Sailor Moon 4200: Chapter Sixteen

On Sunday night, clouds swept in from the east and a steady, sullen rain began to fall. The next morning, the streets were a sea of umbrellas as thousands of students trudged to school for the first day of term.

After Makoto had left, glumly clutching her own umbrella, Seki stood at her window, looking out through the sheets of rain. Her mind was not on the weather, or on schools. She was thinking about a newsie report that she had heard while Makoto was in the bath. She did not know what it meant, but it troubled her.

The report had been a light, vaguely humorous one, but somehow disturbing. It seemed that a number of antiquities collectors—and even one or two museums—were claiming that on Friday evening, parts of their collections had come to life. Inert objects suddenly started glowing…or vibrating…or playing music. It only lasted a few minutes, and then the ancient artefacts were dead once more. Nobody could explain it. The newsie announcer chuckled patronisingly and moved on to the next story.

Seki stared out into the rain and wondered. The announcer had not gone into specifics, but he had said that the reanimated objects were hundreds of years old. That, Seki thought, would probably make them relics of Crystal Tokyo.

The Serenity Council met in a building that would have looked much like an office tower, were it not for the walls around it and the ‘W’ Division guards stationed at the gate. Most of the building was, indeed, government office space. But on the fourth floor of the Council Chambers there was a simple room with a table shaped like a hollow oval, broken at one end, and fifteen chairs spaced around it. In front of each chair was a pad of paper, three pens (blue, black and red), and a secure socket to plug in a commset. That was all.

Today’s Council meeting had begun at seven o’clock in the morning, and it finished in ninety minutes. There were no speeches, no clashing ideologies, and only three issues that came to a vote (by a simple show of hands). The chairman liked to keep business moving, and demanded that his councillors come well-prepared.

After the meeting ended and the councillors filed out, the chairman himself lingered, apparently paging through something on his commset. Once two particular councillors had left—Numbers Thirteen and Fifteen, the directors of ‘A’ and ‘C’ Divisions—he gave a short nod to three of the others and they sat back down.

“Something the Holy Innocents shouldn’t hear?” inquired Number Nine archly. She was the director of ‘P’ Division, a woman in her mid-thirties with a face that fell naturally into a scowl.

The chairman gave her a long, inscrutable look. “The time may be approaching when we no longer need uninitiated members of the Council. But the time is not yet. For now, Thirteen and Fifteen serve their purposes. After all”—he gave a thin smile—“it was Fifteen who first alerted us to the presence of Moon Cats in the city.”

“ ‘I was giving it a piece of fish, and it said thank you,’ ” quoted Nine, shaking her head. “Spare me. Calling them ‘holy innocents’ is too close for comfort.”

“It’s nothing definite. But…there are indications that Thirteen might be digging into some dangerous areas.”

Three hesitated. “As I said, nothing definite. We know that she’s aware that she isn’t being told everything. She’s challenged the Council about it a few times. But lately…” He paused in thought. “If anything, lately her behaviour has been too clean.”

Nine blinked, and then gave an unpleasant smile. “Oh, yes. For the clever ones, too clean can be dirtier than dirty, can’t it? I know.”

“Enough,” snapped the chairman, before Nine could answer back. “Keep an eye on her, and keep me informed. But for now, we have other matters to discuss.”

“We do,” said Five, shooting him a keen look. “And apropos of that, how are we doing on finding a replacement for Number Twelve?”

The chairman shook his head impatiently. “The Permanent Council Commission is weighing candidates. As you know. When a councillor dies in office, they like to take their time.”

“I am aware,” the chairman growled. “There have been…strongly-worded discussions. But—” He broke off, and resumed in a milder tone. “We need someone who can be initiated, and that takes care.”

“I suppose there’s no possibility that we could initiate Thirteen or Fif— No, of course not.” Five shook her head. “Sorry. A silly thought.”

“Let’s move on,” said the chairman with studied patience. “We’re here so I can give you your instructions.” He looked around the table, and the other three shifted in their seats expectantly. “We are about to begin a major new operation. ‘S’ Division will take the lead, but ‘P’ will have some involvement…and I think ‘W’ may be able to play a useful role as well.”

“In a sense. We are going to war…against the Sankaku Clans. And this time, there will be no holding back, and no quarter. The Sankaku are about to become a thing of the past.”

Three blinked. “That’s…a welcome move. But why now? What’s brought this on?”

The chairman glowered. “They have been getting above themselves…and poking their noses into areas that are not acceptable.”

In another room not far away, Toyotomi Serabi, Number Thirteen, listened to their voices with keen attention. Her new alliance was paying off: she had learned more in the last ten minutes than in the previous three months.

Her allies had provided her with a tiny transmitting device and promised her that its signal would not be detected by any Council monitoring. She had casually wedged it into a corner under the table, all but unnoticeable, during this morning’s meeting.

Now it seemed that she would be able to pay her allies back sooner than anyone had expected. “All-out war against the Sankaku,” she murmured under her breath. “What the hell is going on?”

And that was only one revelation among many. The discussion about Fifteen and herself had been almost as enlightening. At first amusing, and then annoying…but then there was that tantalising mention of initiation. Apparently, it was something the other councillors had been through, but not her or Fifteen. Telling them the truth about what was going on, perhaps?

It was definitely interesting to learn that Fifteen, like her, was deliberately being kept on the outside. But why? She would have to consider approaching him…carefully, of course.

Iku made her way to school with extreme care. She was hidden under her umbrella, faceless among all the others heading back for the start of term, but still her heart was pounding. She was not altogether certain how she was going to make this work…but she knew that she had to make it happen somehow.

She had been planning it for weeks, or at least telling herself that she was planning it. She’d worked out the route to take, anyway, and as she got close it was easy enough to just follow the other students. But routes aside…as she walked through the rain, splashing into puddles at unfamiliar corners, her heart was sinking. She didn’t know who to talk to when she got there. She hadn’t filled out the right forms. (Whatever the right forms were.) She wasn’t even wearing the right uniform—the sleeve piping was the wrong colour. There was no chance of just slipping in, no chance at all.

But set against all that was her awareness that something had to change. Her life had reached an—an “inflection point,” she’d heard it called. A pivotal time where nothing ahead could ever be the same again. She had a new life now. A new home. A new family. And she had Dhiti. Crazy, passionate Dhiti who had pulled her out of the hellhole of her old life and given her everything new, Dhiti who would have her total loyalty forever.

So she was going to find a way somehow, because she wanted this more than…more than anything she could remember. She was going to do it. She was going to change schools, she was going to go to the same school as Dhiti no matter what anyone said—

And then she rounded the corner and lifted her umbrella a fraction to see the gates of Aosagi Koukou, and instantly she knew that it was not going to happen.

Because standing there, leaning back casually against the wet stone, wearing a dark overcoat and an elegant hat, was Sharma Praket.

She did not try to hide. There was no point, she could see from the slight tilt of his head that he had seen her. Probably before she saw him.

She thought, for a moment, of running; but even as the thought occurred, she knew it would do no good. And besides…Queen Serenity had hinted to her that she needed to stop being afraid.

She walked up to him, stopped, and waited. After a second, she closed her umbrella so that she could see his face. The rain pattered on her skin and hair and she ignored it, because…because he did not look angry. He was smiling.

She blinked, and then blinked again as a drop of rain hit her in the eye. At least he had a hat to keep the drops off his face. It wasn’t fair.

He raised one eyebrow, looking at her, and nodded in understanding. “Inside,” he said. “The café over there.”

He led her through the door, and ordered tea for them both. He had clearly noticed what kind she liked. They sat down and Iku stared at him in silence until the tea arrived. He sipped his. She did not.

“So,” he said at last. “Did you have any idea how you were going to make it work?”

Praket nodded thoughtfully. “I am uncertain whether I am doing you any favours in telling you,” he said, “but Dhiti came to me and said that you might try this.”

He sipped his tea again without changing expression. “Obvious…yes, I’m afraid so. A fool? Of course not. You are loyal and it is clear that you have come to love Dhiti as a sister. It is also clear that you desperately want a break with your old life, and that includes your old school and the people there who would remind you of things you prefer to forget. Foolish…no. Merely inexperienced, I would say.”

He held up a single finger, and she stopped instantly. It was not out of fear, merely that she was coming to know him.

“You never actually asked if you could change schools,” he observed. “If you had, I could have told you that ‘O’ Division would not permit it. They have a strong preference, perhaps justifiable, for preserving continuity in cases such as yours.”

“I do not entirely agree with their reasons,” he went on. “But I would have given the same answer, for reasons of my own. Iku, you…” He paused. “In many senses you have become a part of our family. I am not quite your father, and you are not quite my daughter, but a bond is growing between us all. But, Iku, it is not a good thing to throw away everything about your old life. Trying to do so would leave you…an incomplete person. Do you understand me?”

“Well, I am reluctant to play the tyrant, but in this case we shall have to explore the reasons another time. You may not transfer to Dhiti’s school. For now, drink your tea; we need to go in another—” he glanced at his watch “—four minutes, if we are to get you back to your regular school on time.” He frowned, just perceptibly. “I believe I will be late for work this morning.”

Iku drank her tea, and then they left. Strangely, she did not feel upset any longer. She felt…relaxed.

Beth marched to school through the rain. She barely noticed that her feet and lower legs were soaking wet. Her shoulder was still stiff and sore, but she ignored that, too. She was too immersed in her inner pain.

She had failed again. Worse, in the battle at Aozora Park, she had actually attacked the people who were trying to help the Senshi. It was worse than making a mistake; she was becoming a…a liability.

Bendis had been full of irritated questions after the fight—Beth had slipped away without letting the cat know she was going—but Beth had been too sore and miserable to give her any sensible answers. Even today, after brooding about it for half the night, she had only a vague idea of what had gone wrong.

What it was, she thought, was that she could transform to Venus, but she couldn’t be Venus any more. She knew that didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was what she felt. Ever since Queen Serenity told her that she was really Aino Minako reborn, it was as if the Aino side of her had gone. And without that side…she had the form and the powers of Venus, but not the spirit.

So when she went to fight at Aozora Park, she was only pretending to be Venus. She knew Venus would do something wild and crazy, so she tried to be wild and crazy too. But when Venus did that, she always did the right thing. (Well, maybe not always. Often.) Whereas when Beth tried it…she lacked the instincts. Everything went wrong.

It occurred to her, distantly, that Venus was at her wild and crazy peak of success when she had Bendis telling her what to do. Whereas Beth hadn’t listened to Bendis much lately, had she?

She wondered if Artemis had helped Aino-sama to do cat things, long ago. It was hard to imagine; Artemis seemed so up-tight nowadays. But maybe he had been different when he was younger.

She ought to resign as a Senshi, she supposed. Could Senshi even do that? Maybe Ochiyo could find someone else and give the henshin wand to them…

She was so focused on her private misery that she bumped into another girl as she went through the school gates. “Oh, sorry,” she said automatically, and then realised, startled, that the other girl was Iku. “…Oh. Hi, Iku-chan.”

Iku stiffened, then visibly relaxed as she recognised Beth. “…Hello, Beth-san.”

Beth opened her mouth to continue, but suddenly she could think of nothing to say. After all these months, Iku was still an enigma to her.

“…Dhiti told me. I came, but I was late. It was over by the time I arrived.” Iku hesitated and then added timidly, “I heard you got hurt.”

“Oh, it’s, um. Not so bad.” Beth started to flex her shoulder, and winced. “I’ll be fine soon. Um. Iku-chan, do you ever—”

In another moment, she would have let it all spill out, confessing her doubts, her fears and her inadequacy. Iku would have listened in amazement and growing recognition, and realised that she could talk to Beth in ways that she could not share with any of the others, not even Dhiti. She would have talked about her fear of her own power and how little she understood it. In another few minutes they would have taken the first steps toward real friendship and understanding. From that first step, many things might have gone differently in the days to come, and perhaps the coming tragedy might have been avoided.

It never happened, because at that moment Nanako came up behind them, looped her arms around their shoulders with a happy greeting, and started talking non-stop about her vacation. Eitoku joined them a minute later and the four went into class together.

Kitada Masao arrived at work early. He was still getting back into the swing of his old job, after the time he had spent with ‘S’ Division, and he was putting in a lot of extra hours to catch up. His supervisor, Sachiko, approved of his initiative, and it seemed that she had almost forgiven him for his prolonged absence.

Office work was a lot more stable than spying, and almost never life-threatening (Sachiko notwithstanding). All the same, it lacked a certain something, and sometimes he wished he were back in the communications van, looking for lost cats.

Off in the background, a newsie report was playing: ‘P’ Division were still looking for a teenage boy who had disappeared after the monster attack on Friday. He ignored the distraction, flipped a page in his worksheet, tapped briefly at his computer, entered the results on the sheet, and turned to the next page.

A few desks away, Sachiko was talking on the commset. She sounded upset. “Who did you say?” she demanded. “Really? …Yes, Kyoko sends her regards. …Of course. …You what? …You can’t be serious!” Her voice was rising in pitch.

Masao knew the signs, and eavesdropped contentedly. She was furious, but she wasn’t furious with him. All was well with the world, he thought, and started another worksheet. This was his life now. Safe, comfortable work. Drinks with his teammates after work. Eventually, a comfortable retirement. To hell with spying.

His own commset blipped and he answered it automatically. “Kitada Masao, may I help you?”

“Back to work, Kitada,” said Captain Hiiro’s voice. “You’re on the clock again. Get your ass down here pronto.”

The comms van was no longer parked outside the Olympus, but a quick message to Aoiro on his way out told him where to go. Twenty-five minutes later, they were all assembled in the rear of the van—all except Mitsukai, he noticed.

He raised his eyebrows at that and Kuroi snapped, “Reassigned. Not important right now. Shut up and listen.”

Hiiro gave him a look and he subsided. Hiiro said mildly, “Mitsukai has been transferred to another project, ours not to reason why. But there’s a major operation beginning and it wouldn’t surprise me if we cross paths again.”

“Major operation?” repeated Masao. “Is that what you called me back for? You think I can, er, be useful?”

“Well, as to that,” Hiiro said, “when I said ‘major operation’ I mean major. Bluntly, we don’t have the manpower for it, so a whole lot of Irregulars are being activated. And when I say ‘a whole lot’ I mean, hundreds. Hundreds. I figured you’d get pulled back, since you’ve actually got some experience by now, so I nabbed you, ah, preemptively.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Hiiro admitted. “It seems the Sankaku Clans have annoyed someone high-up once too often. No idea how, or why. But the Powers That Be have decreed an end to mutual tolerance.”

“Oh. Um, wow.” Masao hesitated, his head reeling. “Um, that sounds a little outside the sort of experience I‘ve had so far.”

“Relax, Kitada. Nobody’s expecting you—or us—to be fighting pitched battles on the streets. If it comes to that, a little birdie tells me that ‘W’ Division are going to be involved. No, we’ll be doing what we do best. Intelligence work.”

Masao thought that over. There was really only one thing he could say. “Count me in.”

“Um—I should ask, what does this mean about our previous work? I mean, what about the Senshi?”

“Bigger fish to fry, Kitada,” said Aoiro breezily. “Give them no further mind.”

“By which he means,” said Hiiro, “that we damn well keep our eyes open. They messed with our minds, remember, and then they killed a Serry. We do not forget that. But right now…they move to the background.”

Hiiro grimaced. “Find me Pappadopoulos…or Artemis,” he said, “and we’ll talk.”

“Right.” Masao shook his head, still trying to take it all in. Hundreds of Irregulars being activated? That was going to cause chaos in Third Tokyo, with so many people suddenly being pulled away from their usual jobs.

With a sudden shock, he remembered Sachiko on the commset, earlier. Kyoko sends her regards. That was the activation response. Which meant…Sachiko was an Irregular, and she was being activated.

Later, when he got a moment to himself, he made a comm call of his own. It was to a number he’d never called before, one that changed every hour according to a scheme that he’d had to memorise.

Jiro answered almost immediately. “ ’Lo, Kitada-san,” he said jovially. “What’s up?”

Masao, once an innocent officer worker but now a committed double agent, told Jiro all about his reactivation…and about the coming government war upon the Sankaku. He did not leave anything out.

Jiro listened, and then said, “Okay. Don’ worry about it, Kitada-san. We knew already, and we’re makin’ plans to handle it. Got a few new resources ourselves, actually…might be a nice edge.”

“What, you think you’re our only source in the government? Not likely. Someone high-up gave us the word days ago. But ’s good to have confirmation.”

“Just relax for now, follow along. An’ gimme another call if anythin’ else comes up, hey?”

Jiro hung up without saying goodbye. Masao stared at the commset for a minute, then shrugged and got back to work.

“Not sure.” Kuroi shook his head. “Whoever it was, they had some good encryption…and some really good redirection schemes. I got the number he called, and the next two links beyond that. After that it hit something I couldn’t touch.”

“Yup.” Hiiro thought for a little, and smiled. “Good thing we called him back in, don’t you think?”

Suzue arrived at school in her regular uniform, but with a minor addition: a small badge on her chest. It was unobtrusive and designed to be completely within the bounds set by her school rules; but to anyone who came near, it was also very recognisable: the emblem of the Church of Serenity.

For a while, nobody noticed. At a glance, she looked normal enough, and there was no particular reason for anyone to pay attention. She had changed into her indoor shoes and was headed upstairs toward her classroom before she heard the first sharp, indrawn breath.

After that, it didn’t take long before she met a welcoming committee. The usual ringleaders were waiting on a landing: Kubota Rinako and Arita Mariko, and three of their cronies: two boys and another girl. Rinako was big and tough; Mariko was small and tough; the others were…mean.

Suzue looked her in the eye without flinching. “Very nice, thank you. And how was yours?”

“Oh, you know.” Rinako waved a hand casually. “Did this, did that. Passed the time.” She cocked her head. “Seems like you’ve been doing some things too. Forgetting some things, seemingly.”

“No,” Suzue said calmly. “Remembering some things, actually. Remembering that some things are important enough that you don’t hide them away forever.”

“I don’t think so. Hiding who I am, just on your say-so, that was the mistake. Well, I’ve decided—no more. This is who I am, and if you don’t like it, then that’s your problem…not mine.”

“Well, you know, I think,” said Rinako, “that you might be wrong about that. I think we may have to show you just how much it’s your problem.”

“Sure, I expected that.” Suzue continued to look directly into her eyes. “I won’t back down this time, Rinako-chan. If you try to hurt me, you’ll get some hurt in return.”

“Five against one?” said Mariko. “Don’t flatter yourself.” She started forward casually.

Suzue glanced around, startled, but she recognised the voice. Minoru and Keiko were just coming up the last few steps to stand on the landing beside her. As she stopped, Keiko muttered, “A little warning next time, Suzue-chan.”

Rinako stood looking at them for a few seconds, uncertainty showing on her face for the first time. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. “You’re not Loonies. You don’t have to be part of this.”

“It’s called friendship, Kubota-san,” said Keiko. “You probably wouldn’t understand.”

“But she’s a—” Rinako sighed. “All right. Doesn’t change anything. Let’s get this over with.”

“ ’Scuse me. Excuse me,” said another voice. “Coming through. Sorry to be late. Is there room for one more?”

Ochiyo came down the steps two at a time, behind Rinako and Mariko and the others. She stepped around them, almost tripping over one of the cronies’ feet, and stopped by Keiko’s side.

“Five against four, Kubota-san,” said Minoru softly. “You may win, but there’s definitely going to be some hurting. Sure you’re up for it?”

Rinako stared back at them, uncertain. Mariko put a hand on her arm and whispered something urgently. The moment hung in the balance.

And then there was a murmur of voices from above, and a new set of footsteps on the stairs. “All right, that’s enough,” said a man’s voice. Kawabata-sensei walked down, pushing through a crowd of excited onlookers, and stopped a few steps above the landing. He eyed the confrontation with jaded irritation. “Break it up, ladies,” he said. “And gentlemen. If I hear any more of this, I can promise that I will be deeply unhappy with all of you, no matter who started what. Now, get out of here.”

His look fell on Suzue, and his eyes sharpened as he noted her church pin. “Itagaki-kun,” he said. “I’ll see you in the staff room, in five minutes. Understood?”

“Yes, sensei,” she said, meeting his gaze. He showed no reaction; he merely turned and walked unhurriedly back upstairs.

In his wake, Rinako disappeared back downstairs. Mariko followed with a resentful scowl at the four, and the three cronies followed her. A sudden silence marked the disappearance of unnumbered spectators. Suzue, Keiko, Minoru and Ochiyo were left alone.

“Here and everywhere,” said Suzue calmly. “Sorry, Keiko-chan. I never thought to tell you, but…things have been busy the last few days.”

“Ha. Busy,” said Keiko sourly. “Yes, I remember.” She whirled suddenly on Ochiyo. “Aizawa-san, what about you? I didn’t know you and Suzue-chan were friends.”

“It’s a bit of a long story,” said Ochiyo. “We got talking over the vacation.”

“Just talking? You can’t be—” Minoru cleared his throat and Keiko paused. “Well. Um. Nice to, er, meet you. I’m Keiko, this is Minoru.”

“The mysterious boyfriend, revealed at last?” said Ochiyo with a grin. “How nice to see you’re actually real.”

Minoru flushed bright red. “Er. Thank you…I think? Aizawa-san, perhaps we can catch up another time. Right now, I think Suzue-chan has somewhere she needs to go.”

“Oh, dear. Yes,” said Suzue. “Ochiyo-chan, I’ll see you later? I think Sensei is about to be very unhappy with me.”

As she passed out of sight, Keiko said, “What the hell, Suzue-chan? You’re not safe to leave alone, suddenly?”

“Ha,” Keiko snorted. “She probably changed to…you know who…before school, and just put her uniform on over the top. They’d have needed bazookas to scratch her.”

Suzue blinked. “Oh. That would’ve been a good idea, wouldn’t it? I never thought of it.” But then she frowned. “No, it wouldn’t have been fair.”

“Fair,” repeated Suzue. “Look, we’ll talk about it later. We…have a lot to talk about, now you know, er, who I am.”

“We certainly do,” said Minoru meaningfully. Suzue winced; she had meant to call him about it, but the weekend had been full. Ignoring her expression, he went on, “Probably not here, though. After school?”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said with gratitude. “Right now, I’ve got to go see Kawabata-sensei. Bye…”

“If we don’t see you later,” Keiko called after her, “we’ll know he’s given you detention for the rest of the decade.”

Makoto walked away with the rest of the onlookers who had been gathered above the staircase landing. She had been watching Suzue face off against the five thugs, and wondering what to do about it.

Her immediate impulse had been to walk away and let Suzue take her lumps. But…well, more than two months had passed. It was a long time to nurse a grudge, even discounting the years she and Rei had been at loggerheads back in Crystal Tokyo.

It was not, she told herself firmly, that she was softening her stance. But, well, she had seen Suzue operating as Sailor Uranus a few times now. Even had her own neck saved by Uranus, once or twice. That was hard to ignore, no matter what obscenities the Loonies believed.

And also…Ochiyo had joined Suzue. And Ochiyo was someone Makoto was beginning to like.

Makoto was pretty sure that she wouldn’t have stepped into save Suzue from a beating. But…well, things were getting complicated.

Suzue checked the wall clock, and knocked on the staff room door promptly on time. Kawabata opened the door immediately. He glared down at her chest and said, “Inside, now.”

She stepped into the staff room, closing the door behind her. She had been here once before, years ago, after the first time she got beaten up for talking about her church in class. The place didn’t seem to have changed much since then: desks, filing cabinets, a little corner with armchairs and a coffee machine. A few other teachers were there, but after one quick glance up, they carefully ignored her.

“It seems,” said Kawabata, “that you are…inciting trouble this morning.”

She had to think about that for a moment. “Expressing an alternate point of view, sensei.”

“Really.” He eyed her for a moment, possibly trying to decide whether she was mocking him. “Explain that.”

“I just came to school, that’s all. If someone objected to that and wanted to pick a fight, they were inciting trouble, not me.”

“You don’t deny that that—” he gestured toward her pin “—is an inflammatory object? You walk around wearing that, girl, and anything that happens to you is your own fault.”

“No, sensei,” said Suzue. “And, um, this time I am contradicting you, sensei. People may have strong feelings about this—” she glanced down at her pin “—but that does not give them the right to attack me…and if they do attack me, it is not my fault. Any more than it’s a woman’s fault if she wears a sexy outfit and a man thinks that’s an invitation to attack and rape her. Sensei.”

Kawabata stared at her for a long time. From the stillness of the other teachers in the room, it was clear that they were listening in, too.

“Then I would point out that it is of a size and shape explicitly permitted by the school rule on religious emblems, sensei.”

“I’ll be discussing this with the headmaster. Don’t be surprised if he wants to talk to you, too.”

Seki spent the morning checking through her accounts. She had spent a lot of money setting up new identities for Makoto and herself, and buying necessities for the house—plus a new school uniform for Makoto—and there wasn’t much left in her emergency reserves. She made cautious contact with her tea supplier, arranging for a new supply of Darjeeling to be smuggled in from the Cuddalore enclave, but the net profit she’d get from the shipment wasn’t nearly enough. Without the income from the Olympus, sometime in the next two or three months, she was going to run out of money.

There was another matter nagging at the back of her mind, too. An idea that had popped into her head some time ago; she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or a bad one, for the thought wouldn’t go away. Shortly before noon, she found the business card Sadako had left her, and made a comm call.

“Oh, don’t go getting all superior. Listen, I was wondering if you can do me a favour. I want to make an appointment to talk to someone, and I’ve got no idea how to do it.”

“You want me to get you an appointment?” There was honest surprise in Sadako’s voice. “Who do you want to talk to? Are you thinking of getting into broadcasting too?”

“No,” said Seki levelly. “I want to make an appointment to speak to Chairman Fukuda.”

There was a long pause on the comm line. Then Sadako said, “Well. I thought I’d lost the capacity to be amazed. Are you serious?”

Seki thought for a moment. “I just have the feeling that…it’s time for the two sides to talk face to face, instead of fighting. We’ve never really tried that before, with any of our enemies, have we?”

“Yeah, but are you really sure of that? I think— I mean, I haven’t seen it in the fire or anything. But I just have the strong feeling that…somehow…it might end up helping us.”

Sadako did not answer for some time. At last she said, “If I still had my future sight, I might…might…be able to get you into his office. Without it…no, I don’t see any realistic way for an unknown woman to get a private appointment with the Chairman of the Serenity Council. Hmm…have you considered that one of your other friends might have a better chance?”

Seki stared at the commset, incredulous. “What, are you crazy? He’s a criminal, a terrorist, and he knows I don’t age. He’s probably worked out who I am. He’s the last person I ever want to see again!”

“I had thought,” said Sadako mildly, “that he was an old friend of yours.”

“Well, you can unthink that, right now. He—” Seki broke off, grumbling. “All right. He was a friend once…or at least someone I trusted. But I don’t see how I can keep on trusting someone who kept such an important thing from me.”

“But he must be well-connected,” reasoned Sadako. “And as things stand, if you’re about to start dealing with the Serries, it’s probably not going to do much more damage if you deal with the Sankaku as well.”

“I’m being serious, actually. I don’t know how or why, but…from everything I learned back when I was working covertly, I have the strong impression that the Sankaku are involved in all this.”

“It’s just a feeling.” Seki could actually hear the faint, slightly mocking smile on Sadako’s face. “Well, if he’s not an option, I’m afraid I don’t have any ideas for you right now. But I’ll think it over and let you know if I come up with anything.”

They said their goodbyes and Seki sat back, still grumbling to herself. The idea of indebting herself to Jiro again was obviously absurd. Even if he had been a good friend once…twenty years ago. A friend close enough that he’d actually studied Greek for her sake.

At last she shook her head to clear it, and looked back at the accounts spread out on her table. The numbers had not grown any smaller.

She caught a bus down at the foot of the road, and travelled for fifteen minutes before getting off at a strip mall. There, she stepped into a public comm booth, made sure that the door was firmly closed, and punched in a number.

Seki froze, staring at the commset. An old proverb came to her mind: Once you open a can of worms…

Aloud, she said, “I don’t think I want to talk about that. Not right now. But you owe me, Jiro.”

“Hmm.” It was Jiro’s turn to hesitate. Then he said, “ ’Suppose I do.” He took in a long breath. “What is it, then? An’…what should I call you?”

“ ‘Itsuko’ will do. I’m not telling you my current name. But I do need a favour. There’s a man I need to talk to—and someone I trust suggested that you might be able to help.”

Mark and Liam stretched out on the grass at lunchtime. They were not exactly girl-watching, but there were definitely girls in view.

“Lots of chatter about the mess-up at the concert on Friday,” said Mark idly.

Liam smiled faintly. “You’re not the first to say it. Not even the hundredth.”

“So I’m not a front-line fighter, okay? Not unless I have to be. I’m supposed to be the support guy. I have—I had—generals to do the fighting.”

Liam turned his head slightly to watch a pair of girls, some distance away, who were gesturing wildly in some incomprehensible discussion. One of them was a tiny blonde; the other was a Claver with chocolate-dark skin. He said, “Dhiti’s always paid more attention in history than all of us put together.”

Mark grinned. “Drives the teachers crazy.” He glanced over at the girls. “So, you’re watching Dhiti, huh? Not Kin?”

“You know, if you want,” Liam said with a glare, “I can tell you where Miyo lives now. Then we’ll see how funny you act.”

“Yeah. Thought so.” Inwardly, Liam frowned. Had he really been watching Kin? Certainly not; he had given his heart to someone else, long ago, forever. Kin was a good friend, and that was all there was to it.

“She doesn’t talk to me any more,” said Bendis. “I mean, she talks, but she doesn’t talk about anything. Nothing important.”

Artemis said thoughtfully, “How long has she been this way? Seki said she was very quiet during the last training session. And a few of the others said she was…different, during the battle at the Tenshin Institute.”

“I think that was when it really started,” said Bendis. “But she’s a lot worse now. And I can’t get her to say why.”

“She did make that blunder at the park on Friday. But it seemed like an innocent mistake…and charging in like that was the sort of thing she does.”

“She wasn’t paying attention.” Bendis sniffed. “She didn’t get that from me.”

“Uh.” Artemis refrained from commenting. “If she won’t talk to you, who does she talk to?”

“Nobody? I mean there’s that Nanako girl—and the boy, whatsisname, who hangs around with them. But she doesn’t talk to them about anything important, I’m sure of that.” Bendis decided not to mention that Nanako knew that Beth was Venus…and furthermore that she knew Bendis herself could talk. Beth didn’t know any of that, and so it didn’t really count, and so Artemis didn’t need to know it either.

“Well, that’s a whole different issue…and I think Dhiti has it in hand,” Artemis replied with a smirk that said he knew more than he was saying. Bendis eyed him warily. He was not above bluffing, she knew.

“Sometimes,” Artemis resumed patiently, “it turns out for the best when they work these things out on their own. I can think of a few times back in the old days…”

“But what about the times they don’t work them out on their own?” Bendis interrupted. She did not want to sit through another long, rambling story about the Good Old Days from Artemis.

Artemis considered. “Sailor Moon used to be pretty good at stepping in before things went too far.”

“Oh, no. She needs to step in on her own. We can’t be the ones pushing them, Bendis; if we meddle too much, nobody learns anything.”

Bendis stared at him. “I don’t know if that makes sense, or if it’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

Artemis cat-smiled. “When you can tell the difference, you’ll be another step toward being ready to work on your own.” He turned and bounded away without giving Bendis a chance to reply.

She stared after him, and shouted, “What are you talking about, you pompous windbag? I’ve been working on my own for months now!”

The school day drawled to a close. Suzue did not get summoned to the headmaster’s office. Nor did anyone else pester her during class. For now, it seemed that the unofficial student policy was ‘hands off’. That would change soon enough, she was sure; but for now she counted it as a win. After all, she had expected a beating before school even started.

“Yes. As it turns out.” Suzue glanced quickly around, but nobody was nearby.

“This is… I don’t even know what to say,” said Minoru. “Suzue-chan…are you okay with this?”

Suzue thought it over. “It’s certainly different from how I expected my life to be going,” she admitted. “I’m not sure how much else I should say, really.”

“Suzue-chan,” said Minoru with exaggerated patience, “you’ve just become part of the group you worship. How does that even work?!”

“Don’t be silly,” Suzue said stiffly. “We don’t worship the Senshi, we worship the Blessed Lady Serenity. And I’ve met her now, and she accepted me. She was very wise and very gracious.”

Minoru said, “Neither can I. But first…I was wondering. Is Aizawa-san one of you?”

“You don’t expect me to tell you who the others are, do you?” Suzue sniffed. “Besides, I already told you. Ochiyo-san and I ran into each other over the holidays, and ended up talking a lot. I quite like her. We even went to the theatre together, if you can believe it.”

Later, as Suzue headed toward home to get ready for the Monday evening service, she ran into Ochiyo, who did not try to hide that she had been waiting for her.

“I take it they know who you are?” asked Ochiyo. “Or maybe I should say, what?”

Again, Suzue looked around. There were a couple of middle school kids playing not far away, but they looked like they were out of earshot. She nodded. “I had to change in front of them on Friday. There wasn’t any time for excuses. But they can be trusted, Ochiyo-san, I’m sure of it.”

“Oh, I didn’t doubt that,” Ochiyo said. “I was thinking, I’m sure they had questions about me.”

“I named no names. I said you and I became friends over the holidays, that’s all.”

“Well.” Ochiyo shrugged. “Maybe I’d better talk to them myself? What do you think?”

“I trust them,” said Suzue. Honesty made her add, “That doesn’t mean that you should.”

“That’s an ugly world you live in,” said Ochiyo, shaking her head sadly. “But I suppose you do have your reasons, don’t you?” She smiled. “We’ll see how it goes. I think trust is better, myself. See you tomorrow, Suzue-chan.”

She walked away, leaving Suzue looking after her and wondering if that had been a criticism. Wondering whether Ochiyo had been right or not. Wondering, when you came down to it, just how far trust stretched. And, really, just wondering.

Dhiti wandered home after school, feeling a little out of sorts. She had no particular reason for it; the day had gone just fine, she and Kin had had fun, and even better, she was fairly sure she’d caught Liam watching Kin from a distance.

It was just that…it wasn’t the same without Hayashi. Oh, of course she knew that Hayashi was Makoto now (not ‘Hiyama’, she’d tried that and it didn’t work. Makoto) and they still got on just fine when they met, and yet something undefinable had changed. Something more than Makoto’s new hairstyle and skin colour, eye colour and her silly damn minimiser bra.

Maybe it was as simple as: Dhiti and Hayashi and Kin had been a unit, and now the unit was broken. Just that. Life changed, and there was no getting around it.

Maybe, she thought mordantly, she should convince her father to let her change to the same school as Makoto. Hibari, wasn’t it? Ha, that would be a fine thing; over the holidays, Iku had been talking about wanting to change to Dhiti’s school. But if Dhiti changed, then Kin would be left behind, so Kin would have to change as well, so…

Anyway, there was Iku to consider. That thought unaccountably cheered Dhiti up as she opened the gate, swung in the front door and called out, “I’m home!”

“Dhiti?” called her mother from the kitchen. Dhiti stuck her head in the kitchen door and her mother said, “Your father will be home late tonight. He had some difficulties to handle this morning.”

“Oh? What happened? He went to get a haircut and had to make sure every hair was the exact same length?”

Her mother, from long experience, did not react at all. “Don’t be silly, dear. He…” She got an odd look on her face. “Perhaps you should discuss it with Iku-chan.”

Dhiti headed upstairs and found Iku curled up in the chair in her room. It had been the guest room, not long ago, and it still had not developed much personality; Iku had arrived with few personal belongings and she hadn’t added many since then.

Iku was knitting again. She looked up as Dhiti came in, and for some reason, she looked embarrassed.

“Hi, Iku-chan,” Dhiti said breezily. “ ’Sup? How was your first day of school?”

“Oh…it was, um, fine,” said Iku. Strangely, her embarrassment seemed to grow.

“Only, Amma was saying something about you and how Pitaji is working late tonight.”

“Oh…um. I don’t know? That might be kind of weird. I guess if you—you—” Dhiti frowned at her. “You’re trying to distract me.”

“I…I tried to go to your school this morning. Your father caught me. He—he knew I was going to do it before I even did.”

“Er.” Dhiti’s mind raced. “Well, I mean, you’d been talking about it for a while, wanting to change, so I guess it was kind of obvious that— You actually did it? You tried to go to Aosagi? Where did he catch you?”

“Wow.” Dhiti thought about it. “I wish I’d seen th—or, actually, no. Probably a good thing I wasn’t there.” She eyed Iku uncertainly. “You don’t look all that unhappy about it.”

“Sometimes,” said Dhiti to herself, “I think I haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on in my own house.”

“Oh, like that’d do any g— Wait a minute. Was that a joke? Are you joking with me now? Invading my copyright?”

Dhiti gave her another long look. Then she said, “Hope for you yet. You know…at the risk of sounding weird myself…I’m glad you’re here, Iku-chan. I’m even glad that you’re getting to be my…my hemi-demi-semi-sister.”

Iku flushed bright red, and mumbled something inaudible. Then, louder, she said, “Me, too.”

“So, you’ve been kind of droopy lately,” said Nanako on Wednesday morning.

“Oh, that’s friendly. Seriously, Beth-chan, what’s going on? You’ve been acting like you had the worst summer vacation ever.”

“I…” Beth had to stop to think about that. It was difficult; her mind was so muddled, filled with bitter rambling, that lately it was hard to focus on anything at all. “…Maybe you’re right?” she said cautiously.

“Then cheer up—coming back to school has to be a step up,” Nanako said breezily.

That sounds like something Aino-sama might say, Beth thought. Which was no help at all. “Why are you so cheerful?” she asked, hoping to change the subject.

“I…” Nanako paused. “Is it okay if I talk about ’Toku-chan and me?” she asked.

“Hmm. Well, I got a message from him. We’re going out on Friday night.” She showed her comm screen, which unhelpfully said, UMe Fri? 89.

“Oh, just ignore that. It’s this stupid goroawase thing that ’Toku-chan loves. He can be such a child sometimes.”

“Eighty-nine? Oh, I get it: eito…ku. At first I thought it might be a hug.”

“That’s a dad joke, Beth-chan.” Nanako sighed. “But it would suit ’Toku-chan.”

“So where is he taking you?” Beth did not actually care much, but it was better than dwelling on her own problems.

“No idea! He’s going to surprise me.” Nanako eyed her, then said slowly, “You know, whatever’s going on, if you won’t talk about it to me, then pick someone you do trust.”

“Oh, just forget it, all right? Look, just…don’t keep it inside forever, huh? There must be someone you can talk to.” Nanako walked away into school, turning once to throw her an oddly intense look.

Beth watched her go, feeling rather as if she had missed something. It was a feeling she often got with Nanako.

The face that came to mind was quite unexpected, though it should not have been. After all, they had talked quite often over the holidays. Even about some fairly private subjects.

School let out on Friday evening, and a swarm of students headed for club meetings, sports grounds, or the gates. They would all be back the next morning; there was talk in the news that ‘E’ Division was conducting a study over phasing out Saturday morning school, but nobody was holding their breath.

At Hibari Koukou, Hama Minoru lingered for a while, talking to Suzue, and suggesting that they find some time to be together. She agreed, but hinted vaguely that she had plans for Saturday. That was pretty typical of Suzue. She might have a flying lesson; then again, she might have a Senshi meeting.

The thought that Suzue—his Suzue—was one of the Sailor Senshi still blew his mind. He was by turns thrilled, awed, and horrified. After all, everyone knew that the Senshi were great heroines and had saved the world many times…but what they did wasn’t safe. He had seen that himself, just a week ago, at Aozora Park. Suzue fought a crystalline monster all alone, in a battle that she couldn’t win. She was only saved when ‘W’ Division showed up to help, and finally when the other Senshi arrived.

His heart had been in his mouth as he watched from the tree-line. Keiko had stayed with him, hands over her eyes, watching from between her fingers and moaning in dread each time Suzue dodged a blow. When the monster was finally destroyed and he and Keiko stole away, they were both limp with relief; but Suzue—no, Uranus—seemed totally matter-of-fact, as if she did this every day.

It was ever harder to believe that, just minutes before the battle, she had been in his arms, kissing him.

We live in wonderful times, he thought to himself whimsically. But not safe times.

As he went through the gate, still musing, a girl stopped him. She was tall, tanned, athletic, with short black hair. He did not recognise her.

“Yes?” he said, hoping (that kiss was still on his mind) that this wasn’t going to be a confession of some kind.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Hiyama Makoto. You won’t know me…I just transferred to Hibari recently.”

She paused, seeming uncertain. “I’m not sure how to say this… I saw you on Monday morning…when there was nearly a fight. You were with a couple of other girls, and with…” Another pause. “A girl named Itagaki-san.”

Minoru’s mood sank. “Itagaki-san,” he said frostily, “is my girlfriend.”

“Hiyama-san,” said Minoru, “why don’t you just say what you want to say.”

The girl took a deep breath. “I’ve met her before, actually. And I was…unhappy when I found out that she…that she’s a Loonie. Only, everyone says that you’re not one of…them. But you stood up for her, and…and you’re her boyfriend…and I just need to know, why? Or, I mean…how?”

“Yes! How can you just ignore it—all the craziness, all the nonsense they say…everything!”

Minoru stood looking at her for a minute, controlling his temper. At last he said, “Hiyama-san…I don’t know whether to punch you in the mouth, or just walk away—”

“Better not try the first one,” she said, her lip curling. “I take judo.”

“Do you want an answer or not?” he snapped. “The answer to your oh so polite question, Hiyama-san, is: I do not share Suzue-chan’s beliefs, and she knows that, so we simply don’t discuss it. The times when we can’t avoid the subject, she explains what she needs to, and I listen with respect. We’ve only been together for a week or so anyway, but so far, that seems to work. Respect. Perhaps you’ve heard of the word.”

He took a deep breath. “I am completely certain that there is so much about Suzue-chan that I do like—that I care for, very much—that I do not need to focus on that one small thing. Does that satisfy you?”

“She is a member of the Church of Serenity. If you say that other word again, I really will punch you. Far more importantly than that, she is also a loyal, intelligent, beautiful girl who I…” He stumbled for a moment. “Who I love,” he finished in a softer voice.

Well. There. Now he was committed, publicly committed for all time. He only said it because he’d lost his temper, but…funny, how good it felt to say.

But the girl only stood there, stock-still. Then she said, very softly, “Oh, no… Oh, no, no, no. Oh, kami, this is just like Amsterdam all over again, isn’t it? Only this time, it’s all on me.”

“Never mind. …Hama-san, I’m sorry to have bothered you, and I’m sorry if I seemed impolite. Thank you for your time.”

The girl walked away, her face expressionless, her body stiff. After a second, she began to run. Minoru watched her go, utterly confused. He was sure of only one thing: there had been pain in her voice at the end there, great pain.

Makoto fled the school, feeling sick inside. She had been standing there, staring at that boy, Hama somethingorother, when she realised that she was about to hit him. And why? Because he was defending Su—defending Itaga—defending the Loonie.

And then suddenly there was a flash of her perfect memory and she was back in Amsterdam, seven hundred years ago, staring at Rei. In the moment before they tried to kill each other.

And at the same time, Liam’s voice was echoing in her ears: Nobody’s asking you to approve of her beliefs, no one says you should be happy about it, but if you can’t work alongside her in a…a professional way, then she’s twice the Senshi you are. Whatever she may believe about Serenity, whatever rubbish her church may have filled her head with, it doesn’t make her a bad person.

And Makoto couldn’t deny that Suzue was doing just fine as a Senshi, and seemed to get along with most of the others…after that rocky moment when she confessed to them all. Even Seki accepted her.

(How?! How did Seki accept her—Rei, who had been the closest to Usagi of them all, who damn well knew better. How could she accept this?)

And Ochiyo, their new princess, who had actually gone to one of the Loonies’ so-called “services” with Suzue. And who didn’t have anything bad to say about it.

They accepted her, they respected her. But it was all wrong. It had to be wrong. Why couldn’t they see?!

Staring at Rei, back in Amsterdam. Trying to kill each other, all because of a joke gone wrong. If you can’t work alongside her in a professional way, then she’s twice the Senshi you are. Lying in bed, sleepless, after meeting Rei again and finally realising that all the centuries of feuding had been in vain—that they needed each other far more than they had ever hated each other. Whatever rubbish her church may have filled her head with, it doesn’t make her a bad person.

And with a pang of despair, she could no longer deny the truth. The ultimate futility of hatred. Her feud with Rei, her rejection of Suzue, they were exactly the same thing…and the one being hurt the most was Makoto herself.

She—Hebe of Callisto, Kino Makoto of Tokyo, Hayashi Miyo and Hiyama Makoto of Third Tokyo—she, Sailor Jupiter—she was the bad person.

Early on Saturday morning, Seki got a commcall. She looked up at her clock, saw incredulously that it was 6 , and muttered something vile. She reached for her commset and found it silent. Then she realised that it was her second, emergency comm that was vibrating.

She tried to remember who she’d given the emergency comm number to, and drew a blank. Irritated, she answered the call. “What—”

“Can you be here in thirty-five minutes?” said Jiro’s voice. He named an address.

Jiro repeated the address. Then he said, “You ask’ for a favour. This is it. Be here on time…won’t be another chance.” Then he disconnected.

She dressed in a medium-formal business jacket, blouse and skirt. At the last moment, she remembered to take the little bag out of her bottom drawer, and pull on a tight hairnet and a wig that looked the way her hair had been, back when she was Itsuko. In the genkan she grabbed her purse and stuffed her Seki glasses into it, then slipped her shoes on and scrambled out the door.

The bus took forever, but she reached the address Jiro had given her two minutes before the deadline.

Almost exactly on time, a van pulled up; the passenger door opened and Jiro beckoned her in. The van was moving again almost before she had closed the door.

As they drove, she looked over her shoulder. There were others in the rear of the van: two men and three women. They looked back at her, expressionless, and she turned her head forward again.

He glanced at her, then back to the road. “I don’ think you need all the details, eh? We got people who work in the Council Chambers; we’ll get you in.” He paused. “Doin’ this will break one of my people’s cover. He’ll have to run for it. Hope it’s worth it, Itsuko-chan.”

“We can get you in, but…might be tough to get you out again. You said you’ve got a way to handle that?”

“Yes. I think so. If not…” She shrugged, her lips tightening. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

The chairman of the Serenity Council arrived at the Council Chambers at 6:35 AM sharp, as always. He waited for his driver to open the car door and stepped smoothly out. The driver carried his briefcase as they crossed the underground carpark to the elevator. They exited at the top floor. The driver dropped the chairman’s briefcase in his office, and then left silently. The chairman went on, past his office door, to the little medical clinic at the end of the corridor. He spent some fifteen minutes there. When he was done, and wearing a fresh pair of black gloves, he returned to his office.

There was an unfamiliar woman sitting in one of the guest chairs in front of his desk. He paused. He did not have any appointments scheduled at this time of day.

“And you are?” he asked quietly, touching the silent alarm button by the door.

“My name is Hino Rei,” said the woman. “Formerly, Pappadopoulos Itsuko. I thought it was time we had a talk, Mr. Chairman.”

He remained by the door, eyeing her. He could feel a sudden prickle of heat at the base of his skull. The Master’s interest had been aroused.

“The silent alarm has been disabled, by the way,” the woman said. “You may as well sit down. We have things to discuss.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps we do,” he said. “Assuming that you can corroborate your identity.”

She did look like ‘S’ Division’s photos of Pappadopoulos…though there was something not quite right about her hair. Perhaps a wig?

Hino smiled. “I assume that you somehow reopened Sailor Mercury’s borehole,” she said. “Back then, the workmen said it was freezing cold down at the bottom. Do you have to dress warmly, when you go down?”

The chairman controlled his face. That…was information few people knew. He sat down at his desk, watching her closely. “We keep a supply of thermal gear available,” he said. “What brings you here, Hino-san?”

“You may as well relax,” she said. “I assume you know that I’m not a Senshi any longer, so I can hardly hurt you. So why not talk?”

“You’re a fit, healthy woman with a history of performing remarkable feats,” he said dryly. “Even completely unarmed, I suspect that you could hurt me if you wanted to. But very well. Why not talk? I assume you have some kind of message for me.”

He gave her a thin smile. “The Master hardly shares his intentions, or his motivations, with me,” he said.

“I don’t mean your…Master. Is that really what you call him? I know what he is, by the way.”

“I assumed as much. No doubt Sailor Pluto has told you a great deal. As for a name…the Master has never expressed a desire to be called anything but ‘Master.’ ”

Hino nodded. “This is why I came,” she said. “Before we have to go to war and do our best to destroy each other…I thought we should have a chance to just sit. And talk.”

“A last meeting of generals before the final battle?” he said, actually interested. “How very…classical.”

“Well, I’m old enough to appreciate the classics,” she answered dryly. “But I didn’t mean your Master, earlier. I meant, why do you do this? You, and the rest of the Serenity Council.”

“Does the name bother you?” he asked. “ ‘Serenity Council,’ I mean.”

“Yes, quite a lot. You know what she stood for. I’m not sure what you stand for, Mr. Chairman. But I’ve had a while to get used to the name. And by the way, you can’t deflect me that easily.”

“No offence,” he said easily. “This is rather a new experience for me. Hmm…a moment, if you please. May I use my comm? I need to make sure we’re not interrupted.”

He touched his commset and said, “Clear my schedule for the next hour, please. No calls.”

“Good.” The chairman sat back, and then paused. “Would you care for a cup of tea? No tricks.”

He got up and went to the little tea set in the corner of the room. “I hope Darjeeling is all right. I’m rather fond of it.”

He made two cups, using his private stock of tea leaves—they were hard to get, but someone on his staff bought them privately. They were probably an illegal import, but he pretended not to know. He returned to his desk, passing one cup to Hino.

She took it with a very odd expression, then took a sip and nodded in approval. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Hmm… Why do I and the rest of the council obey the Master?” He shrugged. “You’re making an incorrect assumption, I’m afraid.”

“Yes. ‘Ah.’ ” The chairman looked down at his gloved hands, and again felt the pinprick of heat in the back of his head. But there was no command to be silent; only a cold, arrogant amusement. “You know, of course, why the Master could so easily dominate the world during the Fall.”

“He could control any kind of crystal,” said Hino. “Sailor Mercury worked that out.”

“Any crystal not directly protected by Queen—” Hino broke off. “Wait. That madwoman who kept attacking us. Your Number Twelve, I think it was? Araki-san? She had a lump of crystal in her—”

“Yes indeed. But hers was a second-stage initiation into the Master’s service,” the chairman said. He was surprised that he was being allowed to say all this, but the Master’s contemptuous tolerance continued. “The rest of us,” he went on softly, “have had our own initiations…of lesser degree.”

He touched the back of his head with one gloved hand. “A tiny sliver of crystal, inserted under the skin,” he said. “Small…but quite sufficient.”

She looked at him with something like horror—or perhaps disgust—on her face. “So you’re…controlled?”

“We retain our own minds…most of the time. Unlike Araki-san. But he knows what we are thinking—when he wishes to. He dictates our actions—when he wishes to.” He blinked, twice, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. “And we know what he is doing through us. Oh, yes, we know.”

“Certainly. He is listening to us right now, even as we speak. I think it amuses him.”

“If I tried, the Master could simply override me—take over my body, wield me as a puppet. Anything is better than that. Better to be a servant, than to become nothing but a tool.” The chairman grimaced. “Araki-san disobeyed. Look what happened to her.”

“You see, then. I will do whatever the Master wants, one way or another. So why try to fight? I truly have no choice.”

But Hino was shaking her head. “No,” she said. “You’re wrong there. You do have a choice. You always have a choice. You can give in…or you can fight. You can be a slave, or you can resist. And as long as you do resist, you’re not a slave.”

He looked at her for a long moment. Then, slowly and carefully, he began to remove his gloves. “I did try to resist,” he said as he worked. “Just once.”

And then his ruined hands were bare before her. Fourth-degree burns, he supposed, were something like this: skin almost gone, muscle charred away from bone, the surviving tissue endlessly cracking and weeping serous fluid. And never, ever healing; the Master had made sure of that. Some of the nerves still functioned; he was never free of the pain. Or of the smell.

“This is the price I paid,” he said softly. “I wonder: in my position, would you be so quick to proclaim your freedom?”

There was no disgust on her face now; only that worse thing, pity. “Nevertheless,” she said, just as softly. “Your choice remains. The price of it may be very high—” And then, incredibly, she reached out her hand and laid it on his, without flinching. “It may even be your life. But, Mr Chairman…you do have that choice. And you have chosen to give in.”

He closed his eyes. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps we are not all strong enough to have your kind of moral cour—”

He broke off. Inside his head, the Master spoke, and he knew that the meeting of minds was at an end.

And then he looked up at her again and said, “I’m afraid this interview is over, Hino-san. I am not permitted to say any more.”

He picked up his gloves, wincing a little, and began to slide them on, working slowly and carefully. Hino watched him.

“I am not permitted bandages,” he said through his teeth. “The gloves are specially lined… Ah. There.”

She regarded him for a moment longer. “Before I go,” she said, “one more question. It seems you’ve run out of vitrimorphs…and you’re making crystites again. But how? I—we all thought—that wasn’t possible any longer.”

“I’m sorry, Hino-san,” he said, and actually meant it. “There will be no further questions. And as for ‘before you go’…” With his foot, he touched another alarm switch on the floor under his desk. This one, he was certain, would not be blocked. “I’m afraid that’s no longer an option you have. Surely you must realise that I cannot let you walk out of here.”

Hino gave him a tight smile, and reached into her purse. He could see that she was gripping something. Her lips began to move, speaking words he could barely hear. Nonsense words.

“As you pointed out earlier,” he said patiently, “you are no longer a Senshi—”

“—and you cannot escape this time by pretending to transform.” He said it with something like real regret.

And then her eyes blazed and she threw something at him. Something small and white—a piece of paper—

The paper—the ofuda—struck his forehead and clung there. He felt a surge of—something, some kind of power, like a wave of fire that washed over him and yet did not burn. It was over in an instant…and then, unbelievably, the pinpoint of heat in his head, his link to the Master, simply winked out and was gone.

He stared up at her. He could not move, his muscles were frozen. He could barely breathe. And yet he…was free.

“No,” said Hino, “I’m not a Senshi any longer. But I remain what I have been for more than two thousand years: priestess of the sacred fire.”

She turned and walked quietly to the door. Before she opened it, she glanced back at him and said, “Goodbye, Fukuda-san. I do feel sorry for you. But we make our choices, don’t we? And then we must accept the consequences.” She paused for one moment longer. “I wonder if it’s too late for you to choose again?”

The chairman could only sit and watch. He heard the coded knock on the hidden door behind his desk, his security forces come at last. He still could not move.

Slowly, the paper peeled itself off his forehead, fell to the desk, and began to smoke. In a few seconds it was nothing more than fine ash.

Then he felt the crystal at the base of his skull come alive once more. He felt the heat. And then the voice of the Master.

On Saturday afternoon, Suzue went to her sewing room and transformed to Sailor Uranus.

She hadn’t done much sewing for a while—she had other priorities lately—but all the same, it was a convenient place for privacy. She had thought of going somewhere else, away from home, but where? The warehouse where the Senshi had met a few times was clearly compromised. She might have gone to Seki’s house…but the situation with Makoto made that impossible; and in any case Seki might have asked questions, or, worse, offered suggestions.

Whereas here, at home… Her parents were out; but even when they were around, they usually left her alone when she was sewing. If they did come home unexpectedly, this was the last place they’d look for her.

So now, as Uranus, she pushed aside a partly-completed blouse that she was probably never going to finish, sat down at her work table…and closed her eyes and thought.

She had had a dream, a little over two months ago. The night they met the ghost of Queen Serenity, actually; talking about Serenity with Minoru and Keiko had reminded her. It had been a strange dream, far more concrete and, well, real than most. And unlike most dreams, she remembered it with total clarity.

And Haruka had given her an order. Told her that she needed to find her talisman. The Space Sword.

True strength comes from within, Haruka had said. You have to look for it inside yourself. Search for a way to tap the passion of your pure heart… Even that may not be enough. But when you need it, the sword will answer.

Uranus thought back to her battle in the park, the previous weekend, when she had been almost unable to touch the enemy, the crystite, because her Music of the Spheres simply wasn’t much use for front-line fighting. Right now she was only a support fighter, and that had almost gotten her killed.

She needed something better, something that let her fight more effectively. Haruka was right. She needed her talisman. Her sword.

A nagging voice at the back of her mind asked if she actually had a talisman. She wasn’t Haruka; she wasn’t part of a trio of Outer Senshi who had such powers. Who was she, to presume such a thing?

She silenced the voice ruthlessly. Haruka had told her that she was worthy. Or that she had better be worthy.

But wasn’t that all just a dream? asked the traitor inner voice. Why should I pay any attention to a dream?

Uranus gave that a little more thought, then dismissed it, too. Dream or not, she had nothing else to go on. She was the heir to Uranus. She did need this. That was damn well going to have to do.

Eyes closed, she tried to feel inside herself. She had no idea what to search for, but…she was a Senshi. Invited by a new age, holder of the power and authority of Uranus.

Deep inside her, like a slow, subtle pulse, there was a ripple of energy: quietly turning, churning, not like a heartbeat but with a strange, electric cadence like nothing she had ever felt before. She focused on it and her inner vision swam; she seemed to see, just for an instant, a vast bluish globe, silent and cold and yet alive with energy. Ouranos, the imperious ruler of the heavens, father of gods—

Then she lost focus, and the vision was gone. Try as she might, she could not bring it back; there was only the strange, electric beat of power in her centre, almost

like an alien thing—and yet at the same time, something she had always known, a part of herself…

The shrill sound of her communicator jolted her out of her reverie. She looked down at the tiny screen, feeling annoyed but also, in a way, somewhat relieved. She shook her head to clear it, touched the control, and said, “Yes?”

To her surprise, the face that appeared was Beth. “Oh, hi,” the girl said awkwardly. “Look, I was wondering if we—” She broke off. “Wait, you’re transformed? Is there a problem?”

“No, no,” Uranus said, flustered. She was not blushing; Senshi did not blush. “I was just trying to…well, um, that’s a bit hard to explain. What is it, Beth-san?”

Beth said, “There’s something I wanted to talk about, and I…wondered if you were busy. I, uh…” She paused, as if struggling with herself. “I think I have a problem.”

Uranus stood up, and was surprised at how stiff she felt. How long had she been sitting there? She shook her head again. “Uh. Yes, sure.” She and Beth had ended up talking a number of times over the holidays, about some surprisingly private things. Boyfriends, for example. She did not think that the two of them were friends, not quite, but…they were something close to it. “What’s the matter?”

“Um.” Beth glanced to one side, almost guiltily, then back at her screen. “Can I—can we… Uh, where are you? Maybe it would be better if we met in person?”

Uranus frowned to herself. This was sounding oddly like the time Bendis had come over. She suppressed a smile at the thought. “I’m at home,” she said aloud. “You can come over, if you like; my parents are out.”

Beth looked so relieved that Uranus decided that something really must be wrong. Apprehensively, she gave directions—the two of them didn’t live far apart—and settled back down to wait, wondering if she should detransform before Beth arrived.

She had just become Suzue again when the doorbell rang. She glanced at her communicator-watch and saw that Beth had made very fast time. She really must be anxious—either that, or she had changed to Venus and roof-hopped all the way. But that was ridiculous…surely.

She led Beth into her sewing room, cleared another chair for her to sit, and said simply, “What’s wrong, Beth-san?”

Beth did not answer for a long time. She looked…miserable, as if she were trying not to cry. Suzue began to feel more and more worried. At last Beth said, “I don’t…I can’t…” Then, in a rush, she said, “I don’t know how to be Sailor Venus any more.”

“You…?” Suzue stared at her. This was nothing that she could have imagined. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You were at the park last week, you were Venus then—”

“No! I wasn’t. I haven’t been Venus for a long time. Oh, how do I explain this…” Beth was talking faster now, the words almost pouring out. “Last week. At the park. That wasn’t Sailor Venus, Suzue-san. That was me. Just Beth.”

Suzue tried to follow this, but failed. “But—I don’t understand. Aren’t you both?”

Suzue was silent for a long time, trying to think what to do…or what to say. None of this made any sense to her, and yet it was clear that…something…was upsetting Beth terribly. Finally she said, “Start at the beginning. You, er, used to be Sailor Venus?”

“Yes! Exactly!” Beth said eagerly. “Or at least, when I changed, she was always there. I mean—I think you all noticed, that first time we met at the gymnasium. When I changed, Venus was there, and she talked to you all…and when I changed back again—”

“Then you were Beth again,” Suzue said slowly. “I do remember. You’re always so…so boisterous when you become Venus, it’s like you’re two different people—”

“Yes,” whispered Beth. “But now Venus is gone, and I don’t know why, or what went wrong. I can still transform, but when I do, it’s just me, in Senshi form. Not Sailor Venus.”

“I noticed you were less…less wild. Sometimes.” Suzue rubbed her forehead. “But then you saved us all at the Tenshin Institute, and last week you were fighting at the park—uh. Well, you attacked the wrong people there, but it was a perfectly understandable—”

“Venus always knew what to do,” said Beth miserably. “I…I try to do my best, but…but I just don’t know! Maybe I offended Aino-sama somehow…”

“Yes. When we talked to Queen Serenity, she said that you…you all thought that maybe I’m Aino-san reborn. Or partly reborn…maybe? I didn’t understand that bit. But if I am, then maybe she’s…decided to leave me? Maybe I did something wrong and she didn’t want to be part of me any more?” Beth was actually wringing her hands now.

“I—I don’t know,” said Suzue helplessly. “Aino-sama reborn…? I never heard anything about that. I suppose I could see why some of them might think so, but—”

“And then I had the dream when I talked to Aino-sama. And she was going to tell me all about it, I’m sure she was, but then she had to leave…and ever since then, she’s been gone and—and I don’t, d-don’t know what to do…”

“Oh, Blessed Lady,” Suzue muttered to herself. “What am I supposed to…” But even as she said it, she knew what she was supposed to do. She got up, went over to Beth’s chair, knelt down, and held the girl as she cried.

Somewhere in the interval that followed, as Beth wept and Suzue gave her what comfort she could, she realised that she had been wrong earlier—and that, yes, the two of them were friends.

At last, the crying died down to a kind of wet snuffling that should have been disgusting but which, somehow or other, Suzue found that she did not mind. She felt around for a box of tissues and discovered that, without her even noticing, they had ended up sitting down on the floor, clinging together. It might have been embarrassing, but instead it was merely comforting.

She offered the tissues to Beth, who wiped her eyes, blew her nose noisily and then said, “Suzue-san, what am I going to do?”

“I don’t think we need to be so formal any more, do you? …Beth-chan, have you talked to Bendis-san about this?” Suzue thought about that for a moment and added, “Well, maybe not Bendis-san. But maybe Artemis-sama? Or Seki-sama?”

Beth snuffled again, blew her nose a second time, and said, “No. Not anybody. I—I’ve been scared.”

“All right, I understand that. All the same—” Quite suddenly, something Beth had said a few minutes before came back to her, and Suzue paused. “Just a moment. You said you had a dream where you talked to Aino-sama?”

“Um…yes? It was that night after we talked to Serenity-sama and went to the ‘M’ Division place. When I finally got to bed, I dreamed.” Beth looked at her, bemused. “Suzue…chan, it was so real.”

“It’s strange,” Suzue mused. “I had a dream that night, too. I talked to Haruka-sama…and I could tell you every word she said.”

“I don’t know. She told me I need to find—well, that doesn’t matter. But I was just thinking about that a while ago, when you called me. It’s…very odd.”

“Um. Maybe.” Suzue suddenly realised that they were still sitting on the floor. She got up and sat back in her chair. Beth returned to her own chair, still holding onto the pack of tissues. They watched each other for a moment, and then suddenly Beth’s eyes widened.

“Oh…” Suzue grimaced. “All right, no, I don’t. Partly it’s…if I go over there, I’m likely to run into Makoto-san, and that, um, gets messy.” Beth nodded silently. “But also, this thing with the dreams, it feels—personal, you know? Private. And, well…maybe they’re just dreams, you know? We had just been talking to the Blessed Lady, after all. It would be perfectly natural if we ended up dreaming about the past.”

They talked for a while longer. Suzue found herself admitting that she was trying to find her talisman. (That took some explaining.) Neither of them had any idea what to do about Beth’s problem, but Beth looked and sounded a lot happier, just from having talked about it.

“But I still think you should talk to Artemis-sama about it,” Suzue added. “I mean, he should be the expert, right?”

Suddenly, without warning, they were interrupted as the sewing room door opened. A tall, powerfully-built man poked his head in. “Suzue? We have a visitor?”

“Daddy!” Suzue blurted out in shock. “I…I didn’t hear you come in.” She collected herself and said, “This is McCrea Beth. We were just talking—I invited her over—”

Her father raised his eyebrows. “Welcome, McCrea-san. Would you care for some tea?” Suzue flushed, realising that she had never offered Beth anything.

Beth glanced between the two for a moment, looking uneasy. “I, um…thank you, Itagaki-san. But it’s getting close to dinner time…I should probably go.”

“Of course.” He nodded gravely. “I’m pleased to meet you, McCrea-san. My daughter doesn’t have many friends—”

“—and so it’s a precious thing to see you here. Please feel free to come again.” Suzue’s father bowed slightly and withdrew. Then he reappeared. “Suzu-tan, is your mother home yet?”

Suzue flinched slightly at the childish nickname; she saw Beth smile. But then she said, puzzled, “No, I thought you were out together? Did you come home early?”

He waved a hand, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll talk to her later. My apologies, McCrea-san.” He left again, closing the door behind him.

“Oh, shut up. The number of times I’ve told him…” Suzue sighed, giving in.

“It’s cute!” Beth sighed and said, “It really is getting late, though. I should go. Um…thanks, Suzue-chan. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

Suzue saw Beth down to the front door, but after she had gone she paused in the genkan, thinking. The family car was not parked in the driveway; her mother must have it. So her father must have left her to come home by bus or train. But why?

And why hadn’t she heard him come in? He must have opened and closed the gate and front door as silently as possible. But why would he bother?

Shaking her head, she put the thought aside for now. It was getting near dinner time, and if Itagaki Aiko was not home, then Suzue had better start doing it herself. She went into the kitchen and started chopping vegetables.

Later that evening, Seki sat on a cushion in her living room, yawning. She and Makoto had finished dinner, and now Seki was feeling deliciously lazy. She watched the viddy idly as she sipped a cup of tea and leaned back against the couch.

Then she heard the word monster. She jerked upright and reached for the control to turn the viddy sound up.

The newsie program was showing an alleyway somewhere in the city. She had missed the beginning of the report, but the picture made it look as if a typhoon had hit the alley. And the ground was strewn with pieces of… It was too hard to make out on the screen, but they might have been pieces of crystal.

“Eyewitnesses report some kind of epic battle here,” the newsie was saying excitedly. “Two men and a woman had to run for their lives, but they report hearing shouting and screaming, and the roars of some kind of monstrous creature.”

The newsie was interviewing the woman, who was talking fast, almost stumbling over her words. “—one of those monsters like everyone talks about,” she was saying. “It was huge, and it had a dozen arms and three heads, and I was so afraid—”

“—and then the woman arrived,” said one of the men. “It was one of the Senshi, I swear it! And she attacked the monster and—well, I had to take cover, but I could hear the roaring—”

“—didn’t recognise her,” the other man was saying. “She must be one of the new ones, I don’t remember all the names—”

“She was beautiful, though,” said the woman. “Except for her eyes, poor thing.”

The news program droned on, but suddenly Seki was no longer listening. She looked over at Makoto in shock.

“That…that doesn’t make any sense. It’s got to be a hoax. None of us are blind… How could a Senshi be blind…?”

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” said Seki grimly, “but we need to find out. Mako-chan, call Dhiti. Tell her to put that computer to use, and find out where this happened…and what happened.”

“It’s a hoax,” said Makoto again. “I mean, surely?” But she raised her communicator and placed the call.

Dhiti called back later to say that she had found multiple reports of a “disturbance”, differing wildly in details, but no concrete information. She went over herself to check the place, but by the time she got there, the litter that looked like pieces of crystal in the newsie report had vanished.

She did report, however, that according to her computer, some of the damage to buildings and road in the alleyway showed traces that might…possibly…have come from a Senshi attack.

Other damage, however, looked like it had been caused by explosives. Or weapon fire.

On Sunday afternoon, Nanako and Eitoku were taking a walk together, heading for a nearby park, when they encountered a team of spies at work.

Nanako’s mind was on other things at the time. She and Eitoku had gone out on Friday night as scheduled, and that had gone very well. If this afternoon went just as well, she was starting to think that she might be ready to take things to the next level. The without-clothes level.

It was while she was musing on this prospect, not without anticipation, that she noticed a young girl slip out of a driveway, run across the road, and stand behind a bush in an unmistakably sneaky way.

Nanako blinked, her fantasies gone in an instant. She looked closer. The girl was around eleven or twelve, and looked seriously intent on what she was doing. It must be some sort of game, surely.

Then she looked further down the street, in the direction the girl was facing. There was another kid down there, also hiding, and looking just as serious. This one was a boy.

Nanako started to grin, and was about to walk on with Eitoku, forgetting the game entirely. But then a third kid came around the corner, looking just as sneaky, and this time she recognised him. The third kid was Kawatake Hideo.

In that moment she knew, beyond all possible doubt, what the kids were doing. Her eyes flicked down the tree-lined street, past the more distant boy, and saw what she knew she would see. A teenage girl, walking alone. Watched by all three kids.

“Nana-chan?” said Eitoku, breaking into her train of thought. “What is it?”

“Oh, it’s…nothing, really,” she said unconvincingly. Her mind was racing. This whole Senshi Watch thing had gotten way out of hand. She should track Hideo down tomorrow and tell him to call it off, or there would be consequences. She wasn’t sure what the consequences would be, but she would think of something.

No, damn it. Those kids were there right now, interfering with…with things that should be left alone. It was time to end it. Now.

How could she ditch Eitoku, without him realising he was being ditched? Telling him she felt sick wouldn’t work; he’d insist on taking her home.

She looked down at her wristwatch, and frowned. “ ’Toku-chan,” she said, “I promised I’d give Beth-chan a call, but I just saw the time. Do me a favour? You remember that shop that makes those strawberry-cream taiyaki? They’ll be closing in fifteen minutes. Could you run ahead and get us some? I’ll catch you up in just a few minutes.”

He jogged off obediently and Nanako watched him go, feeling an unexpected pang at the lie. It was for the best, she told herself…but the excuse felt hollow. She muttered a curse under her breath, pulled out her commset as an excuse, and started down the side street toward where she’d seen Hideo hiding.

She did not see Eitoku look back over his shoulder, waving. And so she did not see him stop, puzzled, when he saw his girlfriend walking away in another direction…with her commset out, but without even looking at it.

Nanako followed Hideo and his junior secret agents down the street. She soon realised that the spies were not very good at their job: they may have been hiding from their target, but it never seemed to occur to them that anyone else might be watching them. And, after all, they were only kids: without realising it, they were really only playing at being spies, with all the exaggerated sneaky behaviour that had attracted her attention in the first place.

Nanako, for her part, simply strolled slowly along the street, appreciating the shade of the trees in the early autumn warmth, and she had no trouble at all in keeping both Hideo’s group and their mystery target in view.

Soon, the girl they were all following turned into a small, old-fashioned brick house. It had a faintly shabby look and one wall covered with ivy, but there were signs here and there that someone was trying to fix it up. The garden in front looked immaculate.

The girl went straight up to the front door, knocked, and went in. Behind her, the three spies paused, holding an inaudible discussion. Far off in the distance, Nanako could hear the cawing of crows.

Hideo made an imperious gesture and two of the kids departed. They ran straight past Nanako, paying no attention to her. She noted their faces with interest; they both looked resentful. They had wanted to keep watching, but Hideo had clearly insisted on doing this part alone. It was, she admitted to herself, probably a sensible decision.

She watched Hideo hover outside the gate, then prepare to climb over the fence instead. Before he could do it, she walked up and tapped him on the shoulder.

He jumped in such exaggerated surprise that it was almost comical. Hideo was a smart kid, but he was, after all, still a kid. “I wasn’t doing anything,” he blurted out. Then his brain caught up as he recognised her. “What are you doing here?” he hissed.

“Oh, I’m just out for a pleasant Sunday stroll,” she said vaguely. “But then, my goodness, what do I find? Kawasaki Hideo, out following girls. What is it, Hideo-chan, are you in love? She looked a bit old for you.”

“You—you—” He stuttered for a minute, trying to follow the change of subject. Then he glared at her. “You know who she is.”

“I’m sure I know what she is,” Nanako said, dropping the banter. “As for which one she is…I only know a few of them to look at. Something tells me you know more.”

“Almost all of them,” he boasted. “But I’m not telling you. You’ve changed, Nanako-san. You used to be just as keen to find out as me. You started all this.”

“…Maybe. But that’s not the point.” Nanako took a deep breath. “Hideo-chan, do you realise how dangerous all this is?”

He looked confused. “What?” Of course he didn’t know. He was a kid. He didn’t think of consequences at all.

“He changed. He screamed, and he changed, and he became that crystal monster. And then the Senshi had to kill him. Hideo-chan, when you follow them around, you’re putting yourself right in the place where you’re most likely to get hurt. Don’t you see that?”

“No,” he said, his face stubborn. “We can keep hidden. None of them have spotted us. We can…” He hesitated, just for a moment. “We can be safe.”

“Not any more,” she said flatly. “I can’t have it on my conscience. This has to end, Hideo-chan, and it’s going to end, today. If you don’t leave and go home right now, I’m going to march up to that door, knock, and tell them what you’ve been doing.”

That made her hesitate for a moment—but only a moment. “Having a meeting, are they? All the more reason, then. Look—we both know, I probably can’t stop you following them. But this— I don’t know what they’re talking about in there, but this should be private. What they’re doing is too important for you or me to poke our noses into. No matter how curious you are.”

She looked him in the eye. “Understand me, Hideo-chan? If not, I’ll go knock on that door.”

He held on for a few seconds longer, visibly trying to make up his mind. Then he made a rude face at her, turned, and ran off.

Nanako let herself relax slowly. She wasn’t quite sure if she would have made good on her threat. And, she had to admit, he was right: she had changed. She had been just as eager as him to pry more into the Senshi and their secrets. And she was strongly tempted to do exactly what he had been about to do: sneak in and eavesdrop on the Senshi meeting.

But she had watched a boy die, the week before: someone close to Eitoku’s age.

She shook her head and looked down the street to make sure that Hideo had actually left, rather than waiting to sneak back after she had gone. He was almost out of sight, but he was definitely moving away. She breathed a sigh of relief, turned, and started to head away herself.

She whipped her head up, startled. And then she heard something else: two girls talking, some distance off. She caught a glimpse of them through the trees lining the other side of the street. Heading her way.

Hideo-chan, you idiot, she thought, you told me they were all inside already.

There was no time. She couldn’t let Beth see her here. Acting almost without thinking, she vaulted over the fence, looked around wildly for cover, and then sprinted around the back of the house. There, she dropped to her hands and knees, trying to control her breathing and waited to be discovered.

She flinched and looked around, stifling a wild yelp. There, crouching down just behind her, was Eitoku. He gave her a quizzical look.

Suzue and Beth were the last ones to arrive for the meeting. They were just barely on time, but this did not prevent them receiving some disapproving looks. Suzue ignored the looks; Beth did not seem to notice.

“Sorry to pull you all in on such little notice,” Seki announced as soon as the two had found seats. They had to sit on the floor; all the chairs were full. “We’ve got some important things to discuss.”

“You sound like you’re running a business meeting,” said Artemis. “Relax a little. Whatever it is, it can’t be that serious.”

Liam cleared his throat and said, “Before we start, can someone open a window? There’s eleven of us in here and it’s a warm day.”

Dhiti was nearest; she stood to comply. “Eleven?” she said. “I can only see—”

“If we can settle down?” asked Seki, with just enough irritation in her voice to show them she meant it. “Thank you. So. We put this off earlier because it was the last weekend before the start of school and nobody could squeeze a meeting in, but we need to talk about the attack at the park last week. And about the mystery group who helped Sailor Uranus. And now there’s this new Senshi the newsies are talking about—”

“Well, that’s what I said. But Dhiti-chan thinks there might have been an actual Senshi battle going on there.”

“Maybe,” said Dhiti. “I said maybe. My computer put up big flashing question marks and offered to submit the data to the Senshi Research Academy on Ganymede.”

Dhiti buffed her nails with a smirk and said, “Always room for a good straight man in the team, Beth-chan. No, it didn’t. It basically said, 67.3% similarity to previously recorded data. And yes, I just made that number up, but it was in the vicinity.”

Seki stepped in before things became heated. “All right. So we have a ‘maybe’ on a new Senshi…but blind, that’s a mystery.” She glanced at Sadako. “I’ve never heard of anything like it—have you?”

“But both the witnesses on the newsie program were definite about it,” said Ochiyo. “I watched the replays this morning, and they seemed really certain.”

“This is a long shot,” said Liam, “but…could it be another extra-solar Senshi? We’ve had contact with Senshi from other stars before, obviously—”

“Yes, and yes,” said Seki. “Quiet, please. Liam, what made you think of that?”

“The witnesses said her eyes were strange,” Liam replied mildly. “I just wondered: what if this was someone whose eyes worked…differently?”

“Well, that’s an unsettling thought,” complained Artemis. “But I don’t see how it helps us. For now, all we have is one report that, frankly, I don’t consider reliable. Unless this mystery girl reappears, I don’t see what we can do for now.”

“I do,” said Makoto. “Dhiti-chan, can you set your computer to monitor for reappearances?”

“Oh, sure,” said Dhiti, “ask the computer expert.” She huffed. “Lucky for you, I’ve been practicing a bit. …Okay, I’ll have a go, but no promises.”

“Whoever she was—if she even existed at all—I’m more concerned about those people who helped out at the park,” said Suzue.

“They can hardly have been ‘W’ Division,” said Makoto. Seki noticed, interested, that there was none of her usual hostility toward Suzue.

“Of course not,” said Artemis. “But I have to admit, I can’t think of any other groups with that kind of weaponry, who’d want to help us out.”

“How come nobody ever tried to help us back in the old days?” Makoto wondered wistfully.

“It’s not like there weren’t plenty of eyewitnesses, some of the time,” Seki grumbled. “But we’re getting off the subject. Suzue-chan, what did you say they told you?”

“That’s tantalising,” said Liam. “Whoever they are, they think the vitrimorphs—or the crystites—are their enemy, as well as ours.”

Seki froze. She could think of a group who opposed the Council, and who might well have heavy weapons. But why would they be siding with the Senshi?

Then she remembered Jiro. And that he somehow—dammit—knew that she had once been Hino Rei.

She glanced over at Sadako. Who gave a tiny frown, and then shrugged, and was of no help at all.

Well, Seki was not going to admit to all that mess right now, not in front of all the girls. Not when she already had another confession to make. She might talk it over with Sadako, Liam and Artemis later, though. Maybe Makoto. Maybe Ochiyo—or, no, probably not.

At that point she realised how far she had gone, keeping secrets from them all. Keeping secrets from Sailor Moon. It had begun back when Sadako told her the truth about the Enemy, and convinced her not to share it with the others. But by now it was almost a habit.

She hated Sadako a little for that, and then realised uncomfortably that she hated herself more.

She needed to spend some time before the Sacred Fire, praying. Maybe the kami would help her unscramble it all.

“Whoever they are,” she said, “I’m worried about the danger they’re putting themselves in. I wonder if they realise how dangerous a crystite can be?”

Makoto nodded. “Too dangerous even for trained soldiers,” she said. “I remember, back in Bali during the Fall.”

“But…but what should we do about them?” asked Iku. “How…um, how do we…k-keep them safe, if they decide to fight?”

“Is it?” said Ochiyo. She was frowning, as if in thought. “Part of me wants to say that we’re trying to save the world here…and if they choose to join our fight, then they assume the risk.”

“But then,” Ochiyo went on, overriding her as if she hadn’t heard, “I have to remember why we fight. And how history tells us that Queen Serenity would always, always, put herself on the line to save others. No matter what. Even if it seemed like she was risking total defeat, just to save one innocent life.”

Liam gave her a long, measured look. “And so, what’s your point?” he asked softly.

“For her—for Sailor Moon—there was no choice at all. She would always save the innocent life, always. Without regret.” Ochiyo paused, closing her eyes for just a moment. “And in the end, she always won. Because that kind of purity of purpose has a strength of its own—a spiritual strength, if you like. And the war we’re fighting can’t be won by guns and grenade launchers. In the end, I think the strongest weapon we have is in fighting with purity of purpose.” She smiled, just a little. “Or, if you like…for love and justice.”

The room was silent for a long time. Then Sadako stirred. “Thank you, Princess,” she said simply.

Ochiyo gave her a cool nod. “And so, Sailor Mars, the answer to your question is—we will keep them safe with everything we have. Because if we don’t, then we will not be fit to be the Senshi of our worlds…and we will no longer deserve to win.”

“Simmer down,” said Seki without heat. “And I agree, Princess: thank you. That’s a reminder that I—we—need to hear more often.” She looked around the room. “But we’re still left with the mystery of who our unexpected helpers were. Unless anyone has any ideas, we may have to wait for more information about this one, too.”

Makoto laughed. “Who does? But complaining about it never helped us in the old days. And not now, either, I expect…unless anyone has any bombshells to drop.” She made a show of looking over at Sadako.

Sadako, for her part, merely smiled. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I have no more idea who those people were than you do.”

Seki said, “Then perhaps we need to think about the monster attack itself. If it was really a crystite—”

“Well, I didn’t see it myself…and your memory is more recent than mine, anyway. But the newsie footage looked terribly familiar.”

“Yes,” said Liam. “It did.” He glanced over at Sadako, one eyebrow raised.

“Again, don’t look at me,” she said. “I wasn’t there…remember? I’ve never seen a crystite in person, then or now.”

That made them all pause. Then Bendis said, in a plaintive tone, “But why have they switched to crystites? Why would the Enemy suddenly change plans like this? What’s happened?”

“I should say that’s obvious,” said Suzue. She blinked as she realised that everyone was suddenly looking at her. “We destroyed their vitrimorph facility at the Tenshin Institute. So now they may not have any other source for them—or they may not have had time to rebuild.”

Liam said, “But they clearly do have a source of crystites. I wonder how? We know that during the Fall, they could transform anyone with a crystal power source implanted within their body. But nobody has anything like that nowadays.”

There was another pause, longer this time. Then, reluctantly, Seki said, “Actually, that brings me to something else we need to talk about. Something most of you don’t know.” She glanced at Sadako, then at Artemis. “Some of you, er, may be unhappy about it.”

Sadako coughed. Artemis looked at her suspiciously, then snapped, “No need to be so dramatic, Seki. Just spit it out.”

“Right. Well. So. Not to mince words…yesterday morning I went to the Council Chambers and had a talk with Chairman Fukuda.”

The stunned silence, followed by the explosion of reactions, were all that Seki could have imagined. She looked around the room, judging reactions, as she waited for the tumult to die down. Sadako did not react, of course. Liam only raised his eyebrows a fraction. Artemis…narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. That was unexpected.

“I won’t ask how you managed it, Seki,” Artemis went on, ignoring her. “Instead I’ll ask: was it worth it? Did he tell you anything important?”

“He told me,” said Seki, “that all the Serenity Council members have a piece of crystal inserted under their skin.”

“I thought it was worth trying. Our dealings with enemies don’t often leave room for… I don’t know. Debate.”

Suzue pursed her lips in thought. Then she said, “But surely the crystite on Friday was not one of the Council.”

“No, I’m sure it wasn’t. And that does bother me. Of course there’s a lot he didn’t tell me—not that I ever expected him to. But he was surprisingly forthcoming…up to a point. He said that their crystal inserts mean that the Enemy can read their thoughts…and it can speak to them, give them orders, any time. And they have to obey.”

“I know. He mentioned Araki-san, briefly. Lady Blue, I mean. Implied that she was under some higher level of control. A ‘second stage,’ he called it.” Seki shrugged. “But he wouldn’t talk about how they’re making new crystites. I asked, but then he tried to take me prisoner and I had to leave in a hurry.”

“Well. One of my ofuda broke his connection…for a few seconds. I don’t think I’d get away with that again, but it worked one time, anyway.”

“Ah? Interesting…and something to keep in mind. But we should also think about—”

He did not finish, because at that moment they heard a curious thudding sound, and then a voice outside the window said, “Excuse me? Help, please?”

For the first minute or so, Nanako was in agony, trying to keep Eitoku quiet—especially after someone opened the window right above them. But then, as they heard the voices from inside—very clear and easy to follow—it gradually sank in what they were listening to. And Eitoku was just as transfixed as Nanako.

A little while later, his eyes wide and incredulous, he mouthed again: “Beth-chan?!”

Nanako watched his face as the discussion proceeded inside, enjoying the wonder and amazement there. It was a relief that he’d found out, actually. Nanako was a girl who liked to know everything, and she took great pleasure both in knowing secrets, and in using that knowledge when she pleased. Of course she would never have given away what she knew about the Senshi; as she’d told Hideo, some things were too important, and too dangerous, to treat casually. But now that Eitoku had stumbled into the truth—thanks, she had to admit, to her own carelessness—there could be one fewer thing that she had to hide from him. That was probably a good thing.

Of course, she realised guiltily, they were still probably going to have an awkward discussion about keeping secrets, once they were alone.

Her rather smug feeling of pleasure lasted until one of the Senshi started to talk about the crystal monster at the park. That brought the scene back vividly in her memory. She saw it again, the boy who clutched at his forearm, screamed in agony, and then changed so horribly.

And then the girl inside—they called her Seki, but Nanako hadn’t worked out which Senshi she was yet—was talking about pieces of crystal inserted into a man’s body, which somehow allowed the evil overlord to control him.

Again she saw the boy at the park, clutching at the light bandage around his arm, Something moving under the bandage. His arm bursting open, crystal spearing out of his flesh. Screams of horror, her own among them.

And she thought, he must have had one of those crystal slivers in him, too. Just like Chairman Fukuda.

And there was something else there, some memory from a few months ago, but she couldn’t quite place it…

She could hardly believe it all. Chairman Fukuda had a crystal in his body. The chairman of the Serenity Council. The rulers of Japan. The government. The ones Eitoku, with his love of politics, wanted to emulate.

And again, her mind flashed up the boy in the park clutching at his arm. At the bandage around his arm.

And then she remembered. The day, two or three months ago, when Eitoku announced that he was joining a new political-studies program sponsored by ‘D’ Division. And then, a week or so later, he came to school with a dressing on his arm. He said it was nothing, but… But. He had a bandage on his arm. He joined a government program and suddenly he had a bandage on his arm.

And again, and again, she saw the boy in the park as he clutched at his forearm and screamed, and when that happened, Eitoku gasped and clutched his own arm, too.

And she looked at Eitoku in horror, saw him staring up at the open window, listening eagerly. And she looked around, barely thinking, and her hand found one of the heavy stones lining the garden. And she lifted it and struck the side of his head.

And as he collapsed to the ground, stunned, she called out in a voice that trembled just a little, “Excuse me? Help, please?”

“Not now, Beth-chan,” said the intruder. She spoke fast, almost gabbling. “Please, someone, you have to help him! He’s got one of those crystal things in his arm. You have to get it out before he turns into another one of those monsters.”

A range of expressions met her, ranging from interested or confused, all the way to actively hostile. Ochiyo saw, intrigued, that the most hostile looks were coming from Bendis. Did the little cat know something?

The girl ignored them all. She said, “Please! You’re the Sailor Senshi, you’ve got to help him.”

Seki was kneeling by the boy’s side, examining him cautiously. “What on earth happened to him?” she asked. “He’s getting a huge lump on his head. Did you hit him?”

“And what makes you think we’re the Sailor Senshi?” demanded Makoto. She was another one with a hostile look. “That’s, um, absurd.”

“Oh, please, I’ve known Beth-chan for years and she’s about as subtle as a walrus in a fish factory.”

“Well, sorry, Beth-chan, but it’s true. You gave yourself away almost immediately, y’know? But that doesn’t matter now. —Yes, of course I hit him. I had to! I heard what you were saying about this Enemy person knowing what the ones with crystals are thinking. I had to knock him out before he gave everything away…or before they changed him into a cristode.”

“Crystite,” corrected Seki absently. “You’ve really done a number on him, though I don’t think you cracked his skull—”

“Why do you think he has a crystal in his arm?” asked Liam, his voice gentle.

At least someone’s keeping their head, thought Ochiyo. She wondered if she needed to take charge.

“Because—oh, look, there’s no time to tell you right now. Just check him, please!”

Seki was still examining the boy’s head. Ochiyo sighed, and nudged Makoto. The girl looked indignant for a moment; then she snapped, “Oh, all right.” She knelt down beside Seki, and said, “Where’s this thing supposed to be?”

The girl—Nana-chan?—closed her eyes for a moment. “Um. Right arm. Ahh…on the inside, I think. Not far above his wrist.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Makoto slid the boy’s sleeve up and began to probe his arm. “I’ll have you know, I went through a stack of paramedic training back in Crystal To—” She stopped suddenly, her eyes widening. “He does have something here.”

“Let me see that,” said Liam. There was nothing gentle in his voice now, but a crisp, decisive command. Ochiyo remembered what she so often tried not to think about: that he had once been a king. And, in a certain sense, her father.

He knelt beside Makoto to press two fingers into the boy’s arm. His face took on a distant look, and then he half-closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly. “A small disc…like a go stone.”

“How—how can you tell that?” asked Iku in a tiny, faltering voice. She was, Ochiyo had noticed, a lot more relaxed around Dhiti these days; but Liam still seemed to make her as nervous as she’d ever been.

“Oh. That’s one of my own powers. It’s not all just throwing roses around.” He gave her a quick grin. “A little psychometry, a little healing, a little psychokinesis.” He focused on the boy’s arm again. “I’m afraid this girl is right—Miss…?”

“Higoshi?” For a moment his eyes sharpened, focusing on her. Then he returned his attention to the boy. “I’m afraid Nanako-san is right. We need to remove this. It has a distinct flavour of the Enemy.”

“How do you remove it, though?” asked Suzue. “You can’t just…cut him open.”

“Well, we could,” said Liam mildly. “I don’t really see another way. That thing isn’t deep inside, and I could heal the wound afterward—whoops.” The boy moaned, and started to stir. Liam laid a hand on his head, and he quietened again.

Ochiyo tutted to herself and made up her mind. “Let me take a look,” she said. He raised his eyebrows, but moved aside.

She laid her hand over the spot he had been touching—the boy’s skin was unexpectedly warm; she had somehow thought it would be cooler while the boy was unconscious—and felt the crystal almost immediately: a small, hard lump. There was no trace of a scar, she noticed. She closed her eyes and concentrated. The awareness came slowly: a feeling of…what was it? She had expected something dark, malevolent; but this feeling was alive, eager…and hungry for something.

She huffed, and stood up. “Excuse me, please,” she said…and pulled out her henshin wand. “Moon prism power, make-up!”

As Sailor Moon, she knelt back down beside— “What is this boy’s name, anyway?” she asked Nanako.

“Uh…” Nanako’s eyes were very wide. After a moment, Moon realised why, and hid a smile. “Eitoku. Shiomi Eitoku.”

“Thank you.” Moon studied Eitoku for a moment, then touched his arm again and closed her eyes.

This time she felt the Enemy’s power immediately, swirling in the crystal like a raw, hungry torrent. But she also felt her own power rushing to meet it. In the name of the Moon? she wondered. Except…she could feel something else inside her, too. And then she remembered exactly what it was—and told the crystal in the boy’s arm, with an authority she had never known before, LEAVE.

Moon stood up, and almost reeled; she felt faint, as if after a long struggle. But it had all taken only a moment, she was sure.

“What?” Liam stared at her, then knelt down and touched Eitoku’s arm again. “It is gone,” he said, sounding amazed. “Or rather, the crystal is still there…but it’s dead now, just a harmless pebble. There’s nothing that the Enemy could occupy now. But…how? Your mother needed the Ginzuishou to do that sort of thing.”

“Mm.” Moon nodded. “Well, it was something the Queen told me, that night when we all met her. During the Fall, she spent two months using the Ginzuishou constantly, fighting the Enemy—and I was there, too, in her womb. She thought it might have had some effect on me, though she wasn’t sure what.”

He caught on immediately. “I see. It’s left you with an extraordinary affinity for the power.” He gave her an intent look. “Perhaps”—it seemed to trouble him—“greater than your mother’s.”

“Maybe. I just felt that…something was there, and it was mine to command. If that makes sense.” Ochiyo decided not to mention what she thought of it, when he talked about the Queen as being her mother.

“Putting that aside for the moment,” said Seki, “…I think we need to talk about what these two—Higoshi-san and Shiomi-san—were doing outside my window.”

“And it seems that Beth may know something about that,” Seki went on, glowering at Beth.

“What? I never!” yelped Beth. “I mean—I—yes, I know Nana-chan, she’s my best friend, but I had no idea—that is, I don’t understand—”

Nanako sighed. “Relax, Beth-chan. I already said, you’ve got all the subtlety of—”

“I’ve known about you for months. And I never told ’Toku-chan, that was a—a bit of an accident—”

“Perhaps you should start at the beginning,” said Ochiyo. Her head was still swimming and she didn’t have the patience to hear the story all higgledy-piggledy like this.

“—Um.” Nanako took a deep breath. “Right. Well. There’s this kid, Hideo. About, I don’t know, twelve maybe.”

“So, early on, I caught him watching us, and we had a little chat. At first I thought he was interested in girls, but actually it seems that he’d had an encounter with a certain cat. Isn’t that right, Bendis-chan?”

They waited, but the cat only hunched down in sullen silence. Suzue said, “Seems like there’s a lot of ‘accidents’ happening here.”

“Shall I tell them, then?” asked Nanako, looking at Bendis. There was no reply. “All right. Well, Hideo-kun knew about Bendis-chan, and I knew about Beth-chan. We sort of traded information.” She looked around at their faces and added guiltily, “It was just a game, back then. Um, I’m sorry.”

“Well, I kind of left it there. It was fun knowing a few things, though it was a bit hard watching Beth-chan when she’d come to school all bruised some days—”

“Sorry. Well, a bit later I worked out that Iku-chan had to be a Senshi, too—”

“—So I talked to Bendis, and a little while later Sailor Mars appeared in public so I knew I’d worked it out right.”

“Look, I’ll tell you later, but the important part right now is Hideo-kun. Because it turned out, he’s not just some bratty kid. He’s a master spy, or he thinks he is, anyway. He’s definitely trying to be one. He’s put together this…this organisation of other kids, all about his age, and they’ve been watching you all.”

“I’ve no idea how they figured out who you all are—I only recognise Beth-chan, Iku-chan and Dhiti-san, myself—but I think his group, they call themselves the Senshi Watch, have tracked all of you down.”

“You know, I have noticed kids hanging around in the street when I go out, sometimes,” mused Suzue. “I never thought anything about it, but…”

Dhiti sighed. “Right. Kin-chan and now you…seems like we’re building up a list of friends who know about us.”

“Ah.” Suzue bit her lip, then confessed, “I suppose I should say…my boyfriend knows about me. And my best friend, Keiko-chan.”

Seki groaned. “Our security seems to be about as full of holes as a fishing net.”

Liam laughed softly. “But we haven’t had any unwanted publicity, so it seems they can be trusted. It makes me wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have been a little more open with friends, back in the twentieth century.” He looked thoughtful. “I remember there was Saori-chan; she kept it quiet. And I always suspected Motoki knew.”

With a sigh, Makoto said, “Coming back to Higoshi-san being under our window…”

“Oh. Right. Well, today I happened to see Hideo-kun following one of you…I was a bit too far off to see who, exactly. And after the attack in the park last week—” Nanako winced. “I was there, you know? I saw that poor kid get changed. And I decided, this is too dangerous to be a game any more. So I told Hideo-kun he had to stop, but after he left I heard Beth-chan coming. And I…hid.”

“And I followed Nana-chan because she was acting so strangely,” said Eitoku in a low voice. Heads turned; none of them had noticed his eyes opening. “So we both heard…everything. I’m sorry.” He frowned and added, “But I don’t know why someone hit me.”

With a struggle, he sat up, and winced as he moved his head. “Ow. I don’t understand, sorry.”

Seki told him what they had discovered about the crystal in his arm. After she finished, he gazed down at himself. “Inside me? Really?” Gingerly, he touched his arm. His eyes widened. “I can feel it. But…it’s so obvious. How did I not notice it before?!”

“Calm down,” said Liam. “I’m sure it’s a disturbing thought, but if the Enemy can control anyone with a crystal, then—”

“—You never noticed it because the Enemy didn’t want you to,” interrupted Moon. “Now that it’s been, um, drained, the Enemy can’t influence you through it. That’s all.”

She barked a laugh. “Yes, I forgot.” With a thought, she detransformed. “You’ve seen everyone else’s faces, I suppose you might as well see mine,” she said.

“I, um, don’t know what to say,” Eitoku said. “I don’t know most of you so I suppose, er, that might be for the best? But, er, hi, Beth-kun…Iku-kun.” He blinked and added, “Beth-kun, is that your cat?”

Eitoku blinked, three times. He said, “I think I’ll just stay sitting down, if it’s all the same to you.”

Suzue said thoughtfully, “Nanako-san, you said you were there in Aozora Park?”

“Oh…right. ’Toku-chan wasn’t there, Karotousen aren’t his thing, but I’d been looking forward to it for months, y’know? But then, just when the concert was about to start—” Nanako described what she had seen.

“Yes.” Nanako hesitated, and said, “There were these sort of…crunching noises. Like, um, bones breaking. I think.”

“I was thinking,” Suzue went on, her voice low, “that we’d killed that boy. That I had killed him. But from what Nanako-san says…he was dead, the moment he changed.”

“Oh,” repeated Eitoku. He touched his forearm again. “That…could have been me.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” said Ochiyo. “Not just you, Shiomi-san. But…all those other boys who went to that, um, political studies course with you. They probably have those crystals in their arms, too. All of them. It could happen to any of them.”

“Not just boys,” said Eitoku. “There were some girls in the class. Five or six.”

“Ochiyo-chan,” said Seki, “we’ve talked about this before, with the vitrimorphs. You couldn’t save any of them, and it wasn’t your fault. Once they changed—”

“They were already dead. And it’s the same now. That boy in the park, he was already dead, and there was nothing you or any of us could have done—”

“I know that,” said Ochiyo, suddenly furious. “The Serries killed them—the Enemy killed them—and we just…put an end to their remains, do you think I don’t know that? It makes me sick, but…but, Seki-san, that’s not the point. The point is, the rest of Eitoku’s class are still alive and well! And so we have to find them and save them before the Enemy can kill them too.”

Eitoku blanched. “Uh. That was a couple of months ago. I don’t think I ever had a class list. I remember one or two names, guys who go to my school, but…it was students from all over Third Tokyo, not just Kawasemi Koukou.”

Ochiyo simply nodded. “Give us whatever you can, and soon. Dhiti-chan, do you think you can find anything?”

“Uh—” At first, Dhiti looked like she was going to make another snarky remark about her computer. Then she met Ochiyo’s eyes and said only, “I’ll try.”

“It was ‘D’ Division,” warned Eitoku. “Their security may be tight.”

“What else can we do, then?” asked Ochiyo, frustrated. “Shiomi-san, you could ask the ones you know, if they can remember anyone else—”

Artemis sat up, bristling indignantly. “Just a minute,” he said. “Isn’t that the boy you said was spying on us all—?” He broke off. “Oh. I see.”

“Right,” said Nanako happily. “He wants to be a master spy and get involved in Senshi affairs…and I have to admit, the little twerp has been pretty good at it so far. So use him. He can enlist every middle schooler in the city, if he likes. This should be safer for them than chasing Senshi…and they’ll be doing something useful. Saving lives. He’ll like that.”

Seki frowned, digesting that. Then she said, “I can’t decide if that’s a crazy idea, or a brilliant one.”

Behind her, just loud enough for Ochiyo to hear, Liam murmured, “Let Dhiti handle the real work. Meanwhile, this gets the junior spy department off our backs.”

Seki glanced over at Sadako, who had been listening in silence. Sadako shrugged.

“Well, why not?” said Seki, aloud. “As long as you make it clear: identify, don’t approach. We’re trying to keep them safe, remember?

“This—this is totally ridiculous!” protested Bendis. “A kid like him will never take this seriously.”

“Is that so?” answered Ochiyo. “And yet…Nanako-san says that you already know him. So I think you and Nanako-san should be the ones to talk to him about this, hmm?”

“So that’s settled,” said Seki, talking over the top of them with a satisfied smile. “Punishment and atonement all in one neat package.”

Artemis tutted. “Really, Bendis, what were you thinking?” But there was a suggestion of a smile on his face, too.

“Well, then. It seems that most of the Senshi have decided to trust their friends. I don’t see that you two are any different. Except—” Seki’s face hardened for a moment. “You’ve seen and heard a lot today. Perhaps it’s worked out for the best, but…don’t assume that this is an open invitation to come back. Understand me?”

“Okay, okay.” Nanako squirmed under Seki’s gaze. “Um, maybe we should go and, uh, get out of your way.”

“Hmm. It’s been most interesting meeting you, Higoshi-san.” Seki glanced over to where the two cats were sitting, and her face took on a sardonic look. “Maybe you could take Bendis with you, if you’re going to talk to this boy…what was it…Hideo-chan.”

“Come on, Nana-chan.” Eitoku took her hand and pulled, looking up at Seki. “It was…really interesting meeting you all, uh…uh…I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“No, you don’t.” Seki gave him a big smile. “And that’s just the way I like it.”

They walked back down the street, a grumpy Bendis padding along just behind them. Nanako waited until they were out of earshot of the house before she exploded.

“More than all of them,” Eitoku pointed out. “There are only six Senshi at the moment, aren’t there? But there were eight girls there.” He was still feeling little shivers over what he had just heard—and what had been done to him without his knowledge—but chattering with Nanako was a bigger help than he wanted to admit.

“Two of them were older…I think,” mused Nanako. “Maybe one of them was Queen Serenity?”

“Dummy,” said Nanako fondly. “I don’t want to talk about it. I just like to know.” She giggled. “And that nitwit Hideo-chan…he’s going to choke when I tell him.”

Nanako jumped. “I forgot you were there. Hey, who are you, anyway? I don’t remember a Bendis in any of the old stories.”

“Oh, I thought you knew it all already?” Bendis looked up at her, sullen. “I don’t see why I should tell you anything.”

A sigh. “I’m Artemis’s great-granddaughter. And before you ask, ‘Bendis’ was some old moon goddess. Everybody asks.”

“Huh. You know, I might decide I like you, Shiomi-san.” Bendis glared at Nanako. “Not her, though.”

They continued down the street. After a little, Nanako leaned over and whispered, “Where the hell did you read that?”

He reddened, and mumbled back, “Er…it was a manga I read when I was about eight. Tarou-chan in History-Land.”

After another minute, as they reached the corner, she reached out and took his hand.

The living room was silent for a minute or two after the three left. At last Liam said, “Well. That was a lot to take in.”

“It was.” Seki glared around at nobody in particular. “I am so angry.”

“No. At Chairman Fukuda. And ‘D’ Division. And all the damn Serries. That was what he didn’t want to tell me yesterday. All those children. Children!” She swore under her breath. “And to think he had me almost feeling sorry for him.”

Ochiyo gave her a bleak look. “I ‘fixed’ Shiomi-san. But— Well, I’ll just have to, won’t I? No matter what.”

“Oh?” inquired Dhiti. “Don’t you trust the Junior Spies Network, then?”

“Don’t be silly. We made a virtue out of necessity, but it’s going to be a lot better if we can find those names ourselves.”

“Me and my magic memory.” Makoto shook her head. “I suppose it’s probably a coincidence.”

“Hotaru-chan. The last time we met for her birthday memorial, just before the Fall…we invited one of her descendants to come. Higoshi Hato.” She looked away, her eyes distant. “We made sure she was evacuated safely, and her children, but…well, who knows? It was a long time ago.”

“Yes. Her. I checked, back when I could.” Sadako was totally expressionless. “But don’t expect anything for now. The Saturn power does not awaken easily. In this generation…I wouldn’t look for it except as a last extremity.”

Nobody had much to say after that. In a forced effort to lift the mood, Seki pulled Makoto out into the kitchen, and they began to serve tea. Snacks followed. Soon, the room was filled with chatter: the mysterious blind Senshi was a favourite topic, but nobody had any real idea what to make of it.

Suzue found herself standing next to Beth, and they exchanged glances. Then, almost together, they shrugged. It seemed that neither of them wanted to bring their problems to Artemis, or Seki.

“Maybe another time,” Suzue murmured, and Beth nodded vigorously. She looked a bit happier today, Suzue thought. Maybe it was sharing her problems. Maybe it was having something else to think about.

It was nice, though, having a new friend. Perhaps she could introduce Beth to Minoru and Keiko…well, no, that probably wasn’t a good idea. This business of keeping their identities separate was a bit annoying sometimes. She wondered if Seki had any friends who knew her secrets…but knew she would never have the nerve to ask.

Thinking of Seki reminded her that the two of them hadn’t had any of their comparative-religion discussions for a long time. Not since Seki had had to leave the Olympus. The two of them had never quite become friendly, but at least they’d managed to lose the hostility. Now if only she could somehow manage the same with Makoto…

Her train of thought was broken as Makoto brought another plate of food into the room. Whatever it was, it smelled good. She started forward almost automatically, but had to wait as Dhiti got in first.

Dhiti started to help herself, but paused in mid-grab. “Hey, Mako-chan,” she called. “What are these supposed to be?”

Makoto stuck her head back through the kitchen door. “Vanilla cookies,” she said. “Why, what’s the problem?”

“They’re a weird shape,” Dhiti complained. “What are they supposed to be? Ducks?”

“And what’s wrong with ducks? I just thought they’d be more interesting.”

“There’s interesting, and there’s interesting,” Dhiti grumbled. “You sure they aren’t slugs instead?”

Dhiti took one of the cookies and munched it with a beatific smile. “There, you see? Perfect. Here, eat a ducky, Mars.”

Iku, who had been reaching for one of the ducks, froze, and then made a tiny choking sound. Suzue, who was still standing behind the two, cringed. Then, from all parts of the room, a hail of cushions fell on Dhiti. She retired from the floor, grinning and clearly pleased with herself.

The chatter continued. Seki tried to stay in the background, wary of a confrontation with Makoto, but for a wonder, it seemed that Makoto was avoiding her, too. Gradually she felt herself relaxing, and even enjoying herself a little.

Bendis returned about half an hour later, jumping in through the same window that Nanako and Eitoku had used. She reported that Nanako had managed to find Hideo, still lurking in the neighbourhood, and had given him his new mission. The boy was overjoyed to be made “official,” she said.

“But I followed him after Nanako-san left,” she went on. “And he went and found some of his friends and told them all about it…and they decided that they were going to track down this ‘Blind Senshi’ as well.”

“Oh, no,” groaned Seki. “I know it was going to go wrong somehow. I just knew it.”

Liam laid a hand on his shoulder. “Relax,” he advised. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it now.”

“Meanwhile, try to make sure we find them first,” grumbled Dhiti. “I know, I know.”

Ochiyo grinned at her. “I’m pretty sure you’re better with that computer of yours than you want us to think,” she said.

As she listened, Suzue felt a soft tap on her shoulder. She looked around and was startled to see Makoto there. She started to bristle automatically, but Makoto simply nodded in the direction of the kitchen door, and walked away quietly.

Mystified and apprehensive, Suzue followed. She closed the door behind her, took a deep breath, braced herself, and waited.

After a moment she looked up uneasily. She did not know what to expect—insults, arguments, even blows—but what she saw was Makoto, staring back at her, and looking just as nervous.

“Look, I’m sorry, all right? I was wrong. You’re—you’re doing fine as a Senshi. You’re not what I thought. You’re not…not evil.”

“No, no, that came out wrong, I just meant…oh, I don’t even know what I meant…” Makoto broke off, looking frustrated. “Look, she accepted you. You know who I mean. Serenity. I don’t know how or why. I don’t believe—I will never believe what you believe about her—”

“I know that!” Makoto exploded. Then, visibly controlling herself, she said, “Look, I just don’t want to fight any more, OK? I talked to your boyfriend a couple of days ago—”

“He said he could, um, care about you without necessarily accepting everything the Loon—uh, everything you believe.”

Suzue had to think about that for a minute. She wasn’t sure she cared for— No, no. Later.

Makoto must have misinterpreted her hesitation. “Love, OK? He said he loved you.”

“Ah. Um.” This was too unexpected. But she could feel herself blushing. “…Thank you.”

Makoto’s eyes widened in panic. “No! Not that I’m in love with you! Oh, Kami-sama. I mean…I don’t…have to accept what you believe…to, uh, accept you?”

Suzue studied her for a time, trying to think what to say. What came out was, “You’re pretty bad at this, aren’t you? Talking about your feelings, I mean.”

“I can talk about them just fine, thank you,” Makoto said, bristling. Then she took a deep breath and relaxed again. “Mostly. Sometimes.”

Suzue took a deep breath of her own. She said, slowly, “Keiko-chan doesn’t believe any of it, either. My best friend. For years, she made me promise never to talk about it when she was around. Until just recently, when I decided…not to hide any longer.” She remembered those precious moments in the ice cream parlour. “She stayed my friend anyway. But for a while, I thought that Minoru-kun had abandoned me. Only…”

She paused, then looked Makoto in the eye. “He was like you, maybe. He needed time to think.”

“So, so tired.” Suzue shrugged. “But faith is faith. If you abandon it when times are hard, then it wasn’t all that real to start with.”

“Hah. I could almost respect that, if it weren’t for—” Makoto broke off, screwing her eyes shut. “No. Not going there again.” She looked at Suzue fiercely. “So…pax?”

A snort. “It means I’m done fighting about this. If you can be done with it too.”

Suzue breathed a sigh. “I never started. So…I guess…‘pax’?” She hesitated, bracing herself, then held out a hand.

“So, um,” Makoto began. “Maybe if you give me a hand carrying these plates out, we can pretend nothing’s happening here, so we don’t have to embarrass ourselves?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Suzue. “Seki-san and Artemis-sama and Liam-sama are all out there. You think they won’t know the moment we show our faces?”

Another week went by, relatively quietly. There was no new attack by vitrimorphs…or crystites.

The following Saturday morning, Ochiyo went into the Olympus for her regular shift. The time passed slowly, with a level of normality that made her feel nostalgic—as if Itsuko might come through reception any moment and give her a nod and smile. Oh, to have those days back again…

Well, maybe, and maybe not. A lot had changed, and not all of it was bad. She thought of her new friends, and how—as ridiculous as it sounded—they were, all of them, fighting to save the world.

A bit messianic there, Chiyo, she told herself, and almost laughed. Nobody had called her just ‘Chiyo’ for years; they always added the prefix. Her mother liked to tell her that she had been a very bossy child.

Thinking about old friends, though, reminded her of someone else: someone she hadn’t seen for a while. She puzzled over that, off and on, until her shift ended.

“Marisa-san,” she said, “What’s happened to Yukimi-san? I haven’t seen her for quite a while.”

“Ah! And happy about it, la?” Marisa smiled. Not many of the staff got on with Yukimi; she was, as Itsuko had told Ochiyo, a good trainer, but abrasive with her fellow workers. “It’s a funny story. That girl call in and say she is on a…” She paused to remember and then spoke slowly, pronouncing the words carefully. “A civil awareness course at ‘W’ Division. Now there’s a mushroom story, no?”

“Of course not; who has?” Marisa tsk’d. “And she sound so angry when she call, too.”

“Mm, so true. We can cover her shifts, but we are…thin, yes?” Marisa shrugged, and gave Ochiyo a meaningful look. “Wouldn’t hurt to hire one or two more, but I can’t decide that.”

“Um. No.” Ochiyo left, thinking deeply. She and Marisa—well, mostly Marisa—were keeping the gymnasium running in Seki’s absence, but there were some things they could not do on their own.

She had fled home and neighbourhood, trying to get away from everything in her familiar life: from worried parents, worried cats, and from anything that reminded her of people who cared about her and wanted to help her. After all, she did not know what help she needed, so how could she expect anyone else to?

Here, downtown, she felt…anonymous. It was comforting, in a way. She wandered past cafés, shops, street vendors, all without noticing. She was dumb to the hum of traffic, the shouts of hawkers, the buzz of chatter from the crowds around her.

Once, she heard a tiny mew that cut through her self-absorption, and looked down to see a tiny kitten fumbling its way along the side of the road. She found herself moving to help, involuntarily, until a mother cat slunk out of a gap between buildings, picked up the kitten by the scruff of its neck, and slunk back again. It gave Beth a quick, wary look as it disappeared. She stared after it, glad that it had not been Bendis, then shook her head and walked on.

She had come away to think—without any of the pressure of the familiar, without distractions. She had reached a crisis point, she realised dimly: a point where she could not go on any longer without some kind of answer to her problems. She had been close to the edge when she spoke to Suzue; but now, after the meeting last weekend, and another edgy week of avoiding Bendis, she could not bear to go on.

So she wandered the streets, a faceless figure in a sea of equally faceless strangers, letting the hubbub of the city wash over her and trying to discover the meaning of her life.

That was an awfully corny way of putting it, she knew. The sort of phrase she would put in one of her poems, and then cross out with a wince. She wondered if she were in danger of becoming a walking cliché. Or was that just normal teenage angst?

Slowly, as she plodded on, she became aware that there was something familiar about the area around her. That was not what she wanted, not at all. She was tempted to turn around and go another way…but simple curiosity made her lift her head to look around.

For a minute, the familiarity escaped her. She was in a street dominated by a building covered with tarpaulins and scaffolding. There was a faint, rank smell in the air that reminded her of something. She turned her head, confused.

It was here—this street, this department store—where the fire had broken out. Here, where Sailor Venus had charged into the flames to rescue people trapped on an upper floor. Here where she had first met Jupiter and Mercury, as they fought the first vitrimorph together. Her first really public appearance. And a crowd who cheered her and shouted her name and treated her as—

Beth curled her lip at the memory, shaking her head. It had all been fake, though, hadn’t it? All a lie. She was no hero—

Well. Except, she sort of had been, hadn’t she? Running into that fire. Nearly dying in the flames. And rescuing all those people—

And yet, another treasonous memory popped into her head: deep inside the Tenshin Institute, she stood on top of the breeding chamber, reaching up to plug the end of her Love-Me Chain into the power supply overhead, knowing that the shock would probably kill her…and doing it anyway. That wasn’t Sailor Venus. That was Beth.

She stared up at the department store, wondering why it hadn’t been demolished yet. The fire had been—what, four months ago? It was hard to make out much detail through the tarpaulins. Maybe the damage wasn’t as bad as she’d thought?

Curiosity got the better of her. She looked around and saw the building opposite, where months before she’d stood watching the disaster breaking out before swooping into action. She wanted…she wanted to stand there again.

Before she could let herself think about the irony of what she was about to do, she walked into the half-forgotten alleyway, checked that she was alone, and transformed. As Venus, it was easy to loop her Love-Me Chain around a fire escape near the top of the building. The cat-moves came back to her easily. In less than a minute she was at the top.

Feeling guilty, she detransformed and gazed down at the burnt building. How she had felt, back then? Nervous, surely. …Or, well, no. She had been excited, and confident. There were no complications slowing her down. She was a hero and she knew that she could handle anything. Why else had she been chosen to be a Senshi?

Beth frowned at the memory. It was Venus’s memory, not hers, but she could remember it clearly. Something about that seemed wrong, but she ignored it; she was more bothered by the sheer naïveté of the memory. How could she not have seen that the world was more complex than that? It was as if she’d been living in some kind of dream world.

A sound from below distracted her. She looked down and saw a limousine purring up to a stop by the burnt-out department store. A man got out: tall, blond, handsome even from this distance, wearing an expensive suit. He looked up at the building and Beth crouched down in case he looked her way.

Another limousine approached and a middle-aged woman got out. She was wearing an expensive suit, too. She joined the man, and greeted him. Beth wondered who they were.

Enami Goro raised his eyebrows as the woman got out of her car and started toward him. “Number Thirteen? What brings you here?” he asked.

Sese scowled as she stumped up to him. “I had to get out of my office for a bit,” she said. “I’ve been stuck in meetings with a militant farmers’ collective all morning and it was either this or kill someone.”

“Don’t we all?” She looked up at the burnt-out building above them. “What’s the story here?”

“Mm. Well, ‘S’ Division and the Tenshin Institute have finally finished poking through the remains and collecting fragments of…goodness knows what. So finally ‘C’ Division gets to decide whether to pull the place down, or try to repair it.”

Sese glanced up again. “Looks like a wreck to me. Surely there’s no real prospect of repairs?”

“It’s a harder decision that you’d think. Repairs would cost two or three times as much as rebuilding. But it’s one of the older buildings in the city, and there are heritage groups who think that—”

“Yes. Of course.” Sese gave him a long, assessing look. Then she said, “Show me inside.”

“You must be joking. They’ve cleaned up a bit in there, but it’s still filthy.”

He started to protest again, saw her expression, and relented with a shrug. “Through here.”

Inside, the department store was as filthy as he had promised. It was dark, but someone had strung cables and hung lamps here and there. The walls and ceilings were charred ruins, and much of the floor was gone. There were planks laid over some of the gaps to allow access, but the planks themselves were covered with sooty footprints. The smell had been strong outside; inside, it was indescribable.

Goro let her look around. Then he said, quietly, “And now, what are you really here for?”

Her face creased in a wry smile. “Two Serries, meeting in secret. How very suspicious of us.” She paused. “You and I don’t usually have a lot to say to one another, in or out of Council meetings.”

That was true enough. Toyotomi Serabi was Number Thirteen, the head of ‘A’ Division: agriculture, forest, fisheries and natural resources in general. Goro was Number Fifteen: ‘C’ Division, City Planning. The most junior and least prestigious of the Council seats.

Goro flashed her a photogenic grin. “We don’t step on each other’s toes much.”

“But there’s something going on in the Council, something under the covers. You and I get left out of a lot of things.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking into her face. The silence lasted a long time.

“You’re wondering if I can be trusted, I expect,” she said. And waited herself.

She grimaced. “I’m taking a hell of a risk saying as much as I just did. But…let’s say, some associates of mine think you might be trustworthy.”

“…All right.” She took a deep breath. “We’re being left out. I’d thought it was just me, but I recently learned—I won’t say how, just yet—that you’re on the outside too.” She gave him a moment to think about that and then added, “If you don’t want to know anything more, just say the word. I’ll leave and we won’t talk again. Or”—she smiled mirthlessly—“you could talk to Ryobe, and then I expect I’d be in a bad position.”

Goro took a breath of his own. “I have noticed,” he admitted. “I asked once, about a meeting I wasn’t invited to. I was told that it had nothing to do with ‘C’ Division, and there was a strong hint about how junior I was. I took the message.” He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re saying that there’s more to it.”

“Last week, I managed to overhear a secret meeting between One, Three, Five and Nine. They’re planning a war. Total annihilation of the Sankaku Clans.”

“They…what?” He stared, confounded. “Why? I mean…not that that’s a bad idea, surely…but why would they keep it secret?” Then he blinked. “Wait, you said Number Five? ‘W’ Division?”

“Number Five. And as for why…Number One said something to the effect that the Sankaku have been getting involved in ‘unacceptable’ areas.”

“What sort of areas?” Goro’s head was whirling. He had wondered, but…this was far beyond anything he’d ever imagined.

“They didn’t say, specifically. But…the weekend before last, when there was that monster attack at Aozora Park…an armed paramilitary group showed up and helped the Senshi. A lot of kids saw it, but it was kept out of the newsies. I can’t be sure of this, but…I think the paramilitary group was Sankaku.”

“With the Senshi?” Something clicked together in his head. “The Senshi were here, too, during the fire.”

“Yes. Fighting another monster. Maybe the first one.” She looked him in the eye. “And then there’s you, of course.”

He blinked. “What about the cat? We talked about this in Council, didn’t we? Two or three months ago?”

“And Number Three said the investigation was being scaled down. Well, it isn’t being scaled down, Goro. They’re still hunting moon cats.”

“Because, for some time now, I have been carrying out illegal surveillance operations against the rest of the Council.”

Goro stared at her. She’d said it without a trace of humour. He realised, shocked, that she meant it.

“Because they are lying to me! And to you. And to the country. They are carrying out some kind of vast conspiracy right under our noses and I will have the truth.” He heard, now, the level of suppressed rage in her voice. For a minute, it left him speechless.

“Conspiracy I said, and conspiracy I meant. I can prove some of it, but…not nearly enough. There’s all kinds of strangeness going on, but I think—I’m sure—that it all intersects. If I could just see the pattern.”

“It all starts with that damn cat. It appears…and suddenly ‘S’ Division is on the hunt. Just a little later, the first Senshi appears. But get this: the first monsters don’t start appearing until a couple of weeks later. In the past, the Senshi always appeared in response to monsters, but this time they appeared first.”

“I think everything is connected.” She frowned. “But the Senshi are mixed up in it, somehow. There was that fire, right here. More attacks, at a theatre and a mall. Goro, we’re supposed to have the best security service in the world, but nobody knows where the monsters are coming from! And then the Sankaku suddenly join a battle to help the Senshu…and a few days later the Chairman is declaring war on the Sankaku.

“And it may be worse than that. I’ve got a source…I can’t say who. But he tells me there’ve been a lot more incidents that never got into the news. Including something ‘unspeakable’ at the Tenshin Institute. The Institute insists that nothing happened…but they closed a major facility for three weeks, the morning after the supposed incident. Right about the same time that Number Twelve died in a car crash…by an odd coincidence.

“And I haven’t even mentioned the really insane parts. Like why ‘M’ Division keeps ordering shipments of Arctic exploration gear. Or why ‘S’ Division have a group investigating a children’s anime. And there’s a report of a singing hedge…” She shook her head, making a chopping motion with her hand. “No, forget that one. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy.

“Look, I told you I can prove that a lot of odd things are going on. But connecting it together…that I can’t do. Not yet. I do know that I could use another pair of eyes. And…well. The rest of the Council, they say some unpleasant things about you—about us both—but I never heard anyone call you stupid.”

She heaved a sigh. “I can show you what I have. Most of it. Some of my sources, I need to protect. But if you’re willing, you—”

She broke off. Goro looked around sharply, and Sese did the same. There was a sharp cracking sound, coming from deeper in the ruins. And then, heavy footsteps, drawing nearer.

“All right,” said Nine, looking away from her commset. “The crystite is fully transformed, and inside the building.”

“She’s dirty somehow. She’s got to be. You said it yourself: she looks too clean. And with a name like hers, how innocent can she be?”

Three smiled. “As you say. …Did I see someone else was in there with her?”

“Eh? I didn’t notice. Organising the attack was hard enough. I expect it’s nobody who matters.”

“Very well.” Three had never much cared for Nine, but today he was finding a whole new level of reasons to dislike her. “I assume you have ‘P’ Division units standing by to clean up the mess, afterward?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve got nothing that can handle a crystite. I assume those damn girls will show up to take care of it, as usual. Otherwise, it’ll probably take ‘W’ Division to make a dent in it.”

“I…see.” Three nodded. “Well, I’m sure you’re doing the right thing.”

And Three thought to himself, Easy enough to blame it all on you…later. And good riddance.

Beth stopped paying any attention when the two strangers went inside. She sat down on the roof to try to think.

Nothing came to mind. It was just…peaceful. Quiet. The sounds of the city were far off, and nobody was nagging her.

I should do this more often, she thought. It came to her, in a flash of humour, that she hadn’t felt this relaxed since…hmm. That afternoon with Suzue, actually.

That had been a bit of a weird thing. The two of them got off to a rocky start, especially after the bombshell about the Loonies, but since then…well, they were sort of friends now. Nothing like the first time she’d met a Loonie—

The policeman knelt at her feet, gabbling something about “When you see the blessed queen” and trying to kiss her hand—

The memory didn’t even bother her much any longer. When you’d cried on someone’s shoulder and admitted your secret fears to her, and listened as she admitted to her own fear of inadequacy…well, that counted for a lot.

From far off, she heard a smashing sound. She paid no attention, but it was followed by further crashes, and something that sounded like masonry falling. It was weirdly similar to the sounds of destruction she’d heard at Zarigani Mall. Or right here, actually, back on the day of the fire—

She stood, her heart suddenly beating fast. She looked down at the ruined building. The tarpaulins had been torn away near one corner, and there was a gaping hole that she was sure hadn’t been there before.

She raised her communicator to her mouth—the clock display was fast again—and tapped the little call button.

“Venus here,” she said crisply. She was talking just like Venus did, not like Beth, but she did not really notice. “There’s another attack happening.” She gave the address. “The same place that had the fire, months ago.”

After a startled moment she heard Makoto saying, “There? …Are you sure?”

A tiny pause. She only noticed because she had been waiting for it. Then, “Coming.”

Other voices were answering, too, but Beth paid no more attention. Her henshin wand was in her hand, and her voice was resigned but steady. “Venus Power, Make-Up.”

Inside, Sese and Goro clambered under fallen beams and over piles of rubbish, all of it charred pitch-black, as they made their way urgently deeper into the building. Away from the crashing sound that was following them. They had to stick to the areas that the lamps covered, and Sese had a feeling that they were going to run out of places to go pretty soon.

Goro was younger and fitter, damn him. “I’m not sure. But…those monsters are pretty big, aren’t they?”

He pointed. “Upstairs. If it’s big enough, the floor might not support its weight.”

“It might not support ours!” But she turned toward the stairwell he indicated. There didn’t seem much choice.

The stairs were in better condition than she’d expected: charred, but there was solid framework showing through. Fire exit, she thought vaguely. Evacuation codes…has to be stronger… And none of that mattered. They took her weight; that was enough.

Behind them, there was another crash. Then, an odd whining sound…and a sudden crack of energy. A flash of light lit up the ruined walls. “Getting closer,” Goro grunted. He was breathing hard now, too.

But then they were at the top of the stairs, and hurrying through a more open area. Sese plucked Goro’s sleeve, pulling him around toward the opposite side of the stairwell. If the thing came up after them, it might take a minute longer to find them.

There were more crashes downstairs. More…shots, she supposed, being fired. Energy beams? Who knew?

She staggered to a halt, wheezing faintly, by one of the lamps. Goro tried to pull her onward. “We’re a sitting target here,” he urged.

She waved him off. Her handbag was open, and she rooted around inside desperately. She didn’t carry a lot, it had to be here— There. She pulled out what looked like an ordinary compact: nothing special, cheap plastic. She flipped it open.

“Hush.” She closed her eyes, trying to remember. The crashing sounds were getting closer. Frowning, eyes still closed, she tapped a short rhythm on the back of the compact.

“I’m under attack,” she said. “Some kind of monster. I’m in the city centre. The old ruined Lucio Store.”

She looked up. Goro was staring at her. “Who are you calling?” he said, in almost a whisper.

Her compact crackled again, and the voice said, “Hold tight. There’s already someone on the way.”

Another crash, much louder this time. It was definitely coming from the stairwell. The monster was following them up.

Seki stared down at the communicator on her table. She had heard Venus’s call, though there was nothing she could do to help. Makoto was out somewhere, probably a lot closer. Maybe close enough to get there in time.

Then she grimaced as, somewhere far-off, she felt an old, familiar power surging. Somewhere far away, Iku was transforming. Seki could no longer use the Mars Power, but she could always feel it.

She stamped out of the room, and down to the little shine she had built in the house. She might not be able to fight, but she could pray.

Venus stood for a minute at the edge of the roof, looking over at the burnt-out department store. She knew she needed to do something, but her limbs were frozen. Her heart was beating fast; she was having trouble breathing.

What am I supposed to do? she thought, panicked. Then, crazily: What would Bendis tell me to do?

She remembered her dream, when Aino-sama had talked to her, and how real it had felt. Her forehead tingled, just for a moment, and she heard the Senshi of Love’s voice again: You know how the Queen told you you might be me, reborn? Well, just remember this—

Funny how Suzue-chan had said she’d had the same kind of dream, meeting Haruka-sama…

And she was wasting time. Trying to put off the moment. She knew what to do; she had done it before. Bendis had trained her well.

No more hesitation. She stepped to the edge, aimed, and cried out: “VENUS LOVE-ME CHAIN!” The chain caught…and then she was swinging effortlessly over the street below. She did not need to brace for the shock because she knew—she remembered—no, she just knew that she was aiming for the right spot. Her heels struck the tarpaulin half-way up the building…and she tore through, struck the boarded-up window underneath, and broke through easily.

The interior was very dark. The lights were off, of course, but mostly it was because everything was charred black from the fire. The smell was pretty bad. And she was wrong; there were lights, here and there, besides the daylight filtering in from behind her.

She looked around quickly, getting her bearings. She was breathing in quick, shallow breaths: tense, but in control. Which way would the vitrimorph be, from here?

She heard movement and automatically started forward. Heavy footsteps and a crashing sound, she realised after a moment, but she was already moving. Another cat-lesson: hunting reflexes. Thank you, Bendis.

Something about the dreams was bothering her. She had spoken with her Aino-self…but Suzue had spoken to Ten’ou-sama, her predecessor. Why? What was the difference?

No time to think about it now. Because there it was: a great, hulking shape, half-way up a staircase, glinting in the dim light as it moved. Bear-like, but bigger. Four arms, but no head. Terrifying.

She did not think it had noticed her yet. The plan formed quickly in her mind. Wrap one end of her Chain around the crystite; the other end around one of the exposed beams in the floor. Hold it in place, and then she could take her time working out what to do next. This was starting to feel like it would be easy.

She moved into position, fired her Love-Me Chain…and that was when it all went wrong.

The crystite whirled around as she fired, shockingly fast. A crystal hand flashed up and caught the end of her Chain before it struck home. Caught, and then tugged, with horrifying strength. Taken by surprise, Venus was yanked upward, off her feet. Before she could so much as yelp in shock, she smashed hard into the ceiling.

The impact left her half-stunned. Her hand opened, releasing her Chain, and it disappeared. Her head, shoulder and one arm were wedged into the ceiling but, all charred and crumbling as it was, the wood and plaster could not hold her. She peeled away, fell, and hit the floor with a crash.

Her head was swimming. There was pain, but it was muffled, distant. The whole world was grey and far away.

Then something vast and heavy hit the floor right next to her and the world snapped back into focus. The crystite was right there, standing over her. One hand was lit up in a dim glow: the hand that had caught her Chain. She saw that there was a face in the middle of its chest. The eyes were open, staring at her, avid with malice, and the mouth was grinning.

She rolled desperately, and the blows missed—almost. The rock-hard edge of one fist caught her knee. She screamed once. Blinding agony made her vision blur again.

Then she was clear, curled up into a ball on her side and looking up at it. With no hurry at all, it stepped closer. Its fists clenched again. No, no…it can’t end like this! There were voices, far away: a woman and a man, shouting.

One more cat lesson. Where there are no alternatives…attack. She bared her teeth and snarled, “Venus Chain Thing.”

The Chain struck the crystite directly in the eye. And jittered off, sparking and writhing…impotent.

But it made the crystite pause, and gave her a second. Somehow she got to her feet. Set her teeth against the pain. And jumped.

She landed on top of the monster, her Chain wrapped around under its top two arms. It gave her a purchase to hang onto. She leaned back, feet braced against its back, ignoring the blaze of agony from her knee…and pulled.

Sailor Jupiter was running at top speed, and getting close. Her communicator told her that Mercury and Mars weren’t far behind; Moon and Uranus, coming from different directions, were just a little after them. But that meant Venus was fighting alone, and…well…that might be a problem.

She could hear thuds and crashes coming from over her communicator. Then a loud blow, and a stifled scream.

Riding the damn thing like a rodeo horse wasn’t doing a bit of good. Venus needed a new plan, and fast.

She tried sawing her Chain back and forth under the crystite’s arms. The heart-shaped links grated and sparked against the crystal, sending splinters flying. Hey, if she could keep this up for long enough, she might actually get somewhere! She wished Bendis could see—

The crystite had frozen in apparent surprise when she jumped onto its back. But now it moved again. It reached up with a lower arm, caught her Chain in mid-saw, and tugged: lightly, almost casually.

The tug flipped her off the thing’s back; and then she hung in mid-air, suspended under the crystite’s fist, dangling by her own chain.

She released it frantically, but this time she was too late. Another massive crystal fist caught her around the neck.

She looked up into its glowing blue eyes and knew that there would be no more plans.

In her last moments—as she felt the fist begin, oh so slowly, to close—her thoughts whirled crazily and the world went away.

«Some of them think that you are Aino Minako reborn,» said the ghost of Queen Serenity. «Or, at least, that a part of you is.»

“Is…is it true?” Beth asked, afraid to hear the answer…but also afraid not to hear.

«That is a very interesting question. …I could tell you to believe in yourself, but that’s what you have to learn, isn’t it? Instead, take courage. The truth may be difficult for you to bear, but you can do it. You will find, in the end, that that is where true heroism begins.»

“Now, what was it I wanted to say?” said Minako. “Look, I remember now. You know how the Queen told you you might be me, reborn?”

“You said you had a dream where you talked to Aino-sama?” asked Suzue. “It’s strange…I had a dream that night, too. I talked to Haruka-sama…and I could tell you every word she said. It’s…very odd.”

But…but Haruka-sama is dead. Why would Suzue-chan talk to a dead person, but I talked to…myself? It doesn’t make sense.

Unless… If Suzue-chan talked to her, and I talked to Minako-sama, then that would mean that Minako-sama is…is…

Minako-sama said, “Just remember this.” And then she was gone. She was gone!

And then she remembered again. The first time, the very first time she transformed.

In the last moment before it began, in that bare instant when the words seemed to ring in the air and the world held its breath, she knew, knew beyond any doubt that it was no dream. This was no dream, this was real, and her life was about to change forever.

Venus…Venus was the dream. She was always a dream. It was always just me. I was living a dream because in a dream you can act as crazy as you like…you can be a hero, saving everyone, without consequences…and nobody ever needs to get hurt because the good guys always win…

Until Queen Serenity told her that the others thought she might be Minako…and with that, things became far too real. The dream went away…and Beth woke up instead.

Why did you do it, Serenity-sama? she wailed. Why couldn’t you leave me alone? I was so happy!

And the Queen said again, «Take courage. The truth may be difficult for you to bear, but you can do it. You will find, in the end, that that is where true heroism begins.»

Venus looked up into the glowing blue eyes of the crystite. She felt its massive crystalline fist around her neck; she felt the fingers begin to close. Slowly, taunting her.

Because there was something else besides that blazing, righteous anger. There were words in her head that wanted—needed—to be said. She let her henshin wand form in her hand—there was something different about it, but she had no time to look—and clenched it tight.

The power of Venus descended, all over again, shining and golden. She had never felt it so strongly. It whirled around her in a corona of energy. It filled her to overflowing; filled her with so much life and strength that she felt she could leap mountains. It took away all the bruises and scrapes and the agony in her knee and replaced them with overwhelming vitality. And it tore her out of the crystite’s grasp in a burst of lambent light.

She dropped lightly to the floor and stood facing the crystite, feeling the afterglow of transformation fade. Her fury was gone; there was only the necessity of action.

Her Love-Me Chain was not up to the task. She needed something stronger. And now she had it.

And the bolt of power that came from her hand struck home deep into the crystite and blew it to atoms.

Sailor Jupiter arrived just in time to see the end. Venus confronting the crystite…and the energy beam that she fired, so bright that Jupiter saw spots before her eyes.

She pulled to a halt, panting, and Venus turned to face her. Venus looked…different, somehow. Confident, maybe. More…serious?

Venus appeared to think about that. “Well,” she said, “I had to. That’s all.”

Jupiter thought again about the blinding beam Venus had produced, moments before. She could not help remembering Artemis telling her, months ago, that they were all going to progress at their own rates…and in their own ways. She said, “That…um, new attack. It’s the same name, but…it’s nothing like Minako-chan’s Crescent Beam.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Venus. She cocked an eyebrow at Jupiter and added, in what almost seemed like a challenge, “But then…I’m not Minako-sama.”

Before Jupiter could take that in, she heard more footsteps behind her. Mercury and Mars. And then, a moment later, Uranus and Moon.

Moon looked around the scene, and her lips quirked. “Late, are we?” she asked.

Venus grinned in return. “Everyone, thanks for coming. There are…” She paused. “I’ve got things I need to talk to you all about. And maybe a confession to make.” Drawing a deep breath, she added, “But not here. Um, obviously. I think there were some other people in the building…we should check they’re OK…”

They looked around. A man and woman were coming down the stairs, moving slowly and trying not to get too much ash on their business suits. They looked vaguely familiar, but even with her trick memory, Jupiter could not see them clearly enough to be sure who they were.

“Are you sure?” asked Venus, stepping closer. “This was a pretty bad situation.”

“Quite sure, thank you,” said the man. “You took care of it admirably.” He glanced at the woman, who…was staring at Venus in a very strange way. He went on, “We owe you a lot, obviously.”

“Of course you don’t,” said Moon. “This is our…well, it’s what we’re for.”

“All the same,” he insisted. “I don’t know if you realise who we are—”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” interrupted the woman. “Best not to make things…complicated.” Her eyes were still fixed on Venus: almost as if she were seeing a ghost. “But you, girl…” She shook her head. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d ever meet you. Girl, you’ve got to get out of here, fast. All of you…but especially you.”

The woman did not take her eyes off Venus. “Because there’ll be newsies on the way…and if any of them gets a picture of you with me, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“All right, all right,” grumbled Venus. “Be that way. I’ve got to go talk to my cat, anyway.”

The woman gave her one more piercing look. “Not that I’m ungrateful,” she said. “But go.”

Thankfully, the girls left. They were mystified and visibly annoyed, but they were gone, and Sese breathed a long sigh of relief.

Goro looked at her as if he were about to laugh. “I never considered that,” he said. “Sorry if I was slow to catch on.”

“My mother wrote fan fiction,” Sese snapped. “She read it to me when I was a child. I promise you, Goro, it’s worse than you can possibly imagine.”

Goro’s cheeks twitched; he bit his lip. “Perhaps we’d better get out of here ourselves,” he suggested. “Maybe we can beat the newsies, too.”

“We can try,” she said, unconvinced. “And, Goro…we’ll talk again…later.”

“Yes, I think we’d better,” he said. “But, er, Toyotomi-san”—he was not about to say her given name now—“one question first. Who was it that you called for help?”

Sese paused for a moment; but then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “Later.”

She scowled. “I’d give a lot to know that myself,” she said. “Come on, now. Let’s get a move on.” She turned and began to stump her way down and out of the building.

Bendis emerged from behind a fallen beam and watched the two go. Now that was interesting, she mused.

She had been following Beth for most of the day, unseen. Beth was obviously going through some kind of crisis, and Bendis was… Well, she was… Oh, all right, she was concerned. Beth was her human, and she showed a lot of promise. Most of the time. These last few weeks, though, the girl had been impossibly moody, and she wouldn’t say why. It was obviously Bendis’s prerogative to find out what was going on.

It was profoundly irritating that—judging by today—Beth seemed to have solved her problems without any help at all from Bendis. A cat could start to feel unnecessary.

Still, at least Bendis had learned something new and unexpected. Those two humans, it sounded like they were in contact with someone who knew what the Senshi were doing…before they did it. That was a little worrying.

Also, there was something familiar about that man. Bendis could almost think she’d seen him before.

She debated following them. But they would probably get into cars…and cars were difficult to follow.

Besides, Beth had said that she had to go talk to her cat. Bendis figured she had better be there, ready, when Beth arrived.

Number Nine glared down at the screen of her commset. “Screw you and screw your patronising attitude,” she snarled. “Now we’ve got to clean all this up and hide the evidence before—”

“Oh, don’t think you can lay all this on me. I’ve got plenty to link you to all of this, don’t you think I don’t—”

“I do run the security services,” he pointed out. “I believe my people are rather good at knowing who can link what to whom.”

“Ha! Your best people are all out hunting for cats. I’ve been running investigations for thirty years now and if you think I don’t know—”

Neither of them spoke. The chairman looked around the room, expressionless, and then back to Three and Nine.

“Just for the record,” he said, “when one of our strongest assets gets put into play prematurely, and without a word from me…then, yes, the Master communicates with me. In the strongest terms. I trust I am understood?”

“What are you going—” began Nine; but then she thought better of it. “Yes, Chairman.”

“Number Twelve’s offence was far less than yours, and look what we did to her. Can you even imagine what I’m going to do to the pair of you?”

The chairman sighed. “On the other hand—” He gave a thin smile at the sudden hope in their eyes. “If I did to you what you collectively deserve, I would have to find two more Councillors, when we’re still trying to find a replacement for Twelve. And right now, I simply cannot be bothered with the fuss that punishing you would cause.

“In addition…hmm. One of the Senshi actually ascended because of this tomfoolery. Now that was beyond expectations…beyond all hope.”

He looked at them again and shook his head slowly. “Clean this up,” he ordered. “Make sure nothing gets into the newsies. And if either of you causes me trouble again…I promise you, I will do far worse than we did to Twelve. I will transfer the offender.”

Seki listened to Makoto’s report over the communicator, and let herself breathe a sigh of relief. A minute or two later, she felt a tiny inner tension relax as, somewhere far off, Iku detransformed, and she sighed again.

She wanted to talk to someone, but there was nobody there: just a silent, empty house. She made a face, and walked out into the rear garden. It looked like a proper garden these days, thanks to Makoto’s work.

She lifted her eyes to the eaves of the house, and saw the familiar shapes there: a pair of crows, gazing silently back down at her. “Everything’s all right,” she told them. “Sailor Venus won her battle.” She hesitated. “And she got her Star Power transformation. That’s…a surprise. I thought Makoto would be first. After all, she remembers it from before.”

Seki stood in silence for a while. She should have felt happy, but she could not. There was a hollow, empty feeling inside her. Part of it was loneliness, but part of it was something much more fundamental.

With a clatter of wings, one of the crows took flight and flapped away over the top of the house.

Brutal self-honesty made her add, “I mean, even without her, it’s not like Ochiyo-chan is doing badly. She has the right instincts. If she has the time to grow into it, she could be good—maybe even great. If she has time.”

She stood in silence for a minute longer, biting her lip, then admitted: “But it’s not the same. It’s never the same. And…I think we’re running out of time.”

Seki shook her head, suddenly angry with herself, and stamped inside again. At least she no longer felt empty; rather, she felt disgusted with her own weakness.

Moving with taut, clipped self-control, she started to make a pot of tea; but she was interrupted by the chime of her commset. Her emergency commset. Again, it did not show the calling commcode.

“Jiro?” She stared at the commset. “This is the second time. How did you get this code?”

“Questions later,” he said. “Right now, got a message for you. Someone who wants to meet you. They say it’s time.”

“Couldn’t say. But…Itsuko-chan. If you ever trusted me…trust me now. You should come to this meeting. It’s safe; I guarantee it.”

But he paid no attention, speaking over the top of her. He gave an address, and a time. “You got that?” he asked. He sounded oddly tense.

“I…hear you. But if you think for one moment that I’m going to put my head in the lion’s mouth, just on your say-so, then you—”

She sat down on her favourite armchair and let out a deep breath. “Well,” she said to nobody in particular.

The truth was, when you came right down to it, that she had trusted Jiro…once. A long time ago. Or—if she had to be really honest—quite recently actually. Right up until the moment Sadako had told her that he was Sankaku, and she realised that his friendship had cost her the Olympus.

And then, of course, she had trusted him again, only a week ago, hadn’t she? And he had not betrayed her…as far as she knew. He had even helped her, at considerable risk. Even after admitting that he knew about her past.

“Oh, who am I kidding?” she snarled to herself. “He may have told all of them. How would I know? They could all be laughing at me down at Sankaku headquarters.”

And he had been a friend once. Even (oh, damn it, if she couldn’t admit it to herself, then to whom?) a man she’d found…attractive. Once.

She stared down at her hands, uncertain, for an indefinable length of time. Then she glanced at the clock and saw that if she didn’t leave soon, she would miss the appointment.

Grumbling at her own foolishness, she grabbed her purse, changed into sensible walking shoes, and walked out the front door.

She barely noticed the bus ride into town. She had no idea what she was doing, except that it was probably a mistake. She should have called someone. Sadako. That would have been a good idea.

But—though she had had no visions, no premonition, and had not attempted any kind of fire reading—somehow she had the strangest feeling that this trip was important.

She got off the bus at the right stop, and walked a block and a half through city streets. It was dusk, and the shadows were lengthening around her. This was not a shopping district, and on a Saturday evening, the roads and the pavements were almost empty.

She found the right building and walked into the foyer. A young man was standing there. He looked up as she entered, nodded, and motioned her to follow him without saying a word.

Puzzled and apprehensive, she obeyed. They entered the elevator and rode up to the eighteenth floor. When the doors opened, he motioned her to exit. The doors closed behind her and she realised, startled, that he had not followed. She was alone.

She was standing in a short corridor with a single door at the end. She took a deep breath, braced herself, and knocked. The door opened and a woman said, “Come in.” The voice sounded old.

Seki stepped inside. The door swung closed again with a soft click, but she paid little attention. She was standing in what looked like a hotel suite. Half of it was comfortable, though bland. The other half was lined with tables and work-benches, all covered with…equipment. Electronic devices she did not recognise. There was a faint smell of ozone in the air.

In the comfortable half of the room, she saw a couch and three armchairs. Sitting in one of the chairs was an old woman. Her hair was thin and white, her face deeply lined, the skin of her throat slack. When she saw Seki, she smiled and lifted a hand in greeting.

Seki stared at her. The woman was a total stranger. And yet. There was something familiar…something haunting her memory…

Next: A reunion of old friends, a relative unmasked,
and a journey to distant worlds.

Author’s Note

I was going to end this without comment and let readers make of the chapter what they may. However, if I’m going to start making silly jokes with the Japanese language, perhaps there are those who’d appreciate a word of explanation.

So, when Eitoku signs himself 89…this is an example of goroawase, which is a kind of Japanese punning, frequently by numeric substitution. To take Beth’s “dad joke” first: “89” can be read as the Japanese digits hachi kyu, but hachi can be shortened to ha, and kyu can also be pronounced ku or even gu. (This last change, from an unvoiced to a voiced consonant, is common in Japanese, and is called rendaku. That’s probably more than you wanted to know.) So, “89” can be read as “ha-gu” or the English word “hug”.

Whereas if you take the Japanese pronunciation of the English word “eight”, but the Japanese word for “nine”, you get “eito-ku”. It’s similar to the way, in Oh My Goddess!, Morisato Keiichi signs himself “K1” (K-ichi).

As for Dhiti’s punning moment…“Eat a ducky, Mars” sounds a bit like the Japanese phrase itadakimasu, which is often said before eating. It literally means “I humbly receive,” and is a way of practicing mindfulness toward one’s food; but anime or manga translations usually render it as something like “thanks for the food” or “let’s eat.”

I have had notes of these puns for years now, and have been waiting patiently for an opportunity to squeeze them into a chapter. If that strikes you as a bit sad, so be it.

—Angus

First Draft: 27th July, 2026.
Revised for first publication: 24th August, 2026.

S A I L O R M O O N 4 2 0 0

Chapter Sixteen

Spies (III):
Who’s Watching Whom?

S A I L O R M O O N 4 2 0 0

Chapter Sixteen

Spies (III): Who’s Watching Whom?

Spies (III):
Who’s Watching Whom?