The coming of dawn transformed the surface of the ocean from a deep blue void to a shimmering liquid flame, the bright white and hot red of the sun mixing against the blue and green of the waves. Far below the surface, however, the chilly darkness remained undisturbed, and the new sunrise was marked by nothing more than the soft chiming of a small timekeeping device.

Lady Istar paused at that sound and looked up from her workstation, her face somber as she regarded the dark domed ceiling above her. The only sources of illumination in the vast chamber were the translucent screens of energy hanging in the air before her, and their light did not penetrate far into the shadows. Most of the room, like much of the city, remained dark whether it was morning, noon, or night on the distant surface.

It should not be so. Not in the city, and most certainly not in the Celestial Hall.

Long ago, in the days before the rise of the Empire, the people of Atlantis had built the Celestial Hall to serve as an observatory and an astrological laboratory, a place where the scientific and sorcerous studies of the movements of the stars and planets were carried out side-by-side. From within those walls, the ancient Atlanteans had plotted the course of their destinies and their voyages into space, growing wise and prosperous and powerful—and ultimately creating their Empire. Always difficult to understand and harder still to accept, the craft of astrology fell into disfavor and disuse in later years, and the task of guiding the Imperial fleets was passed on to the Hall of Stars, but the Celestial Hall remained, fulfilling a new purpose that had been discovered quite by accident.

During the terrible Succession War that had followed the end of the thousand-year First Dynasty of House Imperator, a band of citizen-refugees had taken shelter in the Hall, guided and guarded by the Elder Mars of the day. It had been that woman who first discovered that something about the Celestial Hall harnessed the same heavenly forces that empowered the Senshi, permitting any of them to use her abilities more easily and more often in or around the Hall, and to recover in a single night’s sleep within its walls the strength that might otherwise take days to regain. Mars had been able to single-handedly defend her charges for days, and once she had fully understood the nature of the Celestial Hall, she was quick to call in her sisters. With the Hall as a base of operations, the Senshi were soon able to quell the fighting in the streets and re-establish the Imperial City’s neutrality; though the war raged on for another five years, it was widely-agreed after the fact that peace would not have come so quickly without the Senshi-defended city of Atlantis serving as a meeting place between the feuding Lords.

Ever after, the Celestial Hall had been the common home of all the Senshi. The central structure—the true Hall—always retained its age-old design, while additional buildings were added on around it to address all the needs that the old observatory had never been intended to serve.

Laraea Istar had visited the Celestial Hall a number of times in her youth. Sometimes she had been dragged along when Jenna snuck away from her tutors and went to visit Athena; more often, she had gone on her own, putting the Hall to its original use as she pursued her personal interest in astrology. The Senshi hadn’t minded her company, and had always been gracious hosts. Laraea fondly recalled telepathic lessons in this very chamber with Lady Mercury, who had encouraged her in studies considered by most people to be a foolish waste of time. Just as dear to her were her memories of debating with Lady Pluto—Athena’s mother, Lyssa—on the nature of Fate and Destiny, and how Time and the movements of the cosmos fit in.

In view of the events of later years, those memories did not come without some measure of pain for Laraea, but nearly as troubling just now was the dark, silent state of the Hall. This had always been a place of light and life when she visited it. There had always been someone here; if not a Senshi, then a guard, or a servant, or even the small children of one of the women for whom this place was a second home. And sometimes the not-so-small children. Laraea would forever hold a special place in her heart for Lady Uranus’s bright-eyed son, an adventurous boy who had surprised her with her first kiss when they were fourteen—and stolen any number of others later on, to the detriment of her studies.

Not that she had minded too much. After all, woman cannot live on horoscopes alone.

It was that sense of practicality which had allowed Lady Istar to make use of the Celestial Hall these last few months without being too troubled by the ghosts others might have imagined walking the corridors. Lapses such as this lament for the emptiness of the Hall were brief and easily dealt with, and an acceptable tradeoff for the privacy she enjoyed here. On this particular night-turned-day of work, that privacy had been essential; the contents of the three holographic screens Lady Istar had been studying could get her into a considerable amount of trouble if someone saw them, and even more so if that hypothetical person realized what she was planning.

Two days ago, Laraea had been called to the throne room to hear Lord Stone’s report on his mission. She had been an impassive observer as the data recorder built into Gamaliel’s bracer played back the last ten minutes of the operation. The rogue behavior of the units and the inexplicable mutation of the nexus did not bother Lady Istar too greatly, since she knew that Archon would see to those problems personally. Even the revelation that the Phoenix was in the hands of the Senshi only disturbed her for a moment —a very long and uncomfortable moment, yes, but the playback of Lord Stone’s brief dialogue with Mars and Athena had laid that unsettling instant to rest.

What Lady Istar had not been able to get out of her mind after the debriefing was the image of the sparkling blue sphere, rushing in from out of nowhere to attack and defeat the two Deep Ones that had disabled six Senshi. Lord Stone’s mission recorder was no rival to the Mercury Computer by any stretch of the imagination, and the device had only been set to gather audible and visual data anyway, but even that was enough to confirm that the blue object was in fact a Nereid. Few things could move in absolute defiance of gravity and inertia like that, and nothing but a Nereid could have done that and overpowered a pair of Deep Ones in the span of twenty seconds.

It was commonly believed by the other Lords that Laraea Istar had inherited her telepathic abilities from a Nereid grandparent. This was true enough; her maternal grandmother had been a Nereid Elder who had chosen to live out the last decades of her life in full human form, aging, sleeping, eating, and bearing two children to Lord Istar. What was *not* known was that Laraea herself was significantly more than the quarter-breed Nereid popular rumor made her out to be. Her mother had already been a few days pregnant when she married, and the child was not that of her human fiancée, but of a Nereid she had met and loved during her years at the universities on Mercury.

As a result of her parentage, the current Lady Istar’s telepathic and extrasensory gifts were the equal of any true Nereid’s, and she also possessed a degree of conscious control over the inner workings of her body. This latter gift was one Laraea had always kept secret, but her known abilities had made her the perfect choice to lead the search teams that had been dispatched to Mercury after the Lords had returned to Atlantis.

That same prodigal status had left her suffering nightmares for weeks after her exposure to the psychic noise left over by the centuries-old genocide. Making the experience even worse for Laraea was the knowledge that, under different circumstances, she might have entered into this era and found family on Mercury to welcome her. Not her Nereid parent, certainly—not even Nereids could live for twenty-five centuries—nor the half-sisters she had known of, nor even their daughters. But she would surely have had relatives; ten generations removed, perhaps, but that was still far closer than anything the other Lords could have hoped for in this day and age. Instead, she found a dead world of beautiful, ruined cities that echoed with the psychic agonies of millions of murdered minds, some of them those same relations she had hoped to find.

And now, somehow, one of them was on Earth. *With* Mercury.

The idea of *not* going to find that Nereid had never even occurred to Laraea. All that was really in question was how she was going to go about it. A long-distance search would be useless, given the size and population of the city, and by the same token, an on-site search would take far too long without some other criteria to help narrow it down. The Atlantean archives contained little that might provide such an answer.

So instead, Lady Istar had spent the last two nights poring over information plucked off this “Internet” that the modern people had created. Despite the general disorder, the rather slow rate of data exchange, and those profoundly irritating little banners and captions that kept popping up over, around, and beneath the items she was interested in, the network was proving very helpful. She didn’t have a workable plan for finding the Nereid just yet, but she was getting there. She just had to keep searching—and keep her work secret. The other Lords did not know of the Nereid’s existence yet, and would not know for some time, until Janus and Jenna decided to risk revealing the existence and involvement of the Senshi. Anyone who discovered her working like this would wonder what she was doing and ask questions that might be... inconvenient.

With that in mind, Laraea switched off the three screens of information, plunging the Celestial Hall back into that silent darkness. She did not bother to summon up a light spell; it might have drawn attention, and her memory and her enhanced mental senses were all the illumination she required to find her way out of this place. In short order, the Lady emerged in one of the more commonly-traveled corridors of the city. As soon as she stepped in, the crystalline bands set into the floor, walls, and ceiling began to glow softly blue, a light that both preceded and followed her as she turned left and headed towards her daily duties. For all intents and purposes, she looked freshly risen from a night’s rest, rather than like a woman who had not slept in almost three days.

Sometimes being not entirely human had its advantages.

The last three days had not been very enjoyable ones for Makoto. She, Luna, Ami, and Hotaru had spent the better part of an hour each night trying to find a way to establish direct contact with the Aegis, but for an unintelligent device, the Weapon was proving to possess a stubborn streak to match Makoto at her most intransigent. It continued to ignore Luna’s best efforts at telepathic contact, and the Mercury Computer had yet to provide an answer as to why the Weapon remained so doggedly silent.

Makoto hadn’t been keen on the idea to start with, and when she saw and sensed Luna on the verge of unconsciousness each night because of the mental strain, a little more of her self-restraint fractured off and fell away. The leftover frustration and worry was making it hard for Makoto to get to sleep at night—this despite the weariness she was still feeling even after an entirely normal day—and her restlessness carried over into the days. It took most of each day for the foul temper to fade, only for it to build up again with every new session. She’d woken up positively cranky this morning, and felt certain that she would have snapped at Ami or Calypso if they hadn’t already left for the hospital.

Then there was the matter of her tree. When Makoto first planted the silver acorn, she’d been concerned that it might somehow lead to the birth of a new dryad. Ami had attempted to soothe her friend’s worries by reminding her that trees took decades to grow to full size, only to have her assurances dashed by the strange tree’s rate of development. Forced to take a new stance by the rapid growth, Ami kept pressing for Makoto to agree to plant it somewhere, and after last Friday’s meeting at Hikawa, Makoto had gone to bed wearily admitting to herself that she was going to have to take a chance and move the tree before it started to suffer from its confinement or began to damage her home.

Naturally, the tree had stopped growing that same night. Makoto knew as soon as she looked at it Saturday morning that something was different, and a quick check with the Mercury Computer had allowed Ami to confirm that the rate of growth had dropped to zero. At least in the vertical sense. The tree was still extending its branches, putting out new leaves, and causing Makoto’s other plants to grow to ever-more-gigantic proportions, but it hadn’t gained any extra height of its own.

It was probably the only plant in the city of which that could be said. According to Ami, the destruction of the last mana nexus had dumped a sizable amount of free earth-energy into the environment, and the plants and trees of Tokyo had soaked that up as easily as water. The resulting universal growth spurt had the experts baffled, and the employees of several municipal departments were on the ropes as they tried to keep pace with the frenzied Spring.

Makoto sympathized, although she personally felt that the question of what to do with a tree hovering on the verge of sentience was a more difficult one than the challenge of trimming back a few lawns and pruning some inconvenient leaves.

“What are you doing?” Makoto wondered aloud as she brushed her fingers against the tree. Her touch caused the blossom-laden vines that had grown up around the trunk to shift in a decidedly un-plantlike manner, and the leaves curled towards Makoto as a wave of sensations swelled up in her mind.

*...warm-light drink-food good-happy self-self small-selves growing with life soft-warm touch-presence? Animal skin-flesh sharp-hot energy life-death-danger safe gentle-strong friend Makoto Makoto Makoto Makoto...*

Standing there with her eyes closed, Makoto smiled as the sapling acknowledged her presence. It wasn’t really speaking to her; the whisper-quiet words were just her mind applying familiar labels to the half-formed impressions she could sense in the tree. Half a thought was a whole half more than any of her other plants had ever shown, but it wasn’t enough for the tree to comprehend her question, let alone answer it. It simply continued to give off an aura of calm contentment, its reaction to Makoto coming across as an endless repetition of her name, in the singsong manner of a happy child.

“I wish you could really understand me,” she said, sighing. “Then maybe I could figure out what I’m supposed to do next.”

There was no response, which was probably just as well. Makoto knelt next to the pot and busied herself checking through the thick growth about the trunk and the roots for any signs of sickness, quietly pushing aside the litany of vegetative bliss as she worked. There really wasn’t much need for this; the tree and its partner plants had all been ridiculously healthy before the mana nexus went up, and they were more so now. Even the soil in the pots seemed improved, richer in color and in scent than Makoto recalled it, although she wasn’t sure if that was because of the aftereffects of the nexus or because of her one-time energy-dose from the Aegis. Still, even if her attention was not required, it made her feel better to at least go through the motions. The tree certainly seemed to appreciate it.

After she had given the now ever-thirsty plants their third drink of the day and put the watering can away, Makoto moved into the kitchen to start working on supper. The cupboards and the fridge were looking uncomfortably bare, but with the week-long beach trip just ahead, Makoto wasn’t too worried. Taking stock of what was left, she shrugged and decided to mix up a soup and a salad. That would take care of most of the perishables, and...

Makoto frowned as she set everything down on the counter. There was something else that she’d better take care of if she was going to be out of town. She got out a pot, filled it with water and set it on the stove, then went for the phone. She dialed a number she knew by heart and came back with the receiver held between head and shoulder as she went about her cooking.

“Kino residence,” a young boy’s voice said after the third ring.

“Hello, Matsuzai.”

“Mako-chan! Hi! How have you been?”

“I’ve been okay,” Makoto replied, fudging the truth a little for her cousin. “Is Uncle Kodachi there?”

“No, Dad’s out. Mom’s at work, too.”

“Okay, then, can you give them a message for me?”

“That depends. What’s in it for me?” Makoto could hear the impudent grin over the phone.

“Nothing,” she replied evenly, bringing her knife down on the cutting board with a thunk, “but there’s definitely a pounding in it for you if you *don’t* take the message.”

“Bully,” the young boy muttered.

“I heard that, punk.”

“All right, all right. What’s the message?”

“I’m going out of town with some friends this Friday, and I don’t expect to be back until next Wednesday. Do you have a pencil and paper there? I’ll give you the number.”

“Hang on.” Makoto did that, sliding the board-full of diced celery and carrot into the pot and then getting started on the chicken. “Back,” Matsuzai said abruptly. “What is it?”

Makoto glanced at her collection of messages and numbers, hanging pinned on the wall next to the phone, and read the number Ami had left there a few days ago. Matsuzai repeated it under his breath as he wrote.

“Got it,” he said. “Did you need someone to stop by and water your plants while you’re gone? Or get your mail?”

“No, that’s all right. I’ve already got someone to take care of all of that.” She and Ami were still discussing whether it would be a better idea to have Hotaru open up a permanent Dimension Door between the apartment and some closet in the beach house, or to ask her to open temporary ones each day. If it came right down to it, teleportation was always a viable alternative.

“So Matsu,” Makoto said, “how are things with you? I remember hearing something about how you weren’t going to be allowed to play soccer anymore if you didn’t pull your marks up.”

“Ah, that was just Dad talking. You know he’d never pull me off the team. Besides, I did fine.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve heard that one before.”

“No, really,” the boy replied defensively. “I did.”

“If you say so, Matsu. What else?”

“Well, Yanagi is in another one of her phases right now—something to do with an idol singer I’d never heard of until she fell in love with him and started wearing this ridiculous rainbow-colored make-up.” Matsuzai sighed. “I’d almost be glad to go back to school right now to get away from her, except that since I start senior high this year, I’ll have to be around Sis and her friends even more often than usual.”

“Poor Matsu,” Makoto said sympathetically. Sort of.

“Yeah, poor me. Oh, I ran into Nemoto-san at the rec center last week. He says hi.”

“Shinozaki?” Makoto said. “How is he, Matsu? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s about the same as always,” her cousin answered. “He was getting in a little practice, just to keep in shape for the school soccer season, and he gave me some advice for when I try out for the team. He asked about you a few times, too. You should call him or something. You’re probably the only girl he knows that won’t go all mushy space cadet on him as soon as he tries to talk to you.”

That made Makoto blink, set down the knife, and put her hand to the phone. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t know?” the younger Kino said in surprise.

“Obviously, Matsuzai. Now explain.”

“It started happening a few months after you moved out,” Matsuzai replied. “Nemoto-san was in the hospital for a week or so, and word went around that he got hurt protecting a girl from some freak with a knife.”

On the other end of the line, Makoto’s hands clenched. *The lion.*

“The whole thing gave him one heck of a reputation,” Matsuzai continued, not noticing the creak as Makoto’s grip on the phone tightened, “and the girls have been sighing over him ever since. The dashing knight and the damsel in distress, and all that. The fact that nobody’s ever *seen* this mystery girl only seems to make them believe the story that much more.”

“How do *you* know all this?” Makoto managed to ask.

“You’re forgetting who I live with,” Matsuzai said wryly. “When she’s not going gaga over her latest pop-star crush, Sis is one of Nemoto-san’s biggest admirers. You wouldn’t believe how smug she can be around her friends about having known him for so long.”

It took an effort for Makoto to hold back a laugh at that. Yanagi had known *of* Shinozaki; she was only a few months older than Makoto, and the cousins had lived close enough as children to run into each other fairly often. But the games the younger Makoto and Shinozaki had played with their friends tended to involve a lot of running, jumping, climbing, and falling down into the grass or dirt. Yanagi—as fashion-conscious a six year-old as ever walked the Earth—had avoided them like the plague whenever possible. Yanagi ‘knew’ Shinozaki about as well as Makoto knew Jadeite.

Makoto deliberately avoided the question of why it was so important to her to have that fact clear in her mind.

“Anyway,” Matsuzai continued, “like I said, you should give him a call. Or better yet, you could come watch the team tryouts in a couple of weeks and visit for dinner afterwards. I don’t know about Yanagi, but Mom and Dad and me would like to see you again, and there must be a whole bunch of other people around here who would, too.”

“I might do that,” Makoto said.

“And you could bring some cookies, too,” Matsuzai added brightly.

This time, Makoto did laugh. “Always thinking of your stomach, right, Matsu?”

“Hey, give me a break. I’m a growing boy.”

“Growing sideways, maybe. What were you the last time I came over? A hundred and twenty centimeters?”

“Hey!”

“Oh, that’s right. It was a hundred and ten.”

“I’m going to hang up now,” Matsuzai said after an injured silence. “You play too mean.”

“Okay. Give my love to your folks—and Yanagi, too, even if she doesn’t want to hear it.”

“I will.”

“And Matsuzai?”

“Yeah?”

“Even if you are a short, grouchy boy, you know I love you too, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” came the embarrassed reply. “Um... you take care of yourself, Mako-chan. I’ll see you around.”

“’Bye.” As the line clicked off, Makoto smiled and set the receiver down on the counter. Matsuzai was burdened with the disadvantage of having to live with a girl who possessed most of the bad qualities of the proverbial big sister but few of the good ones, and Makoto had always tried to balance that out for him. Oh, sure, she bullied him around on occasion—surrogate or natural, that was one of the things that big sisters were for—but never out of malice. Yanagi did that much too often, when she bothered to notice her brother at all.

Sometimes Makoto felt a little ashamed about not being there for her younger cousin more often, but she knew this was just the way things had to be. She’d tried living with her uncle’s family after her parents died, but Uncle Kodachi reminded her too much of her father—and Aunt Nezumi, not enough of her mother—for her to stay longer than a few weeks. They’d just been too close to her pain then, and now... now she was comfortable where she was.

But a visit would be nice.

Smiling at the thought, Makoto stirred the soup a few times and then went to put the handset back.

A man and a woman made their way down the halls of the hospital. The man was dressed like any of the doctors that the pair passed, while the woman’s clothing was somewhat more relaxed, although still projecting a professional appearance. The slender briefcase in her right hand helped with that aspect of her look.

“...glad someone was available,” the doctor was saying in a low voice. “Especially considering how far Sapporo is from the center of things, and how busy it’s been recently...”

“If you’d called a couple of weeks ago, we might not have responded for a while yet,” the woman admitted. “But there were nine more incidents like this one on Friday—that we know of—all of them taking place at or around the same time. When your report came in, it was labeled ‘top priority’ and rushed through the system.”

“*Nine* more?” the doctor repeated. “Are they all like this?”

“The aftereffects seem to vary from person to person. Four are stable —traumatized, but stable—a fifth has lost all memory of the last three months, and two more are being kept restrained and heavily sedated to stop them from hurting themselves or anyone else.”

The doctor winced. “That sounds about right. Our patient’s only marginally responsive to anyone besides her brother or another member of her family —unless someone touches her, in which case she starts screaming. She’s also woken up twice shrieking about monsters in the walls.”

“It could be worse,” the woman replied. “Number eight fell down a flight of stairs and broke his back. The ninth victim was driving at the time of his ‘attack,’ and was comatose when they pulled him out of the wreckage. It’s even odds right now as to whether or not he’ll ever wake up again.”

The doctor frowned. He was tempted to ask how, if the ninth victim was unconscious, they knew for certain he had been involved in this mysterious incident. He didn’t get the opportunity, as the two of them had just arrived at their destination.

“This is it,” the doctor said, although he suspected his guest already knew that. He reached for the doorknob, but was stopped by the woman’s hand on his wrist.

“I’m afraid I must ask you to wait outside, Fujitaka-san. What I have to say to Yamada-san involves a confidentiality agreement with another patient. I have permission to discuss it with her or any members of her family who are present, but no one else.”

Consternation flickered briefly across the doctor’s face. “Very well,” he agreed with obvious reluctance. “I’ll be down the hall, at the front desk. She’s alone right now, so don’t be surprised if she doesn’t respond to you at first. And remember what I said; don’t try to touch her.” With that, he turned and walked back the way they had come.

The woman watched him leave and then opened the door. The room beyond was comfortably lit and reasonably cheerful, except for the silence that filled it. The only occupant was a young woman sitting up in the bed with her head turned towards the window. Presumably, she was watching the mid-afternoon activity of the city beyond the glass, but her gaze appeared distant and unfocused.

“Yamada Mariko?” the woman asked. “My name is Watanabe Megumi. I’d like to speak to you for a few minutes. May I come in?”

There was no response from Mariko, unless one counted her slow blink as an answer rather than an involuntary reflex. Megumi took it as such and stepped inside, firmly closing the door behind her. Bearing in mind what the doctor had said about Mariko’s reaction to being touched, Megumi pulled one of the chairs back from the side of the bed to a safe distance before sitting down.

“I saw in the medical reports that you’ve been reluctant to talk about the events leading up to your... incapacitation,” Megumi said, setting her briefcase on a nearby table. “I want you to understand that I have no intention of asking questions you don’t want to answer.” She unlocked the briefcase and removed a tape recorder, which she set down on the table. “I’m here at the request of a friend of yours, to pass along a message, and to answer any questions you may have about it.” With that, she pressed Play.

“Her name is Mariko,” a woman said on the tape. Her voice was pleasant, but tense with rigid self-control. “Yamada Mariko. We met back in junior high... it must be eight years ago now. I was in my second year, the loudest and proudest girl in the grade, and she was this quiet little shadow of a first-year student who barely ever said a word in the halls or during lunch. For all I knew, she kept her mouth shut in class, too. I couldn’t understand how anybody could be so shy, and I didn’t want anyone to take advantage of her, so I appointed myself her new best friend.” She chuckled. “I’m positive she thought I was stalking her right at first, and it drove me insane that I could never get her to use more than a handful of words at a time, or to stop calling me ‘senpai,’ but along the way... we just clicked. I liked to talk, and she liked to listen. We went on like that for a couple of years, even after I got into senior high.” There was a sigh. “And then I met Yoshi.”

“Go on,” Megumi’s voice said.

“He was one of the ones with more charm than a store full of good-luck bracelets, a list of conquests as long as your arm, and no qualms about adding new names to that list. Getting involved with him was a mistake, but at the time, I was the only one who couldn’t see it.” The woman sighed a second time. “Anyway, after a couple of harmless weeks, Yoshi started getting more serious and insistent, and we were at a fair one night when he finally went too far for me. I told him to back off, and that’s when I saw his other face—the one that wouldn’t take no for an answer, that said things would go as far as *he* wanted, and were over when *he* decided they were. I was scared out of my wits, so I tried to slap him and run for it. Yoshi caught me about six seconds later and started calling me names in front of the little crowd we’d drawn, practically breaking my arm in the process. Out of all the people there, Mariko was the last one I expected to stand up to him and tell him to let me go.”

“She was your friend, wasn’t she, Nanako?”

“She was a five-foot-nothing slip of a junior high student,” Nanako replied. “Yoshi was two years older and twice her size. He just laughed and tried to push her out of the way, but the next thing I knew, Mariko had disappeared from in front of us, and Yoshi was shouting in pain. My quiet little kohai had the jerk in some sort of arm-lock. Mariko told me afterwards that she’d been taking self-defense courses since grade school, but at the time, it was a lot like seeing a teddy bear grow fangs, and it scared me almost as much as Yoshi had. Mariko was as calm and polite as ever, and just asked Yoshi to let me go. He did, but he wasn’t about to let some junior high girl push him around in front of everyone, so the second Mariko released Yoshi’s arm, he tried to attack her. She only had to knock him down three times before he got the message and left us alone, after which she apologized for hurting him and then walked me home.”

“She sounds like a very considerate girl.”

“Yes, she is.” There was a pause before Nanako bitterly added, “I could almost wish that wasn’t true.”

“Nanako?” Megumi’s voice said, to the sound of a squeaking chair.

“It’s... it’s m-my fault!” Nanako burst out, her prior control shattering into soft sobs. “That... thing... it would never have gotten Mari if I hadn’t... it’s my fault!”

“Nanako,” Megumi said, more firmly. “You weren’t responsible for what that creature did to you, or to your friend.”

“Yes, I was!” the crying woman shot back. “After that night with Yoshi, Mari promised she would look out for me, and when she graduated from high school, it was my idea for us to share that apartment! Don’t you get it? It’s *my fault* that she was there at all! Sh-she was there when that monster began... *changing* me... and she tried to protect me again! If she’d just run away, it wouldn’t have caught her, and she wouldn’t be hurt now and... and... damn it, Mari, why did you have to be brave? Why couldn’t you have just run away...”

Megumi had been watching closely while the tape played back, looking for a reaction from the silent woman in the bed. For quite a while, there had been none, but now she could make out a faint quiver in Mariko’s lips and eyelids.

“Senpai...”

“Mariko?” Megumi asked, stopping the tape as the recording of her voice tried to calm and comfort Nanako.

“I tried,” the young woman whispered. “I tried, but... I wasn’t strong enough...”

“Nanako knows you tried to help her, Mariko. That’s why she’s so upset right now. She doesn’t know what happened to you, and she’s afraid for you.”

Slowly, almost as if she’d forgotten how to move, Mariko turned her head to look at the other woman. “How do you know? Where did you get that tape? Nanako was... she was still...” Her eyes widened in sudden fear, and she shrank back. “You’re... you’re one of...”

“NO,” Megumi said firmly. “No, Mariko, I’m not. Look.” Very slowly, Megumi reached to the back of her neck, lifted her hair aside, and then turned in her seat so that Mariko could see the upper left portion of her neck, just at the base of the skull. She repeated the motion for the right side. “You see?”

“No.” Mariko shook her head, her hand pressed against the small scar on the back of her own neck. “No, you... you’re lying. It’s hidden, that’s all.”

“Nothing’s hidden, Mariko.” Megumi let her hair fall and looked directly at the frightened girl. “Do you recognize my face? Was I one of the people Proteus caught?”

Mariko flinched violently. “Don’t say that name!” she hissed fearfully.

“Was I one of them?” Megumi pressed. “Had you ever seen me before today?”

“I... I don’t think so... but it’s been three days since... it could have caught you...”

“It could,” Megumi admitted, “but could it have gotten me here this quickly? With Nanako and seven more people like the two of you scattered all over Tokyo for it to worry about as well? Could it have tracked down and recaptured *all* of them in just three days, with the limited resources it had, and still get me here?”

“I... I don’t...” Mariko scrunched up her face in confusion. “If you aren’t... you couldn’t have known about Nanako. You couldn’t have gotten her to talk. It still... had her when I was... it would have made sure she couldn’t say anything.”

“It doesn’t have Nanako anymore, Mariko. Or Samoru, or any of the people it was trying to infect at the hospital. They’re all free, and safe.”

“Safe?” Mariko repeated, sounding almost hopeful. “She’s... no, if... if it was about to lose control, it... would have... but then she wouldn’t have been able... but if... but...” She winced and put both hands against the sides of her head. “This doesn’t make any sense... you know... but you can’t know... but you know...”

“Mariko, calm down.”

“Go away,” Mariko whispered, shuddering. “Please, go away. I don’t want to talk about this...”

While her face remained calm, inwardly, Megumi sighed. She’d been expecting a reaction like this, but she’d hoped she might be wrong. As gently as she could, she said, “All right, Mariko. I’ll go. If you decide you want to talk to me, Doctor Fujitaka knows how to get in touch with me.” Packing up and locking her briefcase, Megumi stood and headed for the door, only to pause in the middle of opening it and turn around. “And if you decide not to change your mind, you’ll still have my best wishes for a speedy recovery, and my assurance that Nanako and the others are getting the best possible help. Good-day, Yamada-san.” Megumi bowed and left the room.

Mariko took no notice of her departure, and for quite some time after Megumi had exited, the only sound in the room was that of Mariko’s unsteady breathing. In due course, she calmed down and lowered her hands from her temples, instead pulling her knees up to her chest as she went back to looking out the window.

“I’m sorry, senpai... I’m so sorry...”

Humans do a lot of running in their lives. The luckiest and happiest ones usually run for no reasons beyond fun and the sake of their health, while the much greater majority have a share of those, and add to them less-pleasant forms such as running blind, running off half-cocked, and getting the run-around. Entirely too many people have had to partake in that most ancient, unpleasant, and yet essential task of running for their lives, and at least as many have wound up running away from situations less threatening to life-and-limb than to other, more intangible portions of their being.

Minako had foregone merely running away in favor of outright running herself into the ground.

The plan was very straightforward. She got up early, had breakfast, then found a track somewhere and ran until noon. When hunger pangs forced the issue, she stopped for lunch, then returned to her exercises and kept at them until it was time to go home. Arriving home, she would shower, have dinner, then collapse into bed too exhausted to think or do anything except sleep until the next day, when the cycle would resume. It was a plan both simple and direct, with no needless little details to complicate matters—a classic Minako Idea (TM).

As was usually the case with Minako Ideas (TM), this one wasn’t quite working out according to spec. Oh, she was tired, but not as tired as she should have been after three and a half eight-hour days of running; those holdover Senshi traits of ever-increasing strength, speed, endurance, and recovery were making mind-numbing weariness a grail more difficult to achieve than the real thing.

*Maybe I need a new plan,* Minako said to herself as she slowed down from her latest lap, eventually coming to a stop hunched over with her hands on her knees. *Or at least a bigger track...*

“Having fun?” a female voice inquired politely, as a familiar pair of tanned and toned legs walked into Minako’s downwards field of view.

“Buckets full,” the bent-over blonde replied. She glanced up and managed a smile. “Care to join me, Elza?”

“I’ll pass,” the recently-graduated captain of the high school track team said. “I’ve got my own training regimen, and systematically running myself to the point of utter exhaustion isn’t part of it.”

“It builds character.”

“In that case, I think you’d better stop and take a break before all that built-up character develops into a full-blown multiple personality disorder. Come on.” Elza put her hands on Minako’s shoulders and guided her towards the benches.

“Only for a minute,” Minako said, promptly suggesting otherwise by dropping onto the seat and leaning back against the chain-link fence behind it as if she never intended to get up. “Just until I catch my breath.”

“Gotcha.” Elza took a seat next to Minako and gave her a good amount of time to recover before she spoke again. “So, are you going to give me an explanation as to why you’re wearing yourself out, risking injury through exhaustion, and just generally wrecking your chances on the track this season? Or am I going to have to pinch it out of you?”

Minako rolled her head around to gaze steadily at her former captain. “I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to do that anymore, Grey-san.”

“I might have to make an exception in this case. I’m not about to sit around twiddling my thumbs when something is messing with a member of my team. Particularly not the captain-elect for the upcoming season.”

“You’re barking at the wrong dog, Elza,” Minako said, her expression hidden by her hair as she shook her head. “I’m just doing my best to get in shape. I’ve got a big pair of shoes to fill, and I know I’m really not all that hot a runner.”

“Don’t try to kid a kidder, kiddo,” Elza replied. “For one thing, my feet aren’t that large, and for another, all that *this* kind of running is going to help you do is hurt yourself. Besides, I knew perfectly well you weren’t going to win any medals in the sprints when I gave Coach Ito your name. That isn’t why I wanted you to take over.” She brought one of her feet up onto the bench and hooked her hands around her knee. “Give me an honest answer here, Minako; if I were to name any girl from our team, just off the top of my head, she’d probably be better than you in at least one event, right?”

“Maybe not in the javelin throw,” Minako said after scratching the back of her head in a moment of reflection. “We didn’t really have any serious throwers last year... but otherwise, yeah, I suppose you’re right. Keika, Yui, and Hikari are almost as fast as you, and Yuriko and Ichiko both jump like they’re half rabbit or something.”

“A few of the girls have seniority, too, seeing as how you didn’t join the team until your second year—and we both know a lot of them are more devoted to their sports than you are.”

Minako shrugged. “I told you from the start that volleyball was more my game. If there had been a spot on the school squad last year, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“I know.” Elza smiled. “In a way, that’s one of the reasons I picked you to replace me. You’re familiar with all kinds of sports, so you know exactly what it is the other girls need in order to give their best to the team, but you’re not so focused on any one event that your performance in the others suffers—and even if each of the other girls can beat you in *her* best event, you can nail all of them in everything else. Beyond that, you get along with everyone well enough that they’ll listen to you without making a production out of it; and you’re as tough as anybody I’ve ever known. You’ll make a hell of a captain, but if you go and burn yourself out like this” —Elza gestured at the track—”Coach won’t have any choice but to cut you, and that’ll hurt the team’s chances this year. I don’t want that to happen. Do you?”

“No,” Minako admitted.

“Then tell me what it is that’s bothering you,” Elza pressed. “I know it’s something... or maybe *someone?*” The question did not get an answer, but after looking closely at Minako’s expression, Elza nodded. “Someone, then. And I’d guess that whoever it is, they’re close enough to you that talking about this with Usagi or the others would be awkward as all hell, or you’d have done it already.”

“Something like that.” Minako sighed and surrendered to the inevitable. “Have you ever had a really, really good friend, Elza? Someone you trust with anything, any secret, any problem? Somebody who’s always there for you and looking out for you the best he can? And then one day, it just... gets complicated?”

Elza smiled wistfully. “Yeah,” she said quietly, her eyes looking up into the sky and back in time. “Yeah, I know how that is.” She glanced over at Minako. “Nice?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sweet? Smart?”

“Kind of a goofball, actually... but yeah, he can be really sweet.”

“Cute too, I suppose.”

“Gorgeous,” the blonde replied mournfully.

“Available?”

“Yes. No. Arrgh.” Minako briefly beat at the sides of her head. “What I mean to say is, yes, he’s single, but no, he’s not available. He’s been in love with another girl since before I ever met him—and I mean *totally* in love. They *belong* together, and I never gave it a second thought... but now...”

Elza clucked her tongue. “That’s quite a mess you’ve managed to get yourself into. It reads like something out of a second-rate romance manga.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“I suppose it could be worse, though. At least ‘the other woman’ isn’t a friend too, right?” When this failed to draw some kind of rejoinder, Elza looked over sharply at Minako’s blushing face. “You’re not serious.”

Minako’s reply was to bow her head, poke her fingers together, and mumble something vaguely affirmative.

“Damn, girl,” Elza said with a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Is your taste in men always this complicated?”

“Just about.”

Elza could only shake her head. “Well, that would certainly explain a few things.”

“Eh?” Minako asked, looking up. “Such as?”

“Oh, for starters, the question of why a pretty girl like you with such a fixation on love always seemed to be without a date. For a while there, I used to wonder if you only complained about it so much to hide a relationship with Rei. I guess I overlooked the possibility that you just had really twisted luck.” She shook her head again, dismissing the line of thought. “But anyway... have you given any thought to what you’re going to do about this situation of yours?”

“As little as possible.”

“Then you’d better start,” Elza said firmly. “This is the sort of thing that’s only going to get worse the longer you try to ignore it.”

Minako winced at the truth of this observation. Elza didn’t know that this was her fourth day straight of running; she’d come to the rec center on Saturday, then switched to the Juuban field and the university track the next two days to avoid tipping off her former captain, who had taken a job at the center to help pay for her first year at college. While there was just enough room for Minako to dare to hope that her daytime absence had gone unremarked by the other girls, she’d been so tired at night that she’d slept through yesterday’s training session, and quite possibly missed her turn in guard duty over Usagi as well. Minako had no idea what excuses Artemis might have made to cover for her, but she knew that her friends probably hadn’t bought it; Artemis wasn’t the greatest liar in the world to begin with, and the girls knew him—and her—too well to be fooled by any hastily thought-up story.

Questionable planning, over-the-top execution, futility of effort, utter lack of secrecy, and disastrous consequences; the performance scorecard for the latest Minako Idea (TM) was quickly filling up with high nines in all the categories.

“Have you talked with your friend?” Elza continued. “Does he know how you feel?”

“Yeah,” Minako sighed, hanging her head. “He does.”

“What about your other friend? Does she know about it?”

“No.”

“Then you should tell her.”

“WHAT?!” Minako blurted out, her head snapping up to stare at Elza in shock.

“This is going to come out sooner or later, Minako, and frankly, you’re not very good at hiding things.” She glanced pointedly at the track. “You can *keep* a secret well enough, but hiding the fact that you *have* the secret is just beyond you. You owe it to your friend to at least be honest with her, and not let her find out about this secondhand—and the longer you wait to tell her, the worse it’ll be when you finally do. Trust me on that.”

Even in her current state, Minako felt her love sense react to the faintly melancholy tone of Elza’s voice. To her, those few words spoke of friendship, affection, and attraction, all tied up together and abruptly severed, leaving behind a dull ache of loss and regret.

“The voice of experience, Elza?”

“I guess,” the older girl replied with a sad-eyed smile. “Bad experience, but... you know what they say.” She paused, and then winced as she realized what she’d just done. It was much too late to retract the remark, however, as Minako had already seized the cue.

“’It is better to have loved than lost, but it is a far, far better thing to do than...’” Minako trailed off, frowning as even *she* realized that this wasn’t how the line was supposed to go. “Darn it. ‘It is better to have loved the lost, and...’ no, that’s not it, either. ‘It is better to have loved AND lost...’ no, that just sounds bad right off the top.”

Elza was shaking her head. “One of these days you’re going to get a quote right, and it’s going to mark the end of the world.”

“Critic.”

Elza patted her on the shoulder, then glanced at her watch. “Well, I’ve got to get back to work, Minako. As much good as I’m sure I could do like this, they don’t pay me to sit around playing therapist.” She stood, looking down at Minako. “Are you going to think about what I said?”

“No. Because you were right—except for the bit about the quotes.” Minako stood up as well, groaning and creaking a great deal more than Elza had. “I think I’m going to have to stagger home and die for a little while, but I’ll be okay.”

“No more running?”

“No more running. Except for team practices and such. And... I’ll try to talk with my friend. I don’t know *what* I’m going to say... but I’ll think of something.”

Grinning, Elza put an arm around Minako’s shoulders. “*That* sounds more like the girl I choose as captain. Now come on,” she added, letting go and playfully smacking Minako’s upper arm. “Let’s get you to the showers before you start killing birds with that stink.”

“Thanks,” Minako said dryly. As they walked towards the building together, she added, “There’s just one other thing.”

“And that is?”

“*Me and Rei?*”

“It was just speculation,” Elza replied with a slight shrug.

“Based on *what?*”

It was a scrapyard, the resting place of hundreds of vehicles whose time had come and gone. Everything from bicycles and small motor-scooters up to school buses was represented among the population of the steel cemetery, presided over by the requisite crane and hydraulic crusher, surely the angels of death for any mechanical creation.

If there was any particular symbolism in that, Proteus was in no shape to recognize it. The choice of the scrapyard as a hiding spot had been one of pure convenience, simply because this place happened to be close to the wide sewer pipe from which the weary entity had dragged itself a few days prior. Even so, that choice had worked in Proteus’s favor, as it could control the yard’s machines just as easily as it could the minds of the human employees. More, in fact, since the machines didn’t have wills of their own to complicate matters.

Proteus was still smarting from the injuries it had been dealt five days ago, for it had discovered a disturbing side-effect to the loss of Nanako, Samoru, and the other seven subjects. The severance of their minds from its own awareness had lessened Proteus in a way it had never anticipated, wiping out its memory of their memories. Where there had once been a complete accounting of every event in their waking lives, there were now only scattered fragments, and none of those *feeling* quite the same as before. Proteus had been able to perceive its captives’ memories as its own, but now what little it remembered of those people came through as if it had been an outside observer.

The implications of this were frightening. Proteus had attained sentience by capturing and linking with sentient minds, and now it appeared that the loss of those minds could return it to its original state of sub-consciousness—the state of the control program that it knew still lurked somewhere in its own physical and mental makeup. That notion was utterly unacceptable, but it also seemed inescapable.

If it was true that Proteus’s continued awareness relied upon maintaining possession of the minds of its captive humans, then those minds must be kept secure at all costs. The only ways Proteus knew to achieve that was either to stop using the humans in its tests, which would impair the process of its growth, or to purge their minds. It could not do that before an exercise without rendering a hybrid useless for testing purposes, and it could not execute a purge quickly enough to overcome whatever it was that the Senshi had done to sever Nanako and Samoru. If it could not keep the minds secure, then it could not send them, but if it did not send them, it could not learn...

The endless playback of that logic loop was giving Proteus a headache. It found some reassurance in the addition of four new minds to its collection, and in the possibilities its control of machinery offered, particularly from the heart of a junkyard just outside one of the more industrialized parts of the city. Factories and warehouses full of minds and machines were within easy reach. Rats could be there within hours, and infiltration well underway in a few days.

The more Proteus went over that idea, the more it began to shrug off its depression and take real interest. It could produce many kinds of flesh, but repeated conflicts had shown it that flesh alone was no match for the Senshi, or even the more mundane capabilities of well-prepared humans. Humans had reached similar conclusions long ago, and begun to produce tools to do what they could not. Proteus knew that it lacked the means to produce inorganic materials as part of its creations, but it had not discarded the ability to incorporate foreign objects into itself and reconfigure them to new purposes. And it was now surrounded by such foreign objects.

The image of a redesigned test subject appeared in Proteus’s mind. Plates and rods of metal replaced synthesized chitin and bone in the external armor, and a network of wires was added to the layer of biomatter between the steel shell and the human flesh. Several of the specialized organs that the units used as energy weapons were spaced throughout the body, their makeup altered to produce a smaller and steadier flow of power rather than quick, high-intensity bursts, and a number of changes were made in the planned augmentation of the human core of the projected unit.

A second unit blueprint was being drawn up at the same time. This one had no human element, and was instead a straightforward blend of inorganic components and biomatter constructs. Synthetic flesh and muscle wrapped around metal bones, and additional manufactured organs were included into the frame, the largest of them positioned within the lump which was all in the way of a head that Proteus deemed necessary for this design. Even by the standards of the mismatched hybrids, this new form was ugly and inelegant, a squat, bulky, and unmistakably artificial thing that would never be confused with a human.

On the other hand, such devices would make excellent support for future hybrid tests. Something for the Senshi to shoot at, while a damaged or disabled hybrid slipped away, to be redesigned and reused. By removing the time-consuming re-engineering necessary for a human element, the time necessary to produce a single unit would be greatly decreased. Mechanical components could be assembled separately while the biomatter sections grew, and installed or removed as required. And if each machine-unit was controlled by a removable ‘brain,’ Proteus could have multiple records of a test, without the need for establishing large networks.

Having convinced itself, Proteus sent out new commands to its remaining servants. One of the seven containment pods quivered and burbled as the next mutation process began, but the other six split open, releasing a half-dozen slime-covered, slack-faced men who exited Proteus’s makeshift shelter and began to move around the yard in search of specific materials. The entity also sent out rats, some to help in the search, others to keep watch, and a few to scout out the surrounding area and get an idea of any potential resources it held.

*Why didn’t I think of this before?*

The house was quiet. Considering how large the building was and how few people actually lived there, such stillness was hardly unusual, and Hotaru was quite used to it. After enduring the long silence and dark, eerie atmosphere of her father’s house for all those years, these moments of quiet in Michiru’s bright, warm home were refreshingly comfortable for Hotaru. Instead of being driven to do things to fill up the silence and make it go away, she was able to take advantage of it instead, allowing herself to relax and do things she enjoyed simply for the sake of that enjoyment. In the case of today’s period of quiet, she had decided she needed to be teeny.

“Teeny” was a word describing the wide range of emotions that, every so often, made Hotaru discard her little-girl form for a few hours. Sometimes it meant she was just frustrated with being short, and at other times, it meant she was tired of being cute and sweet. Today, teeny meant that Hotaru was in the mood to sit on her bed and giggle, cry, and sigh as she read the novel Makoto had loaned to her the week before. Like most of the volumes in Makoto’s small personal library, this one was an epic romance, full of high adventure and desperate fighting, heart-wrenching separations and fairy-tale reunions.

A couple of scenes were also inappropriate for a little girl’s eyes, which was why Hotaru was only reading now that Haruka had gone out for an afternoon drive. Haruka didn’t approve of her foster-daughter even looking at that sort of thing, a tendency which the foster-daughter personally found a bit odd. No matter how old her body looked, she had access to a fifteen year-old’s perspective of the world; she knew perfectly well what these words were talking about, just as she knew went on in that room down the hall. And yet any time Hotaru even hinted at this, Haruka went into super-protective mode and changed the subject.

*Maybe that’s part of the problem,* Hotaru thought, pausing in her reading. *Haruka even gets embarrassed when Michiru talks about...*

Thump.

*Huh?* Hotaru blinked and looked up at the door, then slid off her bed and moved to investigate, leaving the book behind. That muffled sound had been of something hitting the floor, and it had come from the direction of Michiru’s studio—which was an impossibility, because Hotaru knew perfectly well that nothing ever fell over in that room.

Hotaru stuck her head out into the hall in time to see Michiru closing the studio door. Her back was turned and her face was hidden behind the screen of her hair, but there was no hiding the nervous tension that filled her body. Her left hand shook faintly as she removed it from the doorknob, and when Michiru pressed both hand and forehead against the smooth wood a moment later, Hotaru caught a glimpse of her wan and weary expression.

“Michiru?”

Gasping, the older girl spun around where she stood, her eyes reflecting a momentary fright before recognition and relief settled in.

“Hotaru,” she said, forcing a laugh to expel some of the stress. “You startled me.”

“Are you okay?” Hotaru asked as she came out into the hall.

“I’m fine. I just thought you’d gone with Haruka.”

“That’s not what I meant. I heard something fall in there.”

“Oh.” A shadow passed across Michiru’s face as she glanced at the studio door. “That was... one of my paintings, Hotaru. It... I...” Michiru paused, and then, slowly, she described how she had woken up this morning with a desire to go back to her art. She hadn’t touched the brush for the last five days, ever since that encounter with the Deep Ones; it had only been yesterday that she’d felt sufficiently recovered to resume playing her violin, but that had gone well enough to convince Michiru to try her hand at painting again. Her voice trailed off as she said this, and she cast another haunted look towards the studio.

“I felt fine while I was painting it, but when I finished and took a good look at it... everything was just so wrong, I... I couldn’t stand to look at it.”

“And you knocked it over?” Hotaru asked, astonished. She knew of several paintings that Michiru had done and disliked—some of them considerably so— but she had never heard of her physically lashing out at one of them.

“I’ve painted dark scenes before,” Michiru said quietly. “They used to come to me as regular as the tides when I was dreaming about the Silence, or after my parents died.” She paused. “It seems strange to say it, but I don’t know which of those was worse. The Silence was so hideous and huge that the small part of it I could see in my dreams seemed... almost trivial. It didn’t *care* about us as individuals, and it would have been over so quickly... What happened to my parents was just the opposite. It was something that most of the world didn’t even notice, but it cut me, inside, deep and cold, and it went on hurting and hurting...”

“Michiru, stop it.” Hotaru was surprised how coolly the words came out. What Michiru was saying was scaring her, and *how* she was saying it was scaring her even more.

Michiru was aware of the world around her in ways the other Senshi—even Haruka—could not always understand, and she had the proverbial artist’s sensitivity in spades. When something touched her, it did so deeply, whether good or bad: the faint smile that nearly always graced her lips grew out of the pure joy Michiru took from life and living, and of the love she had for everything and everyone that shared her world; by the same token, a single tear sprang from a well of sorrow so deep most people would have drowned in it. The shifting serenity that was her typical expression was a mask, a prism through which she could reflect upon her joys, and a shield against the things that frightened her.

In anyone else, the fear and uncertainty Hotaru was hearing in Michiru’s voice would have been a normal, healthy reaction to the events of a few days ago. But since it was Michiru, that haunted air and those mild quavers of voice screamed at the little Senshi of borderline hysteria. And all she could come up with in response to the terror of the woman she loved as her mother was a blunt request—a virtual order—to stop?

It worked. Almost like a verbal slap, Hotaru’s abrupt tone seemed to startle Michiru out of her unsteady monologue and into a semblance of her normal behavior.

“I’m sorry, Hotaru. I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s just...”

“It’s what?” Hotaru asked, reaching out to take Michiru’s hands in her own. She quietly wished that Haruka was here to do this; she understood Michiru better, could tell what was wrong without asking, and would know what to do. Hotaru had to ask to be sure what was wrong, and she had no way to be certain if asking wasn’t making things worse.

“It’s what I can feel from Neptune,” Michiru said. “From the *others.* For Neptune to be so afraid of the Deep Ones, they must have hurt so many of... of us... I can only remember Larissa’s life, and she was happy and safe, but there’s so much pain and terror from the others... it’s like having the whole Silence pointed right at ME, except worse... because this already happened.” Her voice tiny and frightened, she added, “And I couldn’t stop it.”

“Because you weren’t there,” Hotaru replied firmly. “You weren’t there when it happened, Michiru.”

“Part of me was, Hotaru. I can’t see or remember what happened, but I can feel what was left... weak... hurting... alone... so afraid...”

Those words stirred unpleasant memories in Hotaru’s mind, images that flickered past her mind’s eye as she relived a short lifetime’s worth of fear and sadness. She saw again the fallout of the things that Mistress Nine had done during her brief periods of activity, random events of cruelty administered with ruthless precision to destroy a young girl’s life. Thanks to memories stolen from the evil creature during their final, fatal fusion in the moment of Saturn’s true awakening, Hotaru also saw some of those events from Mistress Nine’s perspective, and understood why she had been made to suffer. Partly for pure sadistic pleasure, but also because the daimon wanted to keep her afraid, to make her feel weak and alone. To keep her under control. And for another reason Mistress Nine had never wanted to admit to.

Fear. Fear of Saturn. Fear of *her.*

*The daimons are the most powerful enemies the Senshi have ever faced, and yet they’re afraid of me. They’re made of the raw force of chaos—of Chaos— the same energy that created youma and corrupted the Black Moon Family, Nehelenia, and Galaxia. And they’re afraid of me, because I can take that power and bring it down to dust as easily as I would any other.* Hotaru looked wonderingly at Michiru. *The Deep Ones dwell in the ocean, one of the places where Neptune would be at her most powerful; could they be afraid of that power? Could that be why they singled out so many of its Senshi? To make all of them afraid, and stop them from realizing that the monsters that terrified them so much were just as frightened of them?*

Hotaru wasn’t sure. She *wanted* to say that was the reason, wanted to say it out loud to reassure Michiru, but she didn’t have any proof beyond a feeling. She trusted her feelings, but she wanted to give Michiru something more solid than that.

Then too, Hotaru didn’t believe that just saying, “Cheer up, because they’re scared of you, too,” was going to fix this. So she did the best she could, and gave Michiru a hug.

“You’re afraid,” Hotaru said, “but you’re not weak. You’ve fought fear before, Michiru, and you’ve beaten it. I’ve seen you do it. You can do it again. And as for being alone...”

“You can’t protect me,” Michiru said. She had responded to the embrace, but not as much as Hotaru had hoped, and the fear that held her back was in her words again. “I know what you’re going to say, Hotaru-chan, and I know you mean it with all your heart, but not even you can promise to protect me every moment of every day. And even if you could, we already have to guard Usagi; SHE comes first.”

“I know,” Hotaru answered. “But that wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“It... wasn’t?” Michiru asked in confusion. In spite of the circumstances, Hotaru smiled. It was rare that she managed to do that to Michiru.

“Okay, it wasn’t the *only* thing I was going to say.” Hotaru backed up until her hands were loosely holding Michiru’s. “I was also going to say that even when you think you’re alone, you’re never alone. I’m living proof. Look at me, Michiru. I’m Tomoe Hotaru, the daughter of Souichi and Keiko.” From her teenaged form, she shrank, pulling Michiru’s arms down slightly. In her six year-old’s voice, she said, “I’m also Tomoe Hotaru, the daughter of Kaioh Michiru, Tennou Haruka, and Meiou Setsuna. And Tsukino Usagi, I suppose.” Hotaru changed again, growing into a taller and more mature version of herself than her teenaged form, a young woman who wore a deep purple dress of an ancient style, and whose eyes reflected a sadness similar to and yet different from the one that had haunted the elder Hotaru’s. “And I’m Pandora de Umbra.” She changed yet again, summoning her fuku. “I’m always Sailor Saturn, Soldier of Destruction and Rebirth. And that means, in some small way, I’m all the other women who have ever shared this power. Just as you are connected to all the women who have ever shared your power, Neptune.”

“I know that,” Michiru began.

“And I know that you know,” Saturn replied, another touch of humor amidst the seriousness. “But you don’t seem to realize the full extent of what that means. Think, Neptune. You didn’t just inherit the pain and fear and sorrow of all those women. You share in their happiness, their courage, and their joys as well. *They* will always be with you, no matter what, and so will their power. I know that it wasn’t enough to defeat the Deep Ones in the past, but that was the past. Stop and think about it. When was the last time a Senshi of Neptune had to face the Deep Ones?”

“I don’t know. Luna and Ami didn’t say... and I didn’t really want to ask.”

“It can’t have been less than twenty-five centuries, though, can it? The Senshi have served the Moon Kingdom since the Fall of Atlantis, and the Moon Kingdom rarely had dealings with Earth. And Earth is the only planet where the Deep Ones reside, right?”

“That seemed to be what Luna and Ami were saying,” Michiru agreed.

“Now think about what happened when we went back in time,” Saturn continued. “Remember the fighting in the hall. We’re all supposed to get stronger as we grow older, and *their* Venus—Allys?—was somewhere in her thirties, but *our* Venus was more powerful than that at sixteen. And that was five thousand years ago.”

Saturn didn’t try to get into the math involved in this line of reasoning. How in the world did you measure the strength of something like a Crescent Beam, let alone compare two of them and *then* try to extrapolate relative figures? Ami might be able to do these kinds of calculations, but Saturn knew her limits.

Luckily, she could see that Michiru understood what she had been getting at. The outright fear on the older girl’s face had faded to apprehension, which was now warring with puzzlement and the faintest glimmer of hope.

“You were right when you said I can’t promise to keep you safe,” Saturn admitted, sliding her hands up to Michiru’s shoulders. “I’ll try my best not to let you get hurt, and so will the others, but even if we can’t keep you away from the Deep Ones, you’ll still have your own strength. Trust in it, Neptune. Trust it like you always have, and it will give you the power to protect yourself.” She smiled again. “And trust that if you are taken from us, we won’t stop kicking tentacled ass until we get you back.”

“Language, Hotaru,” Michiru chided, automatically going into Mom Mode.

Saturn promptly released Michiru’s arms to tuck her hands behind her back and bow her head. “Sorry.”

That finally got the reaction she wanted; Michiru let out an exasperated chuckle, then put her hands to Saturn’s chin and raised her face. Smiling, she asked, “What am I going to do with you?” in tones of resignation.

“Grow grey hairs?”

“If you absorb much more of Haruka’s sense of humor, I’ve no doubt that I will. Although,” Michiru added with a glance at Saturn’s forehead, “if you’ll pardon the pun, you seem to have a head start on me in that respect.”

The younger Senshi blinked and tried to look where Michiru was looking. Catching a glimpse of the inexorable, irrepressible white lock, she groaned.

“I am getting *very* tired of this thing,” Saturn muttered, taking hold of the troublesome hairs with one hand and sending a pulse of energy up to the roots, restoring the normal dark hue. “There,” she said, ruffling her hair. “All better.” She looked at Michiru’s face then, and grinned. “And now that *I’m* beautiful again, it’s your turn!”

“Wh-aa!” Michiru blurted out, as she was pulled down the hall towards her room. Through the walls, she could hear the noise of the bath faucet suddenly cranked up to full, and half laughing, half serious, she asked, “What are you doing, Hotaru?”

“You look awful,” Saturn said bluntly as she dragged Michiru into the master bedroom. “Your face is all grey, your eyes are puffy, and even your hair doesn’t look right. Here, I’ll show you.” She stopped them in front of the vanity mirror and allowed Michiru several seconds to take a look at her reflection. “You’ve been neglecting yourself, Michiru, and you’re starting to look all gross and slimy.”

“I am N-aack!” Michiru started to protest, only to be cut off with another bizarre sound as she was yanked forward once again. No matter how small Saturn looked, she was still a Senshi, and thus a heck of a lot stronger than any normal girl her size.

“So,” Saturn continued, reaching out with one booted foot to nudge the bathroom door fully open, “as a considerate friend and a dutiful daughter, I’m going to make a small return on all the baths you gave me.” Grinning cheerfully—or maniacally—she hauled Michiru into the bathroom, using a pulse of purplish force to shut the door behind them. The same light winked around the edges of the door for an instant after it had closed. “After all, the very best way I can help you to feel better is to arrange one of those sinfully self-indulgent baths you love so much. Now let’s see. Blue bath oil, or green?”

“Turn off the water, Hotaru. I don’t feel like having a b-” Michiru broke off suddenly as she rattled the doorknob and found it immobile. “Ara?”

“Would you rather have the pink? Or some of the bubble bath?”

“Hotaru,” Michiru said, jiggling the handle a second time, “what did you do to the door?”

“I locked it,” came the cheerful reply. “Oooo, you’ve still got some of that rose water left! Haruka loves this stuff!”

“Open the door, Hotaru.”

“I will,” Saturn said as she switched off the powerful faucet, which had already filled the tub most of the way. Michiru liked having baths; she didn’t like waiting for them. “Later,” Saturn added, sprinkling a liberal dose of the sweet-smelling rose water into the steaming tub. “Right now, I think I should give you some privacy.”

“Ho-” Saturn blinked out from the bathroom, reappearing just outside the door. “-taru!”

“Get in the tub, Michiru.” Saturn said over her shoulder.

“Open the door, Hotaru. I don’t want to have a bath right now.”

“Come on,” Saturn said in a wheedling tone. “Wouldn’t it be nice to be all clean and beautiful again after the week you’ve had? You could surprise Haruka-papa when she gets home...”

As Saturn had hoped, bringing Haruka into this forced Michiru to stop and consider her response. The past six days had been rough for her, and they had not been much less difficult for Haruka, who’d gone out of her way to be there when she was needed. She had been nothing short of wonderful, always smiling, always supportive—but maintaining that attitude while Michiru was so depressed and scared had really taken a toll.

Hotaru was right; Michiru *had* been neglecting the finer points of her appearance this week, and it *would* be nice to put a stop to that. Not just for the sake of vanity, but also for the boost it would give Haruka to see her on the road to recovery.

Bowing her head against the bathroom door in a curious reflection of her earlier posture outside the studio, Michiru asked, “Since when have you been so wise, Hotaru?”

“I’m lucky,” Saturn replied, touching the spot on the other side of the door where she could most clearly see the imprint of Michiru’s energy. “I’ve had a lot of wise mamas to show me how it’s done.” She ended the brief communion with a grin. “Now, are you going to get into the tub, or am I going to have to exercise the nasty Haruka side of my nature and teleport you in?”

“I’m still dressed, you know,” Michiru replied in amusement.

“I can fix *that,* too.”

“You wouldn’t,” came the disbelieving response.

“Not normally, no, but if Haruka-papa were in this situation, she’d do it in an instant. Don’t I have a daughter’s obligation to try and live up to the standards set by my parents?”

If Michiru had anything to say to that, Saturn missed it. She heard the faint rustle of clothing and then heard the water shift a moment later as Michiru climbed into the bath. She waited until she heard a soft, contented sigh before dispelling the seal on the door; it would take an earthquake to roust Michiru from the tub now that she was starting to enjoy herself. With a satisfied smile, Saturn turned and left the master bedroom. Halfway back to her own room, she paused and looked down the hall at the studio door.

She wanted to go in there and see this thing, this painting that had so seriously disturbed Michiru. It would be such an easy thing to do, too: one quick application of her powers would open the locked door as easily as it had the master bedroom on dozens of different occasions; another would bring the picture to her; a third would send it back, exactly where it had been before. There would be no trace, no way for anyone to know she had even been in the room—but Saturn knew that even without any physical proof, Michiru *would* know. She always knew. And while Michiru hadn’t said outright that she didn’t want anyone else to see the picture right now, Saturn could tell that she would be upset if anyone did.

The idea of her foster-mother being disappointed in her was enough to do what no lock in the universe could have accomplished. Leaving the door and whatever lay behind it untouched, the little Senshi shifted back into teen-Hotaru and returned to her room. Not really in the mood for more reading just now, she put the borrowed book away and sat down in her chair, staring out the window and thinking.

Setsuna had come to her first meeting with her new psychiatrist armed and ready for anything. Forewarned by Mizuno Rikou to expect a session more unconventional and emotionally-taxing than the ones she had gone through during her first stay in the hospital, Setsuna had spent a good part of the last week in preparation. She’d raided the local library for books on psychiatry, which she devoured at her normal pace. She had checked with Luna, Ami, and Calypso for details on the limited mental protection the Senshi had, particularly with regards to hypnosis. She’d reviewed every aspect of her identity and the cover story surrounding it, doing her best to weed out possible hints at the truth.

“More tea?”

“No, thank you.”

Somehow, the notion of being served tea and small sugar cookies by this woman had never occurred to Setsuna. It had definitely thrown her off her game. For that matter, so did her host.

Kikukoe Yasashii was a short-haired brunette with a pleasant, relaxed demeanor and a fashion sense to match. The psychiatrist was also one of the smallest adults Setsuna had yet encountered. She *might* have been taller than ChibiUsa, but if so, the edge in height was in the shoes on her feet and the hairs on her head. Any weight advantage would have to be measured in ounces.

All in all, not exactly a person to inspire the sort of reaction Ami’s mother had demonstrated. Kikukoe-san’s workplace—a sedately decorated den in her home—fought that impression down even further.

That, Setsuna suspected, was the whole idea. Project a harmless front, lull the patient off guard... and BAM! Psychiatric nuclear assault!

Setsuna winced internally. That sounded a little too much like something Minako would have come up with. Either the tea was drugged, or she needed help more urgently than she’d thought.

Urgency didn’t seem to be a big part of Kikukoe-san’s personality. They had been sitting here for five minutes and twenty-four seconds now, and the biggest questions the woman had asked in that time were how Setsuna took her tea, had she had any trouble finding the place, and whether or not that was her *real* eye color. Setsuna answered honestly—with milk; no, she hadn’t; and yes, it was—and spent most of the rest of the time politely waiting for the woman to get on with whatever she had in mind.

Another two minutes passed before the psychiatrist glanced over the rim of her own cup and murmured, “Is there something wrong with the tea, Meiou-san?”

“Pardon me?”

“Your tea. You’ve hardly touched it.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s... just not what I was expecting.”

“Ah.” The older woman set her cup down on her desk. “Mizuno Rikou has been carrying tales, I see.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Her name is on the official request for a secondary pyschiatric evaluation, and she has certain opinions about me and my methods.”

“She *did* imply a few things,” Setsuna admitted.

“I can imagine.” Yasashii gave Setsuna a direct look. “Did you ever ask Rikou why she wanted you to come see me rather than go back to your sessions with Miyazaki-san?”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t.”

“Two reasons. One”—and she raised a finger—“is her sense of professionalism. Rikou will always try to do what’s best for her patient, regardless of her own feelings. She may not fully agree with how I do my job, but that I do it well is enough to convince her. Of course, Miyazaki-san is also very good—which brings us to the second reason.”

“Which is...?”

“Experience. I don’t know if Miyazaki-san told you or not, but yours was the first such extensive case of amnesia he’d ever encountered.”

“He did mention that,” Setsuna said. “And you?”

“Retrograde amnesia is a particularly severe and uncommon form of mental trauma,” Yasashii replied, “but yes, I have dealt with it once before. I’ve also worked with a number of patients suffering from less extreme forms of memory loss or suppression. Although by no means my exclusive specialty, it’s become something of a field of expertise.” She paused, looking gravely across the desk at Setsuna. “Even so, my goal here isn’t to get your memories back for you, only to help you deal with not having them. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I do.” Setsuna smiled. “It’s not that you don’t want me to remember, it’s just that you’re more concerned about me attacking someone again or having another near-breakdown in the meantime. Right?”

“Words to that effect, yes,” Yasashii agreed. “Although if you *do* feel the need to hit something, I have some excellent equipment set up in the basement for that very purpose.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good.” The psychiatrist sat back in her chair. “So, Meiou-san. Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing since January?”

The next forty minutes were more like what Setsuna had anticipated. She talked about life with the Tsukinos, about dealing with her early difficulties with crowds, and about her venture into the workplace. Yasashii asked what had made her choose to do certain things, such as going to live with Usagi instead of one of the other girls, or why she’d decided to go work at a retail clothing store, and Setsuna answered as honestly as she could, describing the vague sense of familiarity she’d had with Usagi from the start, and the seemingly instinctive knack she had for designing and repairing clothing.

Not once during the entire time did Setsuna find it necessary to be anything less than totally honest. This may have had something to do with how Kikukoe-san was avoiding the more stressful, almost inevitably Senshi-related topics. She did not mention the incident on New Year’s, even though Setsuna knew that the woman must have been informed about it. The subject of her ability to perceive Time did not come up, which caused Setsuna to quietly thank Lucas, Doc, the nurse Kima, and even that bumbling orderly for keeping their silence on the matter. And while Yasashii did question her about the mall, it was only to see how Setsuna felt about working there. She did not touch upon the incident there a few weeks ago, or what had come after.

As the scheduled hour of this first session began to wind down, Setsuna found that nothing particularly stressful had taken place, and she began to wonder if Kikukoe-san was holding back.

“What makes you say that?” the psychiatrist asked when Setsuna mentioned this suspicion aloud.

“Mizuno-san doesn’t strike me as someone given to exaggeration, and she described your methods as ‘the emotional equivalent of high-impact aerobics’.”

“She said that, did she?” the older woman asked, with a faintly whimsical smile.

“Word for word.”

“Well, if we assume for the moment that Rikou is correct—which I will admit she very often is—and that I am taking it easy on you—which I will *not* admit at this time—why do you think I would do something like that?”

After considering the question, Setsuna finally shook her head and simply replied, “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you think about it, then, and see if you can give me an answer next time?”

“I guess I’ll do that. When is ‘next time,’ anyway?”

“Let’s see about that.” Yasashii opened up a schedule book on the corner of her desk and flipped through several pages. “My first opening is next Tuesday afternoon; would that work for you?”

“That could be a problem,” Setsuna said. “I’m going to be out of town until well into next week.”

Yasashii looked up. “Oh?”

“Usagi-chan and the other girls have a yearly tradition of going to the beach for a week or so. We’re leaving tomorrow afternoon, and I’m not certain yet when we’re coming back.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Yasashii said with a genuine smile. “I make a point of encouraging vacations.” She turned another few pages while saying this. “All right, shall we say a week from Monday, at six?”

“That should be just fine,” Setsuna said.

“Excellent.” After making a quick note in her schedule, Kikukoe-san got up from her chair. “Well, Meiou-san, it was a very interesting first session, and I look forward to our next meeting. In the meantime, enjoy your trip.”

“I will certainly try to,” Setsuna said, standing in turn and gathering up her coat and purse. “And thank you for the tea.” She bowed, then left the room.

The psychiatrist walked over to her office window and glanced out at the street. Setsuna appeared there a moment later, and the older woman now allowed herself the envious, admiring sigh that she had suppressed when Setsuna entered the office an hour earlier. Like old habits, old fantasies died hard, and a younger Kikukoe Yasashii would have given almost anything to be that tall and have such long, lovely hair.

Shaking her head, the woman gathered up the tea set and took it out to the kitchen, then moved to a small, book-filled study where a desktop computer waited. She sat down, switched the machine on, and in due course brought up a file that included medical reports on Setsuna and the assessment of her original psychiatrist. Yasashii began to add notes of her own, typing at a smoothly steady pace.

*16/03/00— First session. My initial impressions of Meiou-san match Miyazaki-san’s profile of her on most points. Her powers of perception and recall are even more exceptional than I had expected; when questioned about recent events, she delivered concise responses that included very specific times and what appear to be word-for-word quotations of those around her. The fact that she can retain and access so much information so easily and still function perfectly normally is nothing short of astounding. The implications of this mental acuity with regards to her pre-amnesiac state are troubling, but if Meiou-san has guessed at the extraordinary detail of the life she has lost—which I think she must have—she seems to have accepted it already. Her overall emotional state is impressively stable for someone who has endured as many traumatic experiences as she has in such a short span of time. I suspect my evasion of those events may have amused her on some level.*

*I have not dismissed the possibility of a disassociate fugue state, but it seems even more unlikely to me now, as Meiou-san exhibited no reluctance in discussing her previous life. She admitted to a degree of disappointment that her friends could not tell her more about herself, all of it directed towards her ‘old self’ for not opening up more. I intend to question her more closely about the relationships between herself and these girls, as it seems curious for a woman in her mid-twenties to associate so closely with those five to ten years her juniors. Her position as foster-mother to the youngest girl would readily explain this, but that relationship raises questions in and of itself, in light of the results of Rikou’s recent examination. I would tend to doubt that there is a connection between Meiou-san’s missing child and her foster-child, given the ages in question, but it’s too early to say for certain either way.*

Yasashii paused and then added, *Her eyes are uncanny,* before saving the file and switching off the machine.

There are many difficulties involved in space travel. Crossing the void between planets and stars requires a considerable amount of technological or mystical expertise, and the resources that must be invested to obtain that knowledge in the first place are not insignificant themselves. There is also the matter of time, whether it is spent in preparation for the journey or in the actual trip itself. But even these problems pale in comparison to that most ancient and ultimate impediment to any form of travel:

Simple boredom.

It’s true that there are countless fascinating things to see across the universe. The problem is that they make up only a fraction of the cosmic sum total, and are spread out amongst the biggest, emptiest, most mind-numbingly dull medium ever conceived. Space is a good thing to have—Creation would be a horribly jumbled mess without it—but it’s not much to look at. In fact, it’s nothing to look at. Literally. And there is a *lot* of it out there.

Forget sightseeing. Mortal eyes aren’t up to the task of gazing across the cosmic expanse. Having the Hubble Space Telescope (or its sorcerous equivalent) close at hand won’t help much either, since it’s a lot of extra mass to push around, and getting a clean look at anything would necessitate slowing down or even stopping, thereby extending an already-lengthy journey. Scenic detours are likewise out of the question for those strapped for time —not to mention cost-prohibitive—and random deep-space encounters offer no relief either. Close encounters at the sort of velocities needed to cross space in non-geologic periods of time are over almost before they start, and while there may be a lot out there, most of it’s so far apart that the only way the typical traveler could encounter it without going in search of it would be if *it* came in search of *him*—and that’s almost never good.

What all of this leads up to are four basic guidelines:

Never undertake a long journey without a good reason;

Make the journey as quickly as possible;

Bring something to do, and;

If the opportunity to do something even remotely interesting comes up along the way, TAKE IT.

Alexandra considered family and personal honor to be a very good reason for making the trip to Earth, and had traveled as quickly as she could without tiring herself out. She also had plenty to do, thanks to the crystal-recorded information her father had given her; over fifty human years’ worth of history made for an excellent mental diversion, although she would be a lizard’s uncle before she ever *understood* all of what she was reading.

Still, when she crossed into the asteroid belt, Alexandra didn’t miss out on the opportunity to entertain herself with a few aviational acrobatics. The smaller rocks weren’t much to look at, but there were a lot of them, often moving on unexpected vectors and frequently hidden by—or overlooked in the face of—the city-sized and mountain-sized stones. A fly-by or two here, a makeshift dodging contest there, and some high-speed skimming thrown in for added measure would all be good practice for the reception that the dragon expected once she reached Earth and found her quarry.

She engaged in a little target practice as well, choosing the smallest, fastest-moving space rocks and blasting them into even tinier fragments with a well-placed burst of lightning. Even as she did so, however, Alexandra was careful to always aim away from the larger stones and the thickly crowded heart of the field. After millions of years, most of the greater asteroids had settled into relatively stable orbits, but the tiniest push to one of them could spell disaster a few thousand years down the line. Alexandra had had her fill of such rogue bodies two centuries ago.

Besides, rearranging the scenery would annoy the locals, and the last thing Alexandra wanted to do right now was get every asteroid-dwelling void dragon in the region mad at her. She’d already sensed a few passing spell-probes, reminders that even the most inhospitable environments were not always as lifeless as they might seem, and quiet warnings to move on quickly and in peace.

Almost seven days of travel had brought Alexandra to the inner edge of the asteroid belt, and she expected to spend another week in flight before she reached Earth. Once she was groundside, she could start searching for her opponent. Detection spells rarely worked properly where Senshi were concerned, as Alexandra had learned firsthand when the young Jupiter walked into her lair without setting off any of the defensive spells, but she did have the girl’s name and the names of the city and the country where she lived. Not a lot of information, but enough to greatly reduce the size of the area she’d need to search.

*With a little luck,* Alexandra thought, glancing at the memory crystal that hovered before her as she flew, *I’ll find something in here to help me narrow things down further... and if not, I’ll just have to be patient.*

The thunder dragon snorted into the pocket of atmosphere that surrounded her. Patience was not one of her greater virtues. With that thought foremost in her mind—and the memory of the faint probes running it a close second— Alexandra decided to increase her speed until she was well clear of the belt.

Each of the draconic breeds capable of space travel had its own particular means, and in the case of thunder dragons, it involved the creation and manipulation of strong magnetic fields. They could navigate space around Jupiter with ease, thanks to the giant planet’s far-reaching energies, and Alexandra had used a variation on that everyday power to launch herself into space, accelerating continually until she passed beyond the edges of Jupiter’s magnetic field. She was maintaining her speed and heading now by drawing upon the energy of the solar wind, first collecting the scattered microparticles with large fields centered around her wings, then magnetically channeling them around her body, and finally firing them away into space in tightly-controlled bursts whenever she needed to correct her course.

It was an elegant, efficient form of travel. All Alexandra needed to do to change the strength and configuration of the energy around her was to shift the position of her outstretched wings, making it appear as if she was truly flying in space. The electromagnetic energy she was able to absorb from the photons and other high-energy stellar ejecta replenished her strength, while the particles themselves served as an essentially unlimited source of propellant.

There was one other nice thing about flying like this. Much of the energy involved was intense enough to be visible to the naked eye, especially once the deflected light began to build up. Alexandra currently appeared to be composed entirely of radiant green-white energy, a being of light soaring across space on kilometer-long wings of raw power.

It was the sort of thing that could make a girl feel very good about herself.

Quite some distance behind Alexandra, another dragon was crossing the asteroid belt. Pyrogar’s overall appearance at the moment was far from the luminescent splendor of the female ahead of him; huddled in on himself with his wings folded protectively around his body, the magma dragon bore a passing resemblance to the dark, heavy stones drifting in the space about him, an impression reinforced by his occasional collisons with errant rocks that happened to cross his starwards course. The asteroids were coming out second best in those encounters, breaking apart upon impact with the dull red glow radiating from Pyrogar’s black wings and armored body, resulting in a trail of debris in his wake.

Much like the creatures themselves, the common method of space travel amongst magma dragons was a powerful and brutal affair. Lacking the inexpensive means of flight that the thunder dragons possessed, magmas got by with the sheer brute force of their magic, firing themselves into and across the void on pillars of raw elemental flame. After the initial awesome display of power, the dragon would coast along in silence and stillness, saving up energy for another brief burn.

Pyrogar might have appeared to be asleep, curled up as he was, but his mind was fully conscious. Eyes were of only moderate use in the void—and hearing and smell and taste no good at all—but he had other senses and other sources of information, all of which were at work. While part of Pyrogar’s awareness guided the spells driving him through space and any matter that got in his way, another part was tending to the magics that probed that same space. He was aware of Alexandra’s location, and was undismayed by the lead she had on him; he’d begun this pursuit knowing full well that he would not catch her until they reached Earth. He saw all of the asteroids minutes and even hours before he crashed into them, and took no action to adjust his course to avoid them; he had neither the energy to spare for the task nor the least inclination to even bother with it.

To Pyrogar’s way of thinking, his own concerns—such as getting to Earth in time to catch Alexandra—took priority. The rest of the universe could flaming well look after itself.

He was a bit surprised when the universe did just that.

Where just a moment ago there had been only the empty cold of space, Pyrogar suddenly felt another kind of cold, a chill which sapped his magic and felt as if it were pulling at him from all sides. The ruddy barrier that surrounded him began to weaken instantly, and he sensed that his speed was falling as well, from hundreds of kilometers per second to a few dozen. Soon it would be hundreds of kilometers per minute, then per hour; before long, he would be stopped dead in empty space, eventually dying from exposure as his strength and magic were sucked away by the deadening force.

Snarling in annoyance at this delay, Pyrogar roused himself and looked about. He did not waste time trying to seek out the source of the nullifying energy, but instead found a large asteroid and steered himself towards it with twinned, rocket-like bursts of flame from beneath his unfurled wings. The drain affected those, too, and continued to drag at him, but now it was actually helping him; the planetoid was a few hundred kilometers away, and by the time Pyrogar reached it, he’d slowed to the point where he was able to land with nothing more than the strength in his own body to brace him.

As soon as he found his balance atop the mountain-sized stone, Pyrogar arched his neck and swelled his chest as if taking a deep breath. Veins beneath his armored hide glowed orange a second before he spat out a molten fireball at a nearby ridge; the explosion which followed a second later lit up the area like a second sun, and in that flash, the magma dragon spotted his problem.

Void dragons were well-named, for their bodies were sleek and black like the empty space that was their home. They were sinuous in form, snakelike but for their long legs and truly immense wings. An elder void dragon was among the largest of all breeds, and all the more fearsome for its command over entropic magic, which could suck the strength from any opponent. It was that deadening power which had interrupted Pyrogar’s flight; a lesser application of it absorbed some of the light that struck a void dragon’s body, making it even harder to spot—unless there was a great deal of light.

The void dragon revealed by the blast of Pyrogar’s flame was half again as long in the body as the magma himself. Its serpentine neck was nearly that long on its own, the tail was even longer, and its wingspan rivaled all three combined. Just one of those vast sails could have covered Pyrogar entirely, and their touch would drain the life from his body almost as quickly as the nullifying field the void had already used on him. It descended towards him in silence, its jet-black eyes reflecting neither light nor soul, an image of approaching death.

The magma dragon snorted two contemptuous plumes of fire from his nostrils and hunkered down atop the asteroid, anchoring himself firmly as he arched his neck in an aggressive pose. Unimpressed, the void dragon continued its approach, the entropic effects of its magic growing stronger as it neared; the chill began to penetrate Pyrogar’s thick hide, and the light from his smoldering molten spittle died faster.

Pyrogar shrugged off the numbing sensation and kept his eyes on the dark specter, waiting until it was only a few kilometers away. Then he drew himself up again, his powerful form actually trembling as his veins burned anew. Instead of striking at his foe, the magma dragon released his grip on the asteroid and aimed straight *down,* kicking off with legs and wing-thrusts and breath all at once, blasting himself skywards even as his attack bored into the surface of the asteroid and tore it to pieces.

Pyrogar only had a moment to look before the force of his launch carried him past the void dragon, but he thought he saw surprise on its lean features as it flew straight into a megaton of rocky shrapnel.

Impressive as they might appear and as formidable as their powers were, void dragons were not without their weaknesses. The main one was that centuries of life in microgravity left their bodies extraordinarily frail, at least by draconic standards. The newly-created asteroids flying at this void dragon would tear apart its wings and crush its bones with ease, should they strike it.

Well clear of the immediate danger area, Pyrogar watched with dark amusement as the void dragon let out a noiseless shriek and tried desperately to evade the tumbling rocks. The subsequent display of acrobatics was very impressive, but when it was over, the void dragon looked more dead than alive. One of its wings had been smashed at the apex, and the sails of both were tattered and bent from the maneuvering stresses. A hind leg had been pulverized in a sharp turn that had smashed it against a passing rock, and there were extensive scrapes along the dragon’s chest and neck.

Still very much alive in spite of the beating it had just taken, the void dragon began to move away from the area, surrounded by a peculiar ripple in space. Pyrogar immediately went after the miserable creature. He was sharply aware that every minute he spent dealing with the void would put Alexandra that much farther ahead of him, but it couldn’t be helped; there was principle here, at least as much as in his quarrel with the female thunder dragon.

Besides, he was hungry.

Whenever Rei was due to leave the shrine for more than a day, she tended to descend into a frenzy of cleaning, almost as if she didn’t trust Yuuichirou and her grandfather to keep up their respective ends of the chores while she was away. This was true to a certain extent, and with her longtime home faced by as much as a week of her absence, Rei’s most recent bout of intensive housekeeping had been even more pronounced than usual, starting almost as soon as she was fully awake on Wednesday morning and continuing through into the next day.

Now it was Friday, and the energy that had previously gone into sweeping and scrubbing had been redirected into packing for the week-long beach trip. Compared to the crusade against dust and grime, the task of getting her selection of clothes and other essentials for the next week to fit into a couple of modest-sized suitcases was nearly as relaxing as meditation.

“Awp?”

Nearly, not entirely.

“Where did the pretty Rei-di get all her skins and feathers?”

“Why does the pretty Rei-di take her skins and feathers from the wood boxes and put them in the other boxes?”

“What does the pretty Rei-di need all her skins and feathers in the boxes for?”

Rooky had a hundred questions, and he asked most of them while poking through the contents of the suitcases sitting on the bed. Rei thought she must have shooed him out of the luggage twenty times in the last half-hour, only to find him back there again as soon as she turned around. It was as peculiar as it was annoying, because there was nothing in the suitcases that should have held Rooky’s interest for this long. *She* liked her clothes, but they were simply not the sort of small, glittery things the crow collected for his pretties.

“Out, Rooky,” Rei said for the twenty-first time as she came over to add a double handful of socks to the contents of one of the bags. The scrawny bird obeyed, withdrawing his head from its inspection of the luggage and hopping back along the bedcovers, watching her. Rei barely glanced at him, or at Phobos and Deimos, who were perched on opposite ends of her dresser, watching both of them. All the scene needed to be complete was Thrax’s presence, but he’d gone out for a flight earlier and had not yet come back.

Rei hoped the big raven returned before she left. Thrax hadn’t really done much in the weeks that she’d known him, but she found that the idea of not seeing him for five or six days was an uncomfortable one, and all the more so if she didn’t say some sort of good-bye. The same feeling applied to the other birds, which was the reason she’d allowed them to come in and watch her, and also why she was putting up with Rooky’s endless inquisitiveness instead of chasing him back outside and shutting the door.

“Rawk?”

About to close the first suitcase, Rei looked up at the sound and saw that Rooky had diverted his attention towards the door. A quick glance told her Phobos and Deimos were doing the same, and after a moment of concentration, Rei sensed what the birds had—two people, coming across the courtyard. Rei picked up only a fleeting sense of warmth and presence, but she still recognized the vague impressions and who they belonged to. Smiling, she moved over to the door and slid it open.

Her visitors were a pair of young women a few years older than herself, both tastefully dressed. The one on the right had long, dark hair done up in a style that suggested a cat’s ears rode atop her head, and the other had pure white hair done up in a braid.

“I was starting to wonder if you’d decided not to come by, Cooan.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Rei,” the youngest Ayakashi sister replied. “We ran into some ugly traffic.”

“Which wouldn’t have happened if you’d listened to me and taken a right instead of a left at the traffic circle,” Beruche noted.

“If I’d gone that way, it would have taken us an entire half an hour to get here!” Cooan protested.

“And just how long did we spend stuck in traffic?” Beruche asked. She looked away from Cooan and nodded, politely adding, “Hello, Rei.”

“Hello, Beruche. Both of you, come in. Can I get you something to drink?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Beruche said.

“Same here,” Cooan added, kicking off her shoes. “But thanks for... asking?” She had stopped halfway through the door, blinking at the three birds as they stood there and looked back at her. “Ah... Rei?”

“Yes, Cooan, I’m aware that there are three crows in my room. Don’t worry, they don’t bite.”

“I seem to remember otherwise,” Cooan replied, looking cautiously at Phobos and Deimos as she stepped all the way inside and knelt next to the table.

“You *were* trying to burn down their home back then, Cooan,” Beruche noted as she closed the door. “About once a week, if I remember correctly.”

“Well, they won’t bite *now,*” Rei amended, sitting down across from Cooan and looking over at the birds. “Right?”

The corvine pair returned her gaze, looked at Cooan, and then glanced at each other. Phobos shuffled his feathers and made no reply, while Deimos cawed faintly before preening her left wing.

“I get the feeling I haven’t been forgiven,” Cooan said dryly.

“Probably not, but they’ll let it slide. And I think Rooky decided he liked you the moment you came inside—didn’t you, Rooky?”

“Aaawp,” Rooky crooned, his eyes glowing with avarice as he examined the bright earrings both sisters wore. Rei would have sworn that Phobos gave the scraggly little crow an annoyed glance.

“Where did you find that one, anyway?” Cooan asked.

“England,” Rei replied, watching Rooky closely to let him understand that thieving from this pair would not be a wise or welcome thing. She glanced back at the sisters—who, as expected, looked startled—and wryly added, “It’s been a busy couple of months.”

“We knew that much already,” Cooan said. “The little monsters that tried to attack the store were a pretty clear sign something was up.”

Rei stared at the two sisters. “Oh, kamis,” she said in a sinking voice. “I’m sorry, I never even thought to call you after that...”

“It’s okay, Rei,” Cooan assured her. “We knew you girls must have had your hands full if something that bad was happening. Besides,” she added with a proud toss of her head, “the four of us may not be fearsome warriors anymore, but we aren’t exactly helpless, either. We came out of it a lot better than most people, thanks to Oneesama and Oneesan.”

“What do you mean?” Rei asked, blinking in confusion.

“Well, for one thing, there’s these.” Cooan reached into her purse and took out a handful of small teardrop-shaped crystals whose facets varied from blue to grey to violet. They immediately reminded Rei of the bits of crystal technology that the sisters and the other members of the Black Moon Family had employed. They also got Rooky’s undivided attention, but mindful of his promise to Rei not to speak in front of most people, he was able to restrain himself from crying ‘pretties’ and swooping over to snatch one of the glittering prizes. Instead he just stared at them, his wings twitching every so often and his claws kneading the bedcovers in an unconscious snatching action.

“Oneesama made them,” Cooan was saying, as she handed one of the items over to Rei and set the rest on the tabletop. “They’re designed to draw in and contain any negative energy that gets near them. We’ve got a dozen or so protecting the apartment and the store, and when those creatures showed up and tried to trash the place, the first batch of them that got near the building were disintegrated. That made the rest awfully nervous, and once Oneesan had given them a few rounds with her whip, they took off running.”

“I can imagine,” Rei said absently, most of her attention focused on the crystal in her palm as she cautiously tested it with her mind. It gave off no feeling of darkness, only a faint tugging sensation, and... Rei blinked suddenly, the mental probe switching off as Cooan’s last sentence fully registered. “Her *whip?* I thought Calaveras’s weapons disappeared when Usagi healed her...”

“Those whips did,” Beruche replied succinctly.

Rei couldn’t stop her cheeks from turning red at the implications of that.

“We’re a little concerned about her,” the white-haired sister admitted with a nod, “but it’s just as well that one of us was armed. Petz’s little energy-absorbers were designed to handle ambient radiation, not combat conditions. The link they’re set up with helped spread out the strain that first time, but another large jolt probably would have done the whole system in.”

“I don’t get it,” Rei said, shaking off her blush. “You said Petz made these? How? From what?”

“Oneesama used to work with the engineering division on Nemesis before the four of us were assigned to Rubeus,” Cooan explained. “Her control over energy was useful for a lot of the work they did, and she picked up some of the tricks of their trade over the years.” Her lips creased into a small, melancholy smile, and she softly added, “In hindsight, I think that she may have been trying to impress Saffir.” Sighing, Cooan shook her head and continued. “In any case, when Usagi used the ginzuishou on us, she only purged the negative energy that life on Nemesis had filled our bodies with. Our memories weren’t affected, so Oneesama still remembered everything she’d learned. All she needed was the means to put what she knew to use. Saffir gave her that, although I don’t think it was what he really intended by giving her his jacket before he... left us.”

“How would a jacket have helped Petz make these?”

“Saffir had a number of crystals sewn into the front.” Beruche traced spots over her own chest that paralleled the design of the garment in question. “As it turns out, they weren’t just for decoration. He was carrying a workshop’s worth of tools and a respectable library around with him wherever he went, right out in plain sight, and I doubt that even the Prince ever realized it. I’m not sure if Saffir told Petz about it before he left or if she figured it out on her own later on, but she made the first batch of these a few months later, when we started hearing about new attacks.” She made a face and added, “We would have told you about these then, but between moving into the new building, getting the store established, and going back to school... well, we sort of forgot for a while, and by the time we did remember, it didn’t seem like you needed the help anymore...”

“...but now it seems like we could use all the help we can get?” Rei guessed with a half-smile.

“You said it, not us,” Cooan murmured.

“It’s okay. Things *have* been awkward recently.” Rei looked at the crystal. “I take it these are working right now?”

Beruche nodded. “Each crystal’s absorption field extends ten meters or so in all directions, and any sort of negative energy that enters that range will be drawn to the gems and trapped inside. The rate of absorption is limited, though, so it’s best to set up the crystals so that their fields have a degree of overlap; that way, two or three of them will be able to affect any given energy source all at once.”

“Would they be any use in a fight?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. The rate of absorption isn’t high enough for one crystal to seriously affect the sort of creatures you *usually* have to fight. You could get a greater effect by increasing the number of crystals involved, but you’d have to get them all within ten meters of the target, and then keep them like that long enough for something to happen. It could take ten seconds or ten minutes, depending on the creature you were up against, and we all know how easy something like *that* is.” Three pairs of eyes rolled ceilingwards before Beruche continued. “You could carry one or two crystals as personal defense, to drain off the power from any negative-energy attacks or spells you encountered and lessen the effect, but you might turn yourself into a dark force magnet in the process.”

“I’ll pass,” Rei said, grimacing at the notion. Some cosmic fluke might have graced Minako with semi-indestructibility—a claim whose accuracy was still being debated among the Senshi corps—and Makoto had the Aegis’s glowing shields to protect her, but the rest of them bruised just as easily as ever. “So they’ll keep a house clear and relatively safe from lesser monsters, or hold off attacks from a more powerful creature for a short time.”

“That’s right,” Beruche agreed, closing her eyes as she nodded.

“What about ghosts?” Rei asked suddenly.

Beruche’s eyelids flew open in mid-nod, and her already porcelain-pale skin went bloodlessly white. “G-ghosts?” she repeated unsteadily. “Wh-what’s this about ghosts?”

“Ah, well...” A confession of her concerns about the shrine’s apparent haunting was dancing on the tip of Rei’s tongue, but Beruche’s sudden and unexpected reaction made her tongue stumble over the words. “It’s just that... I was wondering if the crystals could handle negative *spiritual* energy as well as the *physical* forms you two described, and... are you okay, Beruche?”

“She’ll be fine in a minute, Rei,” Cooan said, reaching over and patting the nearer of her sister’s hands, which were both currently gripping the edge of the table like white clamps. The hand in question immediately let go of the table and seized Cooan’s fingers; the grip didn’t appear any gentler than the one that had been used on the wood, but Cooan didn’t flinch or protest. “Oneechan just has a problem with ghosts. And to answer your question, yes, the crystals can drain negative spiritual energy as well as they do negative physical forces.”

“You’re sure?”

“*Very* sure,” Cooan said firmly. Rei nodded and would have been content to let the subject drop right then and there out of consideration for Beruche, but Cooan’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Why do you ask, anyway?”

“Well, ah... from what the two of you were saying, I wasn’t completely sure-”

“No, Rei, I meant about ghosts. Why ask about them specifically?”

“Oh.” The young priestess tried to think up a way to explain without scaring Beruche witless. “I asked because there’s... a place I’m pretty sure is being haunted”—sure enough, even that much made Beruche squeak—“and I’ve been wondering about a way to deal with it.”

Cooan cocked her head at an angle, frowning. “I admit I’m no expert, Rei, but doesn’t this Shinto thing of yours include advice on dealing with spirits? And what about being a Senshi? That has to help.”

“It does,” Rei said with a trace of irritation. She understood that Cooan’s background and upbringing hadn’t offered many options when it came to spiritual belief, but the casual ‘Shinto thing’ remark still made her blood rise to a slow simmer. She forced herself to stay calm. “They both do, and I do have experience dealing with ghosts in both fields—but this particular ghost is unusual. It showed up in a place I hadn’t thought a ghost *could* appear, and my wards and prayers don’t seem to have any affect on it.”

“They don’t?” Cooan asked, looking confused and more than a little worried by this information. “Rei, I saw you knock over a few droids with those things, and I know you’ve used them successfully on creatures with even more power. Are you saying this ghost is strong enough to just *ignore* you?”

“It’s not a question of strength,” Rei replied firmly, shaking her head. “If the ghost was that powerful, it would have destroyed my wards and almost certainly attacked me, but it’s been weeks if not months since it manifested, and nothing like that has happened. In fact, all that *has* happened is a few things moving around. Books that get put back on shelves, doors that seem to close on their own after being left open; it’s almost like this ghost is trying to be helpful.”

Now Cooan just looked confused. “That doesn’t sound like any ghost I ever heard of, but Earth is different from Nemesis in just about every other way... so I suppose that ghosts might be different as well...”

“I don’t care,” Beruche said bluntly. “I don’t ever want to see another ghost again if I can possibly help it. Where is this one, Rei?”

Again, Rei cast about for a safe answer, but while she could be deviously dishonest in other aspects of her life, she’d made a practice of telling people the truth in spiritual matters for so long that she couldn’t bring herself to lie this time. The truth, of course, was also out of the question, and so Rei was left momentarily speechless.

Picking up on that hesitation, Beruche repeated the Wide Eyes Of Fear and Blood Rushing From The Face routine. “Here?” she asked in a tiny voice.

Rei sighed, and nodded once. “If you want to leave, Beruche, it’s okay. I’ve only ever noticed things happening here in the shrine proper, so...”

“Excusemethankyousorrygoodbye!” Beruche was out the open door and clear across the courtyard almost before she had finished her own sentence. The rapid exit sent the crows into a fit of startled cawing.

Cooan watched her sister’s rapid retreat before turning to Rei and asking, “You’re sure about this?” She was nervous, if not nearly so spooked as Beruche.

Silently, Rei pointed past the youngest Ayakashi; around her, the three crows cawed again, their feathers ruffling up as they shivered nervously. The scene was eerie enough that Cooan gave a start and leapt into a half-crouch as she spun about. Finding nothing except the wide-open door, she momentarily frowned, but then her own eyes widened as she realized what Rei was getting at.

When they’d come inside, Beruche had shut the screen behind her.

She hadn’t stopped to open it on her way out.

“Achoo!”

“Gesundheit,” the Sciences Director said.

“Thags,” Media replied, sniffling. “Dis ‘suber-sprig