Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and the DARK•MATTER setting was written by Wolfgang Baur and Monte Cook. I own neither of these things, and expect that if either of those last two people Google their own names they are going to be incredibly confused. * * * * * Nobody could see her and she couldn't see anything, but Mizuno Ami's eyes still went wide when the car came to a stop. She was locked in the trunk at the time, in pitch darkness, her hands bound and mouth gagged, inhaling the odors of potting soil and machine oil that had soaked into the upholstery. She'd been captured as Sailor Mercury, but had de-transformed almost immediately afterwards, hoping with her gloves off she'd have a bit more room to wiggle out of the wrist tie or, failing that, take off her communicator watch and transform back into Sailor Mercury -- she probably would be able to get out a half-intelligible transformation phrase even through a bandanna in her mouth -- and banish the plastic binding back to wherever her normal clothes went when she transformed, leaving her ready to fight as soon as the trunk opened up. But she didn't expect the trip to be so short, and she hadn't done anything yet. She wasn't quite worried about her secret identity as Sailor Mercury being revealed because her captor was telepathic anyway, she was more worried about the fact that she was un-transformed and thus with no magical protection against bullets, unable to change back for at least another five minutes, still with her hands tied behind her back. She had thought the man needed to be able to see someone to read their minds, but now it looked like she'd overestimated, he'd read her thoughts of escape, and now he'd pulled over to cut them off. That, or the location he was taking her to was practically in spitting distance of the Hikawa shrine. She heard muffled speech coming from outside, and squinted when the trunk opened up. The light coming in from the streetlights wasn't bright, but it was more than she had in the pitch-black trunk, and it was enough for her to see two men in identical black hats, sunglasses, overcoats and ties. She knew that one was Waldorf and one was Statler, but she couldn't tell which was which. She stared up at both of them, eyes adjusting to the light, they stared back at her for ten seconds before the one on the right wordlessly shut the trunk again. "Are you on PCP?" the first one asked, in the same tone one would ask 'Did you watch the game last night?' "What the hell are you on about? Remember this was your idea, and that's what I asked you when I heard it." "No, no, this was not my idea. I think I would remember if I said to you 'Hey, do you know what would be a good plan? If you tie up Sailor Mercury and haul her over here like a bag of peat moss!'" "No, that's not what you said. Rewind the goddamned tape. Yesterday, I told you about Mystery Saturn Bitch, and that I couldn't read her, and it hurt like holy balls when she shot her energy-ball at me? And then we tailed her and it turned out she was holed up with all the Sailor Senshi and since we haven't seen a Saturn or a Pluto, Sailor Saturn was probably her? And then you said that if they can find and turn on us, we'd want a Senshi of our own to counter them, and you thought Sailor Mercury would resist conversion the least, is ANY of this ringing a bell or am I taking crazy pills all of a sudden?" "No, no, no. What I said was, 'if the Sailor Senshi find out about us, they could come after us, and it would be nice to have one of them on our side. I think I can work Ami the easiest.'" "Yeah, and now here's Ami. I already charged up the kuro-whatever upstairs, take her up and work her over." "I meant I could sway her with an argument, you jackass!" The man -- it had to be Statler -- slammed his fist down on the car. "She's the smart one, I was going to point out how stupid the whole magic space kingdom was, and slowly get her questioning everything she believed in, and then build her back up as someone friendly to our cause! I wanted a fifth columnist, not a brainwashed minion like that Dendeemion, or whoever!" "Well excuse me that you don't communicate well, I can't read YOUR mind. If you'll recall, we were perfectly fine with leaving the Senshi alone until I got shot, and all of a sudden YOU think we've got to drop everything and make sure we have a Senshi of our own in case they find us. So I get shot, AGAIN, to get us one, and now you're bitching because you weren't clear enough about what you wanted. And a fifth columnist is stupid anyway, not like she can undermine them when the battle plan is always 'do whatever the hell Sailor Moon is thinking of at the moment.' You just wanted to look mysterious and cool." "Oh, you knew exactly what I meant, I don't have to read you to know that. You've always got to undermine whatever I'm doing. As soon as I make a plan you've got to swoop in and do it better because Kakyuu forbid I actually accomplish something that was my idea!" "I'm undermining you, huh? And, so, what do you call you coming in and taking all the guys I convinced were under orders from the FBI off and replacing them with actual cops, actual cops with a chain of command that people might listen to when they say an FBI agent was giving them strange orders? That's perfectly fine, that you bring in people who are more likely to blab, but I get us a Senshi and now I'm undermining you. I thought you were a gardhyi, not a whiny bitch." Statler started to respond, but paused, listening to someone talking that Ami couldn't make out. "It's none of your business, that's what, you keep walking!" Another pause, and then Waldorf cut in with "She's cheating on you, okay? When you go to work, Fukuda Tamiko is... I'm sorry, when you go to SCHOOL, those night classes Tuesdays and Thursday, she's getting plowed by a guy named Shinobu down the hall. Yeah, the cop. She's only going out with you because your family's rich. ...Oh, you don't know him, huh? Check her purse, buddy, she's got the key to his apartment, 5G. Yeah, you're welcome!" The car shifted downward, Ami guessed they were both leaning on it. "Damn, look at her go. That is never not going to be hilarious to me." "What gets me is they're always so surprised. Have they not been paying attention at all?" "If ever we needed proof these people don't need to see the stars, that's it. They keep putting their hands on that stove, over and over." He paused and sighed. "So what are we going to with Mercury here?" "Well, we can't just throw her back and say 'sorry about the mixup'. She'll be easy to brainwash anyway. I mean, if it worked on that Mamoru guy, no way a meek woman like her is going to resist it. We can probably knock it out in like a day." "So then what?" "Then we have out own Senshi to boss around and shoot ice balls at things, that's what." He paused, made a groan of contemplation. "And, I dunno, I guess you could undermine someone else. There has to be another Senshi you can work on for a fifth columnist." "Eh, Jupiter feels like she's not valued enough on the team, I could do something with that." "See? You can work on Jupiter. Appealing to her petty emotions will probably work better than an appeal to logic anyway, and if it doesn't, now we have a backup plan, and if it DOES work, we still have a walking, talking computer-brain to help us with all the shit in this city that isn't Senshi-related." "All right, all right. But you stay away from her until I'm done, okay? It's a delicate, sensitive procedure." "Hands off, I promise, won't even go near her. We are going to have to do something about Mystery Saturn Bitch, though. And the little pink one, Usagi Small Lady Hoojamawhatever. You know I read her today and she's a time traveler from like five hundred years in the future or something?" "No shit? We're gonna need to get on that before she starts blabbing on about stardrives and maser rifles and gives people ideas." "Well, she is pretty damn young, she probably doesn't understand how... Wait, nobody's looking, let's take her up now. Game face on." The trunk popped open again and the two men in black were standing in almost the same places they were before, staring at her inscrutably behind their black glasses, expressions stony. "Come with us, Ami-chan," said Statler. "It's time you..." He stopped and hissed through his gritted teeth. "...shit." * * * SAILOR•MOON: DOUBLE EXPOSURE CHAPTER 10: DOUBLE CROSS * * * TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE HEADQUARTERS KASUMIGASEKI, TOKYO, JAPAN MONDAY FEBRUARY 21, 1995 8:09 PM Sailor Moon charged through the double doors leading into the lobby of Tokyo police headquarters. The lobby was a strange trapezoidal shape, to fit in the corner of the wedge-shaped plot of land overlooked by a balcony from each of the second and third floors. There was a reception desk in the middle of the room, which had just been cracked in half, and a glass wall separating the lobby from the offices, which Sailor Moon had just blasted a daimon through before it turned back into a lawn chair. "I am the beautiful warrior of love and justice, Sailor Moon!" she called, striking a pose. "And in the name of the Moon, I will punish you!" She usually said that to herald her presence, but this time she thought she'd need to say it so they'd recognize her. Her hair was let down, she was wearing a camo T-shirt over her distinctive collar and bow, though she left the pants outside as it was hard to run in them. She didn't look like Sailor Moon at all, save for the Moon Rod, the skirt, and the fact she'd just destroyed a youma. There were screams, crashes, and sounds of broken glass as men in suits fled, screaming, from the daimon attack. She heard a warbling voice from the offices yell "Hey, we got a Sailor Moon over here!" She spotted the blue face of another daimon before it ducked back behind a corner and ran after it, meaning not to let it get away, she skidded to a halt and barely missed being impaled when something shoved a spear around the corner at her. There were two more of the kinori-lizards, holding spears, waiting for her. She didn't have enough room to get off another Moon Spiral Heart Attack without getting speared halfway through it, and ran off to the doorway with the two lizards waddling after her. She looked back and saw she didn't get nearly enough distance between them, but she did get them next to a window, so that when the first kinori attacked Tuxedo Kamen could break through it and slap the attack away with his cane. She knew he was here, she'd rode the bus here with him, but still her heart raced every time he came to her rescue. "Stop, evildoer!" he said in a voice full of noble chivalry. "How dare you--" he ducked underneath a thrusting attack from this first kinori the left his top hat on the tip of the spear, "--attempt to destroy--" he spun out of the path of the second kinori's attack and kicked him in the cheek with the heel of his dress shoe, "--this cornerstone of law and order!" He extended his cane into the first kinori's chest and pinned him to the floor. "It's unforgivable!" Tuxedo Kamen barely caught a glimpse of a blue daimon peeking around the corner and extending his hand before a pressurized jet of water hit him in the chest and sent him tumbling to the floor. "Ha! I GOT you that time, everybody saw it!" the daimon crowed as it ducked back behind cover. The two kinori leapt at Kamen, he kicked one out of the air but the second one managed to spear him in the shoulder. Sailor Moon smacked him in the head with the Moon Rod, she didn't do much damage, but she distracted it long enough for Kamen to smack him away with the cane. He winced at the pain, but rose to his feet anyway. He pushed the two kinori back with thrusts from his extending cane until he had enough time to reach into his suit coat and throw a fan of enchanted roses in their direction. One took it in the leg and one in the stomach; Kamen fell back to brace for a counterattack, and the two kinori ran as fast as they could in the other direction. They may have been awkward and waddling, but they could really haul ass when they were fleeing something. Moon and Kamen nodded at each other, broke in different directions, and circled around to catch the water-daimon. That made two down. * "You know, this entire farce has got us out of jail at least seven times," said Bill, using a word he'd just learned, "and I am just flabbergasted every time it actually works." "Well, 'Free Bird' is at least good for two things," Donna said as she handcuffed one of the guards -- his English name tag said 'Itsuki' -- to the bed. "Getting hillbillies to hold up their cigarette lighters, and springing us out of jail. I'm not sure why it works, but why change a classic? I just wish they kept Nakami with us, Free Bird doesn't work when you're breaking into a secret Area 51 containment cell." She pulled the radios off the two guards' belts and gave them a listen to make sure they hadn't had a chance to make a call; all she could hear was static. "Uhh, about that," said the other guard she'd cuffed, a 'Shinobu'. "When they catch you again, could you, uh, not tell them how you escaped? Because if our supervisors heard..." "Oh, oh, right, right." Donna took the keys, radios, and other equipment out of the cell and slid the bars closed. "I'm just trying to break us out, not ruin you guys's careers." She locked the door and gave it an experimental tug. "If you tell them I smuggled in a set of collapsible lockpicks that I used to break out and a tube of knockout gas I used to overpower you, nobody's gonna contradict you." By now the Mugen students were making an enormous ruckus, some of them terrified and some of them elated at the prospect of a jailbreak, and Shinobu had to yell over them to be heard. "That would be for the best, thank you!" Donna kissed the back of her knuckles and threw up the 'V for Victory' sign, then slapped the cell keys into Nadine's hand and left down the hallway to drop off the other things at the now-empty security desk. Bill, Philip, and the two Mugen students they shared a cell with lined up at the door as Nadine searched for the key. When she slid it open Bill nearly bowled her over in is rush to get out of the confining stone jail cell and into the confining stone jail hallway. Behind him, Philip was shaking his head and making the 'cut off' gesture; when he walked out, she shut the door behind him. The two men still in there were taken aback, and as he took the keys from Nadine and locked them back in, he bowed, apologized, said "I'll explain, just a moment." He whistled once, clapped his hands, and pointed at himself, even though most everyone couldn't see him. "Okay, everyone, listen up!" he said as the noise calmed down. "Uh, what you need to know is that the rumors about the Mugen Academy are true, they were training witches there, Dr. Suoichi Tomoe was their ringleader, and he was probably trying to destroy the world. And all of you have been having blackouts because they can use you to carry out their orders, so, we can't let you out just yet." They erupted into a cacophony of disbelief. "What? You mean we're stuck here? You're insane! There's no such thing as witches! What if they make us kill each other? I didn't have any blackouts! Why can't you let us out anyway? What will the government do to us if they think we're bewitched..." "Let me finish! Okay, everyone here is bewitched, and you'd be dangerous if we let you out. I know a few of you got the living daylights beaten out of them by my friends here because you were trying to suck brains out of people." "Hearts," Nadine corrected. "Whatever. The point is right now we don't know if you could be controlled again, so you're safest in here. Now the police probably know you're innocent too, and don't want you out for the same reason, but unless they've killed, like, half of the population for knowing too much, you'll be fine once you get out. We've gotta break out of here so we can kill the thing they were summoning, and once we do that, you're in the clear, nothing else will be able to use the spell on you. You'll be in here for probably two, three more days at most. Now we've kind of got a time limit to escape here, but I wanted to make sure that everyone knew what was going on, okay? You hear that, you two? They didn't help us, we didn't help them, no criminal charges, they just need to be here a few more days until we kill the alien demon that can control their minds. Is everyone clear?" They were silent for ten full seconds, then erupted into panicked screams. Philip started to say something else, but Bill dragged him down to the desk, where upon rounding the corner they saw a man in a black suit and tie with dark glasses and an insufferably smug grin, flanked by two more officers with shotguns, one of whom had his weapon levelled at Donna's head. "Nice try, jackass," he smirked. "What? Phil said, finger in his ear to block out the sound of the students yelling. "I SAID, NICE..." he said as loud as he could while retaining his haughty tone, then just growled in frustration. He pointed at the second cop, nodded back to the unruly prisoners, and said "Shut them up, would you?" The cop worked the pump-action on his shotgun and the room became silent. "There, that's better. I said, 'Nice try, jackass'." "Oh. Lovely." "And I heard how they escaped, too!" he shouted to Itsuki and Shinobu. "You two should be ashamed of yourselves!" "Oh. Great." Donna said, rolling her eyes, and with not nearly enough concern for the fact a gun was levelled at her head. "Which one are you? Are you Ralph the Dog or Swedish Chef or Snuffleupagus or some other asshole?" "And can we skip this next part where you throw out the little missives of sneering contempt and show off your cool powers because we already did that with your friends." Philip and Nadine edged away from the other two. "What?" The man in the suit took off his glasses and slid them into his pocket; his eyes were a perfectly normal purple shade. "Are you hopped up on goofballs and seeing Muppets or something?" "Fine, who are you?" she asked, stressing the 'you'. "Since you asked so nicely, I'm the man who's going to be the next head of the NPA after he sends the five of you to prison for the rest of your lives." He flashed a sharky grin that looked to have slithered straight out of Wall Street circa 1988. "I was worried the Americans might make a case to extradite you, but this little stunt here will ensure you stay where I can get at you." "How great for you..." Bill winced as he heard a large crashing noise from somewhere else in the building, winced a little further and closed one eye when he heard the smaller 'whump' following it, and curled back his lips when he heard the remote 'pop' of gunfire. "...I don't want to ask what that was, because then it's going to get worse, isn't it?" The man in the suit nodded repeatedly, his composure visibly deteriorating and held out a finger. "Could you hang on for just one second?" he said to nobody in particular, and vaulted over the security desk to duck and cover underneath it. The second cop saw that, nodded, and walked down to the end of the hallway to hide underneath one of the cots. The remaining cop looked around, very confused, and the Hoffmann agents were all dreading the same thing. "Oh, we know what this is," Bill muttered. * "Not right!" Kher-Aya shouted, waving his shotgun at the two men he had cowering under a desk. "Should be more here. This is offices, not the police! And you!" He pointed at U-Kigumoko, she gritted her teeth and her neck quivered. "Why are you reading budgets to see where the prisoner is?" She slapped the stack of papers she was riffling through against the wall, causing them to drift everywhere. "Well, maybe if you could read a MAP, you'd have brought us to the police station instead of Nakatomi Plaza!" "You drove here! You couldn't figure it out!" "You gave me an address and I went to it! Don't you get snippy with me, lizard!" She turned down the hall to talk to the two daimons turning over chairs and desks to find a missing kinori POW; one was a red, puffy thing with boxing gloves for hands and one was a blue-skinned off-model Sailor Venus. "You guys back me up on this, don't you?" "Shut up! I hear-- Oh for the love of Sobek!" He spun on a footclaw and fired off a shell at the stairwell, blowing Tuxedo Kamen's hat off and sending him crashing into Sailor Moon behind him. "Them again! Quick, make cover!" The other kinori with him pulled out desks and tables to make an impromptu fort, Sailor Blue Venus jogged over to them with her breasts heaving ridiculously with every step. "And you!" He pointed at U-Kigumoko, "Get to first floor, seal their escape!" "I'll seal your goddamn escape, you scaly piece of shit," she grumbled as she walked to the balcony. She leapt off the edge and even stuck the landing, it hurt like crazy and nobody was watching but she felt like she had to. Kamen found his feet first and held back Sailor Moon from advancing further. "They've set up a defense. We'll have to be careful." He paused, and in Mamoru Chiba's normal voice he asked "Can you still throw your tiara?" "I didn't forget how to, it just doesn't work very well any more. Why?" He crept up to the edge of the stairs, as high as he could go without exposing himself to fire. "When I tell you to, I want you to... wait, I think someone's coming." "Stupid goddamn lizard thinks he's hot shit," mumbled U-Kigumoko as she made her way to the stairs. Who put the damn lizard who thinks he's the Terminator in charge, huh? A bunch of other stupid lizards, that's who. Lizards don't get to give her orders. And hell, for that matter, who decided to put the Master in charge? She didn't give a shit about what he was doing, it's not like he was BETTER than her or anything, what gave him the right to boss her around? She sure as hell didn't need any Master. In fact, screw the Master. Screw him and the lizards and all the other goofballs. She arrived at the landing just before the third floor, and saw a surprised Sailor Moon looking back at her. "You know what, Sailor Moon?" U-Kigumoko put one hand on her hip. "I'm just going to--" the Moon Spiral Heart Attack that struck her directly in the face cut off that sentence, and any others she was planning on making. * "So, you go to all this trouble, you hire the engineers, you hide the funding and you get the land and you build an Eiffel Tower so you can install a secret mass driver under it. Okay. And then, a spaceship shows up, and you just sit there and let it abduct people!" Kunimatsu Takaji rubbed his eyes, or at least the small area his hands could cover. "You don't even know how mass drivers work, do you? Now you're just pissing with me just to piss with me. I'm not going to shoot a nine hundred kilogram spike of solid tungsten at twenty times the speed of sound into a spaceship that's hovering like TEN METERS OFF THE SKYLINE. You're seriously telling me you're going to bathe Japan in shrapnel to stop it from abducting someone. You are absolutely unbelievable." "If you can't shoot down a UFO with your Tokyo Tower cannon," Nakami said in the most patronizing voice his lungs were capable of producing, "then maybe you should try and invest in a system that can!" Takaji cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. "WE ALREADY DID. HER NAME IS SAILOR MOON. WHY ARE YOU NOT GETTING THIS." "Because you--" "No. Shut up, okay? Just, just shut up." Takaji rubbed his temples, which were closer to the chin on his fraal skull. "God, can you hear yourself? It's nothing but bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, every single time you open your mouth." He held up both his hands as if they were two tiny grey puppets, and opened his fingers to make them 'talk' in time with his mocking, squeaky speech. "'Oh, you can't use Sailor Moon! Oh, you can't hide the youma so Sailor Moon's job is easier! Oh, you can't bail out the banks! Oh, you can't ignore the earthquake! Oh, you can't build a mass driver! Oh, you can't not use the mass driver! You gotta give me a second chance on Atlantis! You gotta do this, you gotta do that, hurf, durf, a hurfa durfa doo!' I have been in here for a couple hours and I want to jump underneath a bus! I cannot imagine what your staff feels like. You're like a five year old in a loincloth and a tie, but you don't have the excuse of being cute." Behind him, the door swung open, and the security officer peeked his head in. "Sir, I know you said not to be disturbed, but there's a serious..." His eyes went wide as he processed what they saw. On one end of the table was Itohiro Nakami, a haggard looking man with a stained tie, and on the other end of the table was Kunimatsu Takaji, a little grey alien with big almond eyes wearing a kimono. They looked at each other for ten seconds solid, frozen in fear, before Takaji has the presence of mind to bring his human illusion back up. The air around him flickered and darkened and in a second his tiny fraal body was replaced with a stern human in a dark suit. Takaji held a slim hope he could talk his way out of this, but as soon as he opened his mouth, Officer Toshiyuki Kosugi bolted, running down the hall and screaming at the top of his lungs. "Damn it, I am going to have to catch him..." Takaji spun around and shoved the table into Nakami, it didn't travel very far. "You're staying in here!" he shouted as he made a run for the door. "And when I get back, I am going to sell your ass to the Fox network!" * Screams, then more muffled gunshots from above. Donna nodded at the cop pointing his gun at her head. "Uh, someone tell him to put that down? I think both of us just got much bigger problems." "He speaks English." Philip nodded. "I recognize you. You were with the man in black to serve the arrest at the Hikawa shrine earlier today. Minori?" "Yeah. It was only a few hours ago." His weapon didn't move, but his head did, to glance down at his commanding officer, hiding under a desk. "What are these bigger problems you're talking about?" The man in the suit was quivering slightly, but for the most part he was just drumming his hands on his knees as if he were waiting for a bus that stopped at this particular desk. Another scream, and what sounded like a burst of electricity. "Daimons are what she's talking about," Philip said, his voice grave. "Monsters. Your friend and that jerk are freaking out because apparently that's what most people do when they get near them. He's not going to remember any of this happened. I don't know how many other people will either." "You must think I'm pretty stupid..." "Wait, you think there's a youma?" called a voice from down the hall. It was Shinobu, overhearing their conversation. "Because Itsuki just went under the bed and when I say anything to him he says 'Yeah, gimme another five minutes,' and don't youma have the power to cloud men's minds?" "I don't know what a youma is," Philip continued. "But a daimon is a monster that looks like a really brightly-colored woman in a silly theme costume, with dangerous powers that's almost impossible to kill. "Yeah, that sounds like a youma!" Shinobu yelled. They... Look, can someone just unlock me and bring me up? They already caught you anyway." In unison, Philip, Donna, and Bill said "Not it." Nadine rolled her eyes, took two sets of keys, and went to free Shinobu. "But, uh, yeah." Shinobu rubbed his wrist. "I think you're talking about youma. I've only seen Sailor Moon kill a couple, but they tell you about them if you're ever going to have a beat in Juuban." "They also tell us we're not supposed to talk about it!" "Well they already know, I don't see what it hurts! I mean, damn, Minori, you really think it'll matter?" "Yeah, we know about them. They work for something called Pharaoh 90. Sailor Saturn is the one who can kill them, and if one is here, then either it's come to suck out people's hearts, or it thinks Sailor Saturn got arrested with us and it wants to kill her. Either way, it's probably going to check down here and unless one of you is hiding a Glaive in his pants..." "Wait, there's a Sailor Saturn? Because, like I said, I saw Sailor Moon kill a couple of those things when I was on the beat, and other people have seen other planets, and there might have been a Pluto once, but nobody's ever seen a Saturn." Minori looked at Shinobu as if he'd just admitted to... well, to being a grown man with an interest in Sailor Moon, really. "There used to be a Sailor Saturn," Nadine muttered. "There still is a Sailor Saturn," Bill corrected. "The herald of catastrophe. Soldier of ruin and rebirth. And we're on her team. We run with Sailor Saturn. You guys are taking orders from a shadowy psychic asshole FBI Man in Black with too many thumbs, and underneath that a complete prick, so whose team are you on?" "So, then... does that mean, thaaat... you're on the Sailor Team too? Or, like, what?" "Why do--" "As a matter of fact, we are," Philip cut Donna off. "Sailor Juno, Sailor Vesta, Sailor Ceres, and Sailor Pallas." He waited, then when nobody recognized them, added "The four major asteroids." He himself had learned that fact a few weeks ago from an episode of 'Jeopardy!' and figured there was no chance there would ever be an actual Senshi who wanted to use the same name. Shinobu squinted and acted like he was giving that statement a great deal of consideration, far more than it deserved. "...No you aren't." "If there's a freaky colorful monster up there tearing things up and we kill it, can you tell your boss that we are and that's why we escaped? Because daimons indicate we're the least of your problems?" Minori considered it for a moment, heard another crash from upstairs, and lowered his weapon. "Kill it first, then we'll see." "All right then," Donna said, dusting off her hands. "Ceres, what was it, asteroid? Yeah. Ceres asteroid power, make the hell up." * * * The room the two Men in Black took her to was familiar, but it took Ami a second to realize why. She had been here once before, but there were vines growing on the outside of the building; this was Ail and Ann's apartment complex and she was pretty sure they took her to Ail and Ann's apartment, though the decor had changed. Stacks of newspapers took the place of furniture in most places. Three small televisions, stacked in a pyramid, showed three different news channels. Light came from unshaded bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The room was not ill-kept, however, every stack of paper was perfectly squared away, nothing was left on the floor, nothing was stained, no dishes were in the sink, the only thing on the counter was a humming, pulsing black crystal emitting a nacreous cloud of shadow. In the center of the living area was a wooden chair and a coil of bright purple climbing rope. Waldorf and Statler appeared to keep house in a manner both fastidious and totally insane. "Okay, Ami-chan," Statler said as he pushed her into the room and closed the door behind them. "I'm sure you want to get home, so, let's try and get through this as quickly as possible, okay? If you cooperate it will be a lot easier." His voice was so syrupy and so false she thought it was more aspartame than saccharine. She knew he could read her mind, there was no way he could think this sudden turn to kindness would work, but even as she thought that he didn't react. Waldorf glanced up at her, stifled a laugh, and went back to reading the mail. Statler removed her watch and took the pen out of her pocket. "Okay, now, Ami-chan, I'm going to take off this gag. Just to show that you can trust me." She had no idea how he would ever, possibly, think that statement was true. "Now, don't do anything that would make me regret it, okay?" He untied the bandanna and pulled it away from her face, regarding the wad of spit that had soaked into it with disgust. He and Ami looked at each other in silence for five seconds, and though he had to know what she was going to do, she did it anyway. "HELP! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SOMEBODY HELP ME I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED CALL THE POLICE!" She charged for the window at the far wall, hoping she could break it open with her shoulder, only to be tripped by Waldorf and sent facefirst into the floor, coming to a stop right in front of the chair. "Also, the room is silenced, so nobody would hear if I shot you four times in the chest right now," Waldorf deadpanned. "Ami-chan, why did you do that?" Statler shook his head in a not-quite-perfect replica of how humans express disappointment. "I wanted to show I trusted you and you violated that!" "No you didn't!" Ami laughed in panic and disbelief. "What are you DOING? What's WRONG with you? You can't, you can't, can't can't just throw me in a car and kidnap me and show me the chair you're going to tie me to and then say I'll trust you!" She tried to push herself back, away from them, but her socks just slid around on the floor. "Who are you, what, what do you want? Why do you think the Sailor Senshi will attack you?" It was obvious why, because the two of them were made of pure evil, but she was flailing around in blind terror, trying to find some magical theoretical combination of sounds that she could give him that would prevent what was going to happen next. "Oh, don't worry about that. They probably won't anyway. You don't have to worry about having to fight your little friends, okay? We're just being extra-cautious." His voice was like a condescending pediatrician. "Then what do you need me for at all? You could let me go and I wouldn't tell them anything. Forget this whole thing ever, ever even happened. Please..." Her voice cracked. She was dimly aware, in the back of her mind, that she shouldn't be trying to make such a bargain with the forces of evil, that she couldn't call mulligans on evil plans. What was going to happen next scared her so deeply and so completely she couldn't care. "...please, please just forget this ever happened." Waldorf handed Statler something and whispered in his ear. Statler nodded, and said, "Ami-chan, there's no reason to be frightened! Here, I got you a gift, just to show you can trust me." He walked to her, crouched, leaned over her. His body had no odor to it, gave off no heat. He pulled out the object Waldorf had given him, a ring set with a large sapphire; when the light hit it just right it looked like there was a lightning bolt running down the center. When he opened his mouth to talk, in his grating faux-sugary tone, she could see he had two rows of teeth. "See? We got this just for you, as a present. We can't be all bad, can we?" She stared up at him, transfixed in horror. There was no way he thought she would believe it. Why would he even be saying these things, just to mock her, humiliate her, scare her even more deeply? Why bother when he could read her mind? He knew he could change it anyway. But if he thought it really could work... "You..." she whispered, "you don't even know what trust is, do you?" He clapped his hands on his knees and exhaled. "Eh, I tried." Then he reached out and before she could evade him grabbed her by the collar with a two-thumbed hand. "Help me tie her down, okay?" She struggled, tried to squirm away, kicked at them with frenetic intensity to try and free herself, but they knew every direction she was going to move in as she thought of it, there was no way out. They bound her to the chair and she started to hyperventilate, her palms started to sweat, her jaw quivered. Waldorf took the crystal, a hexagonal thing that looked like the ones the Dark Kingdom had used, and set it floating in front of her face. She turned away as far as her head would go but her eyes were drawn to the horrible thing and the shadowy corona that spread to envelop her, by no supernatural pull but by the same force that compels a deer to stare into a pair of headlights right before it gets crushed by a van. She started screaming again, at first pleas for help and rescue, and then desperate and incoherent shrieks of terror. Even as the crystal enveloped her in darkness, she could see what was happening in front of her; Waldorf had turned three televisions on and turned up the volume to drown her out, and Statler was eating a plate of raw hamburger with chopsticks. She'd had nightmares about this ever since what happened to Mamoru, and more after what happened to Chibi-Usa. Dreams that left her clutching her pillow like she was trying to tear it in half, panting, soaked in sweat. Or worse, the dreams where she'd wake up totally unable to move, control of her own body totally stolen away. Dreams where someone swooped in under cover of darkness and took her away, and opened up the working of her mind and soul and rewrote it to their liking and there was nothing at all she could do about it, and by the end she'd been made into someone entirely different, turned against all she ever loved and made to feel as if it was her idea, her free will was obliterated and replaced with a script and she couldn't even TELL because the part of her that would know had been forcibly extracted along with everything else that made her her and there wouldn't be any magic Moon healing for her this time because this was for good and she would be worse than dead because everything about Mizuno Ami would be annihilated and beyond dead and NOTHING could save her and NOTHING could bring her back because there wasn't anything TO bring back because they weren't replacing her they shredded her to pieces and reassembled her all wrong but nobody could ever find a way to put her back together and she'd forced into a twisted mockery of thought and existence FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER. And now she was tied to a chair, unable to move, staring down a thrumming black crystal, and it was happening to her for real. Every nightmare came flooding back and still couldn't compare to the horror of the real thing. And the two men in black were so blase, casual, the most terrifying thing she could ever have imagined was happening to her and they weren't cringing and regretting it, they weren't laughing and relishing in her pain, they were watching TV and drinking soda. Her thoughts were just a device that they could take apart and reshape as they desired, as if her mind were a computer and they were killing time while Windows reformatted. She kept screaming, but nobody heard her. Nobody ever, ever heard her. * * * "They're trying to get at us from below while we try to break their defense," Tuxedo Kamen said. "We will have to be quick to avoid being caught in a pincer." Sailor Moon bent over and picked up the white keycard descrambler the slain daimon had turned into. "Huh. You know, that daimon didn't look anything like this. Wonder what it is?" She turned it over in her hand. "I bet it belongs to that woman. They looked pretty similar." "Sailor Moon! The battle?" "Oh! Right, right." She slid the card into the small pocket in her skirt and nodded at Kamen attentively. "I hurl the tiara up there in an arc, then you come in while they're being smacked around." She rubbed her hands together, pulled off the tiara and gave it a spin, getting back her old technique. "Moon... Tiara... Action!" She lobbed the tiara in an arc up through the doorway, when she heard the first lizard squeal, Kamen jumped up and prepared to throw his rose. His hand didn't make it out of his jacket before someone on the floor shouted "Venus Crescent BEAM!" and he took a bright orange laser to the gut. He buckled over, took a second "Venus Crescent BEAM!" to the shoulder, and a spray of shotgun pellets. Moon grabbed his cape and dragged him out of the line of fire before he could take another hit; he was stunned and bleeding in several places. "Tuxedo Kamen! Tuxedo Kamen, are you okay?" She shook him by the shoulders, and his head lolled around, eyes made halfhearted attempts to open, but he would need a few seconds to get together. She heard heavy footfalls echoing from several floors above, and after a moment, the soft clacking of foot-claws. The blackscale kinori stood in the doorway, glistening in the harsh light of the fluorescent, shotgun across his shoulder. "Sailor Moon!" he barked. "Think we forgot? Think kinori forgot Silver -- HA! -- Millennium? Master will make the surface world pay. And I am going to make you suffer!" The blackscale fired at her, knocking her back into the wall, and instantly leapt at her. He landed on her chest, raked her across the face with the claws of one hand as he flip-cocked his weapon with the other. She screamed and grabbed at the wound, but she also managed to duck and roll away, Kher-Aya's shotgun blast churning up nothing but a storm of plaster dust. She smacked him across the snout with the Moon Rod as she rose to her feet, and he grunted, but she didn't have Makoto's arms and the Rod wasn't made for bludgeoning and he retaliated by smacking her across the jaw with the gun. She shouted in pain, and her tooth went flying out of her jaw and bouncing down the stairs. "No warrior, are you?" He laughed. "Some great leader! Can't fight without your magic and minions!" He punched her in the stomach with his tiny clawed hand. "Sailor Moon will always be able to fight, because her friends are always at her side!" Kher-Aya turned around just in time to see Tuxedo Kamen, his tuxedo ripped and streaked with blood, throw a rose at him; with preternatural speed, Kher-Aya lifted his weapon just in time to catch the rose in the barrel. "That. Was stupid." he snarled, and pulled the trigger, sending out a flurry of rose petals and sending Kamen into the wall, hard, before he hit the stairs, harder. Kher-Aya flipped the shotgun again, only to send it flying, clattering down the gap between the stairwells, when Sailor Moon kneed him in the elbow. "My gun!" He instinctively went to the handrail to try to grab it, and that's when Moon slammed him in the back of the head with the Moon Rod as hard as she could and sent him, squealing, over the edge. She didn't peek over the edge; if she did, she would have seen him catch the handrail on the second floor for a second, lowering his momentum enough to hit the first floor mostly unharmed. She slapped the call button on her watch as she rushed to Kamen's side. "Sailor Venus?" she shouted. "Where are you, this is Sailor Moon, I heard you somewhere, Tuxedo Kamen is hurt!" "Gonna need... a couple minutes..." Kamen moaned. Moon heard a voice that sounded nothing at all like Sailor Venus, from the third floor, shout "I'm right here, Sailor Moon! Where are you?" In a few seconds another figure appeared in the doorway and the first thing Moon thought was that it was a daimon cosplaying Sailor Venus. Blue skin, malformed ribbon, a full foot taller than Venus, no earrings, and gargantuan breasts straight out of a Sailor Moon otaku's fantasy. Moon stammered for a second, at a loss, and Daimon-Venus said "Oh, is that where you were?" As Moon got the presence of mind to pull out the Moon Rod, Daimon-Venus turned around and shouted "It's okay, guys! It's Sailor Moon, she's on our side! Stand down and all that!" Moon blinked and held the Moon Rod in midair, not really sure what that just meant. "Oh no!" Daimon-Venus said with an amazing level of overemotion, "What happened to Tuxedo Kamen?" She bounded down the stairway, breasts heaving in a way that Moon was pretty sure violated the laws of physics. When the daimon leaned in close to her, hugged her, and kissed her on the cheek, she estimated it was the single most awkward moment of her life. But the daimon pulled away instead of trying to crush her, and her cheek didn't burn or start siphoning energy out of her. "Hey, how'd you lose a tooth?" "Uhhh... the black lizard knocked it out?" She rubbed her jaw. "Right in the same place as before, I'll have to go find that tooth again..." "Who, Kher-Aya?" Daimon-Venus waved her hands dismissively. "Oh, no no no. I mean, he's a jerk and all, but why would he attack you? We're on the same team!" She gave Moon another inappropriate hug. "We're all the good guys!" Moon blinked, but she actually was starting to get it. Daimons were made from stuff, and someone made a daimon from something that looked like Sailor Venus, like a UFO catcher doll or one of those little plastic figurines, so now they had a daimon that thought it was Sailor Venus. That could be good, right? "Yes, we are the good guys!" Moon responded. "Why are we here again?" "Oh, I don't know, they don't tell me much. Just follow the kinori around while they look for something and get shot if anyone has a gun. And watch out for Senshi, they're dangerous!" She nodded at Sailor Moon "So keep an eye out." Kamen opened his eyes again, his Senshi powers giving him the ability to absorb far more punishment than he really would have liked. "Uhh..." he looked up at daimon. Moon answered his unspoken question. "This is Sailor Venus, remember? He hit his head." Daimon-Venus nodded sagely and even that made her breasts shake, it was absolutely ridiculous. "Oh. Okay?" Kamen, still a little groggy, made a pass over himself with his healing powers to clean up the bruises and contusions. He felt better, but he was still sore, and it's likely hurt just as much as before if he got hit again, which he would. "Hey, you should have said something before!" She poked Kamen. "That's probably why we always announce who we are to the enemy, so we don't shoot each other." Her elongated ears perked up, and they heard claws clacking again, and turned to see Kher-Aya coming up the stairs, fuming. "Hi, Kher-Aya, look who I found! They can help us look for the thing!" Kher-Aya emitted a noise that wasn't in a language any of them spoke but was certainly the foulest curse he knew and shot Sailor Moon again, she collapsed like she was made of lead. * Four Hoffmann Institute agents crept up the stairs and through the hallways of the police station, trying to find a daimon before it found them. "Phil, I never thought I would ask you this," Bill whispered, "but why did you say we could kill a demon? Usually, I say that kind of thing, and you sigh and give me that look that says you hate God for testing you so." "Hey, we're on the clock now. I'm Sailor Pallas." "Damn, I wanted Pallas. That was the dude from 'The Raven', right?" "Not the same Pallas." "It still sounds cool." "And I figure from what Donna said, how badly the daimon got hurt when she hit it with a car, we can kill this stuff without magic. It just takes longer to heap on enough punishment." "And by 'we' you mean me and Donna." "And by 'we' I mean you and Donna do most of the work, and Nadine and I find heavy things and throw them. I think we are on the clock here, we can't afford to sit out. We need to get rid of this thing before one of the Sailor Senshi shows up to kill it." "Why?" Bill looked around to make sure the cops weren't listening to him, but they were too busy listening to the reverberating 'thump' noises that seemed to be coming from further upstairs. "Me and Donna met up with Sailor Moon and her whole crew there, we think they're all right. Their guy, Tuxy-Man, had healing hands like Hotaru did, I woulda bled to death otherwise." "Well, maybe you met Sailor Moon. Nadine and I met Uranus and Neptune, and they're not so friendly. We know they're after Hotaru, we know they want to kill her, they know we're involved with her, and they shoot magic balls of death at people they don't like. If they come in here to kill a daimon and they find out we're here, they might very well blow the doors off the holding cells and take us back to wherever evil Sailor Senshi torture people for information." "So you think we tell the cops we can kill the daimon, they let us up, and we run like hell." "No, we're going to kill it. We're not going to leave a monster rampaging around." "Good, because if you didn't say that, I was gonna." "We'll hang back until either Moon or Uranus shows up, and if it's Uranus, we get the hell out of here through the parking garage." They crept up another staircase. The sounds were getting louder, and they could now pick out speech, though the gunfire had stopped. Bill tapped Nadine on the shoulder. "Hey. Phil told me he called Pallas, you wanna be Vesta or Juno?" She didn't even look at him. "I don't care." "...Hotaru's going to be fine. You'll see her again." "And how the hell do you know that?" "She's a survivor." "Damn it, no she isn't!" Nadine shouted, and everyone froze and looked at her. "No, she isn't," she whispered. "That's just something people say about anyone regardless of who they are. She's not a survivor. She is a scared, lonely, depressed, hurt little girl who can't stand her own life. She needs someone to be there for her and keep her safe from herself and she doesn't have that. Don't you tell me she's a survivor. She doesn't want to survive." "Yeah." He sighed. "I know. And I shouldn't say she'll be fine because she isn't fine now. She's scared and alone and depressed and hurt and she doesn't wanna keep going, but she will. She won't let herself do otherwise because she just knows she's not allowed to stop. I know I'm not supposed to be the smart one here, but, just trust me on this. I said she was a soldier and I meant it. She'll hate it but she won't stop until this whole thing is over. And then you'll be there for her." "I just hope I'll be enough. Poor girl has been through so much..." "But you love her, right?" Nadine was a bit taken aback. "Uh... yeah. I do. I love her. It's weird to say it like that. I just met her." He put his hand on her shoulder. "Then I think she really will be okay." She smiled, at first she tried to hide it, but she decided not to bother. "You sound like some sappy Disney movie, but, fine. I'll be Vesta, then." He snapped his fingers. "Damn, I was hoping you'd be Juno. I don't wanna be the one named after the capital of Alaska." * The blue Daimon-Venus gasped in shock. Several buckshot pellets were embedded in her shin, looking like she'd tripped in a driveway, but that's not what had shocked her. She stood up over Sailor Moon's dazed form and pointed at Kher-Aya in Sailor Venus's trademark 'admonish evildoers' pose. "How dare you shoot a pure and innocent girl like Sailor Moon? How dare you attack my friend!" Kher-Aya flip-cocked his gun again. He'd reloaded downstairs, but he was still getting low on ammo. "What in the hell are you babbling about, daimon?" "I am the Pretty Soldier, Sailor Venus! And in the name of Venus, I will punish YOU!" She spread her feet over two different stairs to brace herself to fire. "Venus Crescent BEAM!" A streak of golden light erupted from the daimon's fingertips and struck the kinori square in the center of his forehead, dissipating with no visible effect. His eye twitched, he ground his teeth, and there were a lot of teeth there to grind. "I would like it," he said matter-of-factly, "if I had just ONE minion -- just one! -- whom I could TELL to do something, and they would DO it in the manner I prescribed." Daimon-Venus frowned. "So you can ward off my magic? Unlucky for you, I know Krav Maga! En Garde!" Tuxedo Kamen knew that not only did the real Venus not know Krav Maga, but that the thing this daimon was doing looked nothing like it, but he wasn't going to correct her. "Just do what I say! Like minions are supposed to do!" Kher-Aya spun out of the way of a kick and smacked Daimon-Venus across the knees with his tail. "Not get distracted or think they're a Senshi or decide someone forgot to mention a clause..." He bounced backwards and balanced on his tail for a second to avoid a sweep kick, then smashed her across the nose with his gun. "...that they should actually coordinate so they don't just stand there and get shot down!" She threw a punch, but she had to lean forward too far to strike at his head and he easily grabbed her wrist, rolled backward, and sent her somersaulting over him into the wall. "WHY DOES EVERYONE BUT ME IN THIS HORRID CESSPIT HAVE TO BE SO DAMNABLY INCOMPETENT!" He stood over Daimon-Venus, panting. She was upside-down and on her back against the wall, but she looked none the worse for wear, her nose wasn't even bleeding. And she had managed to spin Kher-Aya around so his back was now facing Kamen. The roses wouldn't work, he'd proven that, but being smashed across the back of the head might... His chest hurt, his breathing was tight, and his left arm wasn't as responsive as it should have been, but he rose to his feet. He applied his healing power to himself as Usagi as quickly as he could, gauged the right length to extend his cane in mid swing, and as soon as Daimon-Venus found her feet again he plastered the kinori across the back of the head. He let out a "WARK!" of surprise and went tumbling, end over end, down half a flight of stairs; when he came to a stop he screamed in a mixture of one part pain to three parts incoherent rage. Daimon-Venus gasped and pointed at Kamen, ignoring the kinori on the stairs. "How dare you attack such a wise, respected pillar of the kinori community!" "Oh... no." "Venus Crescent BEAM!" The laser caught him in the shoulder and though it didn't have the force to knock him down, he had the good sense to do down anyway. Another silhouette in the doorway. A kinori, and then, another. "What going on?" the one on the left clucked. "We still hang back?" Sailor Moon looked down at the Moon Rod, then up at the daimon menacing Tuxedo Kamen, then over to the two kinori who had just appeared, and came to a decision. She scrambled up the stairway on her hands and knees, directly toward the one with the gun, and winced in anticipation when she saw it raise its hands to fire. The bullet flattened on her right above the eyebrow and the force left her feeling like someone was trying to twist her head off like the cap on a soda bottle. Daimon-Venus stopped in her tracks, pointed at the kinori, and shouted "How dare you shoot a pure and innocent girl!" * "That's the youma," said Shinobu. "That's a daimon," said Philip. "And that's two kinori with it," said Donna. "Oh, by the way, we didn't get a chance to tell you, but the kinori and the Pharaoh I'm guessing are on the same team now." "I gathered." Two white-scale kinori with handguns were flanking a daimon, the size of an adolescent girl, with a pink carapace adorned with glittery Hello Kitty stickers, holding one hand to her ear and talking loudly as she moved from office to office and flipped over desks. One of the kinori had a rose stem sticking out of his eye, and he picked at it whenever the other two weren't looking. "Looks to be about half the size of the other ones we saw." "Me and B-- uh, Juno saw another one this size before. Oh, if we see one that looks like a pink me with night vision goggles, that's made out of my little card scrambler, I want it back." Shinobu held up his hand. "You don't have to keep using the names. We know there's no such thing as Sailor Ceres, you got let out because you have fought these things before and that's more experience than us." "I'm going to keep saying Sailor Ceres anyway, because it's fun. Buzzkill." The three invaders hadn't noticed them yet, and were too busy talking with each other to really look. "Why look under desks?" one of them clucked. "Prisoner not gonna be there." "Uh-huh? No, get out. He didn't! Oh, hang on sweetie." The daimon paused her conversation with her unseen partner and turned to the kinori. "I'm being thorough, okay? So, like, how about you shut your beak or your snout or your whatever it is you have, and you let me work?" "Not thorough! Wasting time! This place is big!" "Yeah, and I'm gonna run through all of it, all right? And maybe, like, maybe your little dude got out and he hid under a desk so they wouldn't find him, you ever think of that?" "He would hear us and come out! Not wait for us to turn over hiding place!" "And... and maybe you should shut up, okay?" She looked up and touched her hand to her ear. "What? Yeah, I'm still here." "Who you talking to?" Minori returned to the group, with another nervous-looking officer who had an armload of tools. "Hey. This is Officer Kaname. His radio doesn't work either." Bill rubbed his hands together. "Yeah, yeah, whatever, did you hit up the evidence locker like I told you to?" "We got you the high-power cutting implements you asked for, but I'm not giving you back your rifle. You're lucky enough we let you out and are giving you a rotary saw. An illegal sniper rifle is where I draw the line." "Hey! That rifle is my legal property and my arrest was unlawful. I expect it returned." "Well you're not getting it, make do with the rotary saw or start shooting pixie dust out of your hands, 'Sailor Juno'!" "Children, children!" Philip put out his arms and made a 'simmer down' gesture. "Control yourselves." Kaname looked down at the load in his hands. "We also have a power drill, a motorized hedge clipper, aaand some extension cords." Philip blinked. "We have to plug this stuff in?" Donna rolled her eyes and pointed between herself and Bill. "No, WE have to plug this stuff in." Pause. "Wait, we have to plug this stuff in?" "It's not my fault nobody committed a crime where a gas-powered chainsaw was evidence, you're lucky we have this much on hand!" "Whatever, whatever! Gimme one of those cords." Donna peeked round the corner; the daimon and kinori were nowhere to be seen, but she heard them from another office. "Okay, the kinori can be taken out with gunfire, but you're better off at close range. Vesta and what's-your-face," she pointed at Minori, "come with me with the drill. Juno, you plug in the saw over here. I'm gonna try and garrote one of them with the cord, you guys take a few shots at them when I do and we'll see if we can split them up." "...I'll give you twenty bucks if I can be Ceres and you get to be Juno." Donna was already gone, around the corner. They sat there, Bill holding the saw, waiting for an indicator it was time to attack, and they didn't have to wait long. "Should go back! Tell others this here!" said the one without the stem in his eye. "Tuh!" rejoined the daimon. "They can figure it out themselves. Not like it's hidden or anything." "Why don't you CALL one and tell him?" "Because? I'm talking to Keiko?" "You don't know anyone named GACK--" Donna yanked the lizard around the corner, pulling them both out of sight, and Shinobu squeezed off three shots before he got out of the way and let the 'professionals' do their work. "What? Oh no you did not -- I'll have to call you back Keiko, someone just shot me! Click!" The daimon actually said the word 'click' before mincing in the direction of the shot, short little steps as if she were wearing high heels. The remaining kinori ducked into the office they'd just left. "You get back here!" the daimon cried, insulted. "You do not just shoot Ino-Kia and run away!" Bill didn't understand what it was saying, but he could get a vague idea that it wasn't happy. It was even less happy when it walked into view and he swung a rotary saw at its exposed pink neck. The gyroscope effect of the spinning blade threw off his aim, and he only managed to connect with her shoulder; a plume of yellow sparks sprayed out of the contact site, accompanied by an ear-splitting grinding sound, punctuated occasionally with the 'TINGG!' of a sawtooth flying off. Ino-Kia, and everyone who understood Japanese got that one, grabbed at his wrist and he pulled away rather than let her get a hold on him. Bill looked at the blade, it was warped, dented, dulled, and missing teeth. Then he looked at her shoulder, there was a cut about half an inch deep going into it, seeping yellow fluid. "Damn," he muttered. "That has got to be a hell of a scythe." "Oh. My God. Keiko, you are not going to believe what just happened," the daimon said, turning to Bill, not acknowledging the fact that she'd already 'hung up'. "This guy just tried to come at me with a power tool." She spun out of the way of his next swing and elbowed him in the solar plexus as one fluid motion, never really looking at him. "I know, right? Do people still DO that, or does this guy think he's Captain Supermarket, or what?" She punched him in the stomach and swept his legs out from under him, letting his ass meet the carpet, and kicked him once for good measure. "Ooh, you should see his hair, too. It's like Christophe threw up on him." The rose-stem kinori poked its head out of the office, clucking out a call to its comrade in its native tongue. It had only been a second, but they were right next to each other when they heard gunfire, so they-- and now there was a gun in his face, held by the human woman they'd attacked with the daimon earlier today. It put its claws up, slowly, the way humans did to indicate surrender. "Hey, this one surrendered!" she called to her comrades. "Do we have any of those plastic--" here she turned to look down the hall, seeing to her dismay the daimon was NOT dead, right before the kinori slapped the gun out of her hand, raked up the inside of her arm with its claws, and smacked her in the legs with its tail. Kinori claws aren't large or fearsome, really comparable to especially large human fingernails, but being raked by fingernails still hurts when you aren't expecting it. "Damn it!" Donna shouted. "Never believe the goddamn lizards!" The kinori dove to the side to grab Donna's gun, and Donna dove forward to grab the kinori's gun, and they both rolled into a crouched firing stance, facing each other. The kinori's gun wasn't made for his hands, and it took him a moment to aim; enough time for Nadine to kick him in the back of the neck and send him sprawling for Minori to finish off. Philip growled at the plug on the hedge trimmers -- it wouldn't fit in the outlet without an adapter, and the daimon was kicking the living Hell out of Bill. He pointed at Shinobu and ordered, "You, get the shotgun ready," and to Kaname, "Grab something heavy and follow me." Then with a sigh, knowing how much shit he was going to catch for it, he grabbed a swivel chair, held it out in front of him, and charged at the daimon full-bore. He hit her square in the back and pushed her forward, tripping her up on her own ankles. She placed out her hands to break her fall and avoid kissing the floor, landing in more of a sit-up position. "Ow! Keiko, they're ganging up on me now! No, not like that, get your mind out of the gutter girl! No, it's no problem, they're a bunch of losers." She rolled over onto her back, got ready to spring back up to her feet, and got a computer monitor smashed in her face. "Lizards are down!" Donna crowed. She checked the safety on one of the two pistols she was holding and tossed it to Bill. "We found these, we're keeping them." "You can go on telling yourself that," Shinobu retorted. "Argue... later!" Philip said, lugging a mini-fire safe. He let it go on the daimon's head, it pushed her down but had no more visible impact on her flesh than a chunk of Styrofoam. "Monster now!" "Yeah, yeah, now they're just throwing crap on me. No, not like crap crap, like junk and stuff. Hold on, I'll ask." The daimon's hand shot out and snagged Philip's ankle, then yanked him down to meet her. "Keiko wants to know if you guys... Shut up, I'm saying it, quit giggling! ...if you guys are professional idiots or just gifted amateurs?" She rolled over him, broken glass and plastic falling off her face, planting an elbow on his chest and putting all her weight on it as she rose to her feet. "Hey!" Nadine shouted, standing with one hand on her hip, Donna and Kaname nowhere in sight. "Don't talk to Sailor Ceres like that!" "The other girl was Sailor Ceres," Shinobu corrected. "He's Sailor Pallas." "Like I said, don't talk to Sailor Pallas like that!" "You're totally not gonna believe this." Ino-Kia giggled. "They got little code names for themselves! And they don't even remember what they are! I know, what is this, the third grade? Yeah, just like that!" Philip managed to right himself, and at that point Nadine screamed, "RUN! Run like hell!" turned, and did just that, right on the heels of Shinobu. Philip and Bill broke off in the other direction, and Ino-Kia glanced between them, swore, and ran after Nadine. "Yeah, yeah, they're running away. Yes, I'm chasing them, duh! I'm gonna get the one with the bowl cut first." The daimon rounded one corner, then another, gaining on her target, then when she came upon the stairs down to the first floor, an extension cord that Shinobu and Nadine had easily walked over was pulled tight right at shin-level. She tripped on the cord and went sailing forwards into the staircase, flailing and squawking like a duck in an eight-year-old's arms. She hit the first riser with her teeth, and though they didn't break they did bend inward. She rolled downward, smacking her elbows and knees and chin and chest all into each other and into every other part. When she came to a stop at the bottom, she was scraped, bleeding more yellow fluid from several minor cuts, and letting out an ultraviolet streak of profanity that would have melted 'Keiko's' phone, if she existed. "I cannot BELIEVE she fell for that," said Shinobu. "We could have done that." "Yeah, it looks like that to a layman." Donna couldn't believe the daimon fell for that either, but wasn't about to let on. "Okay, seriously? I am starting to get pissed off now." Above her, Nadine leaned over the guardrail and dropped a potted plant into her face. "I'm, ptth, ptth--" she spat dirt out of her mouth, "I am not EVEN playing any more." "Somebody go get the guys, I'm gonna keep finding crap to drop on her," Donna said, "and Vesta, you go plug in this drill." Ino-Kia swatted potting soil off of her face and hair, spitting even after there was nothing left in her mouth. "Dirt! Dropped a potted plant on me!" She grabbed the frond and felt it before tossing it off of her. "No, it's real. They probably rented it." Just as she started to get up, another rented fan palm came crashing down on her, and all she could say was "Damn it! Stop DOING that! How many of those plants do you have up there?" Nadine walked back towards the stairs, drill in hand, only to have it yanked out of her hand. "Uh, Ceres? Problem. This thing will only go 25 feet, I can't get back to the stairs. And you broke the other one strangling the lizard." Donna glared at Kaname as he handed her the fire safe. "You couldn't get a cordless drill?" "We didn't have a cordless drill!" "Well, just go down the back stairs..." She dropped the fire safe and imagined it would whistle on the way down like in the Looney Tunes cartoons. "I'll keep 'er pinned here and... Crap, she got up!" She pulled the gun out of her waistband and flicked off the safety. "Go around, we'll meet down there!" She cursed herself as she descended, wondering why the hell she hadn't looked down before dropping the safe. She hit the first floor, rounded the corner, and immediately got clotheslined across the throat by the daimon's outstretched arm. "Ha, got 'er! Oh, that looks like it hurts, too." Donna swept at the daimon's legs, she hopped out of the way. The daimon stomped at Donna, she rolled back to her feet. They traded quick exploratory blows, then Ino-Kia grabbed Donna's wrist with one hand and with her other hand, drove the base of her palm into Donna's nose. Blood sprayed all over the walls, the carpet, and the two of them. "Ha! Oh, yeah, just like you said, blood EVERYWHERE! That's great!" Donna grabbed her face with both hands, trying to staunch the blood loss. "That shit HURTS!" she shouted, and with her blood-slicked fingers she grabbed the daimon's wrist and bent it back much further than even daimon joints were meant to go. "Ow, ow, okay, lemme go, ow, ow, ow, ow!" the daimon shouted, and Donna guessed the meaning even though she didn't speak Japanese. She twisted the daimon's arm around behind her, spat blood on the back of her neck, and shoved her forward, dropping her head in an open doorway. Blood dribbling off of her chin and smearing on her palms, she slammed the door again and again into the daimon's head, splintering the wood in a depression the shape of her head. "OW! No, I don't know, she just OW! went like totally ax-crazy OW! on me! You OW! said she was supposed to OW! scream and pass out OW! or die or something, not OW! go totally batshit OW! batshit locOW!" The door broke around the daimon's head, and Donna stepped back to give Bill room to beat the daimon with a floor lamp a few times. She grabbed it and tossed it to the side, he stepped back, and the two of them emptied their guns into her, and threw the empty weapons at her for good measure. She caught one, flung it back at Bill, and nailed him in the forehead. The daimon wheezed and spat out a mouthful of bright yellow blood. The punishment she had been given was clearly accumulating on her now, she was covered in bruises, cuts, and lesions. "I hate you guys..." she said. She tried to rise to her feet but her wrist slipped in a pool of swirled yellow and red blood. "I hate you guys so goddamn much." Bill and Donna were panting almost as bad as Ino-Kia was, Donna holding an ice pack to her nose, and Phil felt kind winded just looking at them. "If Nadine... can't kill that thing with a drill..." Bill gasped for air, "we're gonna... gonna have to call in an airstrike or something." "It took Uranus and Neptune three shots to kill one of these." Phil nodded at the daimon. "Bigger than this one. Mother of God they must be like human Howitzers!" "Hey... Hey, guys... This is Ino-Kia," she said to nobody in the room. She started to crawl forward on her hands, slowly, grabbing at Donna's legs and missing by a mile."I was on the fourth floor... There was one of those... like, those gerbil tube bridges there... and there's like a whole other building that..." Donna calmly walked backwards to stay out of the daimon's reach, and the daimon kept crawling toward her. "You know, I think it's where we're supposed to be looking for, you know, the thing... and there's some assholes over here and I'd appreciate it if you tore their arms off and beat them to death with 'em. Okay? Okay. Bai bai. Click." "Either she's talking to her imaginary friend again," Phil translated, "Or there are more of these nearby and she called in reinforcements. I would have told you to stop her if we even could." "...hate you guys..." "And she hates us." Donna wiped more blood off her face. "Yeah, well, we hate her too." "I found an outlet!" Nadine called, holding the power drill proudly. Donna nodded and stepped on the daimon's back to pin her down. Nadine saw the pool of yellow blood and the crawling, wounded, hateful creature, winced, and knelt over. It was a monster, clearly evil, clearly enjoyed causing pain, and if it wasn't killed while weakened it would probably regenerate back into a ball of bulletproof terror, and Hotaru and Sailor Moon and whoever all the others are could kill them and it was clearly right... but, she still couldn't put a drill to a humanoid creature's head and bore into it. So Philip did it for her while she and Donna closed their eyes and Bill closed one. The creature died and its mass vanished, Donna's foot was suddenly in midair and when it fell she crushed the pink Hello Kitty cell phone the daimon reverted back to. Around them, the pools of yellow blood started to smoke as they dissolved. "And..." Philip looked up to Shinobu and Minori, "That's how that gets done." The radios on the cops' belts flared to life. "...ficer Tsukihito, I don't know if anyone can hear me, the metropolitan police headquarters are under attack, it's, there's some kind of monsters, most of the people here are behaving unusually, they appear immune to gunfire, I've barricaded myself in on the eighth floor of the offices..." "Tsukihito, this is Minori, we've just killed one of those things over at the station, Have the monsters moved recently?" "Minori? Man, I'm glad to hear someone, the radios were all out for what felt like forever and everyone is gone! And I don't know if they're moving, I can't see them, but I don't hear them moving around any more." Shinobu puffed his cheeks and blew. "Well, that was nice... think you can do that a few more times? If we help out more?" "Oh sweet mother of God no." Upstairs, they heard stomping noises. "Okay, okay, let me catch my breath, think of a plan..." Donna said, wiping he blood off again. "Maybe if we set up some kind of ambush..." They heard daimons descending, and without saying a word all started to walk towards the back and the stairs down to the parking garage. "Maybe we could electrocute them or something, maybe that would work?" Nadine asked "I dunno, maybe? Me and Donna didn't see any Senshi with electrical attacks, so I dunno." "Jupiter's the one with lightning, she uses Sparkling Wide Pressure." Minori glanced around and coughed. "Or, so I heard." They were on the first floor and though they couldn't see the front lobby they could faintly hear it echoing off the walls. They could hear it when a daimon said "Stairs are for losers, losers!" and shortly afterward the WHUMP associated with a daimon jumping off a balcony into a first-floor lobby. "Okay, okay, electricity. Have to shock a whole bunch of daimons. If it will work without being magic." "And if we leave they go down into the holding cells and puree all the high school kids." Nadine shook her head. "We're gonna die, aren't we?" "No, we can pull this one out..." said Donna, trailing off to hear the sounds of combat. A strike, a dodge, a blast, and a demise. And then, faint but distinct: "The herald of a new age, I am Sailor Uranus!" And after that: "And I am Sailor Neptune, appearing elegantly." Philip and Shinobu looked at each other. "We need to get the hell up out of here," Phil said. "Uranus and Neptune are here. They fight daimons, and that's good. Remember what I said about human Howitzers and how they want to kill us?" Nadine continued. "And how you know there's bigger stuff in play here than weapons charges and you've got bigger problems than us as proven by Miss Cell Phone?" Shinobu nodded. "Yeah, an honor to work with you, Asteroid Senshi, and I look forward to explaining your awesome Senshi powers to my supervisors as well as all of the exciting doujinshi Minori will undoubtedly draw of you and your wacky adventures with the Actual Senshi, but we've got a building full of monsters, you're not getting that rifle back, and we're getting the hell out of here!" And at that all of them, even Bill, ran down the stairs. * Sailor Moon slurped her paper cone of water, slowly, never taking an eye off the kinori sitting in front of her. Its lips weren't really suited to drinking out of a cup, so it had to awkwardly flip upwards and splash the contents into his mouth, but while he did this he kept at least one eye on Sailor Moon and Chiba Mamoru next to her, laying on a table, at all times. In the fracas, Mamoru had taken a really nasty hit from the boxing-daimon (named, appropriately, Boxing) that knocked him out of both his Tuxedo Kamen transformation and consciousness in general. He could transform back and heal himself, he'd only been out for a few minutes, but they had to wait out the 'recharge' time you had to go through to change back into a Senshi. And they were drinking water from the water cooler that a daimon Sailor Venus had dragged over to them, and staring at a kinori but making no aggressive move. "You feeling okay, dude?" Daimon-Venus asked of Mamoru. He nodded weakly and she continued pacing around the floor. Moon had been worried that even if the daimon wasn't trying to kill them with lasers, she would kill them with love and medical malpractice like 'Nurse Minako', but so far she'd been patient to let Moon deal with it. It was weird, Usagi thought, that a daimon could think it was a Sailor Senshi, and that there was absolutely no inner conflict. She liked Sailor Moon, she liked the kinori and the daimons, and the way she resolved this was the that last person to attack either one of them was the evildoer, simple as that. Which was why she was in the room as a kinori and they weren't attacking each other, because as soon as one of them made an attack, D-Venus would kick the hell out of them. Moon knew she and Mamoru couldn't beat a kinori, so she had to tell D-Venus to stay here and patrol. Moon wasn't about to start summoning youma and wearing an evil red dress and driving a hatchback, but she had to admit this daimon was pretty nice even if she did act kinda like a mental patient, and wondered if the others would object to keeping her around. "Ooh!" D-Venus cooed at no visible stimulus. "Oh, you guys hear that?" Moon and the kinori both shook their heads. "Oh, turns out we're in the wrong building, they got a gerbil tube on the next floor to go over there, and that's where we're all supposed to be." She pointed to the kinori, and then to Mamoru. "Can you keep an eye on him while me and Sailor Moon head next door?" The kinori nodded and grinned, and Sailor Moon spoke out. "No! He's getting worse, I think. He... needs a nurse." "Oh! Well, did we bring any nurses with us?" "Of course!" Moon nodded and smiled. "Sailor Venus, you're an RN!" Mamoru glared at her. "Of course I am!" D-Venus smacked her head. "That was ditzy of me. Okay, we'll stay here, and you," she pointed at the kinori, "go next door. We'll catch up!" Sailor Moon waved to the kinori as he left. * Twenty-nine seconds after the four Hoffmann agents fled to the garage, Hotaru and Sailor Chibi-Moon arrived at the front door of the station. The two of them saw Uranus and Neptune and gasped in unison, but didn't turn around fast enough to avoid Uranus and Neptune seeing them. Hotaru held out her Glaive and Chibi-Moon took a defensive stance, Uranus readied her Sword and Neptune her Mirror. They stared at each other in a tense stand-off, neither willing to move until Sailor Uranus got shot in the back of the head. She whirled around to see who had fired and Neptune addressed the two flatly. "Let's just agree that whatever it is that we will do to each other, we will do it when we're not overrun by daimons." Chibi-Moon looked to Hotaru, who nodded sluggishly, and the two Outer Senshi leapt to the second floor from a standing start. There were five daimons here, and at least twelve kinori, and the two Outer Senshi were in rare form, Uranus slashing the magic-resistant kinori to pieces with her Space Sword and Neptune damaging daimons and providing suppressing fire. Hotaru and Chibi-Moon crept forward with nowhere near the speed of Uranus and Neptune. Chibi-Moon lead them and Hotaru followed, looking mostly at her feet. They found a hallway sprayed in blood, both normal red human blood and smoking yellow blood, but not much else as they investigated the area. Hotaru was lethargic and had to be prompted to do most things, and Chibi-Usa knew exactly why -- she was wired and anxious and paranoid for the same reason. When they got to the interrogation rooms, one of the doors was rattling while someone on the other side said "Let me out! What's going on there?" Hotaru sighed deeply, but she didn't have to be prodded to slice the doorknob away and let the door spill open. Inside was what Chibi-Moon saw as a weary-looking man in a rumpled shirt, stained tie, and black plastic glasses, and Hotaru saw as a short grey alien with a big head and big eyes and the same stained tie. "Nakami?" He looked between the two costumed girls, confused. "Have we met before?" Chibi-Moon started to say something, probably to keep their secret identity secret, but Hotaru cut her off. "Yes we did. I'm Hotaru. Sailor Saturn." He squinted. "What? I... ohhh, ohhh, I think I see it. Hotaru, you're okay? Nadine is going to be very happy to see you. She was worried." "I'm... sorry." "Don't be sorry, she..." He rubbed his forehead. "Can I continue this in a bit? I have to pass out now." And at that his eyes shut and he toppled forward, his human illusion melting before Chibi-Moon's eyes. Hotaru dropped the Glaive against the wall and grabbed his head before it hit the ground. "How do you know a fraal?" Chibi-Moon wondered aloud. * "This car is magic," Bill said, caressing the leather interior of the 2000GT. "You know, at this point in the chop-busting procedure," said Donna underneath an ice pack, "I would say you are stupid and this belonged to a cop. But screw it, I have seen magic cell-phone demons and magic schoolgirls, this is a magic car." "And it handles great, too," Philip said from behind the wheel. "The car finds those who are in need of a quick getaway, spirits them to freedom, and then whoosh!" Bill fanned his hands beside his face. "It flies off to the next imperiled soul. The legend... of Magicar." "Coming in summer '96. A Steven Spielberg production. No children under thirteen admitted without parent, guardian, or Sailor Senshi." Phil said in his best 'fine print' voice. "Well, it looks like someone tried to ground the magic car." Nadine leaned forward and dug out a long metal object. "See? The Club. Keys are still in it." She examined the keyring and turned over several rubber keychains: two car shapes with the phone numbers of garages on them, a turquoise violin advertising the Tokyo Philharmonic, a boot with the order number for an Italian restaurant, and a beige oval that really caught her interest. "Huh. 'If found, please return to Tenoh Haruka and Kaiou Michiru,' and then there's an address." "Damn it!" Donna punched the back of the seat. "What, what'd I do?" "The people who own this car have names now, and they probably just got it back at the police station, and she feels bad taking their stuff." "...shut up, Bill." "So what?" Philip shrugged. "This car is easily identifiable anyway, we have to get rid of it. We'll stash it somewhere, go to the address on the keychain... it's actually pretty close. We'll show up and tell them where we put it, say we FOUND it, and then we run like hell. I'm driving in random directions right now, it's not as if we have anywhere else to go." "That seems like a bunch of hassle and a bunch of risk to alleviate Donna's conscience," Bill said. "Well, we've already established this is a magic car. You remember those folk tales where Zeus takes the form of a filthy beggar and asks a rich king for money..." "And the guy says no and then Zeus throws off the disguise and smites the piss out of him?" "Yeah. I remember those too. We already have magical princesses, magic space kingdoms, witches, and demon summoners, I think we ought to play by the magical rules." He shifted in his seat as he took a U-turn, to point towards Haruka and Michiru's apartment building. "For safety's sake." * * * The daimons and kinori had been cleared away, and the Sailor Senshi now squared off on the helipad on top of the building, though Tuxedo Kamen couldn't quite recall how they got up there. One daimon had escaped; Sailor Moon told Daimon-Venus that they'd found what they were looking for, and the impostor Senshi had given her a hug and vanished off into the night to fight crime. Moon didn't know if she should tell the others, or if she'd even see the daimon again, but she's pretty sure she did the right thing. Uranus and Neptune stood at each other's side, Talisman's drawn. Hotaru stood in front of them, gaze averted, point of her Glaive stuck in the landing tarmac. Chibi-Moon stood in front of her, arms spread and lip quivering in defiance, and to either side were Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Kamen. Kamen was cradling the unconscious Itohiro Nakami like an infant. "Sailor Saturn," said Uranus. "The Soldier of Ruin," said Neptune. Hotaru wished she had some powerful and enigmatic rejoinder, but she didn't, and she was in no condition to think of one. All she could say was "...yeah." "You're not going to hurt her!" Chibi-Moon shouted. "She's our friend, that's all that matters!" "Chibi-Usa... don't, you don't need..." Michiru inhaled slowly and set her jaw as if she were about to say something painful. "...you're right. We're not going to hurt her." "You're not?" Moon said happily. "No they're not," said Hotaru, and she looked up from the floor and into Haruka's eyes. "I said I was the only one who can save the world from the Silent One. If they kill me now, I can't die to defeat him." "Yes." Uranus looked away, unable to meet Hotaru's gaze and lie to her. "Yes, that's why." Neptune saw Moon open her mouth to start an entire idealistic argument they didn't need and cut her off. "But whatever our reason is, we'll have to work together, and will have a chance to argue later." "Good. Look in your mirror, tell me where Ami is." "Saturn..." Moon asked, "what happened to Ami?" "They took her!" She slapped at the air and the Glaive vanished without her touching it. "One of the Men in Black took her. Statler or Waldorf. I couldn't stop him, he could just ignore everything we hit him with, he could blink around wherever he wanted." Without a threat to her friend to focus on, the floodgates opened up and Chibi-Moon's panic spilled out. "He, he bound her up and he said he was taking her to an evil crystal and he was going to make her evil too, like he didn't care if we knew because we couldn't stop him! And anytime we hit him it just went right through him and there wasn't anything we could do!" She ran to Moon's legs and held on to them fast, tears streaming from her cheeks. "Men in Black?" Uranus didn't recognize that as part of any kind of prophecy, and the fact that the surface of Neptune's mirror was a uniform black when she tried to scry on Ami's location didn't help. "I saw him before! I knew they were after me! I saw what they could do!" Hotaru fell backward and sat down, wrapping her arms around her legs. Her Sailor Saturn costume flickered and fell from her like shredded wrapping paper, showing her plain black clothes underneath. "He could read minds and teleport and I didn't say anything! This is my fault!" "Hotaru! This isn't your--" "Don't!" Hotaru cut Moon off, sobbing. "Don't tell me it's not my fault! I should have told you something and I didn't, I should have let you all know you were in danger and I didn't and you didn't do anything to prevent it because I was stupid, and I put Ami and Chibi-Usa in danger just by being there without more backup because I knew he would, would come for me and anyone with me!" She choked up a little. "I shouldn't have even stayed at the shrine!" Uranus knelt in front of her and reared back her hand to slap the girl across the face, but found she couldn't, and grabbed Hotaru's cheeks, yanking them to force her to make eye contact. Moon moved to stop her, but Neptune warned her away. "It doesn't matter if it's your fault!" Uranus barked. "It happened and the only thing we care about is what happens next. Don't tell me how you screwed up, tell me how you're not going to screw up again, and that's going to be how we find Ami. Okay?" Hotaru nodded. "Okay. Now, stand up." Uranus let go and stood herself. "Did he say where he took her?" "Back to 'his place'. He said he had an 'evil crystal', but that was all." "There are a lot of those," Moon said to some dismay. "And what do you know about them? How do they use the abilities you said?" Hotaru looked off to the side and bobbed back and forth, thinking. "I think they can step into one shadow and out of another, I don't know how far. They can read minds, but, one at a time, and not mine, and they don't like me because of it. And if they see an attack coming it just goes right through them." "So if they were surrounded they couldn't use their abilities effectively?" Hotaru nodded. "So if we remain in large groups we should be fine." She nodded again. "And when we sleep tonight we should do so in a group and keep people awake as watch in case one comes by to abduct us in our sleep. Correct?" "Yeah. That's what we should have done." "So that's what we will do. And if we keep pursuing the Pharaoh, we will find Ami as well. And since that's what we're going to do, it does not matter if we cannot find her, we know she will be brought to us." "And then we can make her better like you did to me, right?" asked Chibi-Moon. "I see no reason why we wouldn't try to recover her." Hotaru and Chibi-Moon didn't exactly look elated, but they looked a bit happier, and Uranus nodded to Moon as if to say 'see, this is how people accomplish their goals using things other than blind unthinking idealism.' "Venus, Mars and Jupiter are underground right now, so we can't use the communicators, but when they come out where should we meet?" "Well..." Neptune sighed like she knew she was about to say something she was going to regret, "our apartment has a lot of space we don't even use, if it means the safety of the mission..." "No!" Uranus said. "We can't go back to our place yet. My keychain was in the car when the daimon stole it and that has our address on it, remember? The Death Busters probably have it staked out right now." "We can stay with me," Kamen said, "I have some room I don't use. If someone doesn't mind sleeping on a cot in the kitchen." "Good," said Haruka, "Now we know at least we have somewhere to sleep." She looked down from Kamen's face to what he was holding. "Now, what's with the sleeping alien?" * * * "Why does finding anything in Tokyo have to be such a pain in the ass?" Bill muttered as the four of them walked out of the elevator. "Because they don't have street names," Nadine said, "I thought we went through this." "Yeah, I was still wondering why they did that." They came to a stop outside the apartment they were seeking, and Philip shushed them. "Okay. We're here. We don't know this was their car, or if they stole it like us, so, I am going to ask them what kind of car they own in my most authoritative voice. This is a really, really nice building, with very wealthy, very high-class people that are miles above all of us, and I'm going to have to ask that you two," he pointed at Bill and Donna, "not say anything, and stay out of sight unless something goes wrong. Got it?" "Got it." "Okay." Phil rapped his knuckles on the door, then noticed the apartment actually had a doorbell and pressed that. After another thirty seconds, he pressed it again, and again after another wait. "Looks like nobody's home." "No, no, I think I hear something..." He pressed his ear to the door, then rapped on it again and called out in Japanese, "Kaiou-san? Tenou-san? Are you in there, is everything all right?" No response, and Phil started fiddling with the keys. "I'm going in there, I hear someone, I don't want little old lady Kaiou-slash-Zeus dying of a heart attack on the kitchen floor while I walk away... here we go!" The door swung open, he flicked on the lights, and whistled. "This place is gargantuan..." he said, "Oh, I think that noise was the TV... aaaand everyone get in here anyway." "Wait, what's going on, why are we going into these people's apartme-- oh my God this place really is gargantuan." Nadine whistled. "This place would cost a fortune in Boise, they have to be laying out like a hundred grand a week!" The four of them filed in the the vast, palatial living room. Phil closed the door behind them, then pulled a framed photo off a bookshelf that he could see from the door and presented it to Nadine. "Do you recognize these two people?" Nadine scrutinized the picture, squinted, lifted a pair of imaginary glasses. "Uh, a woman with greenish-blue hair, a blonde dude, and they're leaning on a yellow car that I gather is the 'magicar'. I'm guessing she is either Michiru or Haruka, and then he's her boyfriend?" "Oh, right, right, you wouldn't see the... Okay, what if I told you they were both women..." "I'd ask if there were such a thing as 'drag kings' and suggest Blondie was one of the greats," Bill interjected. "...because that is Sailor Neptune and that is Sailor Uranus. And yes Bill, there are such things as drag kings. Get your mind out of Idaho for a while." "Where, I don't... Oh. Oh!" She handed the picture back to Philip; Bill and Donna had never seen Uranus or Neptune face to face and so had to take his word for it. "I see it now. But how do..." Philip grinned, and she punched him in the arm. "Yeah, well, I'm glad I went to that wedding, you know!" "So this apartment... is owned by people trying to kill Hotaru. The human Howitzers. And we're standing in it why?" asked Donna. "Because it's not owned by Uranus and Neptune, it's owned by Michiru and Haruka. As in they turn it off before they come in here." "And one of us is going to be waiting by the door with a sock full of batteries when they come in?" Donna giggled. "Philip Montgomery Akens, you magnificent bastard!" "I was going to say 'confront, disarm, subdue, and interrogate,' but if you can find that many batteries, sure." "Plus," Bill called from the kitchen, "If they don't show up, we trash their apartment. They wanna kill a little girl, they don't deserve to get their damage deposit back. Who wants sandwiches, I am going to raid the HELL out this fridge." --- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * B O N U S C O N T E N T * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * There are Senshi of planets, warriors and guardians of their population and their power. The hearts of stars burn with similar power, but as yet none have come close enough to harness it without being incinerated. A black hole Senshi would theoretically possess magical power hundreds of thousands of times greater then Sailor Moon, but as the magical energy originates inside the singularity it would be unable to escape the black hole's gravitational pull, leaving a Senshi whose transformation sequence would last until the heat death of the universe; constantly approaching completion without ever reaching it. The power of dark matter is harnessed by any practitioner of magic, or anything that passes through a dark matter gateway, or at Progress Level 7 or greater anyone using a dark matter reactor or stardrive. The most recent WMAP observations have indicates that 4% of the universe is ordinary matter, such as planets, stars, black holes, and clouds of hydrogen or helium. 22% of the universe is dark matter. 74% is dark energy, a vast power source, the cause of the universe's expansion, totally unguarded, free to be tapped by the practitioners of the dark arts and the forces of chaos. NEW ARCANE MAGIC FE SKILL: ENTROPOMANCY Name Stat: Cost Entropomancy 13 > Ex Timor Ex Nihilo PER 6 > Wrack WIL 3 > Anchor of Disarray INT 5 > Futility of Effort WIL 4 > Spatial Stagnation INT 5 > Annul the Soul PER 6 > Deaf Eye PER 3 Entropomancy is a school of magic that harnesses dark energy to affect the world. Its spells focus on chaos, decay, and destruction. The 'Voynich Manuscript' and 'Eighth Testament of Zoicite', the seminal texts on the subject, both speak of "the decapitated queen upon an empty throne in the cold, dead kingdom [the Eighth Testament uses the phrase 'dark kingdom'], eyeless and mindless of the treasures of decay in her empty vault." Entropomancy is always phrased as power stolen from a dead or inattentive ruler, something the user has no right to possess but seizes anyway; nobody, not even the authors, is really sure why. Entropomancy uses an additional power source beyond FX Energy Points: Life Energy Points (LEP), drained from other sentient living creatures. Each spell except Drain Energy requires a sacrifice of LEP; a Marginal sacrifice is 1 point, an Ordinary sacrifice is 3 points, a Good sacrifice is 7 points, and an Amazing sacrifice is 15 points. Offering a sacrifice greater than what is required gives a cumulative -1 bonus to the skill check, a sacrifice less than required gives a cumulative +3 penalty. Entropomancy practitioners can hold a number of stored LEP equal to three times their Achievement rank, or spend it directly from a nearby friendly youma or Dark Locus. An Entropomancer may find that he has too many stored LEP and not enough energy to spend them with, or find that the skill he needs for the task is outside Entropomancy's purview. Once per round as a normal action, an Entropomancer may attempt a PER feat check to convert stored LEP to either FX or Psionic energy points, his choice. On an O/G/A success, he gains 2/2/3 energy and loses 5/3/3 LEP. On a Failure, he loses 3 LEP to no effect. Entropomancy gives unique insight to other reality-bending abilities; a character who has Entropomancy may choose another FX or psionic broad skill he has, he purchases all skills under that broad skill for 1 fewer skill point. EX TIMOR EX NIHILO (cost 6, PER) 1 FX Energy Point + Good sacrifice This skill cannot be used untrained. This skill functions exactly as detailed in "Chapter 9: Double Header". WRACK (cost 3, WIL) 1 FX Energy Point + no sacrifice Wrack is the basic skill of Entropomancy, and the simplest means of gathering LEP to power other Entropomancy skills, Wrack forcefully steals the life force of other organic sentients. It has a range of 10/20/40. Against targets with no FX or Psionic energy pool, the attack deals d4+1s/d4+2s/d6+2s, and for every 3 Stun damage inflicted, cumulatively, the user gains 1 LEP. Against Adepts, Mindwalkers, or FX or Psionic talents, the attack takes 2/3/4 FX or Psionic energy points (a victim who has both chooses one to be drained) and changes them directly to LEP. (X) Increased Effect: At rank 4, the stun damage inflicted becomes d4+2s/d6+2s/d8+2s. At rank 7, the energy drain becomes 3/4/5. At rank 10, the stun damage becomes 2d4+2s/2d6+2s/2d8+2s. ANCHOR OF DISARRAY (cost 5, INT) 1 FX Energy Point + Ordinary sacrifice This skill cannot be used untrained. Not simply another means of gathering life energy, the Anchor of Disarray sows chaos and turmoil among humanity and corrupts places meant sacred. Anchor of Disarray converts a leypoint, also known as a Crystal Point or Feng Shui Site, into a Dark Locus. Finding a leypoint to corrode is not difficult, they're actually quite common wherever humans or other sentients regularly travel. Finding a leypoint of sufficient quality to be called a Crystal Point or Feng Shui Site, however, is a bit more difficult. To find a leypoint, make a Lore -- Occult Lore check and an Investigate -- Search check, taking the lower quality result as the quality of the leypoint discovered. If one check fails and one succeeds, the result is a Marginal leypoint; if both fail, no leypoint is discovered. This search, unassisted, takes about 12 hours. In a pinch, an unshielded dark matter reactor always functions as a Marginal leypoint. Every leypoint has an associated penalty to the skill check to convert it, more powerful leypoints are harder to convert. Conversion takes ten minutes but cannot be interrupted. Dark Loci are empowered, literally, by chaos and strife: a Dark Locus fills with one LEP for every five stun or two wounds, and two LEP for each mortal damage inflicted by and on normal human beings within the Dark Locus's area of effect. Damage inflicted by or on people with Psionic or FX Energy pools does not count, nor does violence directly instigated by the Entropomancer. To facilitate the charging of a Dark Locus, normal (no FX or psionics) humans within the area of a Dark Locus of Ordinary or better quality gain the Temper flaw as long as they remain in the area. The flaw is at 2 points for Ordinary, 4 points for Good, and 6 points for an Amazing Locus. People already possessing the Temper flaw have it upgraded, but never past 6 points. While the Entropomancer is within the area of effect, he may spend LEP directly from the Dark Locus as if it were his own. The Dark Locus can be dispelled by anyone with any FX or Psionic talent and three minutes to spare without any special training, so it is a good idea to keep them guarded. LEYPOINT / DARK LOCUS QUALITY CHART Quality Difficulty Capacity Radius(m)* Marginal +0 20 12 Ordinary +1 40 24 Good +3 80 48 Amazing +5 160 96 *Increase Radius by 50% when the Locus has half of its LEP capacity filled, and double it when it is filled to capacity. FUTILITY OF EFFORT (cost 4, WIL) 1 FX Energy Point + Marginal sacrifice This skill cannot be used untrained. All action is futile, all efforts doomed to failure at the inevitable hand of time and decay. Accomplishment is an illusion, destruction the only constant. Morose, and also the means by which Entropomancers defend from attack. This elemental, fundamental futility is harnessed to doom any effort made against them. This skill's effect lasts for ten minutes per activation, and increases all the user's resistance modifiers by +1/+2/+3, making it more difficult for any skills to be used against him. (X) Increased Effect: At rank 4, the duration extends to 20 minutes. At rank 6, the resistance modifier bonus becomes +2/+3/+4. At rank 8, the duration extends to an hour, and at rank 12, the bonus increases again to +3/+4/+5. SPATIAL STAGNATION (cost 5, INT) 2 FX Energy Points + Ordinary sacrifice This skill cannot be used untrained. The wise and spiritual say that one is all and all is one, that all places and things are unified. The Entropomancers see this as proof that change, improvement, and motion are impossible, as you're never truly going anywhere. On using this skill, the Entropomancer marks the point he's standing on. Once in the next 24 hours/72 hours/week (O/G/A) or until he uses the skill again, he may willingly recall himself to the marked point, appearing to flicker and vanish from the place he previously occupied and reappear the place marked. But he didn't really vanish or return anywhere, he's never really moved anywhere. (>) Additional Marks: At rank 6, the user can keep two points marked at once. At rank 12, he can manage four. ANNUL THE SOUL (cost 6, PER) 1 FX Energy Point + Amazing sacrifice This skill cannot be used untrained. Mind control is an easy and dull task. Thoughts and emotions exist as chemical transmitters in the brain, and direct manipulation of these creates the desired response in the subject. Mesmerism, Illusion, several Faith skills, and even the gardhyi Shadow FX all attempt to control the mind, but the Entropomancer realizes that even though the soul is not a part of the mind, it is still energy, and can still be manipulated. This skill requires a complex skill check; the sacrifice need only be paid once but the FX point must be paid every time. It is affected by the target's WIL resistance modifier, but that can be increased or decreased based on the victim's physical and mental condition. The number of successes required is equal to the victim's PER score. Each roll represents six hours of enigmatic taunting, evil laughter, and emotional manipulation that requires complete and unfettered access to the victim. While someone is under the effect of this spell, they are utterly what their master wants them to be. They agree with them about everything and every course of action as if they had arrived at that position through their own rational course of thought. The victim obeys the master's every command without the need for a skill check, but carries these commands out to the spirit, not foolishly to the letter. They will act independently and intelligently in order to make sure their master's desires are met, in the way a normal but loyal friend and ally would. If their master orders the victim to love them, the love they feel is as genuine as any they ever have; if ordered to hate, they truly and honestly despise that person. In short, there are no mental loopholes, hindrances, weaknesses, or peccadilloes from the control process. Of course, for all their talk about how easy it is to alter the energy of the soul, Entropomancers don't often talk about how damn hard the soul pushes to snap back to its original position. Every week, the Entropomancer maintaining the spell must pay an amount of LEP equal to the victim's PER score times the number of weeks they have been controlled -- for a victim with a 10 PER, pay 10 on the first week, 20 the second, 30 the third, etc. If this amount is not paid on time, the victim is entitled to a Resolve -- Mental Resolve check to break free every hour until the check succeeds or the full amount is paid. If the check does succeed, the victim is completely aware of what was done with him and is going to be INCREDIBLY pissed. DEAF EYE (Cost 3, PER) 1 FX Energy Point + Marginal sacrifice This skill cannot be used untrained. Life is a sham and existence a joke. The Entropomancer sees that, but not everyone else does, and sometimes it's a good idea to avoid letting "everyone else" see you doing things that would result in them coming after you with golf clubs and sawed-off pool cues. Or, if you can't hide, convince people that what you're doing is as meaningless as everything else in their existences. Deaf Eye is used simultaneously with other FX or Psionic skills. When used, it creates a reaction similar to the Taioron Reaction provoked by a youma: people who see the FX skill being used will either not notice it, or conclude that it's nothing to worry or care or talk about. Individuals with FX or Psionic energy are never affected; player characters are never affected (come on, it wouldn't be fun); normal humans who would be entitled to resist the Taioron Reaction may make an Awareness -- Intuition check to evade the spell's effects. The spell confers a +0/+1/+2 (O/G/A) step penalty to this check, and each level of sacrifice above Marginal adds another +1 step penalty instead of giving a bonus to the Deaf Eye skill roll. An affected individual can be made to see the masked effect if shown individually, but not if addressed as a group. An unaffected individual won't get a crowd of affected ones to suddenly see something by standing on the hood of a car and shouting "Look over there! It's a big dome covered in red goo-chicks!" but she could take someone aside, point at said dome and say "Hey, don't you notice something over there?" (X) Increased Effect: At level 6, the penalty to the Awareness -- Intuition check is +1/+2/+3. At level 12, it becomes +2/+3/+4.