Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and the DARK.MATTER
setting was written by Wolfgang Baur and Monte Cook. I own neither of
these things, and expect that if either of those last two people
Google their own names they are going to be incredibly confused.



* * * * *



   Itohiro Nakami couldn't sit still. He wasn't sure if he was elated
or terrified, and he seemed to be oscillating between them ten times a
second. He bopped up and down slightly in his seat, shifted his weight
from his left armrest to his right armrest and back again, looked
around the plane's cabin nervously for nothing in particular.


   "First time flying, eh?" said the overweight balding businessman in
the adjacent seat, patting him on the arm.


   "Nooot exactly," said Nakami, chewing on his cheek a little.


   "Well, you picked a good guy to sit next to for your first time,
mister," said the bald man who clearly cared more about his own voice
than Nakami's. "I've been up in the air thousands of times for my
business -- I'm in sales, by the way," like Nakami gave a shit, "I
probably have more flight time than half the pilots by now. So if you
got any questions about anything here don't you hesitate to ask and
I'll lay it all out for you. I love mentoring you newbies." He
extended his sweaty-palmed hand. "Walter Mifflin, pleased to meet
you."


   Nakami glanced at Walter's hand but made no other motion towards
it. "Charmed."


   "So," said Walter as he retracted his hand but clearly missed the
hint, "What takes you out to California? I've got a biiig presentation
for some real important Hollywood-types in a couple days and I thought
I'd get there early, you know, scope out the area, get the lay of the
land. Don't want to be unprepared, plus I figured I could get in some
surfing lessons on company time, you feel me?" He chuckled and elbowed
Nakami in the ribs. "What about you, you into anything like that?"


   "I'm not going to California," he droned in a tone of voice he
hoped indicated 'I am too polite to not respond to you but am not
interested in this conversation' but he doubted it would. "I'm just
stopping in California on my way to Japan."


   "Oh, good man, good man," said Walter like visiting Japan was some
laudable thing. "You, what, visiting family or something like that?"


   "Something like that."


   Yeah, something like that. You know the horrible boogeyman that
lived in your closet when you were five years old, the one who your
dad could never find during the daytime? The one that came out at
night every night and just stared at your quivering form underneath
the covers? And you didn't dare to lift your blanket, to expose one
square inch of your body because you knew, you KNEW that was all it
took for him to each over and flay the flesh off your bones. So you
just sat there with your eyes wide open, paralyzed with fear, and
hoped to God you wouldn't fall asleep or he wouldn't just decide to
pull the blanket off of you and rip you to shreds right there? And
every single morning when you woke up you wondered how you were even
alive and the only conclusion you could ever draw was that he was
toying with you. My boogeyman's name was Isci ba Fan, and he's been
menacing my entire extended family for as long as we've existed. The
last time we tried to do something about him he killed around ten
thousand of us and we rammed a STARSHIP into its FACE and we still
couldn't destroy him. And ever since he's been showing up at family
reunions from time to time wearing someone's peeled skin, just to let
us know he's there. And all of us pretend he's a superstition because
we all know he's real and he scares the living shit out of us.


   And just when I'd been away from it long enough to start thinking
that maybe we were all wrong, maybe Isci ba Fan was really just a
superstition, I get a call from Tokyo and not only is he running
around, and mentioned by name -- which by the way we never told
ANYBODY -- but they've also found somebody who pulled off the blanket
and looked right at him and lived to tell about it. If I was coming
out to meet that person, would that count as more a 'friend of the
family' thing, Walter Mifflin Who's In Sales, or would a demon who's
been stalking us for as long as we've been in the solar system be
close enough to count as 'family'? I could see it going either way.


   The 'fasten seat belts' light clicked off and Nakami's hand
instantly shot to the 'call attendant' button above him. The
stewardess came by while Walter was droning on about the importance of
running your sales team like a family. When she came back with his
bourbon, Walter was talking about a business retreat in Aspen.


   Nakami downed the shot of bourbon in one gulp and tapped the
stewardess on the shoulder as she was leaving. He handed the empty
shot glass back to her and said "I'm going to need a hell of a lot
more of these to get where I'm going."


* * * SAILOR.MOON: DOUBLE EXPOSURE


CHAPTER 4: DOUBLE BACK * * *


JUUBAN SHOPPING CENTER, OUTSIDE SOUTH ENTRY #3
TOKYO, JAPAN SUNDAY FEBRUARY 20, 1995 4:15 PM


   "The herald of catastrophe, I am Sailor Saturn!"


   The charging daimon had totally ignored her up until she finished
that sentence, at which point her head jerked to the side like a dog
hearing a can opener. "YOU!" it howled as it changed its course to run
towards her, "YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE YOU HAVE TO COME BACK
WITH ME RIGHT NOW!" One of the thing's bright orange legs looked
mangled but it ran at her with hardly a limp.


   "Okay, so, this is apparently what we're doing now," said Bill as
he rolled into a sitting position and worked the bolt-action on his
rifle. "That thing sharp enough to cut open dai-mons?" he asked in the
same way one would ask 'that thing got a V-8 in it?'


   Hotaru tightened her grip and stared at the massive creature
closing in at her. "Yes," she said, hoping she'd be quick enough to
strike the daimon before it trampled her, or punched the weapon out of
her hand, or pounded her into the sidewalk. Deep down she knew it
wouldn't be the weapon that failed, it would be herself.


   "Okay, that's cool." Bill raised the rifle to his shoulder again
and closed one eye, but Hotaru knew bullets couldn't hurt it. Only
magic could, magic like Hotaru had in the cursed Silence Glaive she
held, and now people would die because there wasn't someone better to
take it from her. In the middle of the street, Donna glanced behind
her, saw she was no longer being followed, and skidded to a stop. The
monster yelled about how Hotaru was in the wrong place, but Hotaru
tuned it out. She took a deep breath, held it, pulled back her
shoulder...


   A gunshot echoed through the street and the daimon fell flat on its
face, the chunks of metal in and on its body bending and snapping, the
piledriver tearing through the concrete. It skidded, somersaulted, and
then rolled to a stop fifteen feet from where Hotaru was standing.


   "People often forget that being bulletproof doesn't negate the
force of the impact, just the penetration," said Bill, grinning. "If
your knee is wearing Kevlar and I shoot it, you may not bleed but you
will fall down, ain't that right you big orange bitch? You should be
clear on its left." He stood up and pulled back on the bolt again,
ejecting the spent cartridge. Hotaru blinked, surprised, but she
quickly walked over to the monster's left side. It looked up at her,
waved its arm-stump ineffectually, tried to position its heavy
piledriver arm into place to get back up again. It was still shouting
about how Hotaru should come back with it as Hotaru closed her eyes
and swung the blade at the creature's neck.


   Before the severed head even hit the sidewalk the daimon was gone
with a 'POP!' and a puff of smoke. In its place was an ordinary
commercial piledriver (though dented and beaten beyond use) and,
floating above it, nine glowing red gems. They resembled the one on
Hotaru's chest, though none of them were so ornate or had so many
points.


   "Is that what pure hearts look like or is this some different kind
of thing?"


   Hotaru nodded. "These are the heart crystals it took out of those
people. I don't know why they had this many. Before, they would go
after one at a time and look for the purest."


   "But, you can put them back, right? They don't turn to voodoo
zombies or something and try to eat us?"


   Hotaru thought about Chibi-Usa and she winced. "I can put them
back. They won't wake up otherwise."


   Bill rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. "All right, seems
simple enough. Hey, Donna, we-- aaand she's already gone." Donna was
down the street, punching two hypnotized people's lights out and
rolling others off of a pile so they wouldn't get crushed or
suffocated to death.


   Hotaru sighed. She knew what came next. Just like the schoolkid who
skins his knee or burns his hand in the same class as the creepy girl
with scary healing powers, they'll be too happy to accept her help and
then after it's over tell her how weird and scary and wrong she is.
And keep on telling her that until the next time they needed her. Or
they could just layer her with false praise about how normal and
totally not-scary she is and then ask the school to teach a new class
as soon as her back was turned.


   Or they could take her back to wherever fake FBI agents come from
and do to her what they were going to do to ET, that remained a
possibility.


   "So, how come you didn't tell us you were," he turned around to
face her and his eyes went wide, "oh son of a bitch is there some kind
of CONVENTION in town?"


*


   Luckily for Phil and Nadine -- and the citizens of Tokyo -- the two
women, the herald and the elegant, Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune,
knew what they were doing. And 'what they were doing' involved, in
great part, firing off glowing blasts of energy at things. 'Uranus'
threw it and yelled 'world shaking!' and 'Neptune' braced herself like
her arm was an artillery piece and shouted 'deep submerge!' before she
fired it off, but they both seemed to work the same way. And they
appeared very suited to blowing the Hell out of four-armed flame
monsters, after two or three hits the thing was reduced to what
appeared to be a blowtorch.


   Most everyone had cleared out by that time, save for the people it
had grabbed and the two people who were dragging the others into a
pile. All four of them ran towards the same area, but the two planet-
sailors were in better shape and a lot faster than Phil and Nadine
were. 'Neptune' was on the ground checking vital signs, and 'Uranus'
had one of the two draggers up against the wall with her arm across
his neck, shouting questions he wasn't answering.


   Nadine immediately dropped to the ground and went to work,
performing CPR on a woman with a gash in her head who looked about
thirty. 'Neptune' looked a bit surprised but didn't stop her. Phil
paused a second, wondered if there could ever possibly be a way he
could talk to the two of them and arrive at this question naturally
without it being the most awkward thing in the world.  He came to the
conclusion he could not.


   "So, I don't suppose either of you know a girl named Tomoe Hotaru?"
Uranus turned to him slowly, with a look equal parts confusion and
wrath, like a man who goes to the supermarket and unexpectedly runs
into the person who killed his family. "Little girl, about yay tall,
dark purple eyes, kind of sickly?"


   Uranus blinked and spoke in English slowly and deliberately. "Right
now, I want you to repeat the phrase, 'I am actuely aware of the fact
that it's not working, William.'"


   Phil balked. "How on Earth could you have heard that? Who are you?"
Outside, he heard gunfire.


   Uranus looked back at the man she had pinned to the wall and
punched him hard in the stomach, lifting her arm off and letting him
slide to the floor. She spun back to Philip and extended a finger, her
form partially silhouetted by the light coming from the glass entryway
behind her. "You look a lot more talkative than your friend here was,"
she pointed back towards the man in a heap on the ground, "and for
your sake I hope you are because I am not going to give you a whole
lot of time to tell me where these daimons came from, and what they're
doing, and what you want with Hotaru." Her hand went toward a sword at
her waist that Phil swore wasn't there a second ago. "So you had
better start talking!"


   Phil started to say something, then his eyes went wide and he lost
his train of thought. He stammered out "What, I, I don't even know
what you're talking about, Dr. Tomoe is the one who was summoning
demons, I wasn't--"


   "Don't you play goddamned games with me!" she snarled, "You were at
Mugen, you were part of Tomoe's project, you were there on Thursday
and now you've got something to do with this!"


   "Children!" shouted Nadine as she pressed down on the woman's
chest. "People are about to die because me and 'Sailor Neptune' over
here can only administer CPR one at a time and nobody's checking to
see if they're breathing!"


   Phil swallowed nervously and kneeled down, checking the pulse and
breathing of a man while never taking his eyes off the angry woman.


   "She's right, you know," said Neptune, and Uranus rolled her eyes
and got down on the floor as well. There were a good sixteen people
there at least, and while Neptune and Nadine tried to resuscitate two
of them Uranus and Phil went through the others one by one. Outside
they heard crashing and squealing noises, likely as people in their
cars tried to flee, and Uranus started to turn around toward their
source.


   "I don't know what you're talking about!" shouted Phil, then when
Uranus looked back towards him, he repeated, "I don't know what you're
talking about," in a too-calm voice. "I was never part of any project
involving Dr. Tomoe. I'm a professor of linguistics!" he stopped
talking to listen for a man's breath, "I teach at a university in
Milwaukee. A colleague of mine at Tokyo University asked me to come
here," another pause for breathing, then a crawl to another person,
"and investigate something for him. We've only been here less than a
week and we haven't seen Dr. Tomoe in that time."


   "You're lying to me." She stopped and put her ear to a young man's
mouth. "I heard you at the Mugen Academy when you were trying to
summon the Silence. You must have dropped something or broken
something -- no, no, I checked him already -- before the ritual was
completed, and now you're using..." Pause. This one wasn't breathing.
She held his nose and blew into his mouth, then pressed in on his
sternum. "...now you're using these daimons to get yourselves back up
to speed and you want to find Hotaru because she can get the summoning
started again."


   There were more noises of calamity from outside, and if Uranus had
been listening very closely to the noise out there and not listening
for breathing from a young Japanese man, she would have heard a
woman's voice she recognized yelling, "SHIT! SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT
SHIT!"


   "You're right," said Phillip, his eyes wide and locked on hers, "I
am lying to you. I'm an FBI agent and I don't need you to tell me
where Tomoe Hotaru is because she's already in FBI custody." Pause,
listen, take pulse. "She's a material witness to these events and she
told us that two people matching your description tried to kill her. I
wanted to know if it was really you. It looks like it is."


   "You have no idea what you're dealing with," said Haruka, refusing
to break his gaze even when she leaned in to exhale in the young man's
mouth. "Tomoe Hotaru is dangerous. She's destined to bring about the
end of the world and there is nothing the FBI can do to stop her.
Keeping her in your custody only delays the inevitable, it won't stop
it."


   "Well if you have a problem with that, Miss... Uranus, you should
take it up with the Prime Minister or with William Sessions," he
paused, waiting for a spark of recognition, "...the director of the
FBI. Because as of now this entire incident is under the jurisdiction
of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Miss Tomoe will be on a plane
to Quantico within the hour."


   "So she's not on one yet?" said Neptune as the person underneath
her coughed and returned to consciousness.


   "Who's not on a what yet?" asked the old man she had just
resuscitated.


   "Nobody's not on an anything yet," responded Nadine, "You're just
hallucinating. Go back to sleep until the paramedics arrive."


   "Oh. Okay?" The old man laid down and closed his eyes.


   "Nobody's called the paramedics," said Haruka. "For the same reason
nobody called the police the last three times this happened. Nobody's
going to even remember this happened once they get a couple blocks
away."


   "And you said that Hotaru will be on a plane in less than an hour,"
Neptune added, "That means she's not on one now. She's still at the
airport, isn't she?"


   Neptune and Phil looked at each other for a moment. Phil broke into
a run down the now-deserted mall toward the eastern exit, and Neptune
sprinted behind him. Uranus and Nadine shared the same meaningful
look, then each looked down at their patient and started performing
CPR like it was an Olympic event, breath-breath-pushpushpushpushpush
with mad urgency and speed. Uranus's patient coughed first and before
he could even ask what was going on she had clapped her hands in the
air, shouted "YES!", and jumped over him to sprint off down the mall's
length.


   Phil sauntered back once she was gone. "I'm gonna find a pay phone
to call 911. Well, it's 119 here, but you know."


   "Oh, you're a real sweetheart. What was that 'FBI' business all
about? I don't think magical warriors care about any governmental
agency."


   Phil shrugged. "I think it worked out all right, all things
considered. I just needed her to keep talking to me without thinking I
was one of the official bad guys and thus okay for her to blast, and
without turning around. The fact I sent her off on a wild goose chase
when she's trying to kill the Tomoe girl is an added plus."


   Nadine looked confused, and so did the woman in her lap. "Why
couldn't she turn around?"


   Phil arched an eyebrow. "You weren't looking out the windows behind
her? You didn't see our van drive by with Bill and his rifle on the
back fender, then drive back in the other direction, then see Donna
running from some orange monster I guess she hit with the van? Hotaru
is probably with them, and if they knew that we couldn't stop them.
Thank God I got them to leave the building on the other side."


   "William Sessions isn't the director of the FBI any more," said the
woman with the head wound. "It's a man named Louis Freeh now."


   Nadine fixed her with a stern glare. "Ma'am, the FBI does not
appreciate nitpickers."


* * *


   Uranus and Neptune did manage to make it to the airport within an
hour, though they were not helped by the fact that Uranus's car --


   A pristine canary-yellow 1967 Toyota 2000GT open-top, one of only
two models ever produced, a vehicle once driven (albeit briefly) by
James Bond himself, Mr. Sean Connery for the film "You Only Live
Twice", a vehicle into which Tenou Haruka has poured countless hours
of time and gallons of sweat modifying, tweaking, and enhancing to be
the most flawless, the most ruthless racing machine ever to cast its
shadow on the quarter-mile...


   -- had been stolen. Uranus was nearly apoplectic with rage upon
discovering this and had Neptune not been there to calm her down it's
possible she would have killed the next person she saw with her bare
hands. Not precisely likely, but certainly possible. Lacking
automotive transportation, and with public transportation service
during a mass youma attack spotty at best, they ran. When they arrived
at the Narita airport, they did not find a team of FBI agents ready to
load Tomoe Hotaru onto a plane back to Quantico, Virginia. And in the
time it took them to get there Michiru remembered from 'Silence of the
Lambs' that Quantico was where the FBI training academy was, not its
headquarters.


   What they did find was four more of the new-model daimons, ten feet
tall and made out of very hazardous objects. They also found Tuxedo
Mask running as fast as he could in circles around the daimons -- who
were bumping into each other at least as much as they were attacking
him -- and on his shoulders, Sailor Chibi-Moon firing a sustained Pink
Sugar Heart Attack. An attack that, she learned within the past hour,
will actually kill a daimon if it's kept up for around fifteen to
twenty minutes, a situation that may arise when Tuxedo Kamen's run out
of whatever magical ammunition propels those roses around and there
are no other Sailor Senshi in sight.


   Uranus and Neptune, of course, will take any opportunity to swoop
in in the nick of time and save someone, no matter why they were there
in the first place.


* * *


   When the daimon turned back into the power transformer that spawned
it and the nimbus of electrical interference around it vanished, it
left behind five heart crystals and a whole host of problems. Luckily
for them, heart crystals won't go back into a person they didn't
originate in; THAT would have been a nightmare to figure out
otherwise. They'd wanted to get Sailor Jupiter, or just Makoto by that
point, into a bed with some very powerful painkillers in her
bloodstream; but they couldn't move her, they couldn't get into the
cabinet with the morphine, Ami wasn't sure she could dose Makoto
without killing her, and they had very pressing matters competing for
their attention. In the end they just had to leave a note on Makoto
(who was mercifully unconscious at this time) that said "Broken leg,
cast mislaid -- EXTREME PAIN, recommend opiates." At the bottom Ami
tried to forge her mother's signature but they doubted anyone would
buy it.


   The pressing matter vying for their attention was the fact that,
according to the now-fully-functional Mercury Computer, the Juuban
ward of Tokyo was under a full-scale daimon assault. Between twenty
and thirty -- the readings couldn't get a precise lock on some ranges
-- were active on the surface, almost all of them moving towards, away
from, or around in the mall or the airport. They all grimaced, and
Usagi swore like nobody knew she was capable of doing, but they left
the hospital, closed in on the nearest energy signature, and went to
work.


   They soon discovered that they were not the only ones fighting the
youma, others were vanishing off the radar without their help. They
could only guess it was Uranus and Neptune, and perhaps Tuxedo Mask,
because they sure weren't swooping in in the nick of time to rescue
the Guardian Senshi's asses. But they knew they had most of the
firepower, and they couldn't rely on someone else to do the job for
them, which is why it was so bad when they started running out of
ammo.


   The Senshi did know, academically, that their attacks could only be
used a limited number of times before the magic ran dry and they
needed to recharge. Venus had been the one to test it, she just went
into the park at around 3 AM and shot at a tree stump until no more
Crescent Beams would come out. But she was able to fire about twenty
times before she ran out, and that limit was so high it had just never
really come up in a combat situation until today.


   Today's daimons, in addition to their great numbers, larger size,
and unusual behaviors, share other characteristics. All of them are
made out of items that were extremely dangerous -- industrial
equipment, lawnmowers, that sort of thing. And they were all tougher.
Not exponentially tougher, not enough that their attacks did no damage
and they knew that Sailor Moon would soon get her powers upgraded as a
result, but enough that it took two or three times as much fire to
take one down, assuming no misses or blocked shots. Thank God that
none of them had the same reactive defense as the power-transformer-
daimon did or they would be dead eight times over.


   Venus ran out of ammo first, which is to be expected when you're
firing Crescent Beams out of both hands like Chow-Yun Fat while
holding a toothpick in your mouth. Not wanting to use a short-range
chain to engage daimons that were very often made of sharp, whirly
things, she ran off to the mall to see if she could meet up with
Uranus and Neptune. They were better about conserving their shots
after that as they hit daimon after daimon on a jagged path leading
roughly toward the Juuban Shopping Center. Moon ran out of power next;
apparently the increased effectiveness of her Spiral Heart Attack
meant she could use it less times in total. She hung behind to put the
heart crystals back in the people that had been drained and let
Mercury and Mars go on ahead to the next encounter. Mars estimated
that each of them had two shots remaining, three at the most, when
they closed in on the latest daimon.


   Mars peeked around the corner to get a glimpse of the thing. It was
facing her but if it saw her peeking from behind the building she
didn't care, and it walked down the sidewalk with three Mugens as if
it were just strolling to the corner store to pick up a jug of milk.


   Its body was a dull rust color, which made sense as it appeared to
be made out of old, rusted metal. Its legs were just metal cylinders,
its arms had long lag bolts that looked to take the place of biceps.
Its right hand was two steamshovel-scoops that clacked together, it's
left hand was a rivet gun. Rivets ran up and down its torso and legs,
stained with even deeper patches of rust. Mars ducked behind the
corner to talk to Mercury.


   "Looks like it was made out of a rivet gun. Metal body, probably
got ranged attacks. Coming away from the mall, so I guess it must have
gathered its quota of hearts."


   Mercury tapped her temple to switch the display on her visor.
"Another two vanished at the mall itself, there's just two left. About
five at the airport, and they don't appear to be moving."


   "If this thing is made of metal, it should crack if you freeze it
and then I heat up the same spot, right?"


   "Other way around, actually. Heating metal up and then freezing it
causes stress fractures." Mercury paused. "That's if it follows the
same rules as normal metal. It might not."


   Mars exhaled sharply. "Worth a shot anyway. You ready?"


   Mercury nodded. "Ready. On three."


   They counted to three and each of them rolled out from behind the
corner, Mercury kneeling and Mars standing behind her. Mars shouted
"Mars Flame Sniper!" and shot the daimon perfectly in the center of
the chest, heating the metal to a far more bright shade of reddish-
orange. Mercury got as far as "Shine Aqua" when the short, overweight
Mugen jumped at them and kicked her in the face with both feet.


   The back of Mercury's head collided with Mars's legs and sent the
both of them toppling backwards, arms flailing wildly. Mercury didn't
fire off her attack when she was flailing her arms like this and thank
the Silver Millennium for small favors. The youma shouted "IT'S TOO
LATE NOW! YOU DIDN'T SHOW UP EARLY ENOUGH!" and it started to run, its
big metal legs clanking and straining. It wasn't running away from
them, but it wasn't exactly running towards them; it seemed to just be
trying to go around them.


   Mars planted her palms on the sidewalk on either side of her head
and kicked her way upwards, connecting with the Mugen's chest with two
high-heels. He staggered and reeled but did not topple, at least until
Mercury kicked the ankles out from under him. Mars got to her feet and
lunged forward, arm outstretched, clotheslining the second Mugen
across the throat. She grabbed his wrist and spun him so that he was
in front of her and she had his arm twisted behind his back, gave it a
good yank upward, then kicked him in the small of the back (no heel,
she didn't want to paralyze him) and sent him toppling into the third
Mugen, causing them both to tumble to the sidewalk. Mercury rolled to
the side and rose to a crouch; had she got up any faster, she likely
would have been decapitated by the large metal bolt that whizzed over
her and grazed her hair. It impacted the building behind her with a
heavy THUNK. The monster crowed "CAN'T STOP ME ANY MORE!" and fired
again, Mars easily ducked out of the way.


   Neither one of them had to say "Rivet guns don't even work that
way," it was just assumed.


   "It's going for the subway entrance!" shouted Mars, and it appeared
to be even though it must have passed five such entrances already on
its walk back from its harvest. "Stop it!"


   Mercury thought for a split-second she could nail the daimon from
here, but thought better of it. She was seeing it from the side now
and soon from the back, and neither angle let her see the glowing hot
area Mars had made with her attack, hitting somewhere else may waste
energy they cannot afford to waste. Instead she ran toward the subway
station in a full sprint, hoping her faster pace could make up for the
daimon's longer legs. The monster fired its rivet gun at her as she
closed the distance, but missed wildly every time, apparently it was
terrible at leading its shots. Mars ran close behind her.


   The daimon had enough of a head start and enough momentum to make
it to its target first, and it leapt into the open stairwell like
Arnold Shwarzenegger leaping towards the landing strut of a
helicopter. It hit the ground with a horrible CRASH and more piercing
metal-on-metal screeching, and the people in the station (who
apparently did not notice the monsters outside until just now)
screamed and fled as the monster rose to its feet.


   Mercury got to the stairwell next and she leapt onto the handrail
in the center and slid down it -- something that she's always wanted
to do, truth be told. She came in to find the monster unable to stand
fully under the low ceiling of the subway station and scrabbling on
its hands and knees to get to the platform. "TOO LATE! ALREADY DONE!
TOO LATE!" it crowed.


   Now that it was slowed to crawling, Mercury was easily able to
circle around it, jump over the turnstile (something that she really
couldn't be blamed for here) and cut off its path.
"ShineAquaILLUSION!" she shouted, not just as if it was all one word
but all one syllable, and shot a blast of frost directly into the
glowing red area on its chest.


   There was a hissing, a groaning, a crackling noise like ice cubes
dropped into warm water, and then a great SNAP as the area of its
chest cracked and fissured. It made a noise that could be a howl of
pain, and fired rivets at Mercury in a blind spray, but it did not
die, turn back into a rivet gun, and release the heart crystals it had
stolen.


   The monster pushed itself backward onto its rear, with its knees in
front of its chest, and fired repeatedly at the toll station Mercury
had ducked behind. It seemed to have abandoned its triumphant tone and
was now shouting "GO AWAY! YOU AREN'T DOING ANYTHING!" like all the
others. Mercury winced a little every time she felt the dull impact of
a rivet hitting the tollbooth, and put her hands above her head to
shield her from shards of broken glass.


   Mars shouted "Mars Flame Sniper!" from the other side of the
station and Mercury heard a 'whoosh' of heat and flame. She counted to
five, the time she estimated it would take for the monster to turn
around, then stood up from behind her cover and delivered a Shine Aqua
Illusion right into the back of the creature's glowing red head. It
snapped, it crackled, and then it popped, leaving behind an old, rusty
rivet gun and a floating array of heart crystals that almost looked
like something Alexander Calder would make.


   Mercury tapped her temple again; the visor was cracked from when
the Mugen kicked it but could still display information pretty well.
"Okay, that looks like the last of them in the area. There's one more
by the mall -- oh, no, it's gone now too. Still four at the airport, I
think someone is keeping them contained."


   "That's good," Mars panted, more due to anxiety than exertion,
"because I think that was my last shot. Sailor Mercury?"


   "Yes?"


   "I think I'm starting to hate my job."


*


   Hotaru spun on one heel as Bill brought the rifle to his shoulder.
Behind here were not one, but TWO more daimons, walking towards them
as if they were just out for an afternoon stroll. Five humans,
obviously under the Pharaoh's control, walked with them; they bumped
into each other occasionally but didn't look like they acknowledged
each other's presence. One of the daimons was a thing of matte black
and galvanized steel, with round, toothed blades about two feet wide
protruding from each shoulder and replacing her left hand; Hotaru
guessed this one was made of a circular saw. The other was dark blue
with three or four upward-pointing, foot-long metal spikes ringing her
knees, hips, elbows and shoulders. Hotaru wasn't sure about that one
but if pressed she might guess it was some kind of garden implement.


   "Duck!" shouted Bill, and she did, and when he squeezed the trigger
he missed his target by a country mile. Neither daimon, nor the humans
below them, seemed to notice. He swore, yanked back on the bolt, and
fired again; this time he was rewarded with a spark from the saw-
daimon's thigh area, a loud 'KA-PWINGG!', and an instant reaction from
the daimon and two of the humans.


   "YOU'RE AN OBSTRUCTION! YOU ARE DELAYING THINGS!" shouted the saw-
daimon, and it ran at its attacker. The two men with her said nothing,
they just charged. Their legs were shorter than the ten-foot daimon's,
and they lagged behind it. And behind them, the pointy-daimon and the
other three humans sauntered forward as if nothing unusual had
occurred.


   Bill fumbled with the bolt again and fired the last round in the
magazine, the spark told him he'd connected right with her knee and
she showed no signs of slowing down or falling. "Damn it, that doesn't
negate the force of the impact!" he shouted, and grabbed into his
pockets for more ammo.


   "GO AWAY! STOP SLOWING THINGS DOWN!" it yelled, and it swung its
left arm toward them, detaching the saw blade and flinging it toward
Bill and Hotaru. Hotaru started to bring the Silence Glaive up to
block it or slice it away, but she knew she'd be too late, she wasn't
strong enough or fast enough to get the blade up in time.


   When the incoming sawblade was split into two pieces by a vaguely
spiral-shaped cut down its middle and wobbled harmlessly to the
ground, it actually took Hotaru a second to realize that she'd sliced
it out of midair. Behind her, Bill pulled out a fistful of ammunition
and swore when he realized he'd grabbed the wrong caliber of ammo. He
dropped the rifle to the ground and pulled his revolver out of his
jacket.


   The daimon reached back and pulled a blade off its shoulder to
replace the one it had fired, and then before it could fire that one
off it had closed to melee range. It swung its saw-arm downward
towards Hotaru's head, Hotaru spun and sidestepped it easily. Hotaru
brought her glaive around as she spun and aimed it at the creature's
neck, the creature leaned back and swatted at the weapon's shaft with
her elbow, sending it harmlessly over her face.


   Hotaru wasn't thinking about what she was going to do, she was more
concerned with what she just did. The saw came at her low and
horizontal, she back-flipped over it and swung again at the monster's
chest. She didn't know how she was this skilled, how Tomoe Hotaru
could ever be this good at anything. The monster grabbed the glaive
right below the blade and held on to it, Hotaru thrust it forward
again and again, going for the creature's face, making it devote its
efforts to deflecting her attacks. She decided that it couldn't really
be Hotaru Tomoe doing this, but Sailor Saturn, the same way she must
have been in control when she fought the Pharaoh. The monster brought
its saw down from overhead to slice the haft of her glaive in half,
she dashed toward the creature, leaving no space for it to cut. Sailor
Saturn was a warrior of the Silver Millennium, a skilled combatant, a
champion, and Tomoe Hotaru was just a weak, frail girl who couldn't
run fifty meters without collapsing into a coughing fit. She darted
between its black-and-steel legs and twisted her weapon to wrench it
from the creature's grasp, then dragged it behind her to hack a deep
gash in the daimon's groin area -- or what would be a groin if it
wasn't a monster made out of a circular saw. Hotaru rolled to her
feet, one hand on her weapon and one hand splayed out on the sidewalk
for balance, breath already ragged and wheezy, and decided to just let
go and let Sailor Saturn handle things completely.


   That's why when the monster spun to face her, pinkish ooze leaking
out of its lower body, it was able to backhand her into a wall without
her dodging it.


   Bill had circled around them and was now standing in the middle of
the street with his revolver at the ready. Hotaru was moving almost
too fast for him to track, and he didn't want to shoot the monster and
risk hitting her, especially when the monster seemed to be totally
immune to bullets. The two people with the monster, a man and a woman
he did not know to refer to as "Mugens", had made no attempt to attack
Hotaru when she was engaged in combat with the saw-monster, but Hotaru
had gone through the monster's legs and now come out on the side they
were on and he didn't think they were up to something good. He knew
there were mind-control demons about and these people were obviously
under its influence, so he couldn't kill them, but getting into close
combat with them right next to a gigantic sawblade without being a
Crazy Schoolgirl Scythe Ninja like Hotaru apparently was was a real
bad idea. He grimaced and shot the closer one -- the woman -- in the
thigh, hopefully not a fatal area, and luckily for him both of them
turned towards him but the monster didn't.


   Hotaru gasped, the wind knocked out of her, and when she dove
downward to avoid the followup attack from the saw she left a few
purple hairs stuck to its blade. So, Sailor Saturn wasn't taking
control. Something else. She swung her weapon at the creature's arm to
hack it off, but it pulled back and upwards to get out of the way.
Hotaru rolled forward to her feet before the creature could manage a
followup attack. She could swing a weapon, she could fight, she could
dodge and leap and she didn't even have to be thinking about it, but
she had to be trying to do it, there wasn't someone else there to do
all the work. The monster advanced, swung the saw back and forth at
her, she couldn't get a good swing in for fear her weapon would be cut
in half. She leapt backwards out of the way of each swing, thrusting
over the saw-arm at the creature's face but her attacks were easily
swatted away.


   In the middle of the street Bill brought the butt of his revolver
into the man's nose, sending blood everywhere and kneeing him in the
stomach as he went down. The woman delivered a roundhouse kick with
her shot-up leg over her comrade's fallen body; it connected with
Bill's cheek and she let out a yelp of pain as he went tumbling
backwards to the asphalt. He tried to scramble backwards but he was
too slow and the woman jumped on him, knees digging into his chest,
hands raining down blows on his face. He tried punching her in the
head several times but he didn't have the angle to put any force
behind the punch. His vision starting to blur from weak -- but
repeated -- blows to the head, he stuck out his thumb, reached up to
her leg, and jammed it into the bullet wound he'd just inflicted. She
shrieked, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she went limp and fell
off of him. Truth be told he felt really bad about doing that, but
supposed that if mind-control demons don't discriminate based on
gender then neither could he.


   The blue spike-daimon, meanwhile, had ambled up the last few
blocks, waiting at all the crosswalks even though there was no
pedestrian or vehicular traffic and was now right behind Hotaru and
the saw-creature, waiting to cross the street to go to the mall. If it
or the people with it noticed Hotaru and the other monster were there,
they did not act on that information.


   It must be like riding a bike, Hotaru decided as she rolled out of
the way of another swing. Her breath was now so loud in her ears she
could barely hear the monster's shouted complaints, and her chest hurt
every time she exhaled. She swung at chest-level and grazed it,
opening a thin gash across its chest that oozed more odd-colored goop.
She jumped backwards in a full backflip to avoid the counter-thrust,
and when she landed she coughed deep and heavy. It was no magical
ability granted by another, it was a skill she'd always had, something
she may not be aware of but could never truly forget. And
unfortunately, it did not come with magical endurance or stamina, or
if it did not enough. Her lungs burned, her head ached, her vision was
getting blurry, she just couldn't breathe. She shifted her weight
forward to go on the offensive, swinging and thrusting at the
creature's chest and face, it kept its arms back to avoid having them
cut off and ducked and dodged each attack. Hotaru's arms sagged, her
shoulders drooped, and even the gossamer-light Silence Glaive felt
heavy in her hands. She swung for the monster's knee with her hands at
the very end of the haft, for maximum range, but it appeared to be
stepping easily out of the way and swinging back at her overextended
body with an attack she wouldn't be able to dodge. She coughed again,
a deep baritone that sounded like she was trying to expel her own lung
tissue, and she pitched forward faster than the daimon had expected.


   The daimon fell backwards to the sidewalk, right leg severed at the
knee and left leg severed at the thigh. It flailed its arms wildly and
shouted "STOP DELAYING THINGS! YOU ARE DELAYING THINGS!" Bill took a
second to judge how far it's arms would go, waited for it to swing the
saw downwards, then jumped next to the creature's head, put the barrel
of his gun in its eye, and fired three times. Pink ooze sprayed from
the back of its head, it gurgled for a split-second and then reverted
to the Black and Decker circular saw it had spawned from.


   Bill fell to his knees, panting, though not as bad as Hotaru. "That
was incredible," he said. "You saved my life."


   Hotaru tried to say something but it was lost in a ten-second
coughing fit.


   "Are you going to be okay?" Hotaru shook her head. Bill glanced up
at the blue spike-monster, walking by as if it didn't notice them.
"There's one more of them. Think you can do that again?" Again, she
shook her head in the negative. Then she thought for a couple seconds,
and beckoned Bill to come in closer, and in as soft a voice as she
could manage she rasped the plan in his ear.


   Bill nodded, smiled, and picked her up in his arms like he had done
before, though she was bigger and heavier now. He carried her across
the street and set her down on a bench behind the spike-monster, she
curled up around her weapon for support and held it out away from her.
Bill took five big steps back, then pointed his arm at the blade of
Hotaru's weapon and closed one eye, he took a couple slight steps to
the right to line himself up. Then he held up his pistol and shot the
daimon in the back.


   As predicted, the daimon turned around towards the source of the
attack, but the humans didn't because they hadn't seen it. The blue
thing shouted "SHUT UP! GO AWAY! YOU AREN'T DOING ANYTHING!" and ran
full-sprint at Bill; it didn't even slow down to avoid Hotaru's blade
and managed to slice itself in half at the waist with its own
momentum. Before the top half of it even hit the ground, it had turned
back into something Bill would have guessed was a Garden Weasel.


   While this was going on, a car came from around the corner, the
first car they had seen in a couple minutes that really felt like a
few hours. It was a convertible, canary-yellow, with an engine that
sounded like it preyed on and devoured lesser engines. Behind the
wheel was none other than Donna Truitt. She pulled the car to a
squealing, smoking stop in front of Bill and Hotaru.


   "One, gimme your inhaler," said Bill brusquely, "Two, where the
hell have you been, and three, where did you get that car?"


   "One, here." Donna reached into her pocket and produced a white
albuterol inhaler, which she passed to Bill, who passed it to Hotaru.
Hotaru shook it up, pressed the trigger, and inhaled deeply,
immediately coughing almost all of the medicine out without effect.
"Two, I went to take care of those hypno-assholes, then I figured I
needed to get us another set of wheels. Which leads into three, some
asshole had this thing parked across two spaces with the top down and
one of those push-button ignitions like they have on racecars instead
of keys. Nobody who would do that deserves to have this car. Why, what
the hell have you been doing?"


   "Hotaru just had to kill two more of those damn things, that's what
we've been doing!"


   Donna's eyes went a bit wider and she leaned forward to look past
Bill at Hotaru. "What, seriously?"


   Hotaru nodded meekly, then pointed up at Bill. "He helped," she
rasped.


   "I finished one off after you hacked off its legs and I poked
another one so you could slice it in half. You were twirling about
with a scythe and doing, doing shit like I've never seen before!"


   "Damn, Miss Tomoe." Donna whistled. "Well, looks like I owe Nakami
an apology."


* * *


   And what of Tsukino Shingo? School is out because it's Sunday and
with so many teachers affected by the Mugen incident they think they
may not reopen on Monday, and good riddance says Shingo. His obnoxious
big sister Usagi was in the hospital; he was worried for a while but
he knew nothing bad could ever happen to her, not really, and he was
right. His bratty little cousin Chibi-Usa, or at least the one they
said was his cousin but he sure as hell didn't see no aunt and uncle,
was staying with Usagi's bug-ugly boyfriend. That dumb cat was nowhere
to be found.


   Mom and Dad had gone to the hospital to visit Usagi, and Shingo
didn't come because they were worried he might still have the flu and
pass it on to the patients, even though that totally cleared up like a
week ago. He loved his sister and all, and he'd want to visit her
eventually, but he figured letting her stew a while might teach her to
take so long in the bathroom every morning.


   And Shingo knew that Mom and Dad would be so relieved and overjoyed
that their daughter was safe and sound that they wouldn't be able to
be unkind to any of their kids, which was why Shingo was now sitting
on the couch in his "Gatchaman" underpants and nothing else, eating
strawberry ice cream straight out of the carton and watching cartoons
at maximum volume. Shingo isn't a horrible kid, not really, but he
figures these kinds of opportunities only come along once in a great
while and when they do you've got to seize the living crap out of
them.


   When the show gets interrupted by a breaking news bulletin, Shingo
doesn't even stop to hear about bizarre attacks happening all across
the Juuban district, he just shouts "BORING!" and flips through the
channels at about five per second. He eventually settles on a badly-
dubbed kung fu movie where a Bruce Lee impersonator kicks people in
the face a whole bunch of times.


   Yes, right now it's a pretty damn good time to be Tsukino Shingo.


* * *


   The three of them working together managed to get the heart
crystals back to their owners in rather short order; when they came to
and asked what happened they were brushed off with an authoritative
"FBI business, that's what." Philip came out of the mall before they
were done and it was a good thing too, because he told Bill and Donna
that they didn't have a hotel room any more and all of their stuff was
in the van Donna just wrecked. Fingers were pointed, accusations were
raised, names were called.


   Luckily the one suitcase they could salvage before the paramedics
arrived (to ask questions about why they were digging through a car
wreck) was Bill's; he wore the biggest clothes and the others would
look stupid in them but they would fit inside them, and it also
contained an M16, 5.56mm ammunition for it and 7.62mm Warsaw Pact ammo
for the Mosin-Nagant. Nobody asked how the Hell he got that through
airport security because nobody really wanted to know.


   Hotaru was very surprised by how little they seemed to care that
she was Sailor Saturn. It wasn't just that they didn't care, but that
they couldn't understand why this information would change their
situation at all. Nadine came out and didn't recognize her until Bill
spelled out that it was Hotaru, and that quote "She's apparently
Sailor Saturn."


   Nadine had nodded back toward the shopping mall and said "Well, we
just met Uranus and Neptune in there. They were the ones trying to
kill her so we sent 'em off to the airport to get them out of our
hair."


   And then they were back to yelling at each other about wrecking the
car, or leaving their cell phone in the car, or not telling anyone
they'd cancelled the hotel room. Hotaru started to smile, but she
couldn't really articulate why -- she didn't think she should be
smiling -- and suppressed it.


   Once in the car, whizzing all too fast down the road, they'd
started to confer. The further they went, the more traffic there was
as they got away from the daimon rampage area, and Donna actually
slowed down and went with the flow rather than darting from lane to
lane and blazing through extremely orange lights. She recognized this
car was a treasure and she shouldn't put it in danger.


   Bill relayed the events of the attack at the hospital, and Phil
repeated what Uranus and Neptune said about the daimons bringing the
summoning ritual back up to speed and Hotaru being key to this. Donna
pointed out how the daimon had charged Hotaru as soon as she said the
words "I am Sailor Saturn". Hotaru told them that Pharaoh 90 wasn't
defeated, just delayed, and that he could restart his summoning from
another location if he had to as most of the work was already done.
She forgot to say that there was nothing they could do and she did not
say this in the form of a morose sigh.


   After a bit more conferral -- and after Bill made a phone call he
wouldn't tell anyone the content of -- they agreed the best course of
action to find where Pharaoh 90 would try to re-establish his
summoning site, and how to push him back permanently, would be to
return to the Tomoe household. For the second time that week they
backed someone else's car into the Tomoes' empty driveway, though this
time their vehicle was much, much nicer than the first.


   "Sorry again about breaking into here before," said Dr. Neary,
leaning over to lock her door after she closed it even though it made
no difference.


   "Hey, the doors were unlocked, that's not breaking in," said Donna
as she needlessly jumped out of the driver's seat rather than open the
door. "And it looked like you hadn't been in in a while -- car was
gone, lights were burned out..."


   "The living room lights?" asked Hotaru, still in her Sailor Saturn
getup until she found some clothes. "Did you try the switch over by
the kitchen? The wiring is all weird, if both switches aren't up the
lights won't go on."


   Donna looked defensive and mumbled "The lights could have been
burned out..."


   Nadine chuckled and shook her head. She gave the doorknob an
exploratory shake, finding it was again unlocked, she swung the door
open on the house's darkened interior. "Okay, we don't have a lot of
room in the car, so--" and someone lurking beside the doorway kicked
her in the stomach before she could finish that thought. She staggered
forward and her assailant brought a knee to her face, grabbed her by
the hair, yanked her upward and spun her around while she was
disoriented. He was a Japanese man in sunglasses and a black suit &
tie, he held one arm around Nadine's neck and put the other over her
shoulder to point a black Berretta at the other four; he was using her
as a human shield.


   "This is a crime scene!" he shouted in not-quite-perfect English.
Nadine blinked and shook her head a few times, her lip already
starting to swell. "It's under government control! You're criminal
trespassers interfering with government agents! You all need to--" and
that was when Nadine returned the 'interrupted mid-sentence' favor by
pitching her body to the right and smashing his elbow into the
doorframe. His hand spasmed and pulled the trigger but all he hit was
a bush in the front yard. His other arm went slightly slack and Nadine
used the opportunity to shift forward and get enough leverage to elbow
him in the stomach. He grunted in pain but did not fall, however by
that time Bill had wrenched the gun out of his hands and Donna had
grabbed his other wrist and pulled it away from Nadine's neck. Nadine
ducked underneath it and Donna kicked the man square in the chest,
sending him on his ass on the living-room carpet.


   Donna pulled her own pistol, a bulky silver .45, and leveled it at
the man's head before he could pick up. "Bad day to be on duty, G-
Man," Bill helpfully added as he stepped in around her with the G-
Man's gun.


   From the other side of the room they heard a toilet flush, then a
door open. Silhouetted in a column of light from the bathroom was
another man wearing the same outfit as the man on the floor. He looked
at his partner laying on the floor, looked at the red-headed American
holding his partner's gun, looked at the dark-haired woman pointing
her gun at his partner's head, looked back at his partner, and quickly
closed the door.


   "That door's thin and that bathroom's small," Donna shouted. "He's
got a lot better chance of guessing where you're standing than you
have of guessing where he's standing!" After a few seconds, the door
clicked open again and the man sheepishly walked out, hands in the
air; Bill grabbed him and gave him a very rough patting-down. "Are
there any more of you in the house?" Donna asked the man on the floor,
and he quickly shook his head 'no'.


   Nadine stepped over the G-man, holding her hand over her face, and
walked over to the kitchen to get some ice; on the way, she flipped
the wall switch and flooded the room with light. Phil squeezed through
the doorway past Donna with a muttered "excuse me" and Hotaru followed
soon after. Phil immediately broke for the basement and once Hotaru
saw what he was doing she went up the stairs to scope out the second
floor.


   "The next thing I was going to do was make sure he wasn't LYING
about there being no other guys in the house, in case anyone was
wondering!" Donna shouted. Nobody responded.


   Bill and Donna corralled the two agents into the center of the room
and set about finding some way to restrain them. Phil came back up
from the basement stairs and shook his head. "No good. Place is
cleaned out -- even took the Faraday cage off the walls." He leaned
into the banister and shouted upwards, "How's the second story look?"


   "They tore my room apart!" cried Hotaru. "They ripped open the bed,
they pulled out all the dresser drawers, they even... My lamp
collection is gone!" She was on the verge of tears by that point. She
loved her antique lamp collection, and the fact that someone would
just take it away from her like that crushed her.


   "All right, G-Man," said Bill as Donna started wrapping their hands
with the phone cord, "Start talking. Who are you working for, what are
you doing here, and where'd the lamp collection go?"


   "We're with the Public Security Investigation Agency on a joint
task force and we're here because foreign terrorists like you have
been using this house as a meeting ground," he said with a confident
sneer. "And I'm not going to tell you where we took your devices but
it won't matter anyway because you won't be on the loose for much
longer. We're closing in on your associates and before too long the
noose will tighten on you as well."


   Bill sighed. "I didn't ask you to feed me a line, I asked you to
tell me where you took the stuff from this house. Tell me, right now,
or something bad is going to happen to you."


   "Do your worst!" snapped the man on the floor with his hands and
feet bound with phone and power cables, "I can resist any torture you
can inflict!"


   "Okay," Bill said, and shot the man in the shin. He yelped, and he
moaned, and he hissed through his gritted teeth, and he pounded his
head against the wall, and he in general made a huge production about
how much pain he was heroically resisting, but he didn't start
talking.


   Bill turned to look at the other G-man sitting next to him, who
immediately said, "They took all the evidence from the Tomoe household
to an intermediary Foreign Affairs Intelligence Analysis Bureau
storehouse, fourth floor." He paused and did not have to look to his
side to know his partner was glaring at him. In Japanese, he added,
"You can go on heroically resisting torture all you want, Akira,
you're the one with all the Tom Clancy books on your desk! Me, I've
got pictures of my wife and kids on mine! I'm a forensic accountant,
when I signed up for this they never told me I'd be robbing people's
houses and getting shot to hunt down a terrorist cell that didn't
exist until this week!"


   The only words Bill understood of that were 'Tom Clancy', but
Nadine didn't indicate he was lying, so he pressed on. "Okay, so they
took it to the Foreign Affairs Intelligence Analysis Bureau
storehouse. What are they going to do with it there?"


   "Sort and categorize it, send the most applicable evidence to the
Ministry of Justice to help build a criminal case, send the rest to
any other interested governmental bodies. Take about two days, tops."
The man's partner, Akira, gave him a sneer that said 'I don't even
know you any more'.


   "All right," said Bill, trying to sound unbelieving, "And if I
believed you, where would I find this storehouse?"


   The man thought about it for a second, then responded in rapid-
fire, "Take a left out of here, go for three stoplights and then
you're gonna want to hang a right, stay on that road until you cross
the river and then go under the monorail overpass..."


   "Wait wait wait, slow down. I'm not going to remember all that,
just give me a street address. What street is it on?"


   "Oh, it's on the street right by the big Toyota plaza, it's real
hard to miss. You get there by taking a left at the fourth light after
the monorail..."


   Bill looked up with suspicious confusion. Nadine chuckled from
underneath her ice pack and said "Bill, you haven't noticed by now
they don't name streets in Tokyo?"


   Bill looked aghast, pointed at the G-Man, and screeched like Donald
Sutherland at the end of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. He'd
finally found the apotheosis of the insane, selfish, uncaring,
predatory government he had tried to warn others of, and it existed in
Tokyo's urban planning department.


   Donna got a pad and pencil to write down the directions. Nadine
found the house's first aid kit, mercifully unlooted, and went to work
disinfecting and bandaging Akira's leg. Phil went upstairs and came
back down with Hotaru, her face lightly streaked with tears. She'd
lost her 'Sailor Saturn' getup and changed into a standard black shirt
and pants; she was holding a plastic bag with another change of
clothes in it. Once Donna finished transcribing the directions -- she
needed to spill over onto the back of the page -- they made sure the
two G-Men couldn't get to a phone but weren't going to die or rot
there. Nadine turned on the TV and got them a glass of orange juice
with a straw before they went, and Akira drank his portion reluctantly
and only after some cajoling.


   Donna walked out last and as she was closing the door behind her a
thought occurred. She opened the door back up and poked her head in.
"Hey, when you said you were on a joint task force, who's it jointly
with?"


   The cooperative one blinked. "Why, the FBI, of course."


* * *


   The attack was over, and it looked like the forces of goodness had
come out on top. Once the dust had settled (and Haruka had reported
her car stolen), the nine of them -- Ami, Minako, Usagi, Chibi-Usa,
Rei, Makoto, Haruka, Michiru, and Mamoru -- had all assembled in a
room at the Hikawa Shrine to hash out what was going on and what to do
next. The 'Inner Senshi' were gathered around the table in the center,
while Haruka, Michiru and Mamoru were standing behind them and leaning
in to hear what they were saying. Makoto was in a wheelchair with her
leg elevated and still visibly disoriented from the painkillers,
Chibi-Usa was clutching on to the Luna-P like a life preserver. Minako
had a pad of paper and a pen to take notes; more because she needed
something to do with her hands than she needed notes to refer back to.



   "Okay, here's the rundown," said Ami. "These are the facts, this is
what we know." Makoto giggled, but didn't offer up anything else, and
Ami continued. "Last Wednesday evening, Dr. Tomoe Suoichi and the
Death Busters tried to summon the Pharaoh 90 at the Mugen Academy.
Sailor Saturn intended to give her life to kill the Pharaoh, but
something malfunctioned and the summoning was aborted before she could
do so."


   "Which also pulled each of us in a line closer to Toudai, depending
on how close we were standing to the portal," Michiru added.
"Apparently there was some other event at the university that sent a
few people, including Usa-chan, to the hospital, but the papers said
they weren't related and they had almost no information about it."


   "Right," Ami nodded at Michiru, "which would probably indicate that
Sailor Saturn ended up at the site of the Toudai explosion, as she was
standing closest to the portal when it happened. If the two are
related, and there is no reason to believe they are not."


   "And Sailor Saturn ended up in the custody of people who claim to
be, but are not, FBI agents," added Haruka. "If she wound up at the
Toudai explosion it's possible they were responsible for it. They
might have been at the Mugen site, but now that I think about it there
weren't any places for them to be hiding. Maybe we heard what they
were saying through the portal." She paused and ran her fingers
through her hair, sighed. "In any case, I don't think they're with the
Death Busters, but I don't think they're up to any good."


   Ami continued. "So, after the explosion, we were flung all over the
place, our Senshi Transformations turned off, and paramedics arrived
on the scene, even though emergency services usually can't notice
things like this happening. Usa-chan is unconscious for a couple days
and nobody can find her since she didn't have any ID in her pockets.
Hotaru-chan is in the same hospital, but we don't know about it,
probably for the same reason as Usa-chan. For a period of two to two
and a half days, our Senshi powers don't work, but they come back
around when Usa-chan wakes up."


   "But," added Rei, "They don't come back right away, they fade in
gradually. They didn't just come on when Usa-chan came back. And in
those two days, there are no daimon attacks. Then around when our
powers come back, twenty daimons attack the city simultaneously."


   "So you think that whatever was inhibiting our powers was
preventing them from attacking as well?" asked Mamoru. "That it might
not have been directed at us, but something that stopped magic in
general?"


   "It's a reasonable assumption to make, but we don't know for sure."
Ami waved her hand a bit. "Anyway, twenty daimons attack at once. They
are bigger, stronger, more durable, and made out of more dangerous
objects than the daimons we have fought so far, but we can still beat
them because they act in very unusual ways."


   "They're stupid, is what they are," said Makoto, her head lolling
to one side. "Stupid and really whiny."


   "Yes, that. They talk constantly but repeat the same few phrases
about how we should leave them alone and go away, and they don't seem
connected to their actions. They move in a straight line towards the
last person to attack them, unless they think they cannot run as fast
as that person in which case they remain still and just face them.
They harvest Pure Heart Crystals en masse, rather than searching for a
certain one like before, and once they are attacked they do not go
back to harvesting."


   "And there's creepy hypnotized people following them around that
don't come to their senses when I try to heal them, who stack people
up for the daimon to drain," added Usagi.


   "Right," said Ami, "and they try to get more people for the daimon
to drain, and defend it from attacks, but they only react to things
they can see. The daimon either can't or won't tell them it's being
attacked and they don't turn around even if they hear a battle." She
paused. "Actually, you know what it reminds me of?"


   Nobody did, so after a few seconds she continued. "It reminds me of
a bad computer program. The way they act, it's like they were
programmed, but only to use one sense, only to respond to a very
limited set of circumstances in a very limited way, and once one of
their responses is triggered there's no command that lets them get out
of the response sequence and go back to what they were doing."


   Minako shrugged. "Could be." Then she paused. "Hey, the two women
with the staves, Castor and Pollux or whatever, they were the last of
the Witches 5, right?"


   "Cyprine and... Petrol? I think?" said Ami, "But yeah, she said she
was the last of them."


   "Why do they get to call them the Witches 5 if there's six of
them?" added Makoto.


   "I don't know, why is that?" Minako paused for a moment. "Anyway,
anyway. Queen Metallia didn't go around summoning youma, she had Queen
Beryl do it for her, and then Queen Beryl had the four Dark Generals
to do it for her. And Wiseman had that whole 'black moon' deal."


   Rei looked off to the side, thinking. "And Pharaoh 90 had the
Witches 5, Mistress 9, and Dr. Tomoe... all of whom are dead now. Do
you think that this is what happens when he starts controlling things
directly?"


   "Maybe," Minako shrugged. "Maybe the reason these big horrible
threats to humanity always work through layers of underlings is that
they're really bad at being actual commanders?"


   "I tried talking to Puu-chan," interjected Chibi-Usa, "but she
didn't know anything. I asked for her help and she said we didn't need
it, that Hotaru killed the Pharaoh and prevented the Silence from
happening and that Sailor Moon turned her into a baby so she could
live her life over again. When I told her what was happening, she said
something about being 'a sinking wrist'." She paused, and tears began
to well in the corners of her eyes. "She also looked more scared than
I've ever seen her in my life."


   They were all quiet for a couple moments. Then Usagi patted Chibi-
Usa on the thigh and said, "Come on, don't be afraid! We've all been
through scary stuff like this before, and we've always come out okay!
All she needs to know is that her friends are here for her and she'll
be okay."


   Chibi-Usa nodded and let go of the Luna-P, letting it float up to
eye level. "Luna-P, let me talk to Puu-Chan!" There was a slight
whirring noise, and the pupil in the left eye of the cat-face changed
into a ringing phone icon. After five rings, Chibi-Usa started to
think Puu wouldn't answer, but then the ringing phone was replaced by
an image of Setsuna Meioh's face. She looked weary and haggard, dark
circles under her eyes, and she kept looking behind her.


   "Small Lady? Is that you?" she said, and Chibi-Usa could tell she
was wringing her hands even though they were off screen.


   "Puu-chan? Are you alright? You look sick."


   There was a four second pause, just like when someone at NASA tries
to have a conversation with someone on the Moon. "No, Small Lady, I'm
not all right," she said without even attempting to put on a strong
face. "My, my vision of the future's gone asynchronous with what's
happening. I don't know what's going on any more, I just know what
would be going on if something different had happened. I'm, it's like
everything I thought I knew isn't true any more and I can't, I
can't... I'm afraid, Small Lady. I'm afraid about what's going to
happen." She looked to be on the verge of tears.


   "Don't be so upset, Puu-chan!" said Chibi-Usa, wishing she was
there in person to give her a hug. "All of us are a little scared too,
but we know we have each other! Nothing bad's going to happen to you,
Puu-chan, because we won't let it. Right, everybody?"


   Everyone in the room voiced their agreement, though only Makoto did
so with a "hell yeah!"


   Four second pause, then Setsuna smiled. It was a sad, lonely smile.
"That's very kind of you, Small Lady, but I... wait, hold on, there's
someone..." Pluto turned away from the screen. "How did you get here?"
In the background, a faintly heard hiss. Pluto brought up her key-
staff and whispered "dead scream" but before she could fire it off
some THING tackled her out of frame, something fast and covered in
shiny black scales and a row of serrated teeth. There were sounds of a
struggle, grunts and hisses of pain, claws ripping flesh and a staff
cracking bone. Chibi-Usa cried out in horror but anything she said
would take two seconds to arrive and the reaction would take another
two seconds to come back.


   There was a squeal and the sound of something's neck being stomped
on, and Sailor Pluto walked back into frame. The lighting hadn't
changed, but now her face was cast in unnatural shadow, her eyes
hanging in the blackness like two rings of garnet. Her fuku was
ripped, she was bleeding, and her smile foretold nothing but sorrow
and ruin.


   "Puu! Are you okay? What happened?"


   One second pause, and Pluto spoke in a low, throaty whisper. "You
can tell your mother she can keep her grail and she can keep her
friend because I'm going to kill her anyway and I think she'll be so
much the sweeter if her panic has a couple days to fester."


   Then Pluto's face was replaced with the pupil of the Luna-P's left
eye.


---




* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* B O N U S   C O N T E N T *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


HOFFMANN INSTITUTE AGENT NUMBER S-0014408
NAME: NEARY, DR. NADINE LESLIE


AGE: 37
PREV. ASSOCIATION: Mayo Clinic (Civilian, Medical); Centers for
Disease Control (Governmental, Medical)
ASSIGNMENT: Investigation & Response Team Rho


HISTORY: An Iowa native, Dr. Neary attended Iowa State University (go
Cyclones) on a gymnastics scholarship, but soon abandoned dreams of
competitive gymnastics to pursue a career in medicine. After
graduating medical school she moved to Rochester, Minnesota to work at
the Mayo Clinic. Her main field of expertise was infectious diseases,
and in addition to her standard practice she performed a great deal of
research into the Hepatitis A virus, collaborating closely with the
Centers for Disease Control to find a workable vaccine.


In August of 1992, researchers at a commercial laboratory discovered a
cure for the Hepatitis A virus, using a method Dr. Neary had
previously disregarded as a dead end and incorporating almost none of
her research.


Dr. Neary joined the Institute after being involved in an October 1992
incident that concerned the summoning of an ice-demon at a rural Idaho
truck stop, where she had stopped while en route to a microbiology
conference in Seattle where the discoverers of the new vaccine would
be speaking.


PSYCHOLOGY: Much like Dr. Akens, Dr. Neary has conflated her work with
her worth. Unlike Dr. Akens, she knows that her work ended up being
useless, and this causes her to fear that she is useless as a human
being. Neary does not have a mad drive to prove her usefulness to
others, she is fully aware that the only audience she needs to placate
are the chorus of doubts in her own mind. So long as she feels useful
to herself, it does not matter if others recognize it. This lends her
to meddle extensively in the affairs of others, to offer 'sage advice'
that is neither wanted, useful, or wise, to correct the behaviors of
most people she meets (so as to make them better people, of course),
to visibly relish any situation in which others depend on her, and
other irritating but thankfully not psychopathic behaviors.


Working for the Institute allows Dr. Neary to have a job that allows
her to feel as if she is useful and making a difference (never mind
the difference she made in the live of her patients at the clinic),
and it allows the Institute to retain a trained medical doctor who
does not demand anything close to a doctor's actual salary.


SPECIES: Human
PROFESSION: Tech Op
ACHIEVEMENT LEVEL: 5


STR 07 [+0]  INT 13 [+2]
DEX 11 [+1]  WIL 10 [+0]
CON 08       PER 11


Second Sight   [0]: After an aggravating fiasco in Spokane, Washington
involving a warlock making heavy use of 'glamours', I&R Team Rho was
assigned to be trained in the piercing of illusions by a known mystic
and psychic. Dr. Neary, however, had to attend her sister's wedding on
the weekend the lessons were performed and could not receive the
training. A make-up appointment was made, but the psychic died of a
cerebral aneurysm before the meeting could occur -- something that
Nadine thinks he should have seen coming. Though Nadine has no
enhanced ability to pierce illusion, she is immune to the
metacognitive effects that surround youma and other creatures and
prevent people from recognizing them as a threat or remembering their
attacks, this can most likely be directly attributed to a phenomenon
known as the "PC Aura".
Concentration  [3]: Nadine can be a very focused individual when the
situation calls for it. Once per scene, she may take a round to make
an INT feat check, her next action attempted gains a -1/-2/-3 step
bonus on an O/G/A success. This bonus is lost if she is disturbed in
any way.


Combat Information:
Weapon:  Score:  Range (S/M/L):  Damage (O/G/A):  Type:
Unarmed  12/6/3        Personal  d4s/d4+1s/d4+2s   LI/O
Gun       5/2/1       As Weapon        As Weapon   HI/O


Action Check: 14+/13/6/3

Durability: 08 / 08 / 04 / 04

Actions Per Round: 2

Last Resort Points: 2


Athletics                  [07/3/1]
Acrobatics                 [11/5/2]
> Defensive Martial Arts 1 [12/6/3]
> Dodge 1                  [12/6/3]
> Tumbling 1               [12/6/3]
Vehicle Operation          [11/5/2]
Stamina                    [08/4/2]
Knowledge                  [13/6/3]
> Computer Operation 2     [15/7/3]
> Deduce 1                 [14/7/3]
> Language (Japanese) 3
> Language (Korean) 3
Life Science               [13/6/3]
> Biology 2                [15/7/3]
> Genetics 1               [14/7/3]
> Xenology 1               [14/7/3]
Medical Science            [13/6/3]
> Forensics 2              [15/7/3]
> Medical Knowledge 3      [16/8/4]
> Surgery 1                [14/7/3]
> Treatment 3              [16/8/4]
Awareness                  [10/5/2]
> Intuition 1              [11/5/2]
> Perception 2             [12/6/3]
Interaction                [11/5/2]
> Bargain 1                [12/6/3]
> Charm 1                  [12/6/3]