“...do?!”

Tel looked up from the fence post he was trying to straighten as the shrieked word echoed loudly across the fields. His first thought was that the word had been a figment of his imagination, helped along by the aftereffects of the drinking he’d done the night before at the harvest festival, and that he could ignore it and go back to work. Then he noticed that Old Nip had perked up his floppy ears at the sound. Now, Nip might be a lazy sheepdog five years past his prime, blind in his milky left eye and half-lame besides, but he had good ears, and if they were up now, that meant he’d heard something.

And sure enough, a few birds had taken wing from the thicket to the south of the field, startled into flight by the shout—a woman’s shout, Tel thought, although he couldn’t think of who she might be. It wasn’t the missus, that much he could tell; she’d ripped him up one side and down the other for drinking so many times that Tel could have picked her voice out of a crowd of a hundred with one ear stopped up. Besides, Herself would be back at the house at this time of afternoon, finishing up the laundry before getting supper underway.

“Well, Nip,” Tel said after several moments of slow and careful thought, "I guess we’d best be seein’ to that.”

Nip made a show of rolling over and going back to his nap, but when Tel started out for the trees, the mangy old dog hauled himself to his feet, let out a whining yawn, and trotted along behind his master, who had brought along the heavy mallet he’d been driving the fence posts into the ground with. Tel hadn’t ever heard of bandits or the like in the area, and the woman’s voice had sounded royally angry more than it’d sounded scared—if there was one thing Tel had learned from listening to the missus, it was the sound of a woman’s voice when she was angry—but even so, it didn’t hurt to take precautions.

Neither Tel nor Nip were in any great hurry. As they drew nearer to the trees, man and dog could both begin to make out voices raised in a heated argument—women’s voices, and quite a few of them at that, but Tel couldn’t understand a single word they were saying. Make that shouting.

Once he’d gotten close enough to actually see these women, Tel had to wonder just how much he’d had to drink last night, _really_. All told, there were thirteen people in among the trees, one a tall, white-haired man with a couple of claw-shaped weapons hanging from his belt, another a young lad whose attention was fixed on the pretty blue-eyed girl holding his arm for support, as if she were too weak to stand on her own. Those three were dressed a bit strange, but one of the oldest women and a younger lady both wore the sort of gowns Tel had last seen when his Lord’s daughter had gotten married; all the others, ranging in age from young women to younger girls, wore outfits the likes of which Tel had never heard of. Three of them were armed, and another was carrying a heavy book.

The girl with the leatherbound tome and the finely-dressed dark-haired lady were shouting at the blonde girl in the white dress, who was shouting back and gesturing at a small stone or jewel in her right hand. Tel didn’t have to understand the language to know that they were blaming her for something, or that she was trying to shift the blame—to the thing in her hand, unless he missed his guess—but the whole scene was giving him an uneasy feeling.

Not all that many things gave Tel an uneasy feeling. It wasn’t that he was a particularly brave man, he’d just led a life which hadn’t been troubled by the sort of situations where bravery was necessary except in the everyday sort of measures. Once he’d gotten over being scared of the dark and all the other childhood fears, about the only things that could make Tel uneasy were the ring of standing stones to the east of the village, and that weird old hermit who lived in the forest, the one people said was a wizard, or an evil spirit. Tel had long since come to regard these uneasy feelings as quiet warnings from some part of his mind that he was in the presence of something magical and otherworldly, and that he’d probably be a lot better off if he left it well alone and far away.

He was getting that feeling right now, so Tel decided he’d listen to it and leave these strange people to themselves.

Nip had other ideas. The old dog’s nose snuffled at the air for a moment before he growled low in his throat and shot forward with a speed Tel hadn’t thought he possessed, barking at the top of his wheezy old lungs and making a beeline—well, a dog-line—for the dark-haired woman in the dress.

About halfway to his target, Nip suddenly skidded to a halt, the woman forgotten as one of the youngest girls stepped forward. She was easily the smallest of the entire group, a pale little girl-child with a face like an angel—currently a very battered, very bruised angel—but she was giving Tel that uneasy feeling in spades. Nip seemed to feel the same way, as the old dog went down on his belly with a whine; Tel couldn’t see his face, but from the posture of the rest of his body, Nip seemed to be trying to look sorry. Nip had _never_ tried to look sorry, not even when he’d gotten in trouble as a puppy, nor even when an irate bull ten times his size had taken offense at being barked at. This dark-eyed girl didn’t look much larger than Nip, but she accomplished with a simple look what that angry bull’s charge hadn’t.

She knelt down in front of Nip, setting aside the strangely-shaped polearm she’d been carrying so she could take the old dog’s head in both hands and lift it to look him in the eyes. Tel had no idea what happened next, but Nip’s tail started to wag, and all the cringing fell away as he licked the left, uninjured side of the girl’s face from chin to cheek. She scratched Nip behind his floppy left ear, patted him on the head, and nodded in the direction he’d charged from; Nip got up at once, turned around, and trotted back towards his master.

Even hidden behind a tree at the edge of the thicket, Tel was sure the girl’s good eye winked at him before she picked up her weapon and turned back to her friends. That, he decided, was quite enough for him, and once their attentions had left Nip, Tel quietly backed away.

Only when man and dog were well clear of the trees did Tel glance down at Nip. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Nip’s eyes, both clear and shining brown, met his master’s and slowly blinked in agreement.

Following the brief encounter with the battered old dog, the group decided it might be wise to move deeper into the trees, to avoid drawing the attention of any other locals. Unwilling to waste the moment, Luna and Mars continued to argue with Usagi as they walked, words hissing back and forth even as they helped her along.

Mars had willed a small but intensely burning fireball into existence to help keep Usagi warm in spite of the cool winds; some of the others cast nervous looks at her, knowing as they did how Mars liked to wave her hands around when she was getting on Usagi’s case. Uranus led the way, discreetly pushing twigs and branches aside from their path with small bursts of air while Neptune brought up the rear, watching Mars’ flame-bearing hand and keeping herself ready to thoroughly douse any stray sparks—just in case. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

After ten minutes of walking, they reached a small clearing where a few old, mossy boulders had so far prevented any trees from taking root. Saturn, who had been leaning on the Silence Glaive a great deal as they walked, looked at the smallest of the heavy rocks and frowned. Purple energy flashed, and the boulder began to change. Divots of moss, loose soil, and a few startled insects rose up from the surface of the boulder en masse and were deposited atop a nearby stump as the boulder shifted, flattened, and became a wide, high-backed bench of clean grey stone.

Ignoring the startled looks from her friends, Saturn sank down onto the wide seat with a relieved sigh. The stone was a bit too cool to be entirely comfortable, but it let her get off her feet and rest, and after the strain of whatever it was that had gone wrong and flung their little time-trek off course, Saturn was more in need of rest than comfort. She was joined shortly by Pluto, who appeared just as worn out, and then by Ami, who looked even worse and was actually having to fight to keep her head up and her eyes open. Ami spared a tired smile for Ryo as he sat down to her left, on the very edge of the bench, and then she seemed to forget that the rest of them were even there.

Saturn examined Ami carefully out of the corner of her eye. Ami’s aura was the same pale blue as always, and the slightly dull quality of the unseen light was something Saturn had long since learned to identify as weariness. She couldn’t see her own aura of course, but the red energy surrounding Pluto had something of the cloudiness Saturn was seeing in Ami’s aura—just not as pronounced.

What bothered Saturn was not the slight change in intensity, but the weird manner in which the energy field surrounding Ami was continually wobbling and shifting. One moment its vague outline defined a peaceful halo, and the next, it took on a wavy, uneven quality, bending into blurred ripples. Saturn had no more idea what this waviness in Ami’s aura meant than she had any idea what the thin darkness infusing Ryo’s aura meant, but she didn’t like either effect. At least Ryo’s little mystery didn’t seem to be making him sick.

“Are you three all right?” Saturn looked away from Ami and up at Usagi, who wore an almost blinding aura of white energy over her simple gown for the split second before Saturn remembered to shut off the life-vision. Next to her, ChibiMoon’s aura had been incandescent pink, as had the tiny glow emanating from Usagi’s belly. All three of them were in absolutely perfect health—which, considering what Saturn had thought she’d known about using the ginzuishou, ought to be impossible.

“Just tired,” Pluto said.

“Tired,” Ami repeated in a drowsy voice. She was leaning against Ryo, her head on his shoulder and her eyes not even half-open anymore. In any other situation, being caught that close to Ryo would have been sufficient cause for Ami to turn completely red, but she was barely conscious enough to even acknowledge her friends’ presences, let alone the fact that they were watching her. The only things that were really keeping Ami awake at all were the cool stone she was sitting on and the slightly uncomfortable pressure of Ryo’s shoulder against her forehead, but cold had never really bothered her, and his shoulder wasn’t that hard anyway, at least not once she snuggled a little closer and managed to put the side of her head on the front of his shoulder instead of the side...

Usagi smiled as Ami fell asleep. Ryo hesitated for a moment before putting his arms around her—getting another half-conscious attempt to snuggle closer as a response—then looked up at the Senshi as a whole with an almost defiant expression. He needn’t have bothered; there were only more smiles. A few were wistful, others a little envious, but nobody appeared to mind. Uranus _did_ start to say something, but Neptune elbowed her in the ribs before whatever it was got out.

Still smiling, Usagi turned back to Saturn. “And what about you? Are you just tired, too?”

“My face and shoulder hurt a little. Do you suppose you could do something about that?”

The smile went away, and Usagi sighed. “I’m sorry, Saturn, I really am, but that wasn’t me you saw healing Kaiya. The girl, I mean.”

“It wasn’t?” Now that she stopped to think about it, Luna and Mars had been rather quiet for the last two or three minutes, as if the argument had been settled. Saturn looked past Usagi and spotted Mars, who looked back and nodded once, grudgingly, in answer to the silent question. “Well, if it wasn’t _you_, then who was it?”

Usagi held up the crystal. Saturn looked at it, at first not entirely understanding the gesture. Then it came to her. “It did that _itself_?!”

“Shhh!” Ryo admonished softly.

Saturn clapped a hand over her mouth and mumbled, “Sorry,” around her fingers before moving them aside and looking at Usagi again. In a near-whisper, she said, “By itself?”

“Not entirely,” Usagi admitted. “It’s sensitive to what we... to what _I_ think and feel, and right before we left, my attention was mostly on Kaiya.” She frowned and examined the crystal closely. “I’ve always known that this thing has a mind of its own, but it’s usually like it’s asleep, or just observing what we do. It turns me into Sailor Moon and lets me fight for myself, and it only really steps in when and if I get into real trouble. But in the last couple of months, it’s like the crystal’s been waking up—I mean _really_ waking up.”

“Don’t try to blame this on _me_,” ChibiMoon said. “I had no control over it at all. It’s _your_ fault.”

“I wasn’t blaming you,” Usagi retorted, blushing only a little. “And this is as much your father’s fault as it is mine.”

“That’s not what Papa said.”

“Oh REALLY?” Usagi put her hands on her hips as she faced her daughter. "What exactly _has_ he said to you about this, anyway?”

“Now you _know_ I’m not allowed to tell you that, odango-atama.” Usagi’s face twitched, but she was up against a brick wall here, and she knew it; ChibiUsa had made a promise not to talk about the future, and she was going to keep it. Usagi made a noise in her throat and turned back to Saturn.

“What I was going to say was that I’m not used to dealing with the ginzuishou when it’s this active. Before, it was aware, but not really awake; now it’s both, and that’s why it went off like it did. It always used to just do whatever I told it to, or whatever was necessary to protect me, operating from moment to moment without actually thinking. But now it does think, and that means it can remember things that it’s seen or done.” Usagi looked down at the crystal. “It can communicate with us, in a way, and that’s basically how I found out how to call you all, but the communication works both ways. I know what it thinks, and it knows what I think—and when it realized I was thinking about Kaiya and feeling sad, it tried to help.” She smiled faintly, gestured with her hands, and shrugged. “Zap.”

“So it can heal a sick girl,” Saturn began.

“A dying girl,” Luna corrected. “One who was _supposed_ to die, at that.”

“...and it can’t heal _me_?” Saturn finished incredulously.

“It still needs energy to do things,” Usagi said, “and I can’t spare very much right now. But when you two started generating all that power... do you recall what I said about it remembering things? Well, it remembered how we’ve combined our strengths before, and it went from there.”

“You mean WE used the crystal?”

“It’s more like it was using you. I’m sorry about that.”

“You know,” Pluto said thoughtfully, “it might have worked to our advantage. That’s the second time we’ve been teleported by the crystal, and...”

“’Second time’?” Luna echoed.

“The first was when Usagi brought us to the hall, and...” Luna wasn’t listening anymore, but had rounded on Usagi with a fresh crop of fury well on its way to harvest.

“You... brought them... through TIME... are you TRYING to kill yourself?!”

Usagi sighed, raised the crystal, and looked around. “Uranus, away!” The crystal flared with white light, and Uranus’ aura kicked in at full power, wind swirling around her.

“Wha...” She was in midword when she flickered out and vanished, taking the sudden breeze with her.

The other Senshi were still opening their mouths to ask what Usagi had done when she spoke again, in the same commanding voice. “Uranus, to me!” There was another flare, and Uranus reappeared in a rush of air.

“...you doing?” she finished.

“Settling another argument before it gets started,” Usagi said flatly, looking at Luna. “Just because I normally get wiped out from using the crystal doesn’t mean _everything_ it can do is dangerous.” She held it up again to illustrate the point, creating a small sphere of faint white light around herself and then expanding it outwards. The transparent barrier slipped around and past everything except Mars’s steadily-smoldering fireball; that, the expanding dome pushed away from Mars’s hand and carried along through the air for a meter or two before its expansion crawled to a halt. Inside the dome, the temperature had gone up several degrees.

Mars looked at Usagi, then around at the warm air in the dome, and then at her flickering fireball, still floating and burning without any visible source of support or fuel. The fireball went out with a small puff of smoke.

“I can’t fight, I certainly can’t blow up any more asteroids, and the most healing I can manage on my own isn’t very much.” A small, short-lived shower of sparkling energy rained down from the dome, and everyone suddenly felt a great deal less weary than they had; Saturn’s bruises hadn’t faded or shrunk, but they also didn’t ache as much as they had, and the fatigue that had been bothering her was considerably lessened. Pluto looked better as well. “But there are still a few things I can manage. Light and heat are easy to create, and the barrier is practically automatic anyway. It just isn’t as strong as it might be.”

“And the teleportation?” Luna asked, sounding much more calm than before. "I know you don’t have enough energy to do that.”

“I couldn’t teleport myself to the other side of those rocks.” Usagi glanced at the piled-up boulders. “But I wasn’t the one actually teleporting. The Senshi did that themselves, just like we usually do, except that this time I chose the destination for the rest of you.”

“How did you move Uranus, then?” Venus asked. “None of the rest of us were affected that time. Were we?”

“No, she did that on her own.”

Uranus blinked. “I can do that? Teleport by myself?”

“You all can,” Luna said, “at least in theory. It’s a _lot_ easier to do in a group, but you all have the potential for self-teleportation. Some Senshi pick it up easily, and others just aren’t strong enough. The ginzuishou probably helped you a little this time, so it may be a while yet before you’re able to...” She broke off as Uranus disappeared into another half-visible funnel of air. They all started looking around before they heard a whistle from behind Neptune—and above her.

“Get down here,” Neptune said without even looking up at her partner, who was standing on a sturdy tree branch a good three meters off the ground. Uranus grinned, then disappeared again. Several leaves from the tree were still whipping about her as she rematerialized next to Neptune. “Showoff.”

Uranus ignored Neptune and brushed a few leaves off herself before nodding to Usagi. “Thanks, kid. This could come in handy.”

“You’re welcome,” Usagi said dryly. She looked at Neptune and gave a smile that was closer to a wince. “Sorry.”

Neptune sighed. “Well, it’s not an entirely bad thing. Now that she can be anywhere in the blink of an eye, she won’t need that car anymore.”

“Bite your tongue, woman.”

Pluto was nodding thoughtfully. “I wasn’t entirely sure why that trip went so easily, especially considering how much trouble Saturn and I were having with the others, but if the rest of you were moving yourselves... there is one other thing I’m curious about,” she added, looking up at Usagi. “How exactly _did_ you reach us? We were five thousand years ahead of you, thirty-five thousand years behind you, and a thousand or so kilometers out of place on top of that.”

“She cheated,” Artemis said. “The ginzuishou can’t reach through Time right now, but it wasn’t the only force in the hall capable of that sort of magic.”

“The Garnet Orb?” Luna said in astonishment. “But Pluto’s the only one who’s supposed to be able to use it, and I can’t imagine that Medea would have...” She stopped short. “But Medea _wasn’t_ Pluto, and that means...”

“...that she couldn’t have controlled the Garnet Orb as well as a real Senshi,” Artemis finished. “For all we know, the Orb might even have helped Usagi willingly so that it could get itself out of Medea’s hands and into Lydia’s, where it belonged.”

“What they said,” Usagi said to Pluto, rolling her eyes. “I stuck a message into the Garnet Orb for you—sort of a ‘Do Not Open For Five Thousand Years’ rush delivery. And that was _all_ I did,” she added, with a meaningful look at Luna.

“You did a little more than that, Usagi,” Mars disagreed. “Ami and Jupiter weren’t even transformed when your little surprise caught up to us. Ami said she _couldn’t_ transform, because of whatever’s wrong with her.”

Usagi blinked. “When did this happen?”

“She tried to transform seven days ago,” Jupiter said. “Seven days ago in the time where we wound up, I mean—and it backfired even worse than the night we went back to the Moon. The ice on the walls was still there the next day, and Ami blacked out besides. Sasanna had to take some fairly drastic measures to wake her up again.”

“Who?”

“Someone we met,” Jupiter said, absently brushing her thumb over the spot on her uniform beneath which the silver acorn rested, smooth and warm, just over her heart.

Usagi frowned. “I was wondering why she changed back, but I thought she was just tired. Luna, I thought you said she’d be better after a few days.”

Luna shook her head. “I don’t think this has anything to do with the mana nexus. If it did, Ami’s powers would have been snuffed out the second the thing blew. Since she can still become Mercury, if not on her own, whatever’s wrong with her isn’t connected to the nexus. At least, not beyond the fact that that’s what set it off.”

“Then what _is_ causing it?”

“I don’t know, but there are some tests we can run—assuming she can still use her computer?” Luna asked, looking to Jupiter, who nodded. “Right.”

“Speaking of changing back,” Venus said, looking at Usagi, “were you planning to any time soon? I mean, you look good in white and all, but this Usagi-speaking Serenity thing is a little creepy.”

“How do you think _we_ feel about it? This reincarnation business borders on a split personality syndrome as it is, but usually there’s just _one_ of us calling shots. _I_ don’t mess with Serenity when she’s doing something magical, and _I_ don’t meddle in Usagi’s everyday life.” Listening to her/them say that raised hairs on the backs of several necks.

“So why not just change?”

“This is why not,” Usagi said, holding up the ginzuishou. “If we change back, it goes back to sleep in the locket, and right now it doesn’t _want_ to do that. Not until it knows we’re safe.”

“Which would entail getting home,” Luna said. “But before we can go anywhere, we have to know where and when we are...”—and here she looked at Pluto and Saturn.

“Third century England,” Pluto replied. “Or perhaps I should say Britannia.” She shrugged and smiled faintly. “When in Rome...”

Luna nodded. “...and second, we have to figure out if anything’s happened to our own time because of what the ginzuishou did to Kaiya. Mars, does the Book have anything to say about the rest of that night?”

Mars blushed in embarrassment. “I’d almost forgotten about this thing,” she mumbled, taking the Book out from under her arm and opening it to search for the helpful, long-winded passage she’d found before. After quickly flipping through all the pages without finding a trace of that particular section, she sighed. “It’s gone. I don’t know if it happened when we teleported, or because I closed the Book, or if the words just faded out, but I can’t find them. I’m sorry, Luna.”

“It’s okay, Mars; I didn’t really think it would still be there. The Book has a history of being annoying in that respect.” Luna rubbed at her forehead as she tried to think, a gesture that the Senshi had seen before many times, and which made it a lot easier for them to accept that this dark-haired young woman was still Luna.

“Do you suppose Pluto might be able to do something?” ChibiMoon asked timidly. “Now that she has her staff and the Garnet Orb back, I mean?”

“Definitely,” Luna said, nodding. “But I have no idea what, let alone how, and speaking of which,” she said, turning her head to look at Pluto, “where _did_ you get those?”

“They were with me when I woke up after falling into the Gate. And out of it, I suppose. I’m not actually sure where they came from.”

“Uh... I know.” All eyes turned to Usagi; she hadn’t wanted to mention this—they had enough to worry about—but it was too late now. “When we got pulled through the Gate, I looked back and saw one of those things throw it in after us.”

“Which one?” Uranus said immediately. “The ordinary-looking man with the grey hair?”

“Not this again,” Neptune groaned.

Usagi blinked, startled by the intensity of the question and by Neptune’s reaction. “N-no. Actually, it was the one in the second seat, the one that kept changing shape. Why?”

Mars sighed. “A strange man helped Haruka with some last-minute travel arrangements when she, Michiru, and Hotaru were stopping over in Berlin on their way home. He gave her an extra ticket—which turned out to be _very_ fortunate, since ChibiUsa arrived not two minutes later—and when she went back to talk to him, the guy was gone. While they were talking, ChibiUsa mentioned that when she’d gone to the Time Gate, she’d seen someone talking to Pluto, someone who just happened to look like the mystery man Haruka had just been talking with.”

Usagi looked at ChibiMoon, who nodded. “I didn’t really get a good look at him either time, and he wasn’t wearing the airline uniform this time, but I’m pretty sure it was the same person. I don’t think there can be two people who look so... well, ordinary.”

“I’m telling you,” Uranus insisted, “it was the same guy.”

“She’s been going on about this for the last ten weeks,” Neptune said wearily.

“But it’s only been six weeks since you came back,” Usagi objected.

“We racked up an extra month thanks to the Time Gate,” Mars told her. “And I had to listen to them argue about this nearly every night before Katina let me move in with her. I’ll explain later,” she added, seeing Usagi about to inquire about the unfamiliar name. Thinking about her ‘student’, Mars had to wonder how Katina and the three children she had been training were doing. It occurred to her that if she could figure out how to get straight a few answers from the Book, she could find out—but that was going to have to wait.

“One of the three women in the larger gallery looked exactly like me,” Pluto said slowly. “And I think... there was a man working at the hall of records when I went there with Ikuko, and when I was talking to him, for a moment I was almost sure I’d met him before. He had grey hair, but even with that, he could have disappeared into a crowd.”

“Grey eyes, too?” Uranus said quickly. “Not exactly dark-skinned or tanned, but not pale either?”

Pluto nodded. “Yes, that sounds like him. He was very helpful.”

“It’s the same guy,” Uranus said, shooting a triumphant look at Neptune.

“Saturn?” Luna said in a worried voice. “Do you remember what that animal control worker who dropped me off at Makoto’s apartment looked like? I didn’t get a very clear view of his face, but I think...”

“It... might be...” Saturn fidgeted uncomfortably. “I didn’t really look at him at the Time Gate, Luna. Most of my attention was on the figure at the end of the row.”

There was a collective hush as the others recalled that same figure, with its tattered black shroud of a cloak, its bony hands, and the ominously empty space beneath the hood. Pluto shifted her staff to her right hand and put her other arm around Saturn’s shoulders.

“Ah, not to worry,” Venus said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “It’s not like this is the first bozo we’ve come up against whose fashion sense ran to black cloaks and rusty farm tools. We’ll find it and deal with it just like the rest.”

“No,” Saturn said, lifting her head from Pluto’s shoulder. “That wasn’t just some two-bit monster trying to look dangerous, Minako; that _was_ Death.”

For a moment, Venus looked as if she were going to try and laugh off Saturn’s claim, but then something distinctly un-Minako crossed her features, and she became absolutely serious. Saturn was aware that most of her friends were looking at her now, Neptune and ChibiMoon with sympathetic understanding, and most of the rest with expressions ranging from concern to skepticism, but only Venus seemed to be about to ask _why_ she was so certain about the identity of the strange being.

“It gets worse,” Usagi sighed, beating Venus to the verbal punch and getting everyone’s attention off of Saturn in the process. “I know the one who threw Pluto’s staff into the Gate for us. It talked to me again later on, in the dining hall, and told me how to call the rest of you. And we’ve met before.”

“It did sort of look like it was wearing your hair,” Artemis said with a nod. “But I don’t recall ever seeing...”

“It was Chaos, Artemis.” A very strange sound came out of Luna then, the result of a breath trying to get into her lungs and a shriek trying to get out, and she started to cough. “Breathe, Luna.”

Jupiter was the closest, and she slapped Luna on the back a couple of times. “I’m okay,” Luna finally croaked, waving off Jupiter’s ‘help’. She coughed once more, then looked up at Usagi. “Chaos?”

“Chaos. Trust me on this, Luna.”

“This day just keeps getting better and better,” Uranus observed lightly.

“Why would Chaos be helping us?” Neptune asked, ignoring Uranus.

“I asked it that myself, but it wasn’t helping ‘us’. It was helping _me_. It said it owed me a debt, and I think it must have meant for setting it free from Galaxia. Giving Pluto back her staff and then showing me how to call you all once she and Saturn had gathered you up seems to have been Chaos’ way of repaying that debt.”

“Wonderful. So not only do we have a potential paradox to worry about, but now Chaos is back as well. _And_ it’s brought friends.” Luna sighed and looked up at the cloudy sky in a profoundly disappointed manner. She glanced at Usagi again. “Was there anything else you wanted to tell us?”

“No, that pretty much covers it for me.” Usagi’s gaze turned to the rest of the Senshi. “Of course, I’m not the only one who has some explaining to do.”

“You can quit looking at me,” ChibiMoon said bluntly. “I’ve already been scolded for playing games with Time today, so...” She made a quick, dismissive gesture with her hand.

At that moment, the Garnet Orb and the ginzuishou both flickered. Pluto looked up at the jewel atop her staff; Usagi looked down at the crystal in her hand; and ChibiMoon stared at both stones in shock before looking at her hand.

“I didn’t do anything!” she objected.

“It wasn’t you,” Jupiter said, her head turned to the left, looking to where this relatively well-spaced patch of trees grew closer, thicker, and into a true forest. “Someone’s coming.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Jupiter could see that she had just taken Saturn’s place on the receiving end of the curious looks; Mars was staring openly, startled—and more than startled—that someone had just beaten out her sixth sense, although that was still working normally, telling her that a strange presence was out there, and that it was indeed approaching them.

*Usagi was right for once. She’s _not_ the only one who has some explaining to do.*

The explanations were going to have to wait, though. Jupiter moved up behind Usagi, putting herself in a spot to get her or Ami out of the way if there was any trouble, while Pluto and Saturn stood and moved between Usagi and who—or whatever was out there. ChibiMoon was right behind them, and Mars moved out to one side, close enough to reach Usagi if Jupiter had to move Ami, but far enough away to be free to use her flames without harming the others. Luna was mirroring Jupiter to Usagi’s left while Uranus and Neptune had both vanished into another swirling funnel. Venus used a quick signal in their private hand-code to send Artemis ranging around to the other side of the rockpile, which she scaled in a single leap, getting a slightly better view—it wasn’t really that high off the ground—and the angle to rain destruction down on anything that came out of the trees with unfriendly intentions.

Ryo had watched their entire discussion/argument in silent bemusement, and he was the last to move now, turning to look at the forest with that curiously absent look which suggested he was trying to call a vision. He blinked, frowned in a puzzled manner, and then gently shook Ami awake. She came to only very slowly, yawning prodigiously and looking up at Ryo with a mildly confused but rather appreciative smile, and it wasn’t until Jupiter coughed politely that Ami blinked and sprang to her feet, blushing to the roots of her hair. Jupiter silenced her stammered words by simply covering Ami’s mouth with one hand, then pointing past her to the trees with the other. Ami nodded, shook her head to clear away the haze, and got out her computer. She noticed the force-bubble then and started to speak a second time, but thought better of it and left the question for later.

Luna and Artemis heard it before the others did, the noise of boots scraping against stone, clomping onto hard-packed dirt, and every so often snapping a branch or crackling a pile of leaves. Their more sensitive ears and longer years of experience with tracking by sound identified only one pair of booted feet, but also picked out a soft, steady thud which was either a third foot or a staff or cane of some kind. Ami’s computer returned a similar conclusion: one humanoid was approaching.

A figure appeared from the shadows beneath the trees, and sure enough, in one hand it held a tall, gnarled, knob-headed branch with which it—he, actually—picked out the way. And it—he—certainly seemed to need the support of the thing, at least at first.

At first glance, the man was old, with long grey hair and beard and a weathered face that was dominated by two piercingly blue-grey eyes, whose intensity nicely complemented the hawklike proportions of the nose they framed. The Senshi could use the term ‘hawklike’ because there was a member of that particular family of birds perched on the man’s raised left hand, its talons dug into the thick leather glove beneath and its gaze fixed forward with the same intense-eyed, beaked manner as the old man.

Or was he really that old? As he got closer, the Senshi found it harder to be certain of the man’s age. For all the grey hair and weathered skin, the man didn’t have many visible wrinkles, and the long-boned fingers wrapped around the staff, though just as sun-browned and work-hardened as his face, were still straight and smooth. For that matter, the staff itself now appeared to be an affectation of style rather than function, for with his long, smooth strides and ramrod-straight yet somehow relaxed posture, the man hardly seemed the sort to need an aid to walk.

The man came to a halt at the edge of the clearing—and Usagi’s barrier—and looked at them each in turn. His gaze was made all the more intimidating by the fact that he was a head taller than even Artemis, whose human form had a slight height advantage over Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto. Fortunately, the not-so-old man’s eyes didn’t appear to be hostile, so his searching look was moderately bearable. He studied them for three minutes and only blinked five times during it: once when he looked at Pluto; again when he saw Saturn standing next to her; a third time when he noticed ChibiMoon behind them; and then twice more when he spotted Usagi beyond them all. His head shifted to the left to regard Artemis—who was leaning nonchalantly against the boulders and nodded politely—and then turned towards something up in the trees off to his right. A moment later, Neptune and Uranus descended, looking a bit disappointed that their hiding place had been so quickly picked out.

“Well, Xerxes,” the man said finally, his voice low-pitched, very clear, and intended mostly for the hawk, “I understand now how you lost that rabbit. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, my friend. And better luck with your next hunt.”

The man raised his left arm, and the hawk took wing with an ease which suggested it had launched from that particular perch many times in the past. After watching the bird climb into the cloudy sky, the strange man’s eyes returned to the Senshi. Then he extended one hand towards the edge of Usagi’s glowing barrier, pushing against it lightly. Usagi could feel it through the ginzuishou as the wall of energy absorbed the inconsequential force of that push, keeping the hand out without bending even the slightest fraction of a millimeter.

“A very impressive display, your Highness,” he complimented Usagi, nodding both in recognition and approval. “But you might want to give some thought to extending such a defensive barrier _below_ ground level, should you ever have need of it in the future. Much better,” he said a moment later, right after Usagi had adjusted the shield. “Of course, when you’re totally isolated like that, you have to make sure to keep cycling fresh air in and stale air out, or else you’ll suffocate yourself"—Usagi turned white and made another hasty adjustment—“and it’s important to be careful to seal the flows of air energy you use, so that someone can’t ride them through the barrier and...”

“Will you stop doing that?!” Usagi demanded, half-shouting and half- pleading.

“Of course.” He bowed his head again.

There was a brief silence, and then in spite of herself, Usagi asked, "How’s that?” Part of her—Serenity—was feeling like she was back in a class of magic on the Moon. The man tested the barrier with his hand for a second time, and once again he nodded.

“Very well done, Princess. The only way to improve it further would be to increase the level of power"—he eyed her for a moment—“but all things considered, the fact that you’re able to manage even this much is an impressive achievement.”

“Thank you.” Usagi could be forgiven for sounding a bit snippy.

“Even so,” the man continued, “I can’t imagine that your mother will be very happy to learn you’ve removed the crystal from its resting place, to say nothing of its proper era.”

There was a silence. “How did... no,” Usagi said, answering her own question, “let me guess. Pluto and I are dead giveaways, aren’t we?”

The man nodded. “Pluto’s appearances in the timestream are not _always_ the result of her duty to guard the Time Gate, but that is the case more often than not. You are unquestionably _a_ Serenity, but the current Princess of that line is only six years old, and her mother is thirty-two. There are similar conflicts of age between these Senshi and the contemporary Senshi and their pupils—none of whom happen to be Saturn, or this young lady.” His eyes turned to ChibiMoon briefly, then went back to Usagi. “Your sister, perhaps?”

“A... close relation.”

“I see.” Those hawklike eyes examined ChibiMoon again. “I happen to know that there have never been any Senshi in the Royal Family of the Moon Kingdom, so I must conclude that you are from a future age, when a new power has either developed or been created. By the design of that uniform, your power is that of a Greater Senshi, which means your source is either a planet or a moon of considerable size, latent power, or both. Several moons of the outer system would do, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say your resemblance to the Princess is more than a coincidence.”

“Would you like to guess my weight next?” ChibiMoon asked. Wisely, the man ignored the question.

“You would be the Senshi of the Moon, then?”

“ChibiMoon, actually.” She curtseyed with an impressive amount of grace and dignity, considering that the gesture had been designed with something a great deal more full than a miniskirt in mind. “Pleased to meet you, milord.”

“Your servant, milady,” the man replied, executing a courtly bow which defied the common, hard-worn appearance of his clothing. “And my name is Merlin.” In the sudden hush which followed, a look of resigned annoyance crossed the man’s features. “I see you’ve heard of me.”

“Uh... actually,” Usagi said, “no.”

Merlin raised a curious eyebrow as the group facefault shook the trees.

The trek through the woods lasted about twenty minutes, the old man leading the way and pointing out all the rough spots in the trail so those who were being assisted along—Usagi and Ami—and those who were doing the assisting—Mars and Luna, and Ryo and Jupiter, respectively—would have plenty of warning. Most of the others were busy keeping one eye on the forest in case anything else showed up, and another eye on their guide—not just because he might _not_ be who claimed to be, but also because he very well _might_.

Venus was of absolutely no help during this entire time. She wasn’t typically the greatest reader or historian, but she’d spent a lot of time in England, once, and the whole ‘Camelot thing’ was a pretty big part of British mythology. She absolutely would NOT shut up about everything she’d ever heard, read, half-heard, or misread about Merlin. He was supposed to age backwards and see the future by remembering it; he could change shape and become any creature in the world, be it animal, bird, bug, or fish; he could tame dragons with a wave of his left hand and conjure a thunderstorm with his right.

Nothing in any book or movie even came close to mentioning a link between Merlin and the Moon Kingdom, but as Venus pointed out, it was pretty silly to think that the most powerful wizard in history wouldn’t have at least _some_ idea of what was going on up there. Luna had to admit—reluctantly—that she had seen some records to support Venus’ insistent claims, and that of course only sent the girl off into the realm of “See?” and “I told you so.”

They finally sent her to the back of the line to bend Uranus’ ear for the last six or seven minutes so the rest of them could have a little peace. What they had overlooked with this strategy was that Uranus had been picking up a lot on how to control the wind recently, and there was very shortly a light breeze moving along from somewhere behind them, carrying Venus’ excited and overly loud whispers along to everyone else.

Sometimes it’s the little things that make life worthwhile.

The house at which they finally arrived stood alone in the middle of what had to be the darkest part of the forest, a low-roofed, ivy-wrapped heap of stones and wood squatting in the empty space between three big oak trees, and looking not unlike the larger cousin of the pile of boulders they’d stopped at earlier. Like its owner, there was more about the place than met the eye at the first glance, for once the Senshi had stepped inside, they found a huge chamber which simply should not have been able to fit within the dimensions of the building they’d seen. It begged the question of whether the space within the house had somehow been magically expanded, or if instead everyone and everything which entered it was shrunk without realizing it.

A large table with a mix of over a dozen chairs and stools and one particularly large padded armchair scattered around it stood in the center of the vast room, near the fireplace, over which hung three oddly-shaped masses of blue-green crystal or glass. The central space held by the table and chairs was surrounded by other spaces, each of which had apparently been set aside for a certain purpose. One, filled with pots and pans and pieces of cutlery, was obviously the kitchen; next to it was a great array of beakers and bottles and weird metal tools, a kitchen of a very different kind. A third corner was piled high with half-open chests and cabinets, and the fourth held three separate doors and two staircases, one going up and the other going down. Books were everywhere—on the table and chairs, on shelves on the wall, on the floor, and one or two were even floating in the air since most of the other available space seemed to have been taken—and they were joined by exotic bric-a-brac which ranged from fanciful animal skulls and wooden carvings to a complete, slightly rusty suit of plate armor.

The place made Jupiter’s fingers itch with longing for a broom.

There were also a number of animals in the huge room. A great grey hound lounging at ease before the dancing flames of the fire looked up briefly as the guests entered, and then went back to his nap. A cat with black-striped grey fur bounded out of the shadows to rub itself around Luna’s legs and purr spectacularly until she gave in and picked it up, at which point it nuzzled at her face; Luna pointedly ignored the sharp look Artemis gave her and the cat, which just happened to be a tom. ChibiMoon took a seat at the table and blinked as a trio of chittering black and grey ferrets appeared on the chair opposite her; Uranus spotted a puff-feathered owl snoozing away in a shadowy corner of the too-high rafters; and after a moment of listening, Pluto heard squeaks from another dark corner which had to be rodents of some kind, though she couldn’t tell for sure whether they were of the flying variety or not. Given the height, she didn’t dismiss the possibility.

As she turned through a slow circuit to study the room, Mars found herself nose-to-beak with a great raven, fully as large as the hawk that had been perched on Merlin’s hand earlier. It looked dark and regal, mysterious and wise, and she took it to be a stuffed trophy or even an entirely artificial creation until its head turned, the dark eye that was now aimed towards her blinking once. Looking into that eye, Mars realized once again how much she had missed Phobos and Deimos during her month-long stay in the future. She realized something else, too, though she couldn’t have said how.

“Your name is Thrax, isn’t it?” The raven’s head bobbed once, and when she reached out to brush the feathers along the back of its neck, it did not pull away. The old man regarded the two of them with a neutral gaze and an equally neutral nod.

Thrax—if that was indeed the bird’s name—did flinch and squawk as a black shape exploded through one of the open windows, a much more normal-sized crow who was fluttering madly and cawing loudly as it flew into the room and began to circle around overhead. The humans and most of the animals looked up at the bird, and Mars was stunned to realize that the noises it made were actual words.

“Company! Company!” The bird’s voice was rough, raucous, and high-pitched, but its words were amazingly clear. “Old fool in the forest! Fools for tea! Caw!” With avian agility, the noisy crow landed atop Pluto’s staff, gripping the metalwork for balance as it leaned down to examine the Garnet Orb with one greedy eye. “A pretty for Rooky! A pretty! Awp!” it added, startled back into flight as the Orb pulsed once, either because Pluto had told it to or because the jewel didn’t care for the crow’s company. The crow—Rooky, apparently—flapped about crazily and then settled onto Usagi’s head, right between the odangos, and dipped its head over the front, turning its head to one side to meet her gaze. “Who’s the fool? Who’s the fool?”

“Get off my head,” Usagi warned, “or you’re a chicken dinner.”

Ignoring the threat, the crow examined the odangos for a moment, poking curiously at one with his beak before his attention was caught by the small strings of pearls that always appeared in Usagi’s hair when she became Serenity.

“Pretties!” he cawed in delight. “Pretties for Rooky!” He pecked at one of the stones and then leapt into flight with another spooked squawk as a flash of white energy pecked back. The crow’s next target was the head of Merlin’s staff; clearly, Rooky didn’t care to risk being pulsed at or zapped again.

“Behave yourself, Rook,” Merlin said sternly. “These are guests. And why aren’t you with the lad? I told you to keep an eye on him.”

“Old fool! Old fool! Awp!” The bird’s head continued to move about—he seemed incapable of sitting still—looking at each of the ‘fools’ in turn. He cawed loudly at Luna and Artemis, apparently sensing their feline origins, and his feathers shuffled nervously when he looked at Saturn. Then he looked at Mars and fell silent altogether before fluttering over to the table in front of her. The crow’s voice was softer and not quite so high-pitched as he crooned, “Who’s the pretty lady?”

Of course, Rook’s speech patterns were not nearly so concise as common text and proper spelling would have one believe. Even though his words were intelligible, the fact remained that he was creating them using a hard, inflexible beak and a tongue with a different shape than what the humans or the shapechanging cats possessed, and that resulted in an unavoidable accent. For example, he couldn’t produce a hard ‘k’ sound without adding a long ‘e’ or an ’aw’ after it, and his lack of lips made finer control of certain sounds like long o’s difficult, where they were not altogether impossible, so when he said his own name, it came out something like ‘Ruhkee’. ‘Fool’—one of his favorite words—typically came out as ‘hool’ or ‘huhl’, and it was actually this similarity in sound to the word ‘huhan’—or human—which made Rook habitually call them all ‘hools’. That, and a smug surety of his own surpassing cleverness.

Despite the fact that the vowel sounds in ‘lady’ were stretched out to something like ‘laaaydeee’, Rooky’s greeting to Mars came through very clearly. She was surprised at hearing a respectful mode of address come out of such a seemingly rude creature, but she was also blushing at being called a pretty lady. Not that she didn’t feel she was worthy of the title, it was just that having it handed to her in a compliment from a scrawny, hyperactive, and loudmouthed member of an entirely different species in front of all her friends was embarrassing.

“Who’s the pretty lady?” Rooky repeated, hopping a little closer to her outstretched hand, which had been frozen in place by surprise, and brushing the back of his head up against it. Out of habit, Mars gently stroked the light feathers, and the small crow responded with a low croaking sound. Then, greatly daring, he hopped up from the tabletop onto the same hand, holding on firmly but being careful not to pinch. Maybe it was just their imagination, but the Senshi got the impression that Rooky cast a triumphant look back at Thrax, who was far too large to manage the same trick.

“Who’s the pretty lady?” Rooky said for a third time, cocking his head at an angle. His eyes all but glowed red as he was momentarily mesmerized by Mars’ earrings, the jewel in her tiara, and the larger stone on the front of her uniform.

“M-my name is Rei,” Mars stammered.

“Rei?” Rooky repeated. “Lady? Rei-di?” He sounded out the words, apparently very pleased at how close they sounded, and then he started to sing. "Rei-diii! Rei-diii! Rooky finds a pretty Rei-diii!”

Mars didn’t know if it was possible for a person to die from sheer mortification, but she thought this might be a good time to try it.

“Rook,” Merlin said, “I asked you a question, and I expect an answer.”

“Otter’s a fool! Otter’s a fool! A fool, a fool, a boring fool! All chores, all day, all boring!”

“He’s very hardworking. Unlike some around here that I could name.”

“A fool!” Merlin rolled his eyes skyward and shook his head in resignation.

“You’d think that by now I’d know better than to talk to a crow about work ethic.” He sighed. “Never mind. Rook, go back and keep an eye on that boy. Make sure he stays out of trouble.”

Rooky preened at one wing and gave no sign that he was going anywhere. Merlin considered that for a long moment and then reached into one of the dozen or so small pouches hanging from his belt and the leather strap running across his chest, pulling out a handful of seeds of one sort or another. He offered these to Thrax, who accepted them graciously. The logic here was clear, but except for a slight ruffle of his feathers, Rooky didn’t take the bait and demand to be fed. Merlin seemed surprised until he realized that, while Rooky might want to be fed, he knew he’d have to give up something else he wanted to get the food—and at least for the moment, the crow seemed to want to stay with Mars more than he wanted a snack.

Mars set down the Book and held out her free hand for the old man to give her some of the seeds, which she then brought close to Rooky. She let him eat perhaps a quarter of them in three quick pecks before closing her fingers around the rest and pulling her hand away.

“No more for you,” she said.

“Seeds? More seeds for Rooky? Pretty please, pretty Rei-di?”

“Only if you do as you’re told.” Food-based bribery, she knew, was one of the quickest ways to get anything out of a lesser intellect. At least, it always worked with Usagi, and Artemis would jump through flaming hoops for tuna fish. Mars had to wonder briefly how Venus was going to coax the lazy cat into doing anything now that he could open cans for himself.

“Rooky goes! For the pretty Rei-di!” And he launched himself, flying out the window with the same frantic energy he’d shown on the way in, this time calling out “The pretty Rei-diii!” as he went.

“I think you’ve made a friend there, Mars,” Neptune observed.

Mars ignored the comment and held out the rest of the seeds to Thrax, who croaked appreciatively and gulped down a few beakfuls of his own. “I don’t suppose _you_ can talk, too?”

“No,” Merlin said, setting his staff in a corner with no less than four other equally gnarled lengths of wood, “that’s a particular talent of Rook’s. That, stealing, and getting into trouble. I suspect it has something to do with the wild magic area where he was living before I found him. Such areas, as you may or may not already know, are created when too much magic is unleashed in too small an area in too short a span of time—usually because a few contentious apprentices out looking for trouble with their master’s wands happen to find it— and the end result of such incidents is rather like the warping effect of Saturn, albeit on a smaller and slower scale. Talking birds are actually a rather benign example of what can be created by them.”

“He... uh... mentioned an ‘Otter’,” Venus said slowly. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Not yet, but he will be. Currently he’s a fifteen year-old village boy who fancies himself something of a knight-errant and spends half his time working in the fields and the other half battling dragons and vile miscreants in the form of a dozen or so local bullies, lending a helping hand to some village maidens, and generally getting into a lot of good-natured trouble. And no,” Merlin added, without turning around, “I’m not letting you get within five miles of him if I can possibly help it.”

“Why not?” Venus objected, on the verge of a whine.

“Because he’s not intellectually prepared to deal with you yet. I expect it’ll take me a good twenty or thirty years more to grind off his rougher edges and cram enough good sense and learning into his head so I can introduce him to the Moon Kingdom, to say nothing of women who can think and fight for themselves.”

“Stick him in a room with Uranus or Jupiter for ten minutes,” Artemis suggested. “He’ll get the message. And a concussion, probably, but...” He shrugged.

“It may yet come to that,” Merlin agreed. “Of course, once he gets his hands on that blasted sword... well, that’s a problem for another time.” He was standing in front of the fire now, lifting part of one of the crystal objects off and looking down into it with a satisfied nod. “The tea should be done in another minute or two. Please, make yourselves comfortable. And you three,” he added, turning to point at the ferrets, who had climbed across the table so they could poke their noses curiously at ChibiMoon, “get off the table.”

The placement and design of the chairs turned out to be every bit as serendipitous as the presence of the three crystal teapots over the fireplace. The great armchair was obviously Merlin’s own, so the Senshi chose other seats for themselves—or perhaps the seats chose them. Each seemed to be perfectly, individually shaped for whomever sat on it. Usagi got the one with the most cushions, settling herself back with a sigh and a smile which said they were going to have a fight to get her out of the thing. Luna and Mars immediately sat down to Usagi’s left and right, and Venus took the seat beyond Mars, the chair closest to the fire and to Merlin’s place—and to the dog, which was tall enough even laying down for Venus’ dangling right arm to idly scratch him behind the ears.

The second chair left of Luna’s seat seemed curiously large until Jupiter push... er, that is, until she _helped_ Ami and Ryo sit in the thing. While too large for one person, the chair had plenty of space for two, especially since the two in question tried to sit as far apart as they could. The chair was having none of that, though, and Ami and Ryo both quickly discovered that, while the chair was extremely comfortable when they were sitting close, fidgeting even the slightest hair’s breadth apart made it extremely UNcomfortable.

The old man’s turned back got a couple of suspicious looks right about then, but he was very busy with the tea and failed to notice.

Once she had Ami and Ryo settled, Jupiter looked at the empty seat next to Luna, then up at Artemis, and rather deliberately took the chair beyond Ami and Ryo instead. Pluto was already sitting beyond Jupiter, leaving her staff standing at its usual impossibly upright angle behind the chair, and the spot after her was ChibiMoon’s. Saturn had quickly claimed the next seat for herself, and Uranus and Neptune had the last two seats on that side, but the Silence Glaive was giving Saturn some obvious difficulty; it was not exactly the sort of thing you bring to the table, and Neptune had raised her to have better manners than that. She glanced at Pluto’s staff for a moment, obviously debating with herself whether or not she wanted to try and duplicate the effect of immobility. Saturn knew she couldn’t play the same kind of games with Time as Pluto did, but if she could adjust the force of gravity on the Glaive, redirect some of the pull to make her weapon fall _up_ at the same rate at which it was falling _down_...

Merlin looked up from the fireplace as his house rather abruptly gained a new skylight. Saturn was standing with her left hand holding empty air and her face turned towards the ceiling with a startled expression.

“Oops.” A flicker of energy brought the Glaive back to her hand and filled up the small hole in the roof. “Sorry about that.”

“No harm done. But you actually do it like this.”

There might have been a few lingering doubts about the truth of the old man’s identity—after all, while he certainly _talked_ a good piece about magic, had a few magical qualities about himself, and a few more magical things in his home, he hadn’t actually _done_ any magic yet—but those doubts evaporated when the three crystal teapots levitated themselves up from the fireplace and drifted towards the table. At the same time, an entire set of cups, saucers, and trays—all in the same blue-green crystal—drifted up out of the chaos of the kitchen area and in from one of the doors in the corner.

Venus started grinning hugely as everything floated smoothly into place, and Usagi’s eyes sparkled as the lids of the trays lifted away to reveal neat little rows and carefully-balanced piles of cookies and pastries. The crystal cups floated up to the teapots in three neat rows, filled themselves, then moved towards each person at the table. Saturn watched it all very closely, looked at the Glaive, and then carefully let go of it. This time, it settled to the floor with a soft thump, but after that it remained upright; satisfied, Saturn took her seat just as a group of fifteen small jugs and bowls assumed an orbit around each other above the center of the table.

“The cream,” Merlin said, taking his own place and indicating three of the jugs with a finger and a slight increase in their altitude. “Milk, sugar, honey, and butter.” All of the containers bobbed in turn before neatly settling to the table. “Help yourselves.”

The next few moments were a maze of “Pass the sugar" and “Who took the milk?” and about a dozen other requests and comments. Neptune took a sip of her greenish tea, made a slight face as she considered the taste, then added a bit of honey and some cream. It was much better the second time, but Neptune frowned anyway; she was certain she recognized the flavor, and she couldn’t think from where.

Usagi, to the surprise of most of the others, didn’t attempt to consume everything in sight, or even within arm’s reach. She was simply still too full from that huge meal at the Neraan estate to handle anything more than a biscuit and a handful of sugar cookies. A handful and a half. And maybe a small piece of that cherry cheesecake...

While Neptune puzzled and Usagi planned, Ami was adding sugar to her tea—a lot of sugar. She usually preferred milk, but in her current state, warm milk in any quantity would probably send her off to sleep for the next ten hours. Sleep was inevitable, but enough sugar in her system might let her make some sort of meaningful contribution in the next hour or so. After stirring in a couple of spoons’ worth of sugar, Ami took a sip to see if she hadn’t killed the flavor of whatever sort of tea this was. She had to set the cup back down in a hurry and try not to cough.

“Ami-chan? Are you okay?”

Ami made a sound and took a closer look at her ‘tea’, confirming what her tastebuds had already told her. The liquid in the cup was a very rich, dark brown color, and she recognized the smell. Ami didn’t typically drink coffee, but that was definitely what this was; the heaps of sugar she’d stirred in had neutralized some of the bitter taste, but it was still _very_ strong.

“Ami-chan?” Ryo repeated.

“I’m okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’m awake now,” she added.

“Too strong?” Merlin asked, shaking his head.

“Just right,” Uranus countered, taking a long drink. Ami watched for a moment, remembering that Uranus preferred coffee over tea, and that she drank it black. Just the thought of what this stuff must taste like without anything to take the edge off was enough to make Ami shudder.

“Here,” Merlin said, sending a different cup to Ami, “this may be a little better.”

While Ami tested the second cup—and found the pale, orange-brown cinnamon tea within to be a vast improvement over that deadly coffee—Pluto was examining her own cup with a look of intense distraction. ChibiMoon noticed.

“Something wrong, Pu? Too much sugar?”

“I know what this is,” Pluto said, her voice as distracted as her expression as she gently shifted her cup, slowly swirling the contents. “How do I know? And what is it?”

“Martian rustthorn green,” Merlin replied, frowning curiously. “Your favorite.”

There was a pause. ChibiMoon looked from the old man to Pluto’s cup; Neptune blinked, took a sip of her own tea, which was the same as Pluto’s, and blinked again.

“I knew I recognized this,” she muttered, turning to Pluto. “It’s that same brand you were always drinking when we lived together.” Her eyes widened and went back to Merlin. “How did you know?”

“Ah. That is the question, isn’t it? How do I know anything?” He drew a long-stemmed pipe and a small pouch out of the folds of his long shirt and began filling the bowl of the pipe with a crushed, gold-tinted leaf as he talked. “How did I know that this particular tea is Pluto’s favorite? How do I know that your past life"—he looked at Neptune—“was named Larissa, or that yours"—he turned to Venus—“was called Ishtar? How do I know about the destruction of the Moon Kingdom by the youma armies of the Dark Kingdom, or the resurrection of the children of the fallen realm on Earth, ten centuries later?”

“You... uh... you knew about that?” Usagi said with a weak smile. “About us?”

“It would be more accurate to say that I _will_ know.” Merlin paused to blow a silvery streamer of smoke towards the fireplace. “The soul of a living being is eternal, but the bodies it inhabits are not. Each eventually passes away, and the soul moves on to a new existence, a new body which is unaware of its prior life. You, Princess, understand better than most people what happens when one incarnation becomes aware of another, and a past life is allowed to influence the present. So let me ask you this; what do you think would happen if a present life were to become aware of multiple past lives? What if, instead of just one or two or three, a person could remember as many as thirty of their soul’s separate existences?”

Usagi blinked. “I’m not sure. I... Usagi and Serenity get along well enough, but we’re really not that much different from each other in the sense of personality. And at the same time, even though we think and act alike, our lives are different enough that we don’t have any trouble keeping them separate. But thirty...” She—or they; her voice had shifted when she mentioned the names, as if each persona were speaking of her other self—paused. “I think,” she said at last, in a quiet voice, “that a person would have to be patient, wise, and very, very brave to deal with that many past lives without losing their mind.”

“Either that or incredibly stubborn and with an ego large enough to blot out the sun at noon,” Merlin observed, speaking around the stem of his pipe. "Mind you, either combination will work, but most people react better to the first sort of person than to the second.”

“So which are you?” Venus asked. “Brave and wise, or pigheaded and self-centered?”

Merlin chuckled. “I’ve been called all of those from time to time, but my situation is actually a little more complicated.” He blew out a series of four smoke-rings, each passing through the one before it in quick succession. “You see, I was one of those people with the fortune, good or ill, to be born able to recall a large number of my prior lives. At the same time, I was also one of those people born with a great deal of latent magical talent. The two traits— I’d hesitate to call them gifts, exactly—interacted, and as a result, I was not only able to see the past existences of my soul, but a number of its future ones as well. That,” he added, “is why my face appears to be young and old at the same time. They say the body is shaped by the mind, and _my_ mind happens to think of itself in a number of different ways, and Times. In two of those lives, I will meet you.”

Usagi looked at him very closely; so did Luna and Artemis, and finally they all had to shake their heads. “You don’t remind me of anyone from either the Moon Kingdom or Tokyo,” Usagi said.

“And it’s just as well that I don’t. In your time on the Moon, I will not be a creature of magic, but a common soldier, quite ordinary and unassuming; my future life in Tokyo is equally mundane. I will not tell you who I will be, because then at the very least, you would treat that person in your time differently; at the worst, you might be tempted to ask them for help which they simply cannot give you. So far as I know, _I_ am the only incarnation of my soul which is aware of the others and has access to their knowledge, and I would like to keep it that way if I can. Knowing things in advance is not always a blessing, and recalling the truth of things long past is sometimes just as bad. Besides, so long as you have that"—he pointed at the Book—“you have at your disposal a source of information far greater than anything even I could offer.”

“Assuming that I ever figure out how to _find_ what we need to know,” Mars muttered.

“Stop that,” Usagi told her. “You’ve barely had an hour to read the thing since it opened. You’re doing fine.”

“Oh yeah. Real fine. We’re still stuck over a thousand years out of our proper Time, we may or may not even _have_ a proper Time to go home to, we _still_ don’t know who or what was responsible for Pluto’s amnesia, and...”

She stopped talking as Merlin began to cough violently, sending a cloud of smoke in all directions. Venus quickly stood up, hesitated for a moment, and then went ahead and slapped him on the back until he stopped hacking up smoke and waved for her to cease.

“You okay?” she asked carefully.

“Fine, thank you.” He looked at Pluto. “Amnesia?” She nodded slowly, and the old wizard sat back in his chair. “I was wondering why you were spending so much time in a single period of history, but I never would have guessed...” He stopped and looked around at the others. “How did it happen?”

“We don’t know,” Usagi replied. “Not really. Someone or something pushed her out of her place by the Time Gate about a month and a half ago, and we’ve been trying since then to figure out who, how, and why.”

“From what you said earlier,” Uranus said, raising her cup, “my money’s on Chaos. Or one of its buddies.”

“Chaos?” Merlin echoed, his ears picking up at the name. “And... friends?”

Uranus nodded and swallowed the mouthful of coffee. “We ran into them at the Time Gate.”

“There were nine of them altogether,” Neptune said. “Chaos, three women who looked something like Pluto, a very ordinary-looking man with grey hair and eyes that we’ve apparently been encountering a great deal, and four others we haven’t met yet. There was also one empty seat.”

Merlin’s face went white. “The Court.”

Eyes widened. “You _know_ who those creeps are?” Jupiter said.

“Everyone knows who—or rather, what—they are. And at the same time, no one is aware of it.” Seeing her start to frown, Merlin hastened to explain. “The beings you saw were the physical manifestations of the eight primal forces of the universe—Order and Chaos, Evil and Good, Life and Death, the three faces of Time, and the Balance which is created from all the others.”

Ami frowned. “That sounds almost like a line from that chant you were reciting when you reversed Medea’s Time Bomb, Pluto.”

“I’ll... have to take your word for that, Ami-chan. I... um... I can’t actually remember what I said. Well, I can’t,” she said, her voice becoming defensive as they turned to look at her in surprise. “I was seeing... I don’t remember what I was seeing, except that there was a lot of it. Something about a pattern, and a message... and it was just too much for me to hold on to, okay?”

“It’s okay,” ChibiMoon said, patting her on the arm. “We believe you.”

“What are they?” Saturn asked, looking at Merlin. “This Court, I mean. What do they do? What do they _want_?”

Merlin made a face. “There is no easy way to answer those questions. Not many people are ever made aware of the existence of the Court, and none have ever truly understood what they do.” He tapped on his lower lip with the end of his pipe for a moment. “There is a legend,” Merlin said finally, “or perhaps it is better described as a theory. Some people believe that universe began as pure Chaos, all things existing at once, without borders or separation or limitation. Everything simply _was_, and at the same time, it was not, since there was no difference to any of it.”

“This sort of talk always puts me to sleep,” Uranus muttered.

“Then it’s a good thing you have all that coffee, isn’t it?” Neptune whispered back. “Now hush.”

“Into this primal Chaos,” Merlin was saying, “came the force of Time. It may have been sent from outside or somehow separated from the rest of Chaos, but when it appeared, it caused all else to separate as well, for Time is the force which keeps everything from happening at once, and allows the universe to proceed with some degree of Order. Order was the second force to appear, establishing the patterns of the material universe that we know, the rules which govern and direct all things—patterns which the remaining power of Chaos managed to influence and corrupt to some extent with randomness and disorder. Life eventually developed from this mix of Order and Chaos, bringing with it Death, and as Life developed and gained awareness of itself, the concepts of Good and Evil became separate from one another.”

“What about that whole ‘Look! There be light!’ business?” Venus asked, getting a brief silence followed by a lot of long-suffering sighs. Merlin blinked and looked at her as if he were about to say something, then shook his head and thought better of it.

“It was the manifestation of Good and Evil and their associated emotional impulses which supposedly caused the original creation of the Court, for these two forces require awareness, which none of the others had previously possessed. A flower may be beautiful, but it is not necessarily a Good thing; it is just a flower, alive for a time and then dead. Similarly, a hurricane may be destructive, but that does not make it Evil; it is simply a form of weather. To be ‘Good’ or ‘Evil’ requires a choice, the awareness to make that choice, and the knowledge to make it for all the right or wrong reasons.”

Merlin blew out another plume of smoke. “Of course, a choice can only be made once, with one outcome, and both Good and Evil are forever determined not to allow their opposite to be the choice that is made. So they struggle against each other, and as a result, cause the other forces to struggle in turn. The Court came into existence as a means to give limits to otherwise limitless powers, to define the rules of the contest and to contain it so that the full strength of the opposing forces is not unleashed all at once, for such an encounter would destroy the whole of creation. Or so the story goes. As you can imagine, no one’s ever tried to test that particular part of the theory.”

While Merlin paused to puff out a few more smoke ring, Ryo looked around the table. “Everyone who is now thoroughly confused, please raise your hand.”

ChibiMoon, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Venus, Artemis, Usagi, and Ryo himself all put one hand up. Merlin chuckled.

“Yes, it’s not the sort of concept you can come to grips with in an afternoon. It’s been nearly sixty years since I first heard that story, and parts of it still give me a headache when I go back and mull over them.” His next laugh held a wry tone. “And of course, since it _is_ a tale conceived by the human mind, the entire thing may be wrong. The only ways I can think of to find out for sure would be to either go and ask the Court...”

“Been there, tried that.” Venus made a gesture with her left hand that approximated the crashing of an airplane.

“...or to read the Book of Ages very closely and hope your luck is in.”

“Which is basically like looking for a needle in a whole field full of haystacks,” Mars muttered.

“Or you could, under better circumstances, have asked Pluto. If any mortal being could have said what exactly it is that the Court does, it would have been her.” Merlin’s smile was not a humorous one. “That, of course, is likely half the reason her memories were taken from her in the first place. After twenty-four centuries of watching over the Time Gate, she was in a position to know and tell too much about whatever is going on in your era.”

“Twenty-_four_ centuries?” Luna asked in surprise.

Merlin nodded. “One for each year of her life within the flow of Time, as I understand it.” In the middle of taking another draw on his pipe, he looked at them. “She didn’t tell you.” It was not a question, but Luna shook her head anyway. The old man’s mustache danced as he breathed out sharply. “Not surprising, really. She’s always been rather close-mouthed about herself. Not that I don’t understand the reasons for it, but it’s bloody annoying sometimes.”

“You’ve noticed,” Uranus said in a wry voice. Then she did a double-take. "Wait a minute. How did...”

“...did I know? I thought you would have guessed by now; I’ve met her before. In a number of my prior lives, in fact, and others in the future besides the two from which I know the rest of you. And a few times in my current life as well.”

Pluto stared at him, a very fragile and desperate hope welling up in her eyes. “Could you... please, can you...” She couldn’t even say it.

“Here’s an idea,” Venus said suddenly, interrupting Merlin’s reply and earning a shocked, almost angry look from Pluto. “Why not just find Pluto _now_ and have her sit down with herself for a long talk?” Pluto’s expression changed again; clearly, she hadn’t thought of this.

“Wouldn’t work,” Merlin said. “Pluto can affect Time the way she normally does because she’s outside of it; your prior encounters with her, and mine, and anyone else’s who has met her since she took up custody of the Time Gate, would have been with a Time-displaced projection and not the true physical reality. It’s the only way she can be effective in so many different Times while still keeping watch over the Gate in the eternal present. She’s been physically returned to Time now, so she isn’t _at_ the Time Gate.”

Ami, Neptune, Luna, and Pluto all frowned. “There’s a hole in that reasoning somewhere,” Luna said. “I think.”

“I think I see how it might work,” Pluto disagreed. “But I don’t know for sure.”

“How much _do_ you know?” Merlin asked, not ungently. “How much have you relearned?”

“My name—at least, what they think my name is.” Except for Ami, ChibiMoon, and Neptune, the Senshi blinked, for it hadn’t occurred to them that ’Meiou Setsuna’ might be an assumed name. Ami and Neptune had both guessed a long time ago that this might be the case—the odds of whatever long-vanished era in which Pluto had been born having the same naming customs as modern Japan were too remote to even consider—while ChibiMoon didn’t really care; to her, Pluto was simply Pluto.

“I know where I was born,” Pluto continued, “at least in a general geographical sense, and I know how old... no,” she corrected herself, “I don’t know how old I am. I know that I’ve spent enough time _in_ Time to age twenty- four years, and I know the day I was born, but not the year. I remember a lot of information about the rest of the world, I’ve been told a great deal about what I do as Pluto, and I’ve learned something of how I do that, but I still don’t know very much about _me_, about the person who I used to be. I know that one of my ancestors was a slave named Lydia, that the eldest daughter in every generation of my family since her has been a Senshi of Pluto... and that except for my eyes, I look like my mother.” She ignored the startled looks and kept talking. “I work as a seamstress, and I’m pretty good at it even if I don’t know why, and I can see things—events and places—in Time with my mind.” She smiled unsteadily. “And now I know that I like this tea.”

“As long as we have all the important bits covered,” Merlin agreed with grave humor. “Very well. If the powers that be have allowed you to come here, then you’re obviously supposed to hear what I have to say. Which is, as usual, little enough.” He shook his head wryly. “Ah well. I shall begin at the beginning.”

While Merlin paused to direct the crystal teapots to refill various cups that were nearing emptiness, Ryo was looking off into space, not in the way that indicated a vision, but rather because his attention was focused inward.

“Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom and war,” he said, “and the patron of weavers, if I remember correctly. Is that a coincidence?”

“No.” Merlin looked faintly amused. “Where do you suppose the Greeks got their inspiration? Athena was more than competent as the commander of the Senshi, and even as a child, she was wise beyond her years. And yes, she was an excellent weaver. I’ve wondered at times what might have happened if she’d married Janus and become the Empress.” He shook his head and sighed. “But of course, it didn’t happen.”

“Why not?” Venus asked. If there was one thing Venus hated in her unofficial capacity as the Goddess of Love, it was a romance that didn’t end well.

“I suppose you could say that an old ghost came back to haunt the Atlanteans.” The smoky breath Merlin let out took on an appropriately ghostly shape as he explained. “I can tell from what my future self will see in your city of Tokyo that you know what a mana nexus is.”

“We’ve had the pleasure,” Uranus confirmed dryly.

“Does this have something to do with gigantic city-stomping monsters getting loose because the mana nexi were draining the power of their prisons?” ChibiMoon asked, referring to the discourse Artemis had given them on the subject that same night they’d gone back to the Moon.

“In fact, it does, but there _were_ a number of other factors involved besides the beasts.” Merlin frowned, muttering something under his breath and moving the fingers of his left hand as if ticking off items on a list. “Roughly three thousand years ago,” he said at last, “there was a war between the Atlanteans and an army of daimons who somehow managed to get their claws on a stable dimensional rift and turn it into a gateway. It only lasted two weeks, but given the size of the army and the fact that it appeared right on Earth’s front doorstep, most of the Atlantean cities on the planet were partially or totally destroyed. The fallout from the kind of magical battles and wholesale destruction that were going on during those two weeks would have been bad enough, but the Atlanteans wrapped up the whole business by turning loose Saturn AND the Grail.” Merlin shook his head. “They never were the sort to settle for half-measures, but that’s always struck me as excessive.”

“How bad was it?” Saturn asked faintly.

“Well, the _daimons_ certainly regretted it. Every last one of them actually on Earth at the time was wiped out, and your predecessor spent the better part of the next five years running around in the daimon universe with an axe to grind.”

“Good for her.” Uranus punctuated the statement with another drink of her coffee, then forged ahead with another question so the old man wouldn’t have the opportunity to go into any great detail about what a past Saturn had done to the Earth. “Now, what does this ancient history lesson have to do with the fall of Atlantis?”

“The war left most of the Earth inhospitable to the kind of magic-dependent society to which the Atlanteans had become accustomed. Except for Atlantis itself and a few remote areas which hadn’t been quite so heavily assaulted as the rest, the ley lines had been so contaminated by magical fallout that trying to use magic to do anything was unreliable and even dangerous.” Merlin shrugged. “So they left. The bulk of those Atlanteans who had survived the war—and there were quite a few of them—moved out to the other planets in the first great wave of resettlement since the dawn days of their Empire. They never came back.”

“Why not?”

“They had no reason to. It took nearly a thousand years for the Earth’s imbalanced energies to sort themselves out again, and by the time that happened, the Atlanteans weren’t really Atlanteans or even Terrans anymore. The original relocated population would have gone back readily enough, but to their descendants, all those scattered planets were _home_, while Earth was little more than a savage, backwards world with nothing important except the Imperial City.” Merlin took a sip of his tea. “I lived three separate lives during the two thousand years after the exodus, and I can honestly say that a fair number of people didn’t even know Atlantis _was_ on Earth. To their way of thinking, the Imperial City was heaven, and Earth was... well, dirt. Most people who came to Earth from off-world went directly to one of the cities; only the native Atlanteans had any real contact with the rest of Earth, and even they preferred to ignore the ‘primitives’ as much as possible.” Merlin briefly closed his eyes and smiled. “That was a mistake of arrogance on their part. After all, if a neighbor’s house catches fire, you really want to know about it before your own home starts burning.”

“I take it from that that there were some fires, then?” Neptune inquired with a small smile.

“Some of the ‘gigantic city-stomping monsters’,” Merlin said with a look at ChibiMoon, “got loose when twenty-five centuries of increasing use of mana nexi after the daimon war finally took their toll. If someone from Atlantis had been out in the hinterlands paying attention, they might have realized trouble was coming _before_ it showed up on their front doorstep.”

“And started burning the house down,” Neptune added.

“Exactly. The Atlanteans eventually managed to put the beasts back in their prisons, but they had to relocate a considerable amount of their military strength to Earth to do it, and there were casualties. Many of the more distant nations objected to having their soldiers die in some pointless war on Earth, so the armies had to be relocated again, spread out to keep order on a number of worlds that were inching towards revolution. And right in the middle of all the social, political, and economic unrest _that_ was causing, _your_ several- generations-removed grandmother"—he pointed at Usagi—“unveiled her little creations.”

Her face lightly dusted with biscuit crumbs, Usagi immediately looked down at the ginzuishou.

“No, not that. Not at first. _Those_.” Merlin indicated Neptune’s tiara with the stem of his pipe. “Have any of you ever tried to fight without wearing your tiara?”

“Not really,” ChibiMoon admitted. “I _use_ mine as a weapon, and Jupiter and Uranus can fight pretty nasty even when they’re not transformed, but...”

“None of the Atlantean Senshi were wearing a tiara,” Neptune said thoughtfully. “And _our_ Venus at least seemed to be stronger than _theirs_ was. Her Crescent Beam nearly got through Medea’s barrier when everything was warped, and it really shouldn’t have been able to do that. Not when someone with the same power and at least twice her experience couldn’t pull it off.” Neptune turned to Merlin—who had looked up sharply when she mentioned ‘Atlantean Senshi’—and touched her own tiara. “So these affect our powers somehow?”

“They do, although they aren’t actually making you stronger. Your personal strength and control of your powers comes from within, and like anything else, there is a natural tendency for the power of the Senshi to get stronger with each new generation, as the human race as a whole grows and makes new discoveries about itself and its world. The function of the tiaras is keyed to the mystical radiation of your respective worlds, the energy which allows you to use your powers at all. That energy empowers and replenishes you, but as you move further and further away from the source, you are in contact with less and less of its force, so recovery takes longer. The tiaras counteract that and allow you to function at full strength and maximum endurance no matter where you go.”

“Or when,” Saturn added.

“Yes, or when.” The manner in which Merlin shook his head was the sort that suggested they all ought to be grateful for Pluto’s amnesia, since without it, she probably would have already had their hides for whatever mess they’d made of Time by playing with the Time Gate. “They also include safeguards which prevent a younger Senshi who hasn’t been completely trained from trying to tap into too much power at once and damaging herself in the process.”

“What sort of ‘damage’?” Ami asked, trying her best to sound casual about it.

“Energy oversensitivity, for one thing, a sort of delayed allergic reaction which would kick in after the girl transformed or used any of her powers. It was also possible for a girl to permanently cripple her own capacities as a Senshi, weakening whatever part of her mind actually harnessed the force so that she would be permanently stuck, unable to increase her strength beyond whatever level of skill she had already reached. Or over-reached. In extreme cases, the power could be burnt out entirely.”

“Oh.” Ami shivered, but she was a little reassured to hear all that, since it didn’t sound like what was wrong with her. There was nothing _delayed_ about her reaction to her power—or its reaction to her—and she’d done a few things back in that dining hall she’d never even thought of before. Calling the Caduceus Rod had been pretty easy, and it seemed to have produced the Frost Lancet mostly on its own power, but she’d turned into the cloud of mist all by herself. Being mist had actually been kind of fun, but it had been HARD to do, too, and that helped her feel a little better, since it had clearly been pushing back the limits of her strength.

“There were a few bugs in the first generation,” Merlin admitted. “Power fluctuations, one or two of the devices breaking apart from absorbing too much power, even one that _repelled_ the energy it was supposed to draw it, but Serenity worked them out eventually. The problem was, despite the unquestionable usefulness of the tiaras and the other devices which she had developed or was still working on, not everyone wanted to see them put to use. Certain of the theories Serenity had conceived and based her work on flew in the face of everything the Atlanteans thought they had known about magic, and one of those ‘facts’ was the mana nexi. If they accepted Serenity’s work, then they had to accept that the mana nexi, the central power base of their Empire, were also the cause of vast amounts of damage _to_ the Empire, both in the past and in the possible future. Once Serenity’s work became public knowledge, there was a huge uproar, since it meant that the beasts had been turned loose because of the Atlanteans, and that the mysterious illnesses and world-withering blights that were cropping up all over the galaxy were also because of the Atlanteans and their techno-magic. The fuel for a tremendous fire had been laid, and the spark which set it off was the disappearance of Atlantis itself.”

“Volcanic eruption?” Ryo guessed.

“No one really knows what happened, young master. My life at that time was as a servant named Ramos, and while I learned a great many things about the time and Athena from him, he was an old man when she was born, and he died shortly before her twenty-first birthday. Whatever happened to Atlantis took place two or three years later, and nobody got around to writing about it for quite some time after—and a lot of those records, already garbled with mistakes and omissions on top of all the usual revisionist history, were lost during the civil wars.”

“Did _I_ know?” Pluto asked.

“I’m certain you did. You, Serenity, and most of the other Senshi in that era were among the few members of the Atlantean nobility on or near Earth who were still around after the Imperial City vanished.” Merlin paused to refill his teacup, and then sloshed it back and forth absently as he talked. “I asked you about it once, when we met in this particular life of mine, but you didn’t want to talk about it. All you would say was that Serenity, as one of the leaders of the faction calling for the removal of the mana nexi, had been summoned along with the Senshi—who were among her strongest supporters—to a meeting with the Council of Lords, to present whatever evidence she had to support her claims. You refused to say what actually took place, but that was the same night that Atlantis disappeared.”

“What a coincidence,” Uranus noted. Neptune absently reached out and punched her in the shoulder.

“The city took most of the heads of the Atlantean noble families and the military hierarchy with it, and without their guidance, the rest of the Empire disintegrated almost overnight.” Merlin’s eyes were closed tightly as he recalled words, both heard and read. “The story circulated by the surviving Imperialists was that Serenity had created the tiaras and her other devices to gain the loyalty of the Senshi and use them as a base for her own power, and that they were somehow responsible for the destruction of the city. Serenity, as you might expect, had a slightly different story, but she also had some actual evidence to support it. Here. Watch.”

Merlin set aside his tea and his pipe and then held his hands forward, palms turned up and fingers moving slowly in arcane-seeming passes. A mist quickly coiled up from his hands and gathered into a loosely spherical cloud above the center of the table, its inner area quickly darkening to form distinct shapes and colors.

Eyes still closed, Merlin spoke. “What you will see here is taken from my own memories, of a recording I saw in the Lunar Archives some years ago. The information was recorded by the Senshi of Mercury who accompanied Serenity that night.”

For the next five minutes, they watched in silence as the images within the mist played themselves out. When the blue-tinted display of numbers and scanning lines appeared, everyone glanced briefly at Ami, who nodded to confirm that this was indeed the sort of thing she saw when using her visor.

The replayed memory showed a group of a dozen women and four men walking through a series of spectacularly decorated halls and chambers, past lifelike statues and ornate sculptures of marble, crystal, and other materials even more incredible. The appearance of the place had echoes of the mystical, quasi- fairytale architecture of the Moon Kingdom, but many things about it—the abundance of sleek lines and shiny nonmetals in the construction, the muted glows of blue and yellow light within the very walls—were reminiscent of the cities and starships of science fiction.

The men were guards of some sort, wearing grey uniforms, long silvery cloaks, and helmets with face-concealing mirror-like visors. All but one of the women were Senshi, two from each planet except for Mercury and Saturn; the other woman was a tall, regal blonde with the same sort of plain white dress and precisely the same hairstyle as Usagi was currently wearing. The Senshi wore the same style of marked robes that the girls had seen back in the Neraan dining hall, but with the addition of the tiara. The elder of the two Senshi of Uranus carried the Space Sword, while the younger of the two Plutos—women who were virtual twins save for the older features of the one and the crimson eyes of the other—carried the staff. It was also possible to catch a glimpse of the Caduceus Rod in Mercury’s right hand every now and then.

The only warning was when both Plutos suddenly looked up at a brilliant flash from the Garnet Orb, and then figures of darkness were appearing as if from thin air on all sides, men and women in swathes of an all-concealing black material which seemed to swallow the light. Both sides hesitated, the Senshi in surprise at seeing the others, the others in apparent shock from having _been_ seen.

Absolute mayhem ensued as the black-shrouded figures leapt to attack with blades of blue-black energy, and the Senshi countered with their familiar powers—and a few not-so-familiar ones. The elder Jupiter raised her hands, revealing two matched bracelets of what might have been pink pearls, except that four were about half the size of golfballs, and all of them glowed with a bright green- white light before suddenly flying away from her in a veritable storm of electrical energy. A coiling drill of water—obviously the work of one of the Neptunes—went flying across Mercury’s field of vision, the liquid pulverizing everything solid in its path as Mercury summoned the icy blade Ami had used and took on one of the assassins at close range. Shards of glass, falling like rain as the chamber’s dome was shattered by the sudden appearance of a howling funnel cloud, were liquefied in mid-air by a tremendous gout of fire and then picked up and hurled at the enemy with bullet force by the fierce winds.

The dark-clad assassins were clearly getting the worst of it, but the fight wasn’t entirely one-sided. They saw out of the corner of the visor’s sensory field that the elder Mars was standing guard over her fallen student with great waves of intense flame. When Mercury’s head ducked around a moment later, there was a momentary glimpse of the elder Uranus finishing off with a sword-thrust to the head the enemy whose weapon had just gone into her chest. One of the mirror-masked guards had gone down, while the rest were fending off the blue-black energy blades with blue-white swords of their own; even Serenity was fighting for her life, not with the ginzuishou—from what Merlin had said, it probably didn’t exist yet—or the power of Sailor Moon—which DEFINITELY didn’t exist yet—but with the same style of magic Usagi had seen the Atlantean wizards use.

Since Mercury’s visor did not record sound, it all happened in eerie silence. The fight was brief, and when it had ended, the one guard, the younger Mars, and about twenty of the black-clad killers lay dead on the floor; the elder Uranus was sitting up against one wall and keeping one blood-stained hand against her chest as she passed the Space Sword over to her apprentice; and, bleeding from a light cut on her forehead but otherwise uninjured, Serenity knelt on the floor and reached out to close the eyes of the elder Venus, whose body she held close in her arms and cried over. It wasn’t hard to guess why she was so upset, for the physical similarities between the two of them were even more pronounced than those between Usagi and Minako.

After a time, the elder Jupiter walked over—trailing a personal system of small, green-white glowing, pink pearl ‘planets’—rather abruptly yanked Serenity to her feet and shouted something at her. She was crying too, and despite the fact that she was nearly a foot taller and had streaks of white in hair that was otherwise dark brown, her features were almost the same as those of Serenity and the dead Venus. There was an argument—even with the painful nature of the previous images, the girls had to smile to learn that they weren’t the _only_ group of Senshi in history who’d had problems agreeing with each other—which ended with the elder Jupiter and the two Plutos heading off down one hall while the rest of the Senshi gathered up their dead and wounded and teleported away.

The misty image fell apart as Merlin’s eyes opened again. “That was the end of the record,” he said simply.

“They were sisters, weren’t they?” There wasn’t any need for Usagi to name names.

“Yes, they were. Their mother was a Venusian, and she was married twice, once to a Jovian, and later to an Atlantean Lord. Lady Furia, the Senshi of Jupiter you saw, took after her father in size and temper, and she was ten when Lady Joy was born. Serenity was born two years after that. Given that her two older sisters were both Senshi, it’s not much wonder that she devoted so much time and effort to trying to improve their powers.”

“What happened to them after that fight?”

“Serenity and the rest escaped the trap while Athena, Lyssa, and Furia went looking for answers. Only Pluto came back, and then just to deliver the news that her mother and Furia were both dead, though she didn’t say what had happened to them or the rest of the city. She took up residence at the Time Gate not long after that, and that was the last that most people of the era saw of her. Not that many looked,” he said grimly. “They had enough troubles trying to hold together their own little empires while dragging down those of their rivals.”

Merlin sat back in his chair again, looking directly at Pluto. “So. Now you know more or less all that I have to tell you about yourself. I’m sorry if it’s not everything you’d like to know.”

“It’s... it’s a start. It’s better than what I had before.”

“I don’t suppose you want us to start calling you Athena now?” Venus’ tone was half-joking, half-serious; Pluto shook her head.

“No. No matter how much I hear or relearn, I can’t be who I used to be. Not exactly; just knowing isn’t the same as remembering. Maybe I was Athena once, but I’m Setsuna now, and I have to live my life for my future, not my past. Athena... she was... she isn’t... damn, what am I trying to say?” She rubbed her forehead.

“When you told me what little you were willing to say about that night,” Merlin said gently, “you also said that that was when you gave up the name Athena. For all its problems, Atlantis was her world, and when it died, Athena died with it, with her mother and almost everyone else she’d ever known or loved; being Pluto was all that was left, so Pluto was who you were. Is that something like what you’re trying to say?”

Pluto nodded. “Something like that. I feel better knowing who I used to be, but it’s who I am _now_ that really matters.” She smiled one of the mysterious Pluto smiles and looked at Usagi. “Besides, what would your family say if I suddenly changed my name for no apparent reason?”

“In order from Mom down to the runt, ‘That’s nice, dear’, ‘Did you say something?’, and ‘Death from above! Yaaaaah!’ sound about right.” There was some laughter, but it ended when the others noticed Usagi’s pensive look. “I hope they’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Merlin asked.

“We hit a stag a few thousand years back.” Venus explained the predicament the ginzuishou’s misfire had left them in, and then Artemis explained it again to clear up the problems Venus’ choice of language had created.

When they were done, Merlin waved one hand. “Easily fixed. The power of Time binds all possible futures into the single unbroken past. No doubt there are future worlds where saving that child’s life has radically altered your entire history, but there are also just as certainly futures where nothing in your world has changed. The trick is finding the right world, and the Garnet Orb can help you do that.”

“How?” Usagi and Pluto asked in unison.

“There are two steps to it, and they have to do with the basic properties of matter and energy—temporal energy, to be specific. When you travel through Time, your personal temporal energy is adjusted to match that of your destination world; otherwise, you’d either be snapped back to your own Time or even cease to exist altogether. A small trace of the energy of your proper Time remains, and the Garnet Orb can identify that and compare it against the energy of the world you happen to be in. It also has the ability to... I suppose ’filter’ is the best word for it. The Orb can adjust your passage through Time to bring you to the world whose trace temporal signature is the same as your own.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Of course, it will slow down your trip home to a certain extent; instead of one great jump, you’ll have to make several smaller ones so the Orb can compare and adjust.”

“In that case,” ChibiMoon said abruptly, “we’d better get going. A few hours aren’t going to matter much if we get back a month after we left, but they could make all the difference if we’ve only racked up a few hours so far on this trip.”

The Inner Senshi, the cats, and Ryo blinked; ChibiMoon hadn’t told them about the little Time-limit imposed by her mother, but she did so now.

“If it isn’t one thing,” Mars grumbled, “it’s another. Come on. We’re going.”

“But...” Venus objected.

“NOW, Minako.” Mars got a sneaky look on her face. “Unless you want to stay here and miss the pre-season track meets coming up in March. I’m sure Himeko wouldn’t mind.”

Venus was on her feet in a flash. “We’re leaving.”

They stepped outside before trying the Time-teleport again, since even Merlin couldn’t be entirely sure what would happen if they tried to jump out of the dimensionally-warped space within his home.

As Usagi still couldn’t transform herself back to normal, they decided that they might as well use the ginzuishou’s energy-magnifying powers to their advantage, and perhaps spare Pluto and Saturn some of the trouble of the next few jumps forward in Time. Merlin offered some helpful advice on how that might best be accomplished, and also went over with Pluto the details of what she was going to have to do to get them safely home. Thrax had flapped out to watch the proceedings with dignified curiosity, but his attention quickly shifted to another target.

“Awp! Awp! Old fool! Old fool!” They all looked up as Rooky came flapping back in a whirlwind of feathers. “Old fool!”

“What is it, Rook?”

“Otter’s a fool! Lost in the forest! A fool in the forest!”

Merlin frowned. “He’s not in the west woods, is he?”

“Awp!”

“Blast! If he finds that sword now...” Merlin turned to the Senshi. "Ladies, gentlemen, I’m afraid I have to see to this. You’d better get going.”

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask,” Uranus said to him. “Why Camelot? Why Arthur and Excalibur and the Round Table? Why do it?” In spite of his obvious concern, Merlin took the time to answer her.

“In this life, I was born on Earth. When I was young and couldn’t understand or control my magic or the memories of my past and future lives, I ran away from home to try and find some answers. There were none on Earth, but using what I had known and would know, I was able to leave this world and travel among the other planets for a time, studying and learning. Everywhere I went, I saw beauty and culture, but I also saw pity and disdain for both myself and the crude, violent world of my birth. I wanted to change that. I knew that I had the power to help create something that would change this world for the better, to make it into a place the other worlds could no longer hold in contempt—but to inspire an entire world, I needed a single nation as a model. To inspire a nation, I needed the right people, and to inspire those people, I needed a leader.”

She looked at him. “If you can see the future, you have to know it isn’t going to work.”

“Isn’t it? True, the reality of Camelot will not survive to become the unifying nation I had hoped for, but what about the dream? What will knowing that such a place existed once before and can exist again help do for this world? How many lives will be made just a little better by the ideals championed in a story?” He smiled. “Everything that is built eventually crumbles into ruin, but what comes out of that ruin can sometimes be even more wondrous than what was before. Take Atlantis. They dominated this galaxy with an iron fist for ten thousand years, and yet it was their science, art, and higher philosophies which created the Moon Kingdom. Camelot will fall, and the Moon Kingdom will fall, and the Silver Millennium will end, but even if I haven’t seen what will come out of that, I believe it must be something good.”

“It will be.” Usagi walked forward, stood up on her toes, and kissed the old man on the cheek. “Good-bye, Merlin.”

She rejoined the others, looked at Pluto and Saturn, and lifted the ginzuishou as they raised their weapons. At the same time, the others joined hands in a circle, and the deep red, royal purple, and brilliant white were joined by an explosion of colors as the entire group disappeared.

Merlin watched the last traces of the light show fade, then nodded. “On their way to being back where they should be. Right, then; to work. Rook! Where did you see Arthur last?”

There was no answer. Merlin frowned again and looked around. “Rook? Rook! Where are you, you blasted chatterbox?”

Motion in the area of the teleport caught the old man’s attention, and when he looked close, he saw four black feathers drifting around in an eddy of wind. Three of the feathers were small and tattered, while the fourth was whole and bigger than all of the others combined. And after a quick look at the trees, Merlin confirmed that Thrax had disappeared, too.

A slow smile spread across his face before he turned and headed off into the woods, calling one of his walking staves forth from the house with an impatient wave of his right hand.

Wherever and whenever they had landed, it was night. A very large full moon hung low in a cloudy sky, and the dark, crooked shapes of leafless trees rose up in many places.

“Ah-aaaaachooomph!”

The others looked over in confusion at the weird outcry and saw Ryo laying on the ground with Ami laying half-on, half-next to him, and looking totally astonished, utterly mortified, and very worried all at once.

“Ryo-kun? Are you okay?”

“Uugh.”

Smiling, Jupiter extended her hand to help Ami stand and then hauled Ryo up. “What happened?”

“Something buzzed me,” Ryo said, sniffing and shifting his back. “Right when I was about to sneeze. I fell over, and I couldn’t let go of Ami-chan’s hand in time, and... where did it go?” he demanded, looking around.

“I think this is the culprit you’re looking for,” Mars sighed, holding forward the hand that Ryo had let go of when he flinched, to show the small and disheveled-looking crow now perched there.

“Awp?” Rooky said, looking around.

“He brought a friend,” Saturn added, pointing with the Silence Glaive to where Thrax was perched calmly on the lone branch of a nearby tree.

“What are THEY doing here?” Luna demanded.

“Rooky follows the pretty Rei-di, furl.” He pronounced that word something like ‘foo-url’, a blend of ‘fur’ and ‘fool’.

Luna growled at the small crow and then looked up at Thrax, who returned the look calmly and enigmatically. Luna’s eyes narrowed for a moment, and then she sighed and threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, fine. Bring the whole universe along, for all I care.” She stalked off a short distance and stood there muttering and gesturing to herself.

“Furl,” Rooky croaked.

“Don’t push your luck,” Mars warned him. “You’re in enough trouble already.”

“Rooky’s sorry, pretty Rei-di. Forgive Rooky? Pretty please, pretty Rei-di?” Even though she knew Rooky was almost certainly lying, he looked so pathetic that Mars sighed and raised her thumb to gently stroke the crow’s breast.

“I forgive you. But behave yourself, okay?”

“Rooky promises. Rooky will be good for the pretty Rei-di.”

*I’ll believe that when I see it.* Mars suspected that Rooky was likely to prove more troublesome in his own way than a month’s worth of monsters. *I wonder Phobos and Deimos are going to react to their new neighbors. For that matter, how’re Grandpa and Yuuichirou going to react when they hear this bird speak?*

“Are we on course?” Artemis asked. “Even with the birds?”

Pluto looked up at the Garnet Orb and nodded slowly. “We’re getting there. This is Europe, sometime around 1000 AD. I’ll need a minute to check our course before we can try...”

“KLAATU, BARATA, N-harrumph!” a man’s voice rang out suddenly. The first two words had been pronounced clearly and confidently, while the third had trailed off into a nonverbal mess.

“What was _that_?” ChibiMoon asked. Everyone shook their heads or shrugged, looking around for the source of the voice.

“Uh, is it just me,” Venus said nervously, “or do those look sort of like tombstones?” She was pointing at several rows of stone markers and the few small monuments scattered among them. Even from a distance, the statues didn’t look reassuring, and the night suddenly seemed a great deal darker than it had.

Rooky and Thrax both cawed loudly a moment later, right before the ground began to shake and buckle in the throes of an earthquake. Seismic conditions being what they are in Japan, none of the travelers were too terribly concerned until the earth actually started cracking open in places.

“Maybe we ought to think about leaving!” Jupiter suggested, stepping clear of a gap that had split open to her left and which was now radiating a weird yellow-orange light. *I really don’t like the look of that,* she thought, shivering as a wave of darkness seemed to wash out over her.

Neptune screamed then, a sound of pure terror which none of the others, not even Uranus, had ever heard her make before. Whirling around in shock, they found her sprawled on the ground, one leg caught in... faces whitened as they realized it was a hand, a fleshless claw of bone which had erupted from the shivering soil to seize her by the ankle.

Down came the Space Sword, and the hand exploded into splinters.

“Oi!” a muffled, rattling sort of voice shouted—from somewhere below them. “I saw ‘er first! Bugger off and find yer own!”

The shocked look those words triggered on Uranus’ face was almost indescribable, but also very short-lived; her next swing at the stumpy arm severed the two bones of the forearm about halfway down.

“Sod this,” that creepy voice muttered, right before what was left of the arm withdrew into the dirt. Uranus looked at the patch of loose soil that was left behind, shook her head, then pushed the whole moment out of her mind and crouched next to Neptune.

“You okay, Michi?” she said quietly. Pushing herself up, Neptune nodded shakily, and although she was still very pale, she looked up at Uranus and managed a smile.

“My hero.”

Uranus chuckled. “You’re okay.” She stood and helped her partner back to her feet, keeping a sharp eye on the ground around them.

“I’m never going to hear the end of this from them,” Neptune muttered with an embarrassed glance at the other Senshi. “I _never_ scream.”

“Oh, I can think of a few times,” Uranus remarked in a low voice. Neptune blushed and hit her in the shoulder again.

“Hands off!” Venus shouted, reducing another grasping claw to powder with a lash of her Chain. Jupiter stomped on a third hand, crushing most of its fingers, then spun on that heel—grinding the busted bones even further—and kicked another hand off at its wrist. Pluto was using the butt of her staff and a certain amount of accelerated Time-force to smash the things, and Saturn just laid about with the Silence Glaive, shearing two or three dirt-caked bony forearms down to stumps with each slice. Voices as distorted and subterranean as the first one protested each and every disarmament, but they shut up quickly when Saturn started sending bolts of force curvin