Janus and Jenna stood before the large, circular portal, looking out into the circle of light that streamed from the window, illuminating a small patch of whitish-brown sand and the water above it. A pale, ghostlike fish with a mouth almost large enough to swallow a grown man drifted slowly past at the far edge of the light, its huge white eyes staring endlessly out from opposite sides of its head. A long, slender-bodied crustacean made its way through the flat-packed sand below the fish, its long feelers extended in search of food and its tiny organs quite visible through its translucent white exoskeleton. These and other creatures periodically appeared from and then returned to the void, a darkness so deep that it was not easy to avoid the thought that it was trying to crush the tiny space of light that it surrounded, to drive it away from this place that had always been dark and cold.

The thought of crushing came rather easily when you were at the bottom of the sea, though neither of the twins was particularly concerned about it. The transparent substance of the window was quite obviously not glass, and if twenty-five centuries of exposure to the pressure of the deeps had not cracked it, another twenty-five minutes wasn’t likely to make any difference.

The Imperial siblings had their minds on something else entirely, something which was far more dangerous than the pulverizing force or lethal chill of this dark, alien world, something against which the apparently indestructible window would be no defense at all. For that task, should it become necessary, the twins were relying on their entourage. The ten finest members of the Imperial Guard stood along the walls of the corridor, each one bearing his or her full battle gear: the faceless silver helms had been joined by matching full-body suits of smooth, nearly seamless silver armor; each guard held a fully-charged fire-lance in one hand; and all carried two mana blades, the wirebound and jewel-inset hilts hanging easily on either hip, inert but ready to spring to life and produce the intense, white-hot beams of energy which served as their blades.

To the twins’ left stood Lilith, uncharacteristically subdued today in the form of a regally beautiful woman with blue-black hair and eyes, wearing a formal dress of green and gold that hardly clung at all. Beyond her was Lady Istar, who was as always blue-eyed, white-haired, and wearing the silver mantle that proclaimed her standing as one of the Lords of the Inner Circle. Laraea Istar, the head and sole surviving member of her house, was the most formidable mentalist the Atlanteans possessed, and although much of her talent lay in the direction of prediction and prognostication, her telepathic abilities—a legacy of a Nereid great-grandparent, or so the rumor had been in the city before the Fall—were second to none. Laraea was inclined to patience and study in much the same manner as a Nereid, seldom employing her abilities with any kind of aggression, but it was defense Janus and Jenna required her for. If it happened to come down to aggression, Lilith would more than make up the difference.

Opposite Lilith and Lady Istar was Archon, his ornate robes the same as ever, his black eyes coolly impassive, although still far warmer than the darkness of the deep ocean. The archmage’s only _visible_ precaution for this event was the addition of a small golden circlet, from which a single diamond hung over his forehead. Janus and Jenna had nothing to fear from mental invasions, and Lady Istar and Lilith were both more than capable of shielding their own minds. In all honesty, Archon could probably have done the same even though he was not a psychic, but the task of guarding his thoughts would keep him distracted and unable to utilize much of his magic, and so, like the guards, he relied on a shielding device—although knowing the archmage, there were at least three other such devices hidden somewhere on his person.

The last member of the waiting group needed no such device. The black-armored giant stood behind the Imperial person, its arms folded and the eyeslot of its dully-glowing visor pointed directly forward, waiting.

All told, there was enough destructive potential in this small group to decimate a fair-sized city—and for all of that, the only member of the group not showing some outward sign of apprehension was the black knight.

Lady Istar raised her head slightly. “They’re here.”

Janus took a deep, slow breath. “Tell them they may approach, and then be ready.”

Nodding respectfully, Istar fixed her attention on the darkness, the set of her features shifting ever so slightly and then relaxing back to normal. For a long moment after that, nothing seemed to happen.

There is a very old belief that all life on Earth came from the sea. The human body is mostly water, after all, and there is something compelling about the ocean, the ultimate source of that water, that continues to make itself felt and known. The romantics point to the ever-expanding literature of the sea, from the most ancient creation myths with their cataclysmic floods and ocean deities to the most recent boat movies or oceanic documentaries, and say ‘There is the proof. This is where we came from. This is what we are.’ The scientists go on about the origins of life, the steady climb up the evolutionary ladder from bottom-feeding bacteria to opposable thumbs, and the interdependency of life, every living thing interconnected to all the others. The ordinary people go swimming, fishing, or boating, and are more or less content.

When the first and most ancient animals came up from the sea, flopping unsteadily on dry land as they struggled to breathe air instead of water, it was the force of life trying to spread itself to a new environment. This spread was not merely outwards and upwards; it was also inwards and downwards, and in the ocean, ‘down’ leads inevitably to the cold, crushing darkness. Down there, in the darkest of the deeps, the rules are as alien as any to be found on other planets, and down there, in the most primordial blackness and slime, there is life. It is not something to be found in romance or science; it is a part of the forgotten past, something that can at most be only half-recalled in dark dreams. In their earliest history, as they were exploring the secrets of the Earth, the Atlanteans encountered that life in its many gruesome forms. If these creatures ever had a name for themselves, humans never learned it, but the Atlanteans gave them one, a name that was cursed and feared and spoken only in hushed voices even at the height of Atlantis’s power:

The Deep Ones.

The first four creatures to emerge from the oppressive darkness bore some vague similarity to humans, for they had two arms, two legs, and a torso in between to hold the rest together, but they were quite unmistakably inhuman. Each of them stood closer to three meters in height than to two, and each was nearly as broad as it was tall. Their limbs were fat with a degree of muscle physically impossible for humans and ended in long, tentacular digits numbering anywhere from three to seven. Tendrils trailed behind the massive beasts as they trudged forward, and their faces—if that was the word—were nests of thick and thin tentacles hanging from the front of bloated, misshapen heads. Their color was mostly a dark green, save for the red glow of their small, bulbous eyes, two on each side of their heads.

The ugly, brutal giants advanced at the points of a square, and between them floated two creatures who were at once similar and yet very different. They too resembled some grotesque cross between humanoid and cephalopod, but these beings were markedly smaller than their escort, no taller than an average human and quite slender, particularly when contrasted with the lumbering bulk of the other four. Their delicate, four-fingered hands were held folded before their bodies in an almost prayer-like fashion, an image reinforced by the heavy, flowing robes of blue-black that completely covered their bodies from the neck down. The robes included hoods, but these did not cover the faces of the wearers, and the almost-human appearance of the rest of the two bodies made the exposed, pinkish-purple flesh of the faces that much worse to behold. Four slender tendrils hung around each of the small, remora-like mouths, on either side of which were the eyes, two soulless orbs that were as blank and staring as the eyes of the departed mouth-fish, but that the watching humans somehow knew could still see with perfect clarity.

When the two leading giants were within ten meters of the window, all four of them came to a halt. The two robed figures drifted forward a little further before stopping, each of them just ahead of and to the ‘in’ side of the line formed by the two giants behind it. That left the space between the four monsters empty in a rather obvious way.

The seventh creature did not arrive from the distant darkness, but from above. Its massive tentacles descended first, spreading themselves widely along the bare patch of ocean floor to form a base upon which the torpedo-shaped body could balance. The least of those trailing arms was larger than any one of the muscular beasts, and there were ten of them, the longest pair ending in viciously hooked sucker-pads. Two eyes, each larger than a man’s head and as black as the water beyond, stared unblinkingly out from opposite sides of the darkly blue-green body, just above the point where the mass of tentacles began. Dark, low ridges of some sort of horn or water-callused hide rimmed the great eyes and adorned the front of the massive body, from which wide, translucent fins stretched a short distance out to either side, rippling slowly in the icy water.

The Deep Ones stood there, waiting. A moment later, Istar twitched slightly and whispered, “They’re scanning, Highness.”

“Let it pass,” Janus replied, speaking just as quietly as she. The twins didn’t have to see Istar’s face to know that she didn’t like the idea of allowing one of these deadly psychic creatures to have access to the minds of her Prince and Princess; Janus and Jenna weren’t exactly thrilled at the prospect either, but they had to be sure that their curious psychic immunity extended to the mental powers of the Deep Ones as well as it did to those of humans.

*You are the leader?*

The eerie, gurgling voice registered clearly in the minds of all, even the twins, totally unimpeded by the deep, cold waters or the impenetrable window. There had been no movement to suggest it, but it was implicit in the words that the speaker was the robed being standing to the humans’ left—and it was just as implicit that this creature was speaking on behalf of the great squid.

Janus had to repress an urge to smile. There had been very few contacts between human and Deep One during the entire reign of Atlantis, and even fewer of those had involved conversation, but one thing all the records agreed upon was that the Deep Ones did not bother to ask questions: they took the information directly from your mind. Neither of the twins possessed the necessary psychic abilities to withstand the intrusions of a mindwalker of the Deep Ones, nor were they carrying any of the various magical devices designed to provide such a defense. And still, the creatures had to ask that question.

In spite of himself, Janus said a silent thank-you to Athena. “I am,” he said aloud. “I am Janus, of House Imperator, Crown Prince of Atlantis. Why have you requested to speak to us?”

Istar psychically relayed the words, and her communication was followed by a long, motionless silence on the part of the Deep Ones. Janus doubted that the creatures liked learning that there was a human who had immunity to their powers without the benefit of spell or device or training—and they would not like the suppliant nature suggested by the use of the word ‘request’, either—but when the gurgling voice resumed, it gave no hint of the speaker’s feelings in that matter.

*Your presence here disturbs us, human. Since the fall of your empire, we have been left in peace, undisturbed by the intrusions of your kind into our places. Only recently have humans begun to venture into our domain again, and always they come in small numbers, in their metal ships. They come in small numbers, and their minds are asleep; they do not concern us. But you... you come in force. You come with your unwelcome mind-walkers, and the mindless ones whose unthoughts contaminate our awareness. You are not wanted here.*

“We know this,” Janus replied calmly. “We have not forgotten the warnings your ancestors gave to ours when they intruded on you long ago.” Indeed, the horror-stories that had grown out of the records of the ‘cleansing’ of several undersea colonies, unknowingly built too close to the hidden cities of the Deep Ones, had terrified whole generations of Atlanteans, young and old alike. “We are here in your realm only because we must be here, and we have no intention of remaining any longer than is necessary.”

*And yet you have already stayed here longer than you had planned,* the response came. *These ongoing delays are unacceptable.*

“They were unavoidable,” Janus said sharply, speaking directly to the squid. “Much about this world has changed in our absence, and those changes forced us to alter our original strategy. There are very crucial requirements we must meet before we can depart your realm, and we will _not_ hasten the completion of our work here merely for your comfort.”

When Istar’s translation reached it, the monster’s tentacles rolled in what might have been agitation. *You cannot wait forever,* the speaker said, its voice snapping harshly. *Time is of the essence in your plans, and you are fast running out of it.*

“True,” Janus agreed, “but there remains sufficient time for us to finish our work—and to deal with some... unexpected opposition we have been encountering.”

*The Senshi are the least of your problems,* the speaker announced flatly. The twins glanced out of the corner of Jenna’s eye to see what Lady Istar’s reaction to that statement was, and found her unsurprised expression to be quite out of place.

“You knew,” Jenna said quietly.

*I suspected,* Istar corrected, her words appearing in the twins’ minds, unheard by the other Atlanteans and unknown—if not entirely undetected—by the Deep Ones. *I give you my word that I will explain, Jenna—later. For now, I suggest that we finish dealing with our... guests.*

“Resume,” Janus said, before turning his attention to the Deep Ones. “What do you mean by that? What do you know of them?”

*We remember the power of the Senshi of your empire,* the speaker said, *and we remember the power of the Senshi of the years after your empire. Though they had not walked this world for nearly a thousand years, when we felt the new powers awakening, there was no question that they were Senshi.* The creature paused. *Though we sense something else about them that is... different... from their predecessors. Echoes of their minds on the Astral Plane suggest a duality; age that exceeds their age, memory beyond their own. We do not understand it.*

The speaker’s telepathic voice had changed in tone. In those words, it conveyed the impression that it was now speaking for itself, an aide offering a personal but expertly informed opinion. There was actually a note of mild interest, like that of a researcher faced with a new and intriguing problem.

“We can offer little explanation for anything you may have detected about them,” Janus said. “We ourselves have had only one direct contact with these new Senshi.”

*You have had two,* the speaker corrected. *The mind your archmage encountered on the Astral Plane twelve days ago was the mind of the Senshi of Mars.* This got Archon’s immediate and undivided attention. *That was the first time we sensed her there so strongly. The duality was much more pronounced in her for a time, and then it was not. We cannot explain it, nor how she could have affected such a large region of the Plane.*

“We’ve observed similar incidents with some of the other Senshi,” Janus said. “Displays of power and ability which exceed our previous records of what they should be able to do—and yet you say that they’re not what we should be concerned with?”

*No. There is another power there that you have not faced yet.*

“What sort of power?”

The Atlanteans were rather surprised when the squid’s nest of arms rolled and thrashed in a display of agitation that, if anything, was even greater than the last. Both of the robed Deep Ones shifted, seeming to clench their long fingers, and even the impassive giants moved slightly.

*We do not know,* the speaker admitted, its voice once again that of a translator, but full of its own frustration as well as that of its leader. *It has appeared at times in the distant past: once long before your empire; again shortly before your war with the daimons; and then after the fall of your city, during the death-days of your empire. We felt it many times in the centuries following, but we could not perceive its nature, save for the silver light of its power. It slept long, its awakenings coming upon us too suddenly and too briefly to be studied, and it was... distant... from this world. And yet this world reacted to it. _All_ worlds react to it. You have seen the flows of power?*

“The ley lines?” Janus said. “Yes, we’ve studied the changes...” He stopped short and stared at the creature as he realized what it had been leading up to. “That isn’t possible. No single man-made device has _ever_ had the power to affect mana energy on a planetary scale.”

*This one did, and does—and it has done much more. We remember that in all the history of your empire, there was never a time when there were no Senshi, and yet the silver light somehow removed them from the world for the last ten centuries. In all that time, we felt only the echoes of that which you call the Time Gate, the whispering traces of the woman with the eyes of Time, and she was always alone. It was about twenty years ago that the Senshi began appearing once again, but is only within the last four years that any of their powers became active.*

*FOUR YEARS?* Janus thought. His expression and his sister’s were both calm, but their minds were racing. *With no support or teachers except for Athena, these women have developed their powers this far in just FOUR YEARS?*

*The light reappeared with the Senshi,* the speaker continued, *as did the darkness, and we have felt all of them grow. You have missed far more than you think during your exile, Prince of Atlantis; in the last five years, this planet has been besieged by everything from the physical essence of a daimon lord to the Galactic Senshi herself. Every time, we have felt the Senshi involved, and we know that you have barely begun to see the full extent of their powers. We know also, that as strong as the Senshi have become, this silver power that is with them is even stronger.*

Janus was silent for several very long minutes. “Why are you telling us all of this?” he finally asked.

Again, the squid’s tentacles shivered, and the mouth-tendrils of the two robed Deep Ones twitched nervously as well, sharing in whatever emotion their leader was displaying. *We know what is coming,* the speaker said in an even tone. *It is that which has kept us from removing you from our realm, and which has driven us to speak to you here. We offer no untruths to you, human; we have as little use for your species as you have for the lowest vermin, and at any other time, we would gladly expunge you from our domain. But not now. This world is our home as well, and it is threatened. If assisting you is the price of saving our home, then so be it.*

“Assisting us,” Janus echoed, trying to spot some trace of familiar emotion on the alien features of the squid and its aides. “You have the authority to make such an offer in good faith?”

*I do.* The voice was NOT that of the speaker; it was as cold and dark and deep as this ocean floor, powerful and malevolent, and with just those two words, it raised the hairs on the back of the twins’ neck and chilled their blood. Once again glancing out of Jenna’s eye, they could see that Lady Istar’s face had gone chalk white, and that even Lilith looked as though she was about to be sick. To their right, Archon did not appear to be moved at all.

“And in what capacity would you aid us?” It took an effort to keep his voice level, but Janus managed it.

*You have sufficient physical resources for your tasks,* the speaker said, *and you have the means to acquire the energy you will need to fulfill your plans. What you lack is accurate information on the world above, to properly plan your assaults. We can provide that, as well as further and more detailed knowledge of what has passed during your exile. It is also within our power to conceal the movements of your forces, to confuse or mislead—or remove—those who may attempt to interfere.*

That was about what Janus had expected to hear. The Deep Ones could not long tolerate exposure to what humans considered a normal environment. They required the cold, the darkness, and the omnipresent water; even the crushing pressure of these lightless depths was in some measure necessary for their comfort and survival. They fared better than humans attempting to brave the deep oceans, but the end result of prolonged exposure would be about the same. Their mind-walkers, though, could ‘visit’ the surface through any one of a hundred different psychic techniques and suffer not in the slightest. Such abilities as they were known to command would make for a formidable intelligence network, and they were quite correct in their assessment of the Atlantean situation; they needed information just badly enough to accept such an offer, even from the Deep Ones. Working in such a role would allow the creatures to assist the Atlanteans while avoiding the necessity of venturing to the surface and also maintaining a distance both sides would find more comfortable than associating face-to-face.

Then too, it would have been a warm day on Pluto before Janus even considered being a party to a repetition of what had happened to those long-ago colonies.

“It is certainly a... unique offer,” the Prince said slowly. “What is it that you seek in return for this assistance?”

*The continued purity of our realm,* the speaker stated. *We shall aid you so long as your mind-walkers and mindless ones are kept away from our places, so long as your minds remained turned towards the surface, where your tasks lie. Do that, and leave our realm when you are fully prepared, and you will have our aid.*

“Information in exchange for privacy.” Janus nodded. “A fair exchange—but we must give it some consideration.”

*Consider quickly.* Again, the giant squid had spoken for itself, and with those words, it apparently considered this meeting to be over, for it rocketed away into the void with a backblast of water that made the tendrils of its minions and the robes of the two mind-walkers flap wildly. The muscular green creatures slowly turned and began trudging back the way they had come, but the last two remained, and though they did not so much as turn towards each other, Janus had the distinct impression they were conversing. Then the one that had not yet spoken did so, its voice as watery and weird as its counterpart’s, but instantly recognizable as _not_ being that voice.

*One thing more,* it said. *The source of the silver light has changed in recent months. It no longer sleeps, but remains awake, and while we still cannot fully perceive it, it is close enough to us that we can feel a restriction upon its power, a limitation which has grown along with its awareness. It is waiting for something—what, we do not know, but with its power restrained, you have a chance to act without risking its interference.*

*However,* the first creature added, *as the silver power has lessened, we have become more aware of other forces that are somehow connected to it: another light; a darkness; and a strange grey power. We cannot perceive much about any of them, except that your forces have already encountered the darkness in some measure, and may do so again. Though they do not feel as strong as the silver power, we advise you to be wary of all three, particularly the grey. It is the least dangerous of the three, but it is the only one of them currently active, and it evades us even more readily than does the silver power.*

Without another word, they disappeared. For several minutes, the silence was absolute.

“Well,” Lilith said, “_that_ was perhaps the most distasteful thing I’ve had to do in...”

“Be quiet, Lilith,” Jenna snapped. Right on the end of that, Janus added, “The council hall,” in a note of command.

“As you say, my Prince.” Archon bowed his head and spread his hands, and the entire group was standing in the hall. While the twins ascended to the throne—the giant knight moving around behind them and resuming its silent immobility—the ten guardsmen remained where they stood, two precise rows defining a corridor in the middle of the room. Archon, Istar, and Lilith stood at the end of those rows nearest the throne, waiting—Archon and Istar with their respective patience, Lilith with her lack of it.

“Captain,” Janus said, overriding the tightly-woven spell-fields that had kept the guards essentially deaf to all that had been said during the meeting, “you and your people are dismissed.”

Faceless and featureless in that silver armor, the nearest of the ten guards touched the tip of the firelance he carried in one hand to his opposite shoulder in salute, then gave an order that was muted by his enclosing helm but still carried clearly to the other nine soldiers. They saluted in turn and then marched, double file, out of the hall.

For some reason, Janus found himself considering the fact that three of these elite soldiers were women, and yet were completely indistinguishable from their brothers-in-arms while they all wore their armor—which of course was the entire point. The armor was as much weapon as defense, showing the enemy only his own features, warped and distorted by the convex surface of the mirror-mask, and making each guardsman appear to be a clone of the next. Additionally, all the guardsmen were trained and conditioned to the point where they not only looked alike, but _moved_ alike, fighting in perfect tandem. Present a specific attack to a hundred guardsmen, and you would get the same answer one hundred times—the best answer. They did not fight with the rigid, mindless repetitions of units, but with intelligence and precision, and always that peerless synchronization. Defeat one such warrior, and the next would fight so much like him that you were never entirely certain that it was NOT him. The value of that kind of intimidation was yet another weapon in the guardsman’s arsenal.

Right now, though, it profoundly disturbed Janus to see how similar all ten of those soldiers were, how _exactly_ alike each was to the next in shape and movement. The massive warriors of the Deep Ones had been just the same way.

While Janus was pondering that unsettling little revelation, Jenna turned her attention to Lady Istar. “You said you would explain, Laraea. I’m waiting.”

“There were several factors,” Lady Istar replied calmly, folding her arms. “My suspicions were raised a month ago, when you told us that the advance force of units had been destroyed or recalled. From Draco’s and Stone’s reports, I knew that any modern weapons powerful enough to eliminate our units would have caused noticeable collateral damage to the city; Archon would have detected and dealt with any conventional magical resistance; and Lilith and I would likewise have noticed any traces of psionic activity on that scale. Since none of those three seemed to be the case, it was safe to assume that the problem was shielded against magical and psychic detection, but I couldn’t tell anything more than that for some time. Then you assigned me to try and track down the source of that energy Archon encountered.”

“Mars, according to the Deep Ones,” Janus said, “which would explain why neither you nor Archon have been able to find it—her—again.”

Istar nodded and continued with what she had been saying. “I’ve spent a great deal of time on the Astral Plane in the last two weeks, and I noticed a very pronounced change in it four days ago. I was able to confirm the cause of that change to have been the passage of a large number of daimons, and since I know that you would not employ such creatures without a very compelling reason, I reviewed all the factors. An apparently undetectable magical force, strong enough to destroy units with great speed, and which can seemingly only be held at bay by daimons adds up to the Senshi: they are shielded against most forms of magical or psychic detection; they could take control of almost any elementals sent against them; higher-planar beings would not consent to attack them; and daimons are the only lower-planar creatures strong enough to confront them with any chance of success.”

When Istar had finished, Janus raised his hands and applauded slowly—but it was Jenna who shook her head and sighed. “Sometimes I forget that you were training for a post with the intelligence service before the Fall, Laraea.”

“My training can’t claim full credit,” Istar admitted. “Several of my divinations have hinted that we’re facing opposition from multiple elements, and you don’t usually see fire and water aligned together. Mars and Neptune would explain it, though.”

“And once you realized this,” Jenna said, “I suppose you did a horoscope for Athena, as well?”

Istar nodded. “Support and shelter from the same alignment of forces that opposes us—air and water, fire and ice, thunder and metal.” She looked at her Prince and Princess. “I took it to mean that Athena has managed to find—or get herself found by—a full team of Senshi. Is that correct?”

“So far as we can tell, yes—with some differences. For one thing, it appears that the Mercury of this generation is a human, and Cestus fought a Senshi of Venus who was masquerading under a different guise four nights ago. There also seem to be several other Senshi that weren’t around in our time.”

“That would explain the rest of Athena’s horoscope,” Istar mused. “The influence of the moon was twice as strong as anything else, and it was paralleled by a male earth-aspect. There were also signs of several lesser influences: two were aligned with the moon; another was aligned to Mercury, but very strongly influenced by Pluto; and there were several others that didn’t show any major alignments.” She smiled and chuckled faintly. “All in all, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reading quite that crowded. Athena even has Saturn aligned in her favor.”

“Saturn is not usually in _anyone’s_ favor,” Archon said, sounding suspicious. Janus and Jenna had only a vague grasp of astrology, but Archon’s long experience and general expertise of magic gave him a reasonable understanding of its many fields, including the sometimes quirky study of the stars.

“Normally, no,” Istar agreed, “but with the influences of all the other powers added in, Saturn’s usual detrimental effects were canceled out. As I said, it was a crowded horoscope, but it essentially says that Athena is either going to have a year where nothing happens, or a year in which _everything_ happens. It depends on how you interpret the position of Pluto.”

“Has anyone besides yourself been in a position to ‘interpret’ this horoscope?” Janus asked.

Istar’s answering look was proud and just slightly reproachful. “Naturally not, your Highness, and you have my word of honor that unless or until you give the word, no one will. You may have Lilith scan me if you wish to confirm that.”

“That won’t be necessary, Lady—but I _do_ want you to start wearing one of Archon’s shielding devices. I trust your honor, but I _don’t_ trust the Deep Ones.”

“That won’t be necessary, either, your Highness.” Istar reached up and drew a small silver pendant out from beneath her robes. At Jenna’s look, the white-blonde Lady smiled faintly and shrugged. “I don’t trust them, either, and more importantly, I don’t know the full extent of their mental abilities. I wasn’t going to take any chances.”

“Good.” Janus closed his eye and raised his arm, elbow on the edge of the chair and knuckle braced against the bridge of his nose in a thoughtful pose. “They were doing their best to give us every reason to trust them,” the Prince murmured, “and that in itself makes me suspicious.”

“Do you believe that they lied to us?” Jenna asked.

“Not in the sense that anything they said was a deliberate falsehood, but I _also_ don’t believe for a second that they told us _everything_ they know. And did you notice how concerned they were about this ‘silver power?’”

“If it really _can_ alter the ley lines,” Jenna said, “then I’d say that they have _plenty_ of reason to be concerned about it. Particularly if they aren’t able to tell what it is.”

“But why _tell_ us that they can’t identify this thing?” her brother countered, opening his eye and gesturing with his hand. “The Deep Ones seem to want us to believe what they say, so in that respect, they _had_ to tell us about the existence of this thing; otherwise, they would have lost credibility if and when we found out about it on our own. But they _didn’t_ have to go into detail about what it’s capable of; if anything, telling us made the thing even more dangerous, because now that we know what it can do, we’re that much more likely to try to seize it and use it against them.”

“I see what you mean.” Jenna frowned. “So... they either want us to go after this silver power, or at the very least they want to make sure that our attention is fixed on it.”

“And that,” Janus said, leaning back on the throne and drumming his fingers on the armrest, “at least to me, suggests that there’s something else that they _don’t_ want us looking at too closely. Something important to the Deep Ones, but which has little or nothing to do with the Senshi, this mysterious power, or the ‘other forces’ that the mind-walkers warned us about.” His fingers drummed to a halt. “We’ll have to worry about it later. Archon, what’s our status?”

“Preparations for the next operation are thirty-six percent complete, Highness. One nexus, two squads of first-generation units, and one half-squad of second-generation units. We’ll be finished in another six days.”

“Six days,” Janus repeated, plainly not happy at having to wait that long. He sighed. “Very well. We’ll stall the Deep Ones as long as we can, Archon, but have your people concentrate on the nexi just in case we have to move ahead of schedule. We can reinforce the units with earth elementals and use daimons as distractions if we have to, but I don’t want those sucker-faced mutants getting it into their heads that we’re not strong enough to be of help to them.”

Usagi woke up early on Wednesday. It wasn’t her idea.

Monday as a whole had left her completely exhausted. Gloomy, ugly-weather days like that sapped a person’s energy as well as any monster, making everything five times harder to do than normal, and even on the best of days, trying to deal with her mother’s reaction to her latest test scores was something guaranteed to leave Usagi feeling wiped out. Trying to deal with her mother being _happy_ about her test scores for once had been no less draining than the usual routine, because after years of cringing, evading the subject, wheedling, whining, and wailing, Usagi’s reactions were almost instinctive. Every time Ikuko turned in her general direction, Usagi automatically went into cringe mode; she couldn’t help it, and it was only with great effort that she managed to stop herself from going any further than a few nervous fidgets.

There’d been other reasons to fidget as well. Introducing ‘Arthur’ had gone over without a hitch for all of five minutes, and then Ikuko had insisted that he and Minako—and Haruna, Rei, and Yuuichirou as well—stay for dinner. At that point, Usagi had seriously considered hiding under the bed for the rest of the evening. Everybody would ask questions about Arthur, and he and Minako would answer them—with Minako undoubtedly making it up as she went along, with her usual flair and potential for disaster—and then all the Senshi would have to try and get the story straight for future reference... but only after Minako had forgotten about half of everything that she’d said...

Dinner wasn’t a complete disaster. Artemis was at his best, blending the behavior of a perfect English gentleman with that of a not-so-perfect English schoolboy and maintaining that slightly textbookish accent to his Japanese to spin a convincing front. Usagi knew that Artemis had been to England just that one time with Minako, for six months at the most, but ‘Arthur’ talked about it as if he really had been living there his whole life, and the discussion of soccer—beg pardon; the discussion of _football_ that he got into with Shingo took on an almost religious intensity. He repeated the story he had given Umino about studying business; he commiserated with Yuuichirou about the ups and downs of campus life; he described friends, family members, and other fictional acquaintances with casual familiarity. Through all of that, he somehow managed to keep reining Minako in before she went too far or said too much. He even found time to eat.

Once all was said and done, the dishes washed, and the guests on their way home, Usagi had dragged herself upstairs and collapsed, fully intent on sleeping through Tuesday.

Ami’s call over the communicators at just a little past six in the morning had almost spoiled that plan, but after sending Luna to see what was going on, Usagi went right back to bed and slept for another six hours straight. She spent the entire day in her pajamas, if not in bed, absolutely reveling in the knowledge that school was over for a whole blessed month, and that—regardless of the consequences in the distant future—those ‘impossible’ marks had earned her a huge dose of indulgence from her parents.

But after such a lovely, lazy day, Usagi was too well-rested to stick with her usual sleeping pattern, and so when Setsuna woke up at sunrise, she was startled by Usagi’s somewhat moody, “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Usagi-chan.” Setsuna looked at her, taking in the flat-lipped set of her mouth, the straight-backed posture as she sat up against the headrest and wall, and the lack of bleariness in her eyes, and decided not to inquire as whether Usagi had slept well. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

“I had some toast about half an hour ago. Mom wasn’t up.”

“Ah.” In Usagi’s case, the commandment that Ikuko was the only one in the house allowed to cook or grant permission for others to cook was less of an inconvenient restriction than it was a necessary safety measure. Setsuna pushed back the sheets and swung her legs over the side of the mattress, reaching for her housecoat while sliding her feet into her slippers. As was usually the case, she could hear the sound of the shower. “Well, she’ll be downstairs in three minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Shall we...”

“Do you have to do that?”

In the middle of rising from the bed, Setsuna blinked. “Excuse me? Do I have to do what?”

“Be so... so... _precise_,” Usagi said. “Do you always have to say _exactly_ how many minutes and seconds it’ll take for something to happen? Can’t you just say ‘she’ll be a few minutes’ or ‘it’ll just take a minute’ like the rest of us?”

For a few brief moments, Setsuna actually sat there with her mouth open and no words coming out. “I... never actually noticed I was doing it,” she said slowly, folding her arms and tapping her chin thoughtfully with one finger. “Now that you mention it, though... I’ll try to be a little less exact in the future. Okay?” Usagi grunted something which Setsuna took to be agreement; nodding, she stood up and neatly remade her bed, then took a few steps towards Usagi, intending to help her up.

“Do you have to do _that_, too?”

Again, Setsuna stopped with a puzzled look. “Do what?”

“Sway your hips like that when you walk. Well, you do,” Usagi added, seeing the startled expression. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how half the guys in town turn their heads whenever you go by.”

As a matter of fact, Setsuna _had_ noticed this general behavior trend among the male population, but she dismissed it for the moment as she stood there—hands on the hips in question—and looked at Usagi, trying to figure out what the source of these unusual outbursts was.

“And don’t look at me like that,” Usagi ordered, slouching down where she sat, appearing just about as pouty as could be with her lips locked into a frown, her shoulders hunched, and her arms crossed over her belly... oh.

“So _that’s_ what’s bothering you.” Usagi looked up again at the sound of Setsuna’s voice, which had regained some of its old, eerie certainty in that statement, and followed the gaze of those crimson eyes. She blushed and made as if to cover her stomach, then stopped and released a sigh that carried away the angry tension and left her looking just depressed.

“I had a back twinge when I went downstairs this morning,” Usagi said gloomily, as if it were the end of the world, “and I had all kinds of time to sit and think about what it means. I haven’t been able to run—I mean _really_ run—in months, and pretty soon I’m not going to be able to walk very far without a break. I’m just going to keep getting bigger and bigger until I can’t even get across a room without having to stop and rest, and everybody will have to work even harder to try and protect me, because I won’t be able to do _anything_, and then one of you is going to get hurt because she’s looking out for me more than herself... and don’t try to cheer me up,” Usagi warned, as Setsuna came over and sat down on the edge of the bed, her back to the wall.

“Actually, I was going to tell you to scoot over. Go on,” Setsuna said, nudging the suddenly confused girl to one side to make room for herself. She lifted her feet up onto the mattress, drew the end of her housecoat up and laid it across her nightgown-sheathed legs, and nodded in satisfaction. “I prefer to have a complete seat under me when I sit down; sitting half-on and half-off of something makes me feel as if I’m about to fall over the side. Maybe it’s the hips again.” She paused and pushed down on the mattress with both hands. “Hmmm... I can see you gave me the more comfortable mattress. Well, that won’t do; we’ll have to switch. Your mother said the other day that she was going to air them out by the end of the month, so...”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Usagi said flatly.

“You _are_ in a bossy mood this morning, aren’t you?” Setsuna mused, locking her arms about her knees. “I’m glad Luna spent the night at Mako-chan’s, or the two of you would have been at each other’s throats by now—and if you’re going to insist on talking about your pregnancy, then let’s talk about it. You are _not_ going to suddenly swell up to four hundred pounds between now and the end of June, Usagi-chan, and your condition doesn’t mean you’re going to become a complete invalid, even at eight or nine months; it just means you have to be careful. Yes, it probably will get to the point where you’ll be staying at home, and yes, your back will hurt if you walk around too much, but since when have sitting or laying down been a problem for you?”

Usagi almost took offense at that. Almost. “What about school?” she countered, barely believing herself that she’d said it.

“Easily handled. Your mother and Haruna discussed it at some length Monday evening, and Haruna said that as long as you had someone keeping you informed of the regular assignments, you could do your math and sciences work at home with your textbooks and a few supplements from the library. Some of the other courses might be a little trickier, but you have Ami-chan and all the other girls to help you already, so you likely wouldn’t need a tutor—and if it becomes necessary, I’m sure Michiru wouldn’t object to helping you study.”

“But that just brings it all back to what I was worried about before!” she objected. “If you’re all busy helping to look after me, you won’t be able to concentrate on Senshi business!”

“Nonsense. If anything, your staying put in this house will make it _easier_ for us to focus on our other problems, because we won’t have to race up and down half the streets in the city looking for you when there _is_ trouble. Luna at least will always be with you during the day, and ChibiUsa and I will be here in the afternoons and evenings. You can add whichever of the others draws watch as well, and on top of that, you still have the ginzuishou to call us in a real emergency, remember?”

Usagi blushed; in her haste to get in a good pout, she’d forgotten to take the crystal into account, and she mumbled as much.

“That’s what I thought.” Setsuna put an arm about Usagi’s shoulders. “Worrying is a natural response when things get hectic, Usagi-chan, but you can either worry a lot and not be able to help fix the problem, or you can worry a little while making yourself as useful as you can. Right now, to be useful, you have to _not_ do anything that would make the rest of us worry, so that we’ll be able to take care of you and deal with everything else without any distractions. Okay?”

Usagi mumbled something else. “Good,” Setsuna said, nodding. “Now, stop feeling sorry for yourself, you silly goose,” she said gently, pulling Usagi close and kissing the top of her head. “The only two people you can blame for your condition are yourself and Mamoru, and since you love each other, there’s no point in blaming either of you, is there? Particularly since you _do_ sort of _have_ to have this baby.” Setsuna looked over at ChibiUsa, who was still asleep, snoring softly. Usagi also looked, with eyes that were narrowed.

“You left out two of the people that I can blame,” she said, extending one arm. “I can blame _her_”—she pointed at ChibiUsa—“for coming back and starting the whole chain of events that told us who she was, and I can blame _you_”—she pointed up at Setsuna—“for letting her come back in the first place. What do you have to say about _that_?”

“If you accept that she couldn’t have come back without my help,” Setsuna said calmly, “then it isn’t ChibiUsa’s fault, either—and can you really blame me for something I don’t even remember doing?”

Usagi started to say that _of course_ she could still blame her, but no words would form in her mouth, and she went back into pout mode, slouching against Setsuna. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered, as ChibiUsa snored a little louder. “And you be quiet, too,” she added, as Setsuna began to laugh.

“As you command, Princess,” Setsuna intoned dramatically.

They sat there together for several minutes, watching the sunlight grow steadily stronger outside. As the light increased, Setsuna looked overhead, at the shelf which held the Phoenix Egg, and recalled what she had been told about the overnight sprouting of the seed Makoto had planted. Could something similar happen to that peculiar little object sitting barely more than a meter above Usagi’s bed? Could that Egg somehow be hatched? And what might cause it? What effect might the light of the sun—as obvious a symbol of fire as the firebird itself—be having on the Egg?

*And am I just worrying myself to distraction like Usagi was a moment ago?* Setsuna finished wryly, shaking her head and sighing. “Come on, Usagi- chan. Let’s go talk to your mother about breakfast.”

Usagi didn’t reply, or move, and when Setsuna looked down at her, she couldn’t help but blink; the girl had fallen asleep. Setsuna gave her a mild shake and repeated her name, and the only response was a small snore not unlike the ones coming from ChibiUsa. She thought about getting up and carefully sliding Usagi back down to her pillows, but the first move Setsuna made to rise caused Usagi to murmur in protest, then settle in closer, lock her arms around her new pillow’s waist, and murmur again as she drifted back into slumber.

Even if she’d been awake, ChibiUsa would have been no help at all. What one Usagi did, the other was also likely to do, and a ridiculous but nonetheless highly probable image of the two odango-haired girls fighting over a pillow with her own face on it popped into Setsuna’s mind as soon as she considered waking the pink-haired girl up. Luna would certainly have been helpful, but she was not here. In its empty otherspace, the Garnet Orb pulsed once, reacting to the presence of the ginzuishou but otherwise taking no notice of Usagi; similarly, while she could feel the crystal pulse its own recognition of the Orb, she could also feel that it seemed quite content to leave things the way they were. The Phoenix Egg did nothing that Setsuna could see or sense, and she was shocked to discover that even her own body was betraying her; her arms, apparently moving of their own volition, placed themselves around Usagi, and from her throat came the soft, strange notes of that familiar-feeling but utterly unrecognized song she so often found herself humming.

Which is why, when the door opened five minutes later, Ikuko’s puzzled face appeared and found Setsuna looking back at her with her arms around Usagi and a helplessly happy expression fixed on her face.

“Shall we try breakfast in bed today?” Ikuko asked with a gentle smile.

Proteus checked the systems of an electronic clock it had temporarily fused into. 11:37. Two minutes since the last time it had checked.

Waiting had become curiously difficult for Proteus. In its original, near- mindless existence, it could have waited for months on end for a task to begin, but now that it was intelligent, able to realize the infinite possibilities in each second and then regret the loss of them in endless waiting, the entity had begun to discover the emotions of boredom and impatience.

All the pieces for its next test were in place. The site had been chosen, the two hybrid units—11:38—were ready to go, and rat-units were scattered about to observe. The only thing Proteus needed was for the clock to hit 12:08, this being the time that—according to its observations—the most humans would be moving through the test zone. 11:39. Maximum exposure would bring the Senshi in all the faster, and get the experiment finished sooner.

But the clock would not cooperate. It continued to count at its maddeningly steady pace, ticking away the seconds—11:40—moving right along and somehow failing to get anywhere. If Proteus had possessed fingers or feet, they would have been tapping in annoyance.

11:41. *How do humans put up with this?*

Tapping one shoe absently against the floor, Minako checked her watch—11:41—for the tenth time in as many minutes.

“A watched clock never tolls,” she sighed.

“That’s ‘a watched pot never boils,’” Artemis corrected.

“And they’ll be here,” Ryo added. “Trust me.”

“Uh-huh,” Minako said, not really paying attention to either of them.

They were sitting in a booth at the Crown Center, waiting for the rest of the girls to show up for a lunch date. Emphasis on the ‘date’ part, as far as Minako was concerned, and emphasis on the ‘lunch’ part, as far as Artemis and Ryo were concerned.

“Here’s your soda, Mina-chan,” Unazuki said, coming over and setting down a tall glass of cherry pop almost as bubbly as Minako. “And your grapefruit juice, Ryo-kun, and your milk, Arthur-kun.”

“Thanks, Una-chan,” Minako said, taking a sip of her drink and not commenting on the fact that Unazuki had been just a little breathless when she addressed Arthur. Motoki’s sister was between boyfriends at the moment, her last romance having fizzled out shortly before exam week, and she was in the middle of that delicate phase that follows most break-ups, where pretty much any relationship she tried to get into was almost guaranteed to fall apart. Minako was trying to think of ways to prevent that and nudge Unazuki back towards her third-to-last boyfriend, Aiden. The young Love Goddess had only seen the pair together twice, but she had picked up a strong vibe both times, and she was bound and gagged to get them together again.

But in the meantime, a nice harmless crush on a perfectly charming and completely unavailable guy would do the girl some good, and keep her out of trouble until Minako had been able to come up with something.

“Likewise,” Artemis added, politely not noticing as his smile made Unazuki’s cheeks turn red. Instead, he glanced at Ryo’s glass. “I still don’t see how you can drink that stuff.”

“It takes some getting used to,” Ryo admitted, sipping at the sour pink juice and making a small face. “Actually _liking_ it is another story.”

Unazuki blinked and put her hands on her hips, briefly forgetting about Arthur. “If you don’t like it, then why did you order it?”

“Because he enjoys making pretty girls run pointless errands for him,” Makoto said from behind him, as she and Ami came in.

“Well, that goes without saying,” Ryo admitted, neither turning around nor missing a beat, “but the other reason is that it seems to help with my headaches. It’s strange, but they’re never quite so bad after I’ve had a bit of grapefruit to eat or drink.”

“That does sound rather odd,” Ami admitted, sitting down beside him.

“In which case it suits him perfectly,” Makoto added, taking a seat next to Artemis.

“Very true,” Unazuki agreed, before going into waitress mode and asking Ami and Makoto what they wanted. She left, came back with Ami’s water and Makoto’s lemon-lime soda, and then, since the place was otherwise empty, took a seat in the next booth to chat with them. “So, Ami-chan; aside from the weirdness of your boyfriend and the possibility that you and Mako-chan are going to kill each other, how’s life treating you?”

“Not badly,” Ami said. “And you?”

Unazuki shrugged. “Can’t complain. By the way, I saw that article in the newspaper yesterday; congratulations. Again.”

“Thank you.”

“Article?” Minako asked, looking up from her drink with a blank expression.

“The one which said Ami-chan got the highest overall marks in the district,” Ryo announced with a grin. “She also had the best average for our grade level in the last eight years, and...”

“Cut it out, Ryo-kun,” Ami interrupted.

“What?” he asked innocently. “You deserve proper recognition and praise for your genius.”

“You _know_ I hate it when people go on about how smart I am all the time.”

“You didn’t seem to mind it so much while you were talking to your mother on the phone yesterday,” Makoto said, taking a drink of her pop.

“That was different. We were talking about my application for university” -Minako choked and nearly shot cherry soda out of her nose at that—“and the part-time job I’m taking at the hospital.”

While Artemis clapped the wheezing Minako on the back, Unazuki frowned. “They hire students to do the grunt and go-for work, don’t they? If you’re going to be a doctor, shouldn’t you be using that time to study or take some kind of pre-pre-med correspondence course?”

“Mother thinks it’s important that I get some working experience in a hospital, both to see if I can handle the added workload and to give me a better idea of exactly what sort of medicine I want to get into. I happen to agree with her.”

*And it doesn’t hurt that working in the same building will give you a chance to see each other on a daily basis again,* Calypso—hidden today in the form of a neat blue vest—added silently.

*That too,* Ami admitted.

“It’s nice to see somebody with her whole life ahead of her, making all those plans to take the world by storm,” Unazuki sighed, affecting the tones of a world-weary working girl. “I’m more or less resigned to the fact that I’m going to be working in this place and waiting on tables until I’m a grey-haired old granny.”

They knew she was lying about that. Half-lying, anyway. Unazuki liked her job, because she liked talking to people, and people liked talking to her. Yes, she probably would be working in the Crown Center for years to come, but it wasn’t likely that she’d be waitressing her way through the next forty years; her family _did_ own the place, after all, and somebody was going to have to take over the general management once her mother and father decided to retire. Since everybody knew that Motoki had other plans, that left Unazuki to look after the family business. Truth be told, she was probably better-suited for the job than her brother, even if the female clientele generally wasn’t going to go around falling in love with her at first sight.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Makoto said, smiling. “Once I open a restaurant, you can come work for me.”

“That’s assuming my folks will ever let you quit once they’ve got you working in _our_ kitchen,” Unazuki replied. “I think they’ve been considering a full-scale restaurant-quality expansion to this place, and if that happens, we’ll need a good cook.”

“Me, work in a joint like this? Are you insulting my culinary abilities?”

“Just trying to put them to good use. As Ami-chan said, everybody needs at least a little work experience.”

“And you’d be the expert on that,” an older woman’s voice said, “seeing as how you always seem to be doing as little work as possible whenever I come in here.”

“I was beginning to wonder if you were coming in today or not, Reika,” Unazuki said, turning around where she sat and smiling. “My day simply isn’t complete without a visit from my favorite sister-in-law.”

Reika gave her an amused look. “I’m not your sister-in-law, Una-chan.”

“Oh, like there’s _any_ doubt left in _anybody’s_ mind that my poor brother’s going to try to marry you.”

“You never know,” Reika said, spreading her hands. “He might still decide to throw me over for Mako-chan.”

“If he does,” Makoto replied, “I’ll throw him back to you.” She paused, adding, “Eventually, anyway.”

“Train him to clean up after himself while you’ve got him, and it’s a deal,” Reika laughed. “Ami-chan, Mina-chan, Ryo-san; it’s good to see you all again.”

“Likewise,” Ami said, nodding while Ryo mumbled a polite reply.

“And this,” Minako said grandly, “is Arthur Knight. He’s a friend of mine from England. Arthur-kun, this is Nishimura Reika.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Artemis said, his dazzling smile a bit spoiled by the milk mustache adorning his upper lip.

“It’s a pleasure,” Reika murmured, holding back a smile of her own. Artemis blinked, noticed the amused looks everybody was giving him, and ran a finger along his lips, making a face at the milky residue before reaching for a napkin.

“So much for first impressions,” Unazuki said, standing up. “You’ll be having the usual, Reika?”

“Yes, please.” Unazuki nodded and headed for the counter. Reika sat down, sighing as she did so.

“I take it the search isn’t going well?” Makoto asked sympathetically.

“That depends on how you look at it,” Reika replied with a weary smile. “There’s been a run of university and corporate research grants in the last year or so, and all those professors are hiring assistants, assistant assistants, and so on from here out to the moon. The science department at the university’s so crowded right now that you can’t take two steps without ending up ankle-deep in someone else’s work.”

“But...” Makoto pressed.

“But, nearly all of those grants are going into engineering and physics, and after spending the last five years studying biology, chemistry, and geology, I’m a little underqualified in the other fields. It wouldn’t be such a big issue if I didn’t need the money, but I do, so it is.” She sighed again.

The others were silent, unsure of what to say. Considering the emotional roller-coaster ride she had been on—and by association, dragged them all along with her on—before leaving to study in Europe, Reika’s cheerful reappearance in Tokyo early last summer had been a surprise, to say the least. Right at first, everyone had figured that she was just back on a break—those foreign schools had really weird schedules—but whenever somebody stopped to ask her how her studies had been going, Reika had said “fine, thank you,” and then disarmingly changed the subject. It wasn’t until halfway through August that they learned through a hushed conversation with Motoki that Reika had lost her scholarship, and with it, her ability to afford studying abroad.

Everyone had been fairly quiet on the subject since; there had not been so much as one whispered hint of it during Usagi’s party, months gone. Reika had always been very devoted to her academic achievements, and the fact that they had come up short when it really counted had badly shaken her self-confidence. That was really much worse than the loss of the scholarship itself, for in the months since, while Reika had continued her studies, she had done so with nowhere near her original drive. She was obsessive about checking her work, not as if looking for mistakes, but as if she no longer trusted herself to know the answers. Where before she had always been eager to study overseas, now she never mentioned it.

This sort of thing happened, of course, but it was particularly saddening to see in someone whose first and foremost dream had always been her academic career. About all anyone could do to help Reika right now was to be there for her until she was able to reestablish her confidence on her own. Getting a new job would help with her self-esteem at least as much as it would help with her bank account, but with the progress she was _not_ having, improved confidence and improved cash flow both seemed distant possibilities, at best.

“I don’t suppose anyone is planning a field study of some kind?” Ami asked. Reika shook her head.

“That would be wonderful, but nobody’s been able to find the money for something like that. All those grants have more or less dried up support for anything outside the labs.” She looked off into space and added, “I wonder how evil it is of me to wish some sort of misfortune on my colleagues for stealing all the money away from the rest of us. A minor outbreak of pox, a pestilence of roaches—a complete failure of all the electron microscopes _and_ the particle accelerator.”

“Offhand,” Ami replied, “I’d say it was a little evil.”

“Just a teensy bit,” Minako agreed. “But that’s okay; you’re allowed to be a teensy bit evil.”

“Thanks.”

“No charge.” Minako grinned.

“If you people are picking on a future member of my family,” Unazuki warned as she returned and set Reika’s ‘usual’—a very frothy cappuccino—down on the table in front of her, “I’m going to start spilling things on you and having Motoki dock your tickets and prizes in the arcade.”

“We’ll be good,” Minako promised immediately. Prizes from the Crown Center were one of the cornerstones of her existence, to say nothing of the continued growth of the mountain of plushies that inhabited her bedroom. “You’re being awfully quiet all of a sudden,” she said a moment later, changing the subject by turning to Ryo. “Is there something you want to share with the rest of the class, Mister Urawa?”

“No,” he replied, “I’m quite happy to just sit here and listen to Unazuki-san threaten you with a rain of hot coffee and an embargo of crane prizes. But thanks for asking.” He took another small drink of his grapefruit juice and made another face. Swishing the glass’s contents, Ryo felt someone’s eyes on him and raised his head; Reika was giving him a considering, puzzled look. “Something wrong, Nishimura-san?”

“Forgive me for asking this again, but are you _certain_ that we hadn’t met somewhere before Usagi-chan’s party?” she asked. “I know that you said we hadn’t, but I’m almost positive that I’ve seen that look before.”

With their attention fixed on Ryo, Reika and Unazuki didn’t notice the fast, multidirectional look that passed between the three Senshi and Artemis. As a matter of fact, Reika and Ryo _had_ met once before that party—long before it, when Endymion had been collecting the seven carriers of the Rainbow Crystals. The resetting of Time would have suppressed or even totally wiped out that memory for a normal person, but then Reika was no more a normal person than Ryo, and who knew what knowledge the youma sleeping inside of her could have passed on? If anyone might be able to realize the existence of Ryo’s darker half, it would be one of the other six former crystal carriers; small wonder, then, that he tried to avoid them.

And he _did_ avoid them. Thinking back, Artemis, Makoto, and Minako realized that except for this moment and a few minutes of polite conversation with Reika and Rei’s grandfather at Usagi’s party, they had never seen Ryo around any of the others. They hadn’t thought much of it at the party, believing at the time that he had been busy dodging Ami’s mother, which in truth he _had_ been doing, just with two other names beside hers on the List of People To Avoid. Ami, naturally, had noticed all of this and questioned Ryo about it, and he had been his usual forthcoming self, with the same black moodiness that always came over him when the subject involved the thing trapped somewhere inside his soul.

There were hints of that depression now as Ryo searched for a way to convince Reika that their only prior meeting had been that one time. He let out a sigh of very real relief when the door opened to admit Usagi and ChibiUsa, who, as usual, became the center of attention.

“Rei-chan couldn’t make it?” Minako asked as the new arrivals sat down, Usagi next to Makoto and ChibiUsa on the seat at the head of the table.

“Yuuichirou said when I called that she’d been gone for a couple of hours,” Usagi replied. “She didn’t tell him where she was going, of course.”

“Of course.” Minako rolled her eyes and sighed.

“Does Rei-chan really like him?” Unazuki asked a bit skeptically. “I’ve only seen them together a couple of times, and she wasn’t exactly being what I’d call warm.”

“There have been hints,” Minako replied. “You have to look for them, but they’re there. Part of the problem is that once Rei-chan gets an opinion in her head, she doesn’t change it; her first impression of Yuuichirou wasn’t exactly the greatest in the world, but she’s getting over it. Gradually.” She finished off her pop in one big gulp, set the glass down, and looked around the table. “So, who’s up for Chinese?”

As sometimes happened, Rei had woken up today with an urge to get out of the temple for a while. It was a completely natural impulse for any sensible girl who was stuck living with one foolish old man and one foolish young man, a feeling which Rei viewed as a sort of safety valve that kept her from exploding at her grandfather or Yuuichirou more often than was absolutely necessary. Granted, there were times when one or both of them really _needed_ to be yelled at, but there was a difference between shouting at someone for his own good and shouting at him for no good reason—and so, whenever this feeling came over her, Rei took heed and took off for a while, to blow off some steam.

Needless to say, she steered clear of Usagi during these times. By extension, that generally meant avoiding the other girls as well, which was a little unfortunate, but probably for the best; Rei knew that her bad tempers could sometimes be nonselective, and she had no more desire to needlessly scream at her friends than she did to scream at her grandfather or Yuuichirou.

On this particular morning, Rei had first headed down to the park, which was in the tail end of that intermediary stage between winter and spring, when it was too warm to be winter, but too grey to be spring. There were sufficient signs of spring to keep the place from being all grey and depressing, though, and there were enough other visitors to prevent Rei feeling as though she was completely alone.

Thrax, for example. When the weather had started getting warmer, Thrax had begun taking long flights away from Hikawa, either to get away from Rooky’s constant chattering and Phobos’s and Deimos’s suspicious attitudes for a while, or just because he liked to fly. Rei had guessed that the park, being the closest thing to a real forest for miles, would have suited Thrax very nicely, but she was still a bit surprised when he suddenly settled down on a branch of a nearby tree, looking down at her with his head tilted to the left. That pose gave Rei the distinct impression that Thrax was just as surprised to see her here as she was to see him.

“I haven’t been following you,” she said. “I just needed to get out for a while.”

The raven croaked a reply that sounded sympathetic, then drifted down to perch on the back of the bench Rei was sitting on, looking for all the world like a prince of birds who had deigned to grace a lowly ground-crawler with his regal company.

Not for the first time, Rei wondered about what or who Thrax might really be, for there was no doubt in her mind that there was more to him than met the eye. Setting aside the fact that he had been living with one of the most famous wizards in history and mythology when they first met, there was the question of how she had known what his name was as soon as she looked at him. Then there was his obviously more-than-animal intelligence. Merlin had admitted that Thrax lacked even Rooky’s crude, beak-accented command of old English, but Rei suspected that Thrax had no trouble _understanding_ human speech—and not just in English. Several times during their exam week study sessions, Rei had looked up and seen Thrax looking down, paying attention to every question, answer, and argument between the Senshi as if he had clearly grasped what they were saying. And most of it in Japanese, no less, which not even Rooky could understand more than a few words of.

What really had Rei convinced that Thrax was hiding something was the fact that, while he could not speak, he had but to look at her to clearly convey an opinion. Just one look, and Rei somehow knew what was on the mysterious raven’s mind. Not even Phobos and Deimos could do that, and they had been with her for a decade.

Thinking about it now, Rei reached a decision. She was most comfortable using her mental abilities with the aid of the fire at Hikawa, but from the times in the past when the Senshi had combined their powers and their minds, Rei had learned how to attune her mind to other things. She did so now, projecting her thoughts towards Thrax, focusing on the raven to the exclusion of all else, save for the unseen fire that burned within and around her, the waiting essence of Mars. As if he were aware of what she was doing, Thrax turned his head so that both his eyes were fixed on her, and then...

“Rei-san?”

“WAI!” Rei shouted, jumping nearly a foot straight in the air from where she sat. Thrax let out a squawk almost as loud as Rei’s startled exclamation and flapped away, coming to a halt perched on another tree branch and glaring back over his shoulder in extreme annoyance.

“Keiko!” Rei burst out, turning where she sat to look at the girl. “I’ve asked you not to sneak up on me like that!”

“Sorry, Hino-san,” Keiko said faintly, blushing around the hand she had pressed to her mouth. Himeko, who stood to Keiko’s left, was trying to cover a grin and keep her glasses on straight, while over to Keiko’s right, Anya was glancing up at the sky and shaking her head ever so slightly. To her right was a small girl with blue-grey hair and eyes, who Rei recognized as Hayaikawa Karima, a member of T*A’s swim team—and she was blushing and hiding a smile as well. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Rei sighed. “You didn’t upset me, Keiko-san. Not that much. Just don’t do it again, all right?” Still blushing furiously, Keiko hurriedly nodded; Rei glanced at Himeko, who was still turned off to one side, and then noticed that all four girls were carrying gym bags. Considering Karima’s presence and the time of year, Rei then said, “Practicing for the swim team tryouts, I take it?”

Karima nodded. “Of course. I don’t want to lose my place.”

“You always make it, Kari-san.”

“Because I always practice,” Karima replied. Rei nodded, understanding the reasoning.

“What about you, Anya-san? Going to try out for the team?” Rei smiled. “Or you, Keiko-san?” Keiko shook her head, of course—she just wasn’t much for sports of any kind—but Anya gave a small shrug.

“I’ve never been on a swimming team before, but Kari-san said that I should think about it,” she said softly.

“And I agree with her,” Himeko said, finally having recovered from her bout of hilarity. “You’ve got a good rhythm, and I still don’t think you were trying half as hard as you could have.” Himeko pushed her glasses back into place atop her nose and turned back to Rei. “So, Rei-chan, before Keiko-chan tries to scare you into your next incarnation again, did you have any plans?”

“Not particularly, no. Why?”

“Ah, I was just wondering if you wanted to join us for lunch. We’d have eaten at the rec center, but their cafeteria’s refrigeration failed last night, so there wasn’t much of a selection. And we were going to check out the latest inventory at the sports stores after lunch—and then the bookstores, at Anya-chan’s and Keiko-chan’s insistence.”

Rei thought about it, and stood up. “Thank you, Himeko-san. I’d like that.”

“Does your friend want to come, too?” Rei blinked at the question, then followed the tip of Himeko’s finger over to Thrax and smiled.

“No, I think he’ll be okay by himself.” Thrax looked back over his shoulder at her, cawed, and turned away again, his attention on something near the ground that Rei couldn’t see. “See? He’s already forgotten about me.”

A few moments after the five girls had started to move off, a brownish shape appeared below a tangle of leafless bushes. It looked like a rat, and it also did not look like a rat, though anyone who saw it would have had a hard time explaining what exactly was wrong with it. The fact that it was out in the park in the middle of the day might have had something to do with it; so might the greenish patches on its shoulders and back.

The rat stuck its head out from the cover of the still-hibernating bushes and looked around, studying the area for danger before emerging fully and racing across the open area to the shelter of some nearby tree roots. These it raced amongst until reaching the crest of the small hill upon which the tree stood, where it looked around again, and ended up focused on and following the five girls.

That was enough for Thrax. Having remained utterly motionless at the base of his perch, half-hidden by the trunk of the tree, the raven had observed the strange rodent’s movements without being spotted in return. Now, moving in silence, he spread his wings, soared down behind the thing, and extended his talons.

The rat stopped and turned its head, the eyes glowing unnaturally red, but Thrax’s claws were already closing about its haunches, and it took only a split-second for his beak to ram home, striking deeply between the eyes, shattering the rodent’s skull and skewering the brain. The furry body quivered once and then went limp, the unnatural light in the eyes guttering out. Thrax began working his beak free, croaking distastefully at the foul smell coming off the thing and scraping at his beak with one leg.

He backed away in a hurry, croaking more loudly and flapping his wings in surprise as plumes of reddish vapor hissed out of the rat’s body, increasing the intensity of the odor and also preceding the sudden dissolution of the body. It melted down into a puddle of red liquid, which continued to steam until there was nothing left but a small black smear on the grass.

Thrax looked at the acid-burn for a long moment before scraping one last time at his beak and then taking wing.

Proteus noted the destruction of its rat-unit with passing appreciation for the speed and skill of the raven, no real regret for the loss of the unit itself, and concern that—thanks to the combined efforts of the raven, three different cats, and a very messy encounter with a truck—it was now blind to the movements of Archon’s apprentice. And she had been headed in the general direction of its testing site.

Proteus checked the time. 12:05. *It will have to do.*

Somewhere, the two half-human units awoke.

At 12:06, Setsuna was just sitting down to her lunch break in the food court when people all around her started shouting and running. She took a moment to be amazed and pleased with how her mind and body both automatically shifted into a kind of high-gear battle-readiness at the slightest sign of danger, and then turned around, sliding off her chair and kneeling down, facing the direction from which all the noise seemed to be originating.

There were two of those green mold-creatures out there, and... no, wait. Setsuna’s eyes narrowed as she looked more closely, and realized that these were not the usual brand of units. They were more like that odd variant that Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus had dropped through the skylight here a few weeks ago, the one that had held a man inside—but that said, they both looked quite different from it.

The larger one was big enough to have made two or even three of its companion. Its shoulders were twice as large as any normal human’s, and its limbs were of a similarly powerful build, giving it the appearance of being short and squat even though Setsuna could see that it was taller than she herself. The outer surface, while still green, was smoother and more skin-like, more like an animal and less like a plant, than the last such humanoid’s had been, and it had eyes, the same red-glowing pods that the more standard units had borne in profusion as weapons. There were other such growths in the backs of its arms; Setsuna saw the creature raise one arm and fire a short beam of red light at a running man, hitting him squarely across the shoulders and sending him down, groaning. Long black vines or creepers hung from the back of the entity’s head, just like hair, snapping back and forth as the entity looked around, but not moving of its own accord that Setsuna could tell.

The second creature was shorter and considerably more slender than the other, but it had the same smooth-textured skin, the same long hair and glowing eyes—and it was much, much faster. One moment it was on the floor, and the next it was three meters away, airborne, lunging at another fleeing man and striking him in the shoulder with the flat of its palm, discharging a burst of electric red energy that dropped the victim instantly. As soon as its target had fallen, the creature turned to another, leaping and this time kicking out, striking the next man in the back of the knee with another flash. As it landed this time, the smaller being snapped its arms out, and long vine-whips seized a nearby woman, who stiffened and opened her mouth in a silent scream as more of that sizzling red energy coursed down the tendrils and into her body, first paralyzing her and then sending her into unconsciousness.

Watching it, Setsuna could not escape the impression that the smaller monster was female. Even distorted by the outer layer of green skin, the shape and proportion of the body was wrong for a man, and some of the movements reminded her very strongly of various movements she had seen during the Senshi training sessions.

*No time for that now,* she chided herself, looking around for somewhere that she could duck out of sight to transform. The nearest possibility was a side corridor which led to a staircase and an emergency exit. Several people had used the exit, but the stairs might be clear. Setsuna slipped off her high heeled shoes, waited until both creatures were looking in different directions, and then made a break for it.

About halfway to the corridor, she realized she wasn’t going to make it completely unscathed—and sure enough, less than a second later, something hot and HARD slammed into her left hip. Setsuna staggered from the blow but managed to keep her footing for another three steps before the next blast hit her low in the back, spinning her around as she reached the mouth of the corridor and quite literally fell into it. As she went down, she saw that the larger creature had one arm pointed at her, the red growth on the back of the forearm glowing. It watched her fall, then turned to fire at other people, apparently content that she had been dropped by the last shot.

Setsuna managed to get her hands beneath her to break the fall, but her midsection felt almost numb. She looked back over her shoulder to make sure the creatures weren’t looking before she gritted her teeth and forced herself back to her feet, to stumble unevenly down the length of the corridor and into the stairwell at the end. Here she paused for a moment, leaning against the wall, wincing at the pain and the worse lack-of-pain, and looking around for any sign of other people or any security cameras. Satisfied that she was alone, Setsuna transformed, and Pluto stepped back into the corridor much more easily than she had left it. The pain was not entirely gone, but it was far, far less, and the numbness had ended. Heading back towards the scene of the battle, she raised her communicator and sent out a general signal.

“There are two units attacking people at the mall. They seem to be like that man who was being controlled, so I’m going to need some help to deal with them, because I don’t think I can undo this metamorphosis without hurting the people inside.”

She switched off the communicator and looked cautiously around the corner. Both creatures had their backs to her. Perfect. Pluto stepped out of the corridor and raised her staff. “STASIS BOLT!”

At the flash of red light and the clearly-voiced command, the smaller creature spun about on one foot, almost pirouetting, just in time to take the hit head-on and freeze into immobility, its hair and built-in whips hanging weirdly in the air.

Pluto leapt to one side and rolled as her other enemy opened fire with both arm-weapons and its eyes as well, a rapid barrage of bolts which were individually less powerful than the ones that had clipped her before, but which made up for that with sheer force of numbers. Glass displays shattered, mannequins exploded, and various forms of merchandise were torn to shreds, but the onslaught missed Pluto completely, and she took cover behind a low wall that separated the tables of the food court from the open floor around them. The red bolts continued to slam into everything in the area, and she estimated that she had another two minutes and seven seconds before the wall gave way.

One hundred and twenty-seven seconds of Time, when even one second could be an absolute eternity. Pluto took her staff in both hands and bowed her head, concentrating. “MARCH OF TIME: QUICKEN!”

The light of the Garnet Orb flared, and the world around her slowed to a snail’s pace. The bolts, which a moment ago had been striking at the rate of about twenty per second, were now moving slowly enough for her to actually see their irregular, shifting shapes, and count their small explosions as they hit the wall across from her, maybe one or two in each second.

The larger unit—Tetsuo—saw a wide streak of crimson light surge out from behind the wall and cross the floor. When the blur ceased moving forward, the hybrid unit could make out the features of the woman it had been shooting at, and began to bring its weapons to bear. Bolts erupted from its eyes, and the blasters in its arms cut a swathe across the line of shops in the far wall, blowing apart the counter displays, juice machines, and menus which filled most of them as they tracked towards their intended target. It took only a second for the creature to have all its armaments firing straight at Pluto again.

A second was just too slow.

“STASIS FIELD!” The air in front of Pluto blurred crimson as she spun her staff rapidly with one hand, slowing the molecules of the air to a near halt. When Medea had fashioned such a shield, it had nearly been able to hold up in the face of a combined attack from six different Senshi; this one absorbed the full force of the mutant unit’s attack with almost disdainful ease. It also seemed to drain off the March of Time, slowing Pluto back down to normal speed, but now that the Field was in place, she had a much better defense behind which to plan her next move.

Planning didn’t really enter into it, though. Moving more on instinct than conscious thought, Pluto took a step back from the shield, turning sideways and continuing to spin her staff in her right hand, causing the Garnet Orb to glow increasingly brightly. When she caught the end of the weapon with her left hand, it was level to the ground, the now-radiant Orb pointing towards the shield; Pluto took a small step forward and stabbed the head of the staff directly into the center of the field of Time-force, calling out, “SURGE!”

The staff seemed to jump in her hands as the energy in the Garnet Orb discharged into the Stasis Field, and then all those molecules of slowed air sped up and shot forward, becoming a molecule-thick disc which blasted across the intervening space at an incredible speed, sweeping up all of the flying energy bolts before smashing into the massive creature. For all its size, the thick-bodied unit was caught up in the Surge as well, and hauled along until it collided with its still-frozen partner. Here, its relatively irresistible force faced with an essentially immovable object, the Surge ceased.

From the instant her staff had jolted, Pluto had heard absolutely nothing, but when the Surge and the unfortunate unit crashed into the other, she heard a thunderous blast, an ear-piercing howl, and then another explosive crash, all in rapid succession. The noises, she realized with awe, were the sounds of the Surge’s effects just reaching her ears: the blast of its launch; the howl of its passage through the air; and the final crash. It had happened _that_ fast.

Then she saw the green shapes sitting on the floor where the unit’s feet had been, and realized that they were the bottoms of its feet, ripped clean off while the rest of the thing had been accelerated in the other direction. Staring at those two green, pancake-like masses, Pluto involuntarily covered her mouth and tried not to think of what might have happened if there had been someone in the way when she fired.

Swallowing heavily, she returned her attention to the two units. The Surge and the Stasis Bolt must have canceled each other out, for the female creature was moving again, charging directly at her with both hands low, fingers clenched around crackling spots of red energy. Pluto blasted it with a Dead Scream, and the monster fell back—for all of two-point-four seconds. Then it got up, ignoring the heatless burns that marred its originally smooth surface, and leapt high into the air, jumping at Pluto and lashing out with both whips. Up came the staff, batting away one of the lashes and then, when the second coiled around its midsection, rising up over Pluto’s head as she turned and brought her arms, her weapon, and the enemy that was now being pulled along down towards the floor.

The creature hit hard, but not hard enough to stop it kicking out at her legs, and Pluto had to leap back to avoid the crackling energy of the red bead sunk into the green heel. Aware that she was in a very bad position, right between both of her enemies, Pluto turned so that her left side was facing the female and her right facing the other. Looking out of the corner of her right eye, she could see that the larger unit was spread out on the floor, the feeble movements of its arms saying clearly that it was still stunned from her last attack; from her left eye, Pluto was able to see the smaller creature flip to its feet and snap both arms down, cracking its whips loudly against the floor. Tiles popped as the red energy sizzled down those green lengths, and then the unit charged.

For the next twenty-six seconds, Pluto concentrated entirely on defense. Without the March of Time, she was only slightly faster than this unit, and the tips of its two lashes were much faster than the rest of the creature. She side-stepped, ducked, and twisted, spinning her staff into another blur to keep those paralyzing whips at bay. She would have liked to raise another Stasis Field, but using her powers that much in such a short span of time had drained even Pluto’s strength, and she needed to recover. More importantly, this unit was striking from too many different directions for a flat, stationary shield to have been effective.

In the middle of all that nearly-instinctive self-defense, Pluto found that her mind was analyzing everything around her, taking it all into account to formulate her next move with clean precision. It was an emotionally-detached frame of mind, a mechanical kind of logic, and it found something about her enemy’s movements to be unusual. When this round of attack and defense had begun, Pluto was between the two creatures, but now the smaller unit was between her and the larger one, and it was making no move to change that.

Pluto took an experimental step to the left, and one of the lashes snapped out hard, forcing her back. She danced to the right, and her opponent moved to pace her, always directly between her and the fallen unit.

That settled it. The apparently female unit was trying to protect the injured one, the male. Could that mean...

The line of thought ceased abruptly as Pluto saw an opening. “DEAD SCREAM.”

They were so close to each other that when Pluto brought her staff around to launch the attack, she jabbed the unit in the stomach with the weapon. At point-blank range, this Dead Scream had far more effect than the last, and the unit went flying backwards through the air, crashing down atop the other.

Pluto dashed over to them, extending one hand to seize the leg of the large unit, and touching the other with the Garnet Orb. She concentrated, seeing green and golden yellow, and then there was a flare of red light...

When her communicator beeped, Rei covered by tapping it like an ordinary watch that had just gone off. It was a believable gesture, all the more so because Himeko’s button-heavy sports watch had done the same thing five or six minutes earlier.

“I think you might want to adjust the time on that, Rei-chan,” Himeko advised helpfully, breaking off from her ongoing monologue without any difficulty. “You don’t want to start adopting Usagi-chan’s timing after having held it off for so long.”

“I could never be _that_ late for anything,” Rei replied wryly, casting about for a way to lose her four companions long enough to check in with the other Senshi and find out what was going on.

“Speaking of Usagi-chan,” Karima said, “and Juuban, and all... Rei-san, do you know if Mizuno-san is going to be trying out for their swim team this year?”

“I haven’t heard her mention it,” Rei admitted, “but then, I hadn’t thought to ask. Would you like me to?”

“Would you?” Karima asked hopefully. “It would really help out our team if we knew for sure what we were going to be up against.”

Anya was frowning. “This is a team sport, Karima-san. You make it sound as if one person will make all the difference.”

“Ami-chan is the kind of person who _would_ make the difference,” Himeko replied. “You wouldn’t think someone who spends all that time with her nose in a book would be much of a swimmer”—Anya and Keiko both looked a little offended at this remark—“but once you get Ami-chan into the water, she moves like a fish. I don’t think anybody’s ever beaten her.”

“Now you’re exaggerating,” Rei said.

“Oh, am I?” Himeko countered. “Name one person you know who’s ever beaten Ami-chan in a flat-out race. Someone she didn’t _let_ win.”

“Kaioh Michiru,” Rei replied immediately. “She beats Ami-chan about half the time whenever they race each other.” Half the time when they didn’t end up in a tie, actually, which _was_ about half the time.

“Could you set the bar any higher?” Himeko asked. “I’ve heard about that girl, Rei-chan; the national and Olympic teams are in an ongoing despair because she won’t set aside her painting and music long enough to compete professionally.”

“_I_ heard she won’t compete because she doesn’t want to spend time away from her boyfriend,” Karima said.

“I’ve heard that, too,” Himeko admitted. She smiled dreamily. “And I can believe it.” Karima and Keiko made sounds of agreement; Rei just shook her head and made a mental note to repeat this part of the conversation to Haruka sometime.

“You don’t agree with them, Rei-san?” Anya asked curiously.

“I have a slight advantage,” Rei replied dryly, as the five of them started around the corner of a parking garage that had a ‘Closed for Renovations’ sign hanging across the drive-in entrance. “I know for a fact that Haruka is just a bit less charming once you’ve actually talked...”

She didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence, because when they stepped around that corner, they were within plain view of both the mall and the crowd of mid-day shoppers that was pouring from all the exits. Rei stopped and stared at the exodus, as did the other four girls.

“What in the world...” Anya began.

“I don’t know,” Himeko said, her glasses slipping above a worried frown, “but I do know that whatever it is, I don’t like the look of it. Maybe we’d better...”

There was a bright red flash from the ground floor of the garage, and all five girls blinked—Rei did so a second time when her psychic warning system twinged, hard—as the previously empty parking level was given some occupants. Two of them were down in a heap, while the third was jumping backwards from the pair

“Hey!” Himeko blurted in amazement. “That’s...!” She broke off and gave a small jump when the sound of her voice made Pluto’s head turn sharply in their direction. Rei twitched a bit herself, for Pluto’s look had not been at all happy to see them, but it lasted only a moment before the Senshi of Time returned her full attention to the two green-skinned humanoids that had appeared with her.

“Come on,” Rei said, reaching for Himeko’s sleeve. “I think we’d better get out of here before those things see us.”

“Gah... buh,” Himeko said, pointing towards the imminent fight as if she wanted to stay and watch.

“Keiko, give me a hand.” Keiko nodded, took Himeko’s other arm, and helped Rei drag her bodily away from the garage. After one quick last look, Karima and Anya followed. Three seconds later, there was a muffled explosion, and a plume of dust billowed out where they had been standing. The girls jumped collectively and moved faster.

*That was too close,* Rei thought. *I have got to figure out how to get in there to help Setsuna.*

“Hey, look!” Himeko said, struggling against Rei and Keiko to point back the way they had come. Rei followed the gesture in spite of herself and saw Mercury and Venus descending towards street level from the rooftops, a sight which prompted a sigh of relief—at least until Himeko started struggling again. “Let go, you two! Come on!”

“Himeko,” she snapped, “what are you doing?”

“That was Sailor Venus! Haven’t you heard what everyone’s been saying? SHE might be the real Sailor V! I’ve got to get her autograph!”

Rei was profoundly relieved when Venus led the charge into the garage, for it meant that she hadn’t heard Himeko. *That just leaves me with one lunatic to deal with,* Rei thought. “Himeko, calm down and think straight!”

“Let go!”

“Monsters, mutants, and misanthropic misfits, prepare to meet your maker! I am...”

“Er, Venus?” Mercury interrupted. “I don’t think they’re in any condition to be impressed by you.”

Stuck in midpose, Venus blinked at Mercury, and then blinked several more times when she realized that both creatures were laying on the floor, twitching and struggling to rise. Her eyes shifted to Pluto, who was standing over the downed monsters, leaning slightly on her staff, and breathing hard for the first time that either of the younger Senshi could recall.

“THIS is your idea of needing help?” Venus demanded in tones of outrage. “We dropped lunch and ran all this way for a fight that was already OVER?!”

“Oh, quit griping,” Uranus said, as she, Neptune, and Saturn walked down the ramp from the second level. “A little hard running won’t hurt you.”

“Saturn,” Mercury said, ignoring the banter, “I need your help here.” Saturn nodded and hurried over, looking at a pair of luminous holographs that appeared from the jewel atop the Caduceus. “I don’t like these readings,” Mercury said, pointing at clusters of red in each humanoid image. “There’s a rapid build-up of extremely acidic compounds. I think it may be a self-destruct of some sort.”

“But...” Saturn looked down at the two units, her eyes glowing and her face paling. “There are people... inside...” She did not finish, but a very angry look crossed her face as she raised the Silence Glaive. Both units twitched briefly, the red blotches on Mercury’s holographs vanishing.

“Good, that’s got it. Now, we have to figure out how to unwind the connections between their nerve endings and this... stuff... without hurting them. It’s in pretty deep; do you think you can do it?”

“I’ll have to take it slow,” Saturn admitted as she raised the Silence Glaive. “Be sure to tell me if anything starts to happen.”

While Mercury and Saturn worked on the two hybrids, Neptune walked over to Pluto and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay, Pluto?”

“No.” Pluto straightened and opened her eyes. “There were a dozen or more people laying around inside, and when I brought these two down”—she indicated the units with a quick nod—“I checked their short-term futures and saw that they were extremely likely to try and use some of those people as shields. So I teleported them out here...”

“You teleported yourself AND both of them?” Mercury asked, looking up from her computer in shock. “Pluto, if you try a group teleport and the other person doesn’t have the power for it, then you have to make up the difference from your own energy. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

“Would you rather I’d left them inside with the opportunity to hurt someone?” Pluto replied sharply. She sighed as Mercury and the rest blinked at her, startled that she had raised her voice. “I’m sorry, Mercury. I just... between the effort of moving them out here and all the times I’ve used my powers in the last five minutes, I’m worn out.” Pluto winced and shifted, dropping her free hand to her hip. “I have to sit down.”

Looking worried, Neptune gestured sharply to Uranus, and together they helped Pluto sit down against a wall. “What did you do to yourself, Setsuna?” Neptune said flatly.

“The big one shot me a couple of times before I was able to get clear and transform,” Pluto admitted. “It didn’t bother me after I’d transformed, but now that I’ve gone and worn myself down, it’s starting to hurt again.”

“No problem,” Uranus said. “Saturn can just...”

“No!” Pluto said quickly. “Someone may have seen me get hit, and I’m almost certain that the security cameras in the food court would have recorded it. Nobody else that I saw was able to stand up to one hit, and if I show up looking like nothing happened after I was shot twice...”

Neptune and Uranus looked at each other. “She’s right, you know,” Neptune said. “Based on everything the Mirror has shown me, we have to assume that we’re being watched every time we go out in public.”

“Maybe,” Uranus muttered, looking down at Pluto. It was strange to see her, the Guardian of Time, looking worn out and hurt. In a different setting, Uranus might have made some comment about it bringing Pluto back down to the same level as the rest of them, but she found that she didn’t feel like making jokes just now.

“How’s it going, you two?” Venus asked, walking over from the entrance, where—for lack of anything better to do—she had been keeping watch.

“Steadily,” Mercury replied. Saturn, concentrating on the dark radiance surrounding her, the Silence Glaive, and the smaller unit, said nothing. “Why?”

“Well, there’s a bit of a crowd starting to form out there. I haven’t seen any police cars or news vans yet, but I’m guessing they’ll be along shortly.” She grinned. “Rei-chan is trying for all she’s worth to keep Hime-chan from running in here. She probably wants an autograph or something.”

“You really think so?” Mercury asked.

“It’s what I’d be doing.” Venus looked over her friend’s shoulder at the units and frowned. “Now _that_ is the darnedest thing I’ve seen in a while.”

“What?”

“These two,” Venus said, pointing at the half-human creatures, “are a good marriage prospect for one another. I would stake out my tiara in the sun on it.”

Uranus gave her a weird look. “You’re playing matchmaker to mildew, now?”

“Hey, don’t shoot the passenger pigeon. I just call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

“The people inside may know each other,” Pluto said. “When I shot the big one down, the other tried to protect it. Has that ever happened before?”

“Not that I can recall,” Neptune admitted. “But then, the usual rules seem to have gone out the window with this latest group. We normally only see two enemies together when one is a commander who doesn’t want to bother with fighting us and the other is a subordinate that’s been summoned to fight us instead.”

“Typically covering the commander’s ass in a retreat at the same time,” Uranus added.

“Saturn, stop!” Mercury said sharply. “Something is... no!”

A moment later, the green casing sloughed away, leaving a man and a woman, both of them good-looking and somewhere in their early twenties, laying unconscious on the concrete floor. Although that appeared to be a good sign, Mercury looked at two flat lines in the upper sections of the holographs, sighed, and switched off the display.

“What happened?” Neptune asked. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re gone,” Mercury said quietly, lowering the Caduceus and deactivating her visor. “Saturn almost had the woman free, but there was a surge in neurological activity, and a second synaptic pattern appeared, like something else had entered their minds... and then it all shut off.”

“’Shut off?’” Venus echoed.

“Like the first one. Whatever was controlling them must have realized what we were doing, and taken steps to protect itself. The autonomic nervous system— the part that controls the heart and lungs and everything else—is still going, but the higher brain functions have almost totally shut down. Memory, motor control, personality—it’s all just... gone.”

They all looked down at the pair. “Is there... anything...?” Venus asked. “Could Usagi-chan use the ginzuishou later... or Saturn, she could... she could... there has to be something we can do!”

“Venus,” Uranus began. Venus cut her off with a harsh look and one finger raised in warning.

“Not a word,” she said flatly. “Not. One. Word.” Although she was older, stronger, and a better all-around fighter, even Uranus backed up a step in the face of that look. Venus waited until she had, and then turned to Mercury. “I asked you a question. Is there anything we can do to help them?”

“I... I don’t know,” Mercury said hesitantly. “Their mental energy was absorbed into that other signature, so it might still be intact... and if it is, and we find whatever did this, we might be able to retrieve them...”

“All right, then. So we’ve got a plan.”

“But, Venus, even if we do manage to find the thing that did this, there’s no guarantee that...” Now Mercury got the warning gesture.

“That is the _last_ bit of negativity I want to hear out of anybody on this subject,” Venus declared. “Sucking people’s brains out is bad enough, but nothing and nobody gets away with messing up a good romantic match on _my_ turf. We _are_ going to find it; we _are_ going to kick whatever sort of butt it possesses; and we _are_ going to put these people’s minds back where they belong so they can live a long, happy life together. Right, Saturn?”

“Definitely.” The little Senshi’s tone could have shattered rocks. Venus nodded.

“Right. But for now,” she added, glancing towards the sound of approaching sirens, “I think that’s our cue to make like a tree and grow leaves.”

It was a measure of their dismay over the result of the battle that none of the others thought to correct her. While Saturn opened a dimension door back to the house, Uranus and Neptune helped Pluto stand.

“Got enough left in you to have that giant marble show us where you hid before transforming?” Uranus asked.

“Don’t make fun of my marble,” Pluto said levelly, raising her staff and summoning an image of the staircase within the Orb. Uranus studied the scene closely, and then, in a glow that was partly yellow and partly deep red, the two of them vanished.

“She’ll jump back to the house after dropping Pluto off,” Neptune said, turning to Mercury and Venus. “Are you two coming with us?”

“No,” Mercury replied. “I can teleport us back to the restaurant.”

“Okay.” The two of them looked over to Venus, who was kneeling next to the two former units, apparently fixing their features in her memory, and then they glanced at Saturn, who was watching Venus from her place next to the dimension door. Then the two Senshi of Water looked at each other and nodded slowly, silently sharing the same concern.

“Venus,” Mercury called, as Neptune headed for Saturn and the door. “Time to go.”

“Right.” Venus got up, dusted off her knees, and hurried over. They joined hands and concentrated, and just before the blue and gold light blotted out everything, Mercury looked at the man and woman laying side-by-side on the floor, and saw that Venus had placed their hands together.

*Well,* Proteus thought. *That could have gone... better.*

Granted, it had wanted to test the units in action against a Senshi, but such a test meant nothing when the Senshi in question spent half the fight moving so fast that she barely registered on the sensors, and then somehow teleported herself and the two units right out of the testing area altogether! By the time Proteus had managed to track down where its creations had been moved and reestablished full contact, the fight was quite finished, and some sort of barrier was interfering with the sensory input of the two units. Worse yet, the self-destruct systems had somehow been overcome, and something was steadily pulling Hana out of its control.

The purge had almost not worked. The force that had been unraveling the connections between Hana’s body and the bioweave had the same feeling—or non-feeling—as the untraceable power that had obliterated its original network. That seemed to confirm that it was one of the Senshi, which added a very high risk factor to any further encounters with them. And if Archon’s student had witnessed any of this test...

It was high time to get underway again. Proteus released its connections to the mall’s security system, recalled its observers, and began the long march down into the deeper tunnels. Along the way, the entity ran through its stores of information and its inventory of humans before selecting two more—Hana’s roommate Mariko, and a man named Samoru—as its next test subjects. Work on Mariko would have to wait until it could get her down into the tunnels, but Samoru was already encased within one of the containment pods. Samoru had also been modified to an extent already; in light of the results of this test, some adjustments were in order.

*The sort of raw physical power given to Hiroshi and Tetsuo has proven ineffective,* Proteus thought to itself as it considered its options. *Tetsuo’s energy weaponry was somewhat useful, as were Hana’s speed and mobility. Overall defensive power remains lacking... analysis of the second-generation unit’s biomatter has provided potential for limited metamorphic capacity... replication of daimon energy not possible at this time...*

Caught up in considering its choices, Proteus didn’t notice the sound of approaching feet until a group of humans in strange attire rounded the corner of the tunnel ahead. Proteus registered white searchlights and red lasers first, then a spoken command, garbled by some sort of encoding device. Then an uncomfortably large number of high-velocity projectiles and about four different kinds of even higher-velocity high-energy particles began tearing into the rats and Proteus’s own body.

The swarm of rats fought back as best they could, but their armaments would be of limited effectiveness against an ordinary human, and these humans were armored as well as armed; the narrow red beams launched from the mutant rodents did them no more harm than spitballs. Proteus’s own blasts were more effective, but it took three clean hits to drop just one of the enemy, who was promptly dragged back from the front and replaced by another. And when energy blasts started hitting it on the left flank, Proteus realized it was surrounded.

In his office, the Security Director watched his bank of monitors intently as the weird green insectoid lurched backwards, its outer skin shattering and burning under the focused fire of the three squads. It was heading for a maintenance ladder, the only possible escape route left, while the dwindling horde of unwholesome-looking rats massed to cover its retreat.

“Beta 2, disable that ladder. Betas 3 and 4, seal it.”

The live feed coming from three helmets changed; different weapons were raised, and four large, expanding globs of something that the Director knew was even stickier than it looked flew up to form a tight web at the top of the ladder. At the same time, a large gooey mass which was even slimier and slipperier than it looked arced low over the retreating creature, splattering on the bars of the ladder. The insect appeared not to care; its body crashed into the ladder and began attempting to climb, tendrils lashing wildly and heavy claws tearing apart everything in reach as they tried to get a solid grip on the slicked-over ladder.

“Alpha 10, Beta 10, deploy flamers. Target the rats, two-second burst.” Plumes of orange-white fire appeared on most of the screens, and when they ceased a moment later, the number of rats was down to a tenth of its previous strength. “Alpha squad and even Gammas, maintain fire on the rats. Beta squad and odd Gammas, focus on the leader.”

In another thirty seconds, it was over. The rats had been reduced to crispy black husks or dwindling red puddles, and the body of their leader— whatever it had been—was a charred husk, laying in a heap at the bottom of the ladder. Some of the lights in the tunnel had gone out, the power lines running between them slashed by the mutant’s frantic escape attempt, but the visors within his people’s helmets had compensated automatically, tinting everything on the Director’s screens a distinctive shade of green.

“Orders, sir?” a voice asked, surprisingly calmly.

“Alphas 6 through 10, keep an eye on that mess; if it moves again, fry it. Betas 4 and 5, see to Beta 8; the rest of you, secure the area and wait for the clean-up crew. Police and paramedic units are already en route, so do not enter the building unless contact with additional hostiles is made.”

“Understood, sir.”

The Director sat back in his chair as the members of the three squads split up and moved out. After considering the battered hulk of the giant green insect for a time, he reached for his phone.

“Science Division,” a cool, female voice replied.

“My teams have found something you might be interested in.”

*Where did THEY come from?* Proteus demanded in tones of silent anger, its body quivering with rage.

Dumping its awareness into the city’s electrical grid had been a move of desperation; by spreading itself out through a few thousand kilometers’ worth of wiring, Proteus had run the risk of its entire consciousness being permanently scattered. Still, the gamble had paid off; it had successfully traveled through the network of wires and found its way back to the ‘safe zone’ it had established for its cargo of encapsulated humans before beginning this last experiment, passing from the cables, through a power-absorbing growth, and into the small nest of bioweave that had held the pods for the last day.

Proteus set aside its plans for those captive humans, forced down its anger, and got to work assembling a new body for itself.

Setsuna looked out the window of the hospital room. It was the same hospital as before, but a different room from the one she’d been put in to recover from the events of New Year’s Eve.

Uranus had gotten them back to the stairwell with no difficulty. The trouble had been getting her to leave before someone came along and found them. _That_ would have caused no end of trouble, and Uranus had known it, but even so, she had been reluctant to take off and leave Setsuna by herself when she was hurt. She had only agreed to go when Setsuna checked the Garnet Orb and told her that the door would open in another minute.

Actually, it had been six minutes, but Setsuna knew that if she’d said that, Uranus would have stayed—or worse, tried to take her out somewhere that she’d be found sooner. Not that she had _wanted_ to spend six minutes alone, sitting on a cold floor, with her hip and back aching, but it was better than trying to think of answers to the thousand or so questions that would have come up if she’d done anything else. A little better.

“I would have thought that you’d be sick of the view from this place,” Mrs. Mizuno’s voice said from the door.

“It’s a different window,” Setsuna replied, turning slowly where she sat. “A slight change of perspective can make all the difference.”

Ami’s mother smiled crookedly. “You didn’t get hit on the head again, did you, dear? Because now you’re starting to sound like my ex-husband.”

“If I say I did, can I get Yotogi-san in here instead of you?”

“Quite possibly,” Mrs. Mizuno admitted, “except that today is his day off. So, I’m afraid that you’re stuck with me.”

“And... uh... how long will I be ‘stuck’ here with you this time?” Setsuna asked, looking nervously at the heavy envelope in the older woman’s hands.

“Not long at all,” Mrs. Mizuno reassured her. “The x-rays didn’t find anything worse than our original diagnosis suggested, so as long as you take a few days to rest, there’s no need for you to stay here. As it happens, I’m going to take the rest of my lunchbreak in a few minutes; if you like, I can drive you home.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble...”

“It’s no trouble.” Mrs. Mizuno smiled. “Just try not to get attacked while you’re in my car, okay? You seem to be making a habit of it, and my insurance is stretched pretty thin at the moment.”

“How _is_ it going with you?” Setsuna asked, a slightly guilty frown forming on her face. “I haven’t really gotten around to asking Ami-chan about the situation with your house recently.”

“It’s progressing. Slowly. It took me a month to find an affordable contractor, and aside from taking measurements and gathering the materials, there wasn’t very much he could do while there was still snow everywhere. Now that spring’s on its way, he says he’ll make better progress; I’m reserving my judgement on _that_ until I see it.” She looked down at the envelope. “Speaking of seeing things... I have something here you should take a look at.”

She opened the envelope and drew out four large photographs, which she handed to Setsuna. They were x-ray images, one a general view of the midsection, the next an enlarged view of the lower spine, and each of the last two was centered on one hip. Setsuna had no idea what her own bones looked like, of course, but it was a safe bet that these were hers; the photos had her name down in the bottom corner.

“Should I be concerned that there are photos of me floating around this hospital?” she asked with a small smile.

“Not unless we have any osseophiliacs down in Radiology,” Mrs. Mizuno replied, smiling briefly in return. “I’ll check on that for you, but what I wanted you to see was this.” She took the two enlarged images of the hips, upper thighbones, and pelvis, and had Setsuna hold them more or less side-by-side. “Now,” she said, pointing at the image of the left hip, “these marks here were caused by that hit you took to the hip, and they’re the sort of damage we expect to find with blunt force trauma. As I said, nothing to worry about so long as you take it easy for a week or two. What’s unusual are these marks here.” She pointed further down and to the right on the first image, then to a matching place on the second. “You see? These two parallel groups against the pelvic region? They’re much too faint—too old—to have been caused by the injuries you sustained today.”

“I don’t understand,” Setsuna said. “Are they from what happened on New Year’s, then?”

“No, Setsuna. I had to do some checking to be sure, but these are two, maybe three years old, and their placement...” Mrs. Mizuno sighed. “Their location, depth, and size are all consistent with the stress placed upon the pelvic region during labor.”

There was a long, long silence. Then, still looking at the pictures, and speaking in a terribly quiet and almost inhumanly calm voice, Setsuna asked, “What?”

“I went back and examined your medical record,” Ami’s mother said, “but I didn’t find...”

“You didn’t find anything,” Setsuna interrupted, still speaking in that awful tone, “because there’s nothing to find. I don’t... I can’t have had a baby. I can’t.”

“I’m sorry, Setsuna, but you did.”

“You don’t understand,” Setsuna said, her voice still quiet and her eyes shut tight. The photos were crackling as her fingers curled. “There isn’t... I can’t have... I can’t... they would have... someone would have told me...”

“Setsuna?” Concerned by the way the younger woman’s breath was beginning to speed up, Mrs. Mizuno caught her wrist with one hand and raised her chin with the other. “Setsuna, open your eyes and look at me. Talk to me.”

There is an old saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul. When Setsuna’s eyes opened now, Mrs. Mizuno looked into a soul that was falling in on itself, collapsing under agonies of loss. After she had been struck down two months ago, her memories torn away, Setsuna had made incredible progress in adjusting to life, but now, all of that was going to pieces. Ami’s mother cursed her own stupidity; she had never been very good at the emotional side of medicine—or of life in general, for that matter—but even she should have known better than to bring something like this up now.

“Setsuna? Setsuna, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t... I don’t know what I was thinking...”

“Please,” Setsuna said in a tiny voice. “I want to go home.”