SUBURBAN SENSHI

EPISODE 20 PART ONE - "THE ONCE AND FUTURE THING"

Dr. Xadium (drxadium@DEATHTOSPAMgate.net)
April 24th, 2004

Naoko Takeuchi is hereby thanked for her involuntary contribution to this fanfic. TEASER SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN

Jedite sighed and closed his eyes. Ten'ou never seemed to shut up. Ever since the end of the Tenka-ichi Budokai, she had done nothing but prattle ceaselessly about one thing or another, from the curliness of Mr. Satan's hair to the righteous sensation of knocking Mecha-Chibiusa into low Earth orbit with one punch.

Even now, as she piloted the small private plane Bulma Briefs had lent the group to spare them a commercial flight back to Japan, Ten'ou was STILL talking nonstop.

Jedite sighed. Bad enough that he hadn't been able to actually *kill* anyone this trip-- not to mention the fact that that green haired hormone of a Time Senshi had developed a sick crush on him, but NOW he was even being denied of SLEEP!

The Dark General sighed and opened his eyes a slit, the piercing blue of the daytime sky at 30,000 feet momentarily blinding him.

"and man," Haruka continued to ramble, even as she subconciously made subtle adjustments to the small plane's navigational instruments, "when Michi ripped off her shirt I thought I was gonna get a show, you know? But damn--"

"Tenou," Jedite exhaled wearily, "if you think about it-- which I know can be tough for you at times--"

"Shut up," Haruka muttered.

"--the last time you encountered each other, she'd stolen your victory in battle, eliminated your ability to transform , *killed* Nephlite and run off with Elza Gray!--"

Haruka's left eye twitched involuntarily.

"--Did you actually think she was just going to come back, disrobe and fling herself into your arms?", Jedite finished, a tinge of dark amusement in his voice. If he *was* to be kept awake, he would at least enjoy himself, by Metallia.

"Hmm", Haruka muttered profoundly, as Jedite opened his eyes fully and sat upright, looking at her. She was actually *pondering* the question...

"Hmm", Haruka intoned deeply,folding her arms and closing her eyes. The small plane immediately began to dip.

"The *plane*, Ten'ou," Jedite said a bit too quickly.

Haruka, eyes still closed, reached an arm out and grabbed the steering wheel, leveling the craft.

Jedite sighed.

"Hmm..." Haruka continued, opening her eyes. "Yes I did?" she said honestly.

It was all Jedite could do to avoid facefaulting. "Gah!" he snorted. "You believe too many of those blasted internet fanfics about your bishonen charms!"

"Shut up, punk!" Haruka snapped, her eyes narrowing darkly.

"Punk?" Jedite laughed. "Hah! If people heard you talk like that in public, there'd be a scandal!"

"It's hard being percieved as being absolutely perfect," Haruka said with a chuckle, easily manuevering the plane to avoid a storm cloud.

"You're pretty good at flying this plane, Ten'ou," Jedite said with the barest modicum of respect he could allow to enter his voice. " I didn't know you had it in you."

"What's to know?" Haruka asked, grinning and turning to face Jedite, completely ignoring all the instruments once again. "MS Flight Simulator tells you everything you need! It's just a car with wings!" She laughed and turned back to piloting.

Jedite sweatdropped. "I'm very glad I can teleport at will," he muttered.

"So what's everyone else doing?" Haruka asked, whistling the theme to "Dr. Slump" under her breath.

Jedite yawned. " Hotaru hasn't said two words to her father, and she keeps staring daggers at that 'Kaola Night' person"

"'Kaori Knight'", Haruka corrected tonelessly, focusing a bit more on her piloting.

Jedite shrugged. "What's the deal with that 'thing' anyway? She certainly doesn't look like any human woman I know..." _Not that I know many_, the Dark General mused. He usually seduced them and sucked out their energy long before he could get to know them on a social level.

"She's the resurrected necrotic clone of Professor Tomoe's top henchwomon," Haruka said slowly. "Usagi-tachi killed the first one, he crispy-fried the second one, and now he's made #3 to fulfill his sick desires."

"Not bad, Souichi!" Jedite laughed. That was a worthy man to call _friend_, he mused. He might make a useful addition to the new Dark Kingdom, whenever Jedite got round to establishing it. "But why's Tomoe the younger so ticked off?"

Haruka sighed. "Man, Hotaru's always ticked off." She recalled all the times Hotaru had come after *her* over stupid things like the Assualt and Battery, the Kidnapping and the Killing Thing That Time with Galaxia. "In this case, it's because she wants her dad to resurrect her mother, Tomoe Keiko, instead of... what does she call her... oh yeah, the 'Homewrecking Harlot'".

Jedite nodded with understanding. "Ahh, so that would explain why she's been mumbling about 'sharpening the Glaive with Kaori's flesh'' lately."

"Heh," Haruka muttered under her breath. "Man," she continued louder, "back in the day Hotaru was *weak* and frail... nowadays she's slight and still a bit weak but, she's gained a *lot* of self-confidence."

"Yes well," Jedite said curtly, "being able to lauch a 'Saturn Kamehameha' will do that for you."

"Naw man, it was even before that," Haruka said, beginning to laugh uncontrollably.

"What?" Jedite asked, almost afraid to know what had set off Ten'ou's warped sense of humour this time.

"Kamesennin gave her more than just a new technique," Haruka said, trying vainly to suppress her laughter.

"Eh?" Jedite asked.

"He also sent her this tiny poka dot bikini and thong", Haruka chuckled, pulling something out of her pocket and holding it up for the Dark General to see.

Jedite squinted, almost going cross-eyed as he focused on it. "That's just a dyed piece of dental floss, isn't it?"

"Yup," Haruka muttered. "Did I ever tell you about the time I tied some bread to one end of a long roll of floss, tied the other end to my tooth, swallowed the bread and then had myself a full-body floss a few hours later?" She chuckled.

"I really wish you hadn't," Jedite muttered, shaking his head to clear the mental image.

"Heh," Haruka said, "Well it actually-- oh," she paused, starting to pay attention to some voices in her pilot's headset. "We're getting close to Narita now."

"What," Jedite asked darkly, not really addressing Haruka. He turned to face the passenger compartment, staring into the corridor intently. The dark general stood up.

"Whassup?" Haruka asked, too distracted co-ordinating with Japanese air traffic control to really pay attention to Jedite.

"I smell--" Jedite began ominiously, bursting out of the cockpit as Haruka turned attention fully to the controls, muttering "I know, but I wasn't gonna say anything".

Jedite's rapid advance into the cockpit halted as he felt a familiar slushing sensation at the soles of his shiny jackboots. Bending down, he examined the pool of darkened liquid that was rapidly coalescing around his feet.

Dipping a white-gloved index finger into the substance, Jedite brought some up to his lips and tasted it.

"Bah!" he spat in disgust. "What is this? It has not the fresh delectable sweetness of human blood-- it's clammy and stale!"

Standing up, Jedite made his way forward in the small passenger cabin. He noted an unconcious Professor Tomoe leaning sideways in his seat, his black, crimson-grinned face slowly lightening to normal.

"Ouch," Jedite muttered, noting a large bump on the professor's head, but no other wounds.

"This blood, or whatever it is, isn't his," Jedite muttered, noting that the river of blackened serum was flowing from somewhere in the rear of the plane.

He also noted that Hotaru was nowhere to be seen.

"Blast!" the Dark General exclaimed. "That Kaoli Nite must have gone rabid and attacked the Prof, and now she's attacking Hotaru!"

Jedite ran towards the rear of the plane. He didn't know why he was concerned about the younger Tomoe's welfare really, as in the olden days he would have gladly snuffed her life out so much as look at her. Actually he didn't know why he was worried about the welfare of anyone in the plane aside from himself.

He noted the river of blood was coming from underneath a lavatory door in the rear of the plane. The sign above the door read "Occupied".

Within, sounds of a scuffle could be heard.

Jedite frowned. He had been-- no, WAS a mighty general of the Dark Kingdom! He had turned on the weak-kneed Endymion and slain countless numbers of humans in the past! He had even executed Sailor Mercury in her past life! So why now was he worried about the fate of these people? Was it possible-- was the great General Jedite... going *soft*?

The sound of repeated flushing could be heard from the other side of the door.

But Jedite did not linger on those thoughts. "Hotaru!" he yelled at the lavatory door. When he got no reply, he slammed a fist through the door, effortlessly ripped it off its hinges and flung it aside.

What Jedite saw next struck him to the bone.

A limp, flacid, headless body knelt with its back before him, twitching and convulsing, the handle to the toilet still grasped in its tightened hands. As it spasmed and continued to flush, Jedite noted with impressed amusement that the *head* belonging to the body was bobbing quite humourously in the bowl, buffeted by the aquatic forces at play in the porcelain basin.

As Jedite appreciated the scene, a dark, low voice began to speak from his left.

"And so it is that the cold calumny of this besotted cow is thrice repaid, the bloodied blade of vengeance mine bringing swift purity to the contaminated pestilence of her wretched, vile desire..."

Jedite finally shifted his gaze from the severed head of Kaolo Knight and looked over at a darkly smiling Sailor Saturn, who was sitting on the lavatory counter, nursing a semi-retracted Silence Glaive. She stared at the shuddering corpse and chuckled.

"Very impressive," Jedite said, honestly impressed.

Saturn turned her head towards him slowly, a sick grin on her face, and violet fire in her eyes. Cackling, she swung her glaive in his direction, leveling its adamantine tip at his nose.

"And what of you, O Dark Scion?" she began in a semi-singsong, "Do you wish to meet the inevitable fate that marks the end of your destined thread? Shall I show you to the Charybdis, set you forth upon the mighty river Styx?"

"Seen it, boring, ran through the Dark Kingdom, used it to rinse the washing. Beryl used to boat on it a lot," Jedite answered flatly.

Saturn frowned and shook her head, a look of calm crossing her face. She put the Glaive away. She looked at the corpse quizzically.

"Let me guess," Jedite said slowly, "she attacked your father and then you killed her in self-defense, right?"

"Yes," Saturn said slowly, her eyes glazing over as she looked towards the middle distance. "she leaned forward, heaving with bloodlust, pressing him back in his fully-reclined airline seat... clamping her mouth over his, hands searching, roving, seeking deadly purchase-- the air from Papa's face was leaving, his blackened possessed complexion turning purple, the attack swift and savage...!!

Jedite sweatdropped.

Saturn continued in a hysterical frenzy. "Papa made muffled sounds of protest, his limbs flailing about as he tried to esccape, legs wrapped around her in futile hope of crushing her in a deadly bear hug-- !"

Jedite backed up a pace from the ranting Senshi. Finally, he ventured, "You've... never been on a date, have you, Saturn?"

"What..?" Saturn asked, bewildered. "Papa was being attacked, I saved him, and disposed of the traitorous witch!"

"Uhh, yeah, that's it..." Jedite muttered.

"What?" Saturn asked, confused. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Jedite sighed. "You may be the Planet-Killer Senshi, but there are some undiscovered countries you have not yet seen. Someday you're gonna get a boyfriend... and let's just say, your impression about today's events might just change a *tad*."

"I'm not following," Saturn said blankly.

"Nevermind," Jedite muttered as he left Saturn to clean up the mess in the toilet. "Metallia help the poor sod who tries to get to first base with that one."

TWENTY MINUTES LATER

Haruka's Ferarri roared through the streets of Tokyo at ludicrous speed, going so fast at times that the tires almost lost all purchase on the road. The occupants of the car did their best to not look out the windows, for their own sanity's sake.

Professor Tomoe looked at his daughter in shock, his crimson-red mouth hung open in utter shock.

"SO YOU... KILLED HER?" he asked, his voice seemingly stuck in a permament enthusiastic yell ever since his conk on the head.*

*Step one in the conformation of Suburban Senshi fic-dom to Suburban Senshi IRC-dom! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!

"It was neccessary, papa!" Hotaru said almost pleadingly. As much as she had hated that slinky minx Kaolinite, she hated hurting her father's feelings even more.

Even though it was hard to tell for his Shiny round glasses, Professor Tomoe was staring at his daughter incredulously.

"YOU CUT HER TO SHREDS AND GUTTED HER LIKE A FISH?!" he asked, disbelief lacing his every insane word.

"Yes, papa," Hotaru said meekly and apologetically, lowering her head.

She started as she recieved a stiff slap...

...on the back.

'THAT'S... MY GIRL!" the professor chortled. " MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Wha--?" Hotaru asked in shock.

"Ahh, the benefits of having a demonically possessed Papa," Jedite mused from the front seat.

The sounds of brakes screeching and cars crashing behind them broke the trio out of the sentimental moment.

"Should you be going this fast on ice?" Hotaru asked Haruka worriedly.

"Look out for those Christmas Shoppers," Ten'ou!" Jedite said angrily.

"What, I missed them by half a foot!" Haruka snapped.

"That's the POINT!" Jedite retorted. "50 point deduction!"

"HAH!" Haruka laughed even as the shoppers cursed her out in Doppler. "DAMN it feels good to do my own driving again!!"

"Yes," Hotaru said sarcastically as she held on to her father for stability.

"MY HAIR IS WHITER THAN USUAL!" Tomoe said gleefully. "MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Haruka-poppa, stop speeding!" Hotaru yelled as she looked out the window. "You passed the house!"

"No I didn't!" Haruka shot back, slowing down.

"Yes you did, Ten'ou," Jedite confirmed. "That's Excel's place over on the corner."

"What?" Haruka asked, stopping the car. "So it is, but..."

"Back up," Hotaru said flatly.

"But I *never* miss the house", Haruka said, puzzled. "The mailbox is by the... [BLEEP]!!"

Hotaru looked out the window of the car, her eyes wide.

"What the hell happened to the house?!" Jedite exclaimed. "It's an empty lot!"

"Not [BLEEP]ing again!" Haruka yelled. "This is like the THIRD [BLEEP]ing house I've [BLEEP]ing lost!"*

*What a passerby heard, thanks to the Ikuhara effect: "Oh crap, not again! This is the third house I've misplaced! Damn!"

ACT Ia : BE IT EVER SO RUBBLE, THERE'S NO PLACE...

Flinging the driver's side door of the Ferrari open violently, Haruka leapt out and ran onto the devastated house lot, which looked like a cross between the aftermath of a Tornado and the result of a gas giant's lit flatulence.

Hotaru stood at the edge of the debris field, slowly surveying the panorama of devastation, noting that the houses to the left and right of their house lot were perfectly fine.

"It's as if a giant hand scooped this place out of the Earth," she exhaled slowly, watching the mist from her breath condense in the cold, crisp, Christmas air, as Jedite lifted off the ground, levitating to see the destruction from an aerial perspective.

"HMM," Professor Tomoe muttered, examining the scene carefully, as if looking for something.

"What is it, Papa?" Hotaru asked.

The Professor stood there silently for a moment, surveying the damage. Finally he pointed to a hole in the ground and muttered, "MY BASEMENT IS STILL FINE! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Hotaru sweatdropped.

"Oh, whoop-de-doo," Haruka growled. "I'm so glad your BASEMENT is fine. All my [BLEEP] got [BLEEP]ing vaporized!!

"Ten'ou..." Jedite yelled from the air. "This is bad..."

"No [BLEEP]!" Haruka yelled.

"You don't understand!" Jedite yelled back. "I see something!"

"What?" Haruka yelled, not really caring all that much.

"Well, for one thing, I can see down your shirt... and I must say I'm not impressed." Jedite said, smirking.

"Come down here and say that!" Haruka yelled, shaking her fist at the sky.

"I also see the initals "nGo" scrawled in gigantic letters all over the remains of the house lot," Jedite said more seriously.

"[BLEEP]ing Michiru's crew!" Haruka fumed as Hotaru shook her head. Domestic relationships could be so complex.

"I also smell the blood of a wounded animal," Jedite said a little too enthusiastically. He put his finger to the wind and licked it. "A cat, I believe."

"That's creepy how you can do that," Haruka muttered, shivering-- and not from the cold.

"You learn many things in the company of Youma for 10,000 years, Ten'ou," Jedite said darkly... "many things..."

"Where's the cat?" Hotaru asked worriedly as Haruka cursed her luck and her father cackled at some joke known only to him.

"Under some rubble by the hole that leads to Tomoe's lab," Jedite yelled, dropping to the ground and easily heaving aside small boulders to clear a path to the animal-- he was feeling rather peckish.

Finally, the rubble gave way to the prone body of a bruised and battered white cat.

"Damn, kitty's been whacked bad..." Haruka muttered.

"Isn't that *Artemis*?" Hotaru asked incredulously, shifting to one side as her father dashed past her down the hole into his lab.

"Hmm?" Haruka asked, leaning closer and examining the head of the unconcious animal. Sure enough, there was a gold crescent moon on its forehead.

"Holy-- yeah, it is!" Haruka exclaimed. Privately she wondered why she had never been given a talking cat. She could have made [BLEEP]loads of cash making it do tricks and act like a ventriloquist's dummy.

Jedite frowned. "Hmm.. Lunar cat, eh? Heh, if it were that she-bit[BLEEP] Luna I'd kill her on sight." He laughed darkly.

"Why?" Haruka asked as Hotaru put her hands on Artemis and began of heal him.

"Why?" Jedite growled. "WHY? She trained those Senshi girls to run me over with an airplane!" Jedite stamped his foot on the ground.

Haruka looked at the Dark General blankly for a moment before clutching her stomach and breaking out in unrestrained laughter.

"IT'S NOT FUNNY, TEN'OU!!" Jedite yelled angrily. " HAVE *YOU* EVER BEEN RUN OVER BY A 747? HAVE YOU? HUH!?"

"N-no..." Haruka forced out before collapsing into another spasm of uproarious laughter. "HAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHA!"

"Remind me to introduce you to the sensation someday," Jedite growled.

"Ugh," Artemis muttered, slowly staggering to his feet and rubbing his face with a forepaw. "Thanks, Hotaru."

"Hey," Haruka asked, dropping to her knees and trying to look Artenus eye-to-eye, "aren't you supposed to be living in the future with Usagi-tachi?"

"Well," Artemis began slowly... "you see, Luna and I had a... a *fight*..."

"And did you slay the fetid bi[BLEEP]?" Jedite asked darkly.

"Of course not!" Artemis hissed, incensed. "No! How could I! I *love* her!"

"So she handed you your [BLEEP] then," Haruka concluded, standing back up.

"Yes, unfortunately..." Artemis muttered, rubbing a bump on his forehead.

"Why?" Jedite asked.

"Because I'm a lover, not a fighter!" Artemis replied, sobbing.

"No," Jedite said slowly, "I mean *why* did she beat you up?"

Artemis sat down on his hind legs and sighed. "Well you see, Diana was born yesterday...well, 1000 years in the future to you, but yesterday to me."

Hotaru sat down cross-legged on the ground, paying rapt attention. The concept of time travel fascinated her no end.

"And Ami-chan," Jedite continued, "being the delivering nurse, did a routine paternity test..."

"Ho...?" Haruka asked in an interested tone, "and you *failed*, is that it?"

Jedite smacked her on the back of the head. "Think, idiot, if he failed *Luna* would be at fault."

"So? No woman actually owns up to her faults!" Haruka replied profoundly.

"No woman named *Ten'ou Haruka*, you mean..." Hotaru muttered under her breath.

"WHAT WAS THAT?" Haruka growled, clenching her fists.

"Nothing, nothing..." Hotaru replied with a smile as Haruka fumed.

"Well you see..." Artemis conitnued, "I passed the paternity test, but she, well, failed the *Maternity* Test....

"O-ho," Haruka said scandalously. " Arty, you playa...."

Artemis shook his head.

"Unbelievable," Jedite said with relish, "The guardians of moral virture turn out to be as corrupt and contemptable as the rest of us."

"EXCUSE ME," Artemis yelled indignantly, pointing an accusatory paw at Jedite, "BUT I NEVER WENT AROUND SLAUGHTERING HUMANS AND SUCKING THEIR ENERGY FOR KICKS!"

"Infidelity, Slaughter, all the same in the eyes of the Church my lad," Jedite replied.

"GEH!" Artemis exclaimed, going paler than he usally was. "HOW--"

"Huh?" Jedite asked, taken aback as Artemis frantically waved his paw at him.

"What?" Haruka asked, "it was just a stupid joke...?"

"The mother," Artemis forced out...

"Yes, yes," Haruka urged, eager for the next bit of juicy gossip.

"According to the tests," Artemis said slowly, "The mother... was the nun from the church where I married Luna...."

"THE NUN?!" Hotaru exclaimed in shock as she and Haruka promptly facefaulted. So too did Professor Tomoe, who was climbing back out fo his lab.*

*Facefaulting whilst climbing a ladder is very painful. Please don't try it!!

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAH!" Jedite roared with laughter. "A NUN! ARTEMIS of MAU, the DEFILER OF THE SACRED!"

"Shut up!" Artemis yelled desperately. "I didn't TOUCH HER though! The DNA Samples must be contaminated! A retest should prove it"

"IF THE ALLELES DON'T FIT, YOU MUST ACQUIT!" Professor Tomoe yelled as he climbed back out of his lab. "MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"You see," Artemis began almost desperately, "her great-great-great-great-great grandaughter was in for a medical check the day before, and Chibiusa was interning as a nurse, and I'm sure there was a mixup... Chibi-chan's never been quite right since that knock on her head--"

"Sure, sure..." Jedite said dismissively. "I know your kind of old. I know Lunar Cats can go human when they want..."

Artemis sat there stunned for a moment. The ability to turn humanoid was a carefully guarded secret. It stood to reason that someone like Jedite, who was alive 10,000 years agom might know of it, however....

"No way--" Haruka said in shock, eyeing Artemis a bit more warily. "And you, a tom-cat, lived in a girl's house for years, right?"

"Indeed," Hotaru said suspiciously. "Does Minako-san know you can transform into a man?"

"Only under certain stressfull circumstances!" Artemis replied in a panic.

"LIKE THE ESTRUS!" Professor Tomoe said gleefully. "MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!"

"It's not funny!!" Artemis protested, almost crying. "I need to get back and clear my name!"

Professor Tomoe petted him on the head. " WELL I'M SURE I COULD GO BACK WITH YOU AND CLEAR THIS UP! MUAHAHAHAHAAH!"

"Yeah, right," Haruka said incredulously. "like you just happen to have a TIME MACHINE sitting there in your MAD SCIENTIST LABORATORY!"

Professor Tomoe looked at her askance. "DON'T YOU KNOW? I INVENTED TIME MACHINES IN MY YOUTH! I EVEN WROTE BOOKS ABOUT THEM! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! LETS' GO!!"

TOMOE'S LAB

"Is that a DAIMON in there?" Artemis asked in shock, as he examined a test tube on one of the many benches in the lab.

"WATCH OUT FOR P-95-CHAN!," Professor Tomoe warned, as Artemis barely dodged being grabbed by the squiddy tentacles of a small, cat sized Cthulthu demon.

"ARE YOU INSANE!?" Artemis asked in shock, "keeping a DEMON for a pet?!" He looked up at the black, shadowy face of the professor, with its sick crimson grin and sighed. "Stupid question".

"HERE IT IS!" Professor Tomoe said, pointing to a bluish rectangular object cloaked in shadow. "I CALL IT THE TOMOE UBERADVANCED RESEARCH DEMATERIALIZING INTERTIME SPACECRAFT!"

"TURDIS," Hotaru intoned, compounding the acronym. "Very original..."

"But why does it smell like that?" Jedite asked, holding his nose.

"Excuse me," Artemis said, in too much of a panic to really pay attention to his surroundings, "but I'd really like to get going?"

"NO PROBLEM!" Tomoe said gleefully. "LET ME JUST GET MY DNA SPLICER-- I MEAN, TESTER..." He turned to his workbench.

At that moment, a scruffy looking lad in shinto robes burst into the basement.

"Yuuichiro-san!" Hotaru exclaimed.

"Is it true there's a time machine here!?" Yuuichiro yelled in desparation.

"Whaddya you want, wuss?" Haruka asked tiredly.

"Tenou-san! For years the holy flames told me my Rei-sama was in the future world, but I didn't believe-- couldn't believe!"

"So what changed your mind." Haruka asked flatly, not really interested at all.

"But now this talk of a time machine MAKES me believe! I must go to my presdestined love!"

"Were you eavesdropping, Yuuichiro-san?" Hotaru asked, taking the DNA machine from her father. She grunted in surprise as Jedite shoved her aside and grabbed Yuuichiro by the collar.

"Hands off, Punk Rocker no Shrine Lackey, Rei is MY woman!"

"Erm, Jed," Haruka said, prying the Dark General off Yuuichiro, "She ran your ass over with a PLANE."

"And in some circles they say she burned you alive," Hotaru appended.

"Scandalous Rumour!" Jedite hissed. "Hino Rei will be my woman! My incredibly HOT Girlfriend!!"

"Puns should be criminalized," Hotaru said dryly as Artemis leapt onto her shoulder. She opened the hatch to the TURDIS and winced at the stench.

"No!" Yuuicro yelled at Jedite, leaping for him. "I must got to her, and confess my eternal desire!"

"Sorry," Haruka grunted, again interposing herself between Jedite and Yuuichiro, "but we gotta get a cat a blood test to patch up his domestic violence situation, so forget it."

As Hotaru made to enter the TURDIS, Jedite followed her.

"NO!" Yuuichiro screamed. "Our love will NOT be denied!!" He dashed for the machine.

"Oh no you don't!!" Haruka yelled, tackling him. But the young man squirmed and twisted and broke free of Haruka's grip, dashing forward and shoving Jedite out of the TURDIS doorway. The Dark general roared and pulled the scruffy lad out, and they fought in the narrow opening.

"It's not safe to fight in he--" Hotaru began to yell, cut off when Yuuichiro was pitched forward into the depths of the TURDIS, striking a lever on the control console which locked Jedite out and engaged the Time Drive.

With a wheezing, groaning, flushing noise, the TURDIS vanished, taking Hotaru and Yuuichiro into the time vortex.

"God you even ripped off the NOISE it makes Prof," Haruka muttered. "Well, almost."

"THEY LEFT WITHOUT ME!" Tomoe cried. "BUT I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO CONQ...ERR, I MEAN VISIT THE FUTURE! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Hey," Haruka asked... "where's Jed?"

TOKYO - 2999 A.S.

With a wheezing, groaning, flushing sound, the TURDIS materialized on the corner of an immaculate steel sidewalk at the corner of a fairly quiet intersection during the darkness of an early mornng dawn.

Hotaru exited the TURDIS to the sound of air car traffic buzzing overhead. nauseated, she staggered out and almost fell to the ground, Artemis leaping off her shoulder. Yuuichiro followed, similarly disioriented.

"Gah, the inside of Poppa's Time Machine smells like the interior of a septic tank," Hotaru wheezed.

"That's because it *IS* a septic tank," Artemis muttered, pointing to the blue porta-potty TURDIS with a brownish-white paw. For once the cat longed to take a bath as opposed to cleaning himself in the customary manner.

"Good grief," Hotaru said, exasperated, slapping her forehead and instantly regretting it. Luckily she had a handkerchief handy.

"WOW!" Yuuichiro exclaimed, staring at the futuristic city that surrounded him on three sides-- with the exception of a huge pink wall that cut across the land for miles in either direction.

"Something's not right here," Hotaru mused, as Artemis observed her closely. She had heard many tales of Crystal Tokyo from the senshi, but all of them described an ethereal city cut from living crystal. While these steel and glass obelisk-style skyscrapers were impressive and indeed, "futuristic", they fell far short of the mythic vision.

The wall also troubled her. At first glance it seemed like a simple boundary for the edge of a city, but if one looked closely at it, it was clear the wall had a far more sinister purpose. Cameras were studded all along its top, and friendly green fluorescent neon razor wire adorned its top. The odd thing was, the razor wire was pointed outward, as if designed to keep something *out* of the city.

"What is this thing?" She mused, noting two huge closed doors in the surface of the wall. Why would anyone build a huge retaining wall and then place two DOORS in it?

"You can see the tip of some huge glass tower back there!" Yuuichiro said from a distance.

Hotaru backed away about 500 feet from the wall-- indeed, one could see the tip of a glass... or *crystal* tower.

The duo was so entranced with the vision that they both failed to notice a charred, smoking and qute smelly Jedite fall off from the side of the TURDIS, unconcious, his arms and legs still splayed out in the position they had locked in while he had hung onto the outside of the machine as it traversed the vortex.

"Artemis..." Hotaru began, but stopped cold when she saw something coming towards her from the corner of her eye.

"Tomoe-san look out!" Yuuichiro yelled, noticing it too. "YOUMA!"

"But I don't sense anything from it," Hotaru mused, perplexed. Perhaps this wall was meant to keep them out--

"Accura Paisan!" Yuuichiro yelled, failing miserably to stop the Youma with a shinto attack.

--buy why then, would the wall have *doors*?

"RAHHH!" The youma roared, firing beams of energy at Hotaru, interrupting her train of thought.

"TOMOE-SAN!" Yuuichiro yelled.

Hotaru barely had time to react. Slight as she was, it was easy for her to twist her slender frame sideways as red beams of light from the Youma's eyes lanced out silently beside her, arcing through the empty space where here head had been scant seconds before.

Sucking air in between her teeth in annoyance, Hotaru slammed her right hand onto the ground, the rest of her body pushing upwards in a graceful arc as she side-flipped out of the Youma's line of fire. A light drizzle began to patter down from the rapidly-graying sky, the pitter-patter of cool droplets exploding into rapidly evaporating stains of water on plastisteel sidewalks baked in the afternoon sun ringing in the young girl's ears as she focused on her enemy.

"What is this?" Hotaru muttered. The thought of a Youma in the 31st century was unbelievable. This was the age of Sailor Senshi and their dominion over the Earth, was it not? The fact that a *Youma* would wander the early morning streets unfettered was a disturbing contradiction to the esablished future history.

Closing her eyes for an instant, Hotaru felt her power rise up within her, exploding outwards, enveloping every atom of her being and permeating down to the subatomic. She felt strength collapse inward and explode outward, a supernova of Saturnian energies revitalizing and remaking her body in an instant. Her every sense grew sharper, her every movement amplified beyond the mere force exerted by the movement of flesh, bone and muscle.

In her left hand, the small nub of the Silence Glaive manifested, expanding rapidly from a simple point in virtual space to a full-fledged, gleaming weapon of destruction-- death's hand incarnate, it's curved blade almost a cruel executioner's grin. The locus of her energies, it thrummed with a desire all its own-- a yearning need to *cut*, to *rend*, to *slice* whatever came in its way. And today, with the blood of a Youma waiting to be spilled, it hummed with a dark joy that frightened even Saturn.

Sailor Saturn suppressed the intense adrenalin rush that accompanied transformation and ran straight for the youma, holding her glaive out to one side, her breath heavy, heartbeat filling her ears as her legs pounded against the ground.

Partially to get the attention of her prey, and also to fulfill some primal need within herself, Saturn began the customary introduction speech that all Sailor Senshi tended to use upon entering battle. *Some dim revenant of Death Poetry*, Saturn muttered to herself mentally even as her lips began moving. As the image of the Youma jarred in her field of enhanced vision with each footstep, Saturn began to proclaim, "I am the Soldier of Ruin, Sailor Saturn! I will not allow evil such as yourself to exist! In the name of Saturn, I vanquish thee--"

But then her blood ran cold, the heat of battle evaporating as Saturn froze in place, jaw agape. Only slight guttural sounds of shock and confusion came forth from her now, as she stared helplessly at the scene before her.

The Youma had turned aside and pulled off its own head, and was chatting quite amiably with an attractive young woman by the side of the wall.

It took a moment for Saturn to parse the scene in her brain. Even as her left hand lowered, and the Glaive it held retracted into infinity, Saturn could not understand what she was seeing. The Youma had *pulled its head off*, revealing a human head inside it, and that human head was laughing and talking with a young woman. Had the Youma swallowed a man, and then had the man fought his way out from the inside? Ludicrous...

"A costume", Yuuichiro exhaled from somewhere below Saturn's plane of hearing. She turned her head sideways and tilted it downwards slightly, finally spying the scruffy young man sprawled on the ground, resting on his rump in a pose that read "man recovering from falling over backwards in fear".

"Costume". That one solitary word shattered the fog of war completely, leaving Saturn drained and confused. Indeed, the "youma" _had_ been a man in a costume. Glancing backwards, she noted that there was no damage at all from the creature's "eye beams" anywhere to be seen.

After what seemed to be an eternity's worth of silence, she muttered weakly, "... are they celebrating Halloween or something?"

Saturn was jarred out of her stunned reverie by a hard slap to her buttocks that actually knocked her forwards two inches.

Eyes narrowing in anger she spun around, find herself eye-to-belly with a *huge* fat man. The bulbous plain of flesh wrapped in a striped polyester business suit that constituted his upper torso filled Saturn's entire field of view, and she had to crane her neck upwards to meet the lecherous grin of a beady-eyed, bald-headed, triple chinned middle-aged 30th Century salaryman. To Saturn's eyes, he looked like Frank Herbert's Baron Vladimir Harkonnen come alive, sans suspensors.

Drool escaped the corner of the "Baron's" (as she now thought of him) mouth as he smiled a broken-toothed, somewhat unintelligent grin, exhaling an almost childlike squeal.

Saturn was about to admonish him for his rather rude actions a moment ago, when the Baron finally spoke-- in a high-pitched, almost effeminate form of slightly-inflected Japanese.

"My, my my, That 'henshin' sequence was really good, ojo-san!" the Baron said laughing, the fat on his massive frame quivering in time with his amused exhalations. "You holograph cosplayers are *really* good!" He chuckled some more and leaned down about a foot to bring himself eye-to-eye with Saturn. The stench from his breath was overwhelming, and the force of his laboured breathing sent jets of warm air gushng into Saturn's face. It was like being nose-to-nose with a rutting Bull.

Saturn's face involuntarily scrunched up in revulsion. As the corner of her mouth twisted slightly in preparation for a stinging reply, the man laughed heartily, ejecting spittle in her face, causing her to scramble backwards instinctively, as if hit by an electric shock.

Lowering his voice, in a childish tone of gaiety, the man exclaimed, "But I think it was a bit risque!"

Saturn frowned and stared at him, her nose wrinkling in disgust.

"You were nude for a second there, hee hee!"

Saturn froze in embarassment. The same thing had happened when she had transformed in front of Kamesennin... but he was a trained martial artist whose senses were tuned to the maximum... how could this lecherous old man--

Seeing the incredulous look of shock on her face, the fat man roared with laughter as he held up a fleshy hand, twisting it so Saturn could see an admittedly beautiful ring he had thrust betwixt the folds of flaccid flesh on his right index finger. It was a jarring incongruity, to say the least.

"My digital nanocamera ring caught the whole thing!" he bellowed, pressing the stone on the ring, and producing a life-sized hologram of Saturn in mid-transformation, completely nude and exposed.

"_Yadda_!" screeched the young woman by the wall, more out of a feeling of amused scandal than any real desire to see the holo-show end. Her Youma-clad boyfriend chuckled in amusement at the slight until she slapped him and dragged him away from the scene.

Saturn grew paler than she already was. Hearing a sharp intake of air from somewhere behind her, Saturn growled and snapped, "avert your eyes lest I pluck them OUT, Yuuichiro-san".

"Sorry, Sorry!" Yuuichiro stuttered, doing his best to turn away and failing miserably. While Tomoe Hotaru might be somewhat slight, *Sailor Saturn* was a different matter, and the young Shinto adept was having a had time maintain his concentration-- on things *other* than the holograph.

"Would. You. Mind. Turning. That. Benighted. Thing. Off." Saturn forced out with great effort, her every word soaked and dripping with menace.

As if oblivious to her deadly serious tone or quivering, white-knuckled fury, the Baron laughed and began displaying other images.

"Heheheeeh!" he screeched. "'Bobby the Nano' is specially trained to seek and acquire all kinds of ecchi imagry... brief panty shots--" he tok a moment to bellow at his pun-- " Occassional slips, and of course nude cosplayer henshin scenes!"

"Master Hino would die for one of these," Yuuichiro exhaled, staring at the images like a brainwashed sheep, until an icy glare from Saturn freed him from his hormonally-induced reverie.

"Cosplayer Henshin?" Saturn asked, the part of her that was screaming in agony begging to be removed from the presence of the human pestilence that was the Baron momentarily squashed by her intellectual curiousity, which had been tugging at the dim reaches of her mind ever since the self-decapitating youma incident.

"Ahem!" Artemis cleared his throat as loudly as he possibly could before the Baron could reply. "Saturn, I think it's about time we got moving."

"Euuugh!" The Baron said, jerking backwards and away from Saturn with a speed that belied his fleshy frame. "A Talking Pet!" he screeched. "Those things really turn me off!" He shuddered once and ran off.

"Talking pet?" Saturn asked. Artemis sighed, but said nothing.

"Artemis," Saturn said a bit darkly, "I won't ask where your eyes were just now--"

Artemis blanched. "Saturn, do you know how old I am?"

"That pervert was pretty old too," Yuuichiro said gleefully, silenced only when Artemis cooly raised up a soft white paw studded with razor-sharp claws and pointed it in his direction.

"--but something *has* been bothering me," Saturn mused, pressing a gloved finger to her forehead. "I didn't consider it before, what with the rush to get here and all, but how on Earth could Luna fail a *maternity* test? Didn't Diana, well-- *emerge* from her?"

Artemis chuckled. "I see you don't understand how births are handled here in the 31st century," he laughed.

Saturn looked at the cat askance.

"Didn't your mother ever complain about how hard it was to deliver you?" Artemis asked.

Saturn sighed. "My mother died when I was very young," she exhaled quietly.

"S-Sorry!" Artemis exclaimed, stepping back a bit. He had forgotten utterly.

Saturn shook her head. She had taken no offense--her statement had been offered purely by way of pedantic, if somewhat nostalgic and indulgent correction. "But I do recall Papa complaining about how she used to complain about it," Saturn said, partially because it was true and partially to lighten the mood.

Artemis chuckled. "Well in this modern age, no woman gives birth the natural way. Instead, once contractions begin, the mother is put under anesthesia, the umbilical is severed via nanobot, and the foetus is matter-transported into a neo-natal care unit."

"Even for cats?" Yuuichiro asked blankly.

"For *talking* sentient cats who happen to be friends of the woman who *pioneered* the procedure, yes," Artemis replied tiredly.

"But--" Saturn pressed, "if the baby grew in Luna all this time, how could she doubt it?"

Artemis scowled. "She's been hanging around Usagi too long-- the paranoia's rubbed off. Luna thinks that the moment the nun became pregnant, I had the zygote transplanted into her after drugging her with some catnip, in order to prevent a scandal with the nun and to fool her into thinking the child was hers. Of course she only came up with this theory after Chibiusa-chan bungled the maternity test."

"Machiavellian," Saturn mused. She was almost believing it herself.

"Hey!" Artemis snapped, aghast at the new look of "understanding" in Saturn's eyes. "I bribed my way through the time gate to come get you guys to CLEAR my name, not to buy into Luna's paranoid tissue of lies!!"

Saturn shook her head. "Sorry, Artemis, it's just such a fascinating excursion into the realms of theoretical science."

"There's nothing *theoretical* about it. It's happened before in this century," Artemis replied. "to other people!!" he hastily appended.

"You know, Artemis," Yuuichiro said, pressing finger to forehead in an unconcious aping of Saturn's prior pose, "I've heard stories about Crystal Tokyo from Rei-san, but this doesn't anything like what she said she saw when she was fighting Death Phantom..."

"Indeed," Saturn concurred. "These buildings may look more futuristic, but they are more or less regular skycrapers... hardly the city of living crystal we've come to expect."

Artemis sighed a leaden sigh. He cast his gaze around at the drab, damp, early morning metropolis that surrounded him. Casting his head down, careful not to meet anyone's gaze, he finally exhaled slowly and intoned, "That's because this is not Crystal Tokyo."

Sailor Saturn studied Artemis' visage for several seconds. The cat was displaying classic submissive behaviour, his head lowered, eyes studiously focused on the ground, as if hyperfixated on the examination of every small particle of dust that coated the firm, smooth, plastisteel road.

"Did the TURDIS miss it's destination?" Saturn ventured, puzzled at Artemis' abashed demeanour.

"Not exactly," Artemis began slowly, tracing small circles in the dust with his right forepaw. In a human the behaviour would be classed as "nervous". "Nothing can get closer to Crystal Tokyo than this point, the edge of Neo Tokyo 7. It's..." The cat paused and finally leveled his gaze with Saturn once again. "...just the way things are."

"Neo Tokyo 7?" Yuuchiro asked, not following.

"You didn't think the whole world was Crystal Tokyo, did you?" Artemis asked with a hint of amusement in his voice. "I mean it's a great city-- perhaps even the greatest-- but it's one among many."

"So this," Saturn said slowly, indicating the giant barrier wall with a flourish of her hand, "is a barrier that separates Crystal Tokyo from Neo Tokyo 7?"

"Correct," Artemis confirmed. "It is meant to keep all unwanted elements out--"

Artemis checked himself oddly, sucking in his breath at the last second as if he had let too much slip.

"But there's a door right there..." Saturn protested, pointing to the two massive inset doors in the wall, which--

She blinked, and wondered if her eyes weren't decieving her. During her conversation with Artemis, the doors had silently swung open, and a throng of people had begun to gather at the newly revealed entrance.

It was hard for Saturn to see past the crowd, but she was able to catch a brief glimpse of verdant hills, crystal spires and tree-lined cobblestone walkways in the distance beyond the wall-- and if such a thing were possible, the *sky* even seemed a tinge brighter.

None of this shocked her, of course-- it was the stereotypical description of Crystal Tokyo. The sight which had caused her to question her own senses was that of a scrawny-looking fellow in an overly loud business suit sitting behind a hastily-erected booth, who was apparently *selling tickets* to the crowd.

"That's right!" the man yelled in a cockney accent, tilting the black bowler hat on his head slightly, "Buy yah tour tickets rite now! See da whole'a Crystal Tokyo an' meet da Four *Fabulous* Guardians! Marz, Makuri, Jupitah an' Venis! Today Sailah Venis'll be signin' autographs at da Centah Squah!"

Saturn stood silently stunned.

"Are they letting people take tours of the palace grounds like the British Royals do?" Yuuichiro asked, befuddled.

"Not... exactly." Artemis said, a hint of nervousness entering his voice once again.

"How are we to get in?" Saturn slowly said. "I don't have 30th century currency."

"We're not going in that way," Artemis replied, his voice suddenly full of confidence again. "Come with me." Strident and purposeful, the cat moved over to some bushes lining a portion of the wall. Standing a few feet back, the feline made sure no one else was looking, and shot a beam of light from the yellow crescent on his forehead towards the bushes, which parted to reveal a hidden door, much less ostentatious than the main entrance.

"A hidden door," Saturn mused. "Interesting."

"And neccessary," Artemis said quietly. "Stay alongside me or the forcefields will reject your biosignatures and you'll be unable to enter the compound."

"You can really tell it's the 30th century!" Yuuichiro said giddily as he walked alongside Artemis and Saturn.

"Why, because of the technobabble?" Saturn asked dryly. Yuuichiro nodded excitedly.

Entering into a forested area, Saturn noted that the group had emerged parallel to the cobbled road which connected to the main entrance of Crystal Tokyo. Groups of sight-seers were ambling along that road, pointing at various things, emitting "ooh" and "ahh!" sounds every few seconds.

"I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something wrong here," Saturn mused. It was true, she noted discomfortingly, that the sky *was* bluer on this side of the wall.

"I'll be right back..." Artemis said tensely. " I have to use the little kitty's room." He chuckled and winced.

"But thereare no facilties here..." Saturn mused.

"I'm a *cat*, remember?" Artemis said, chuckling. "Bushes are good enough." He turned and vanished into some undergrowth.

Saturn stifled an embarassed cough and turned to address Yuuichiro, who was looking up at the bright blue sky and blushing.

*That's right,* Saturn realized. *It was a damp, drizzly dawn*. She felt the slight dampness of her sailor _fuku_ from the drizzle that had hit her when she had run towards the "youma" earlier. *But here it's a perfect blue sky*. She knelt down, pulled off one of her gloves and touched the ground.

"Dry soil. Not even touched by the morning dew." She muttered under her breath.

"Nice nails," Yuuichiro commented. "Didn't think you were into that sort of fashion, Hotaru-chan?

"What?" Saturn asked, not understanding. Then she looked down at her uncovered hand. In addition to being slightly longer and more slender, her fingers sported immaculately-cut, polished purple nails-- a far cry from the transparently varnished ones Tomoe Hotaru generally preferred.

"Hmm, it must be a side effect of my transformation," Saturn muttered clinically. Absently, she picked up a small sharp rock and tried to scratch the glossy patina of her nails. Nothing doing.

"Impressive," she muttered. Whoever made transformation magic would make a small fortune selling cosmetics. She donned her glove once again.

"I can't wait to see my beloved Rei-san," Yuuichiro muttered to Hotaru, his face one giant red blush. "The sacred flame told me she was in the future, but I thought I was messing up the readings like I usually do!"

"Erm..." Saturn began slowly, "EVERYONE knows the inner senshi were transported to the future."

Yuuichiro's eyes widened as Saturn retold the tale.*

*Man I wish I was getting paid by the word... or getting paid, period.

FLASHBACK

SOMEWHERE IN TOKYO

"RAHHH! AHHHHH! GRAHHHHHHH!" Chibiusa Daimon Pegasus stood in the middle of a conveniently deserted city street, her body hunched slightly, arms off to her sides, fists and teeth clenched. Lightning coruscated all around her, and the street underneath her began to crack, ripping itself apart, the chunks levitating upwards as she amassed a frightening level of battle power.

"RAHHHHHHHHH!" She screamed as she began to levitate, power rushing into her body courtesy of both the Silver and Golden Crystals. Her radioactive pink hair began to alternate between hot pink and a glowing gold, and her blood red eyes began to turn bright green.

"Such ki," Sailor Mercury noted, fear obviously heavy in her voice. "I've never seen anything this powerful before."

"She's building up ki? I thought she was having bowel problems," Sailor Jupiter said in surprise.

"Is that because she's got the Silver and Golden Crystals?" Sailor Venus asked, watching in fear as muscles began to bulge in Chibiusa-D's arms, legs and chest.

"Well, if you had those stuck in the wrong place they would give you bowel--" Jupiter began, stopping when the true seriousness of the situation dawned on her. "She's getting larger! And more like... a man?"

"RAUGHHHHHHHHHHH!" There was a primal scream as Chibiusa-D's body erupted in golden light. There was a persistent golden glow around her body, which was now the size of a teenager's. Her hair was pure gold, sticking up in the air in a somehat spiked formation. Her green eyes flashed darkly. The air whished around her in a steady hiss.

"I'm not done yet, girls," the voice of Pegasus said from deep within the supercharged body of Chibiusa-D. "SPORE!"

With another fierce yell, Chibiusa D stretched out her arms, drawing more and more energy into her body. Her already pumped muscles grew stronger and harder. Freakish blue lightning began to streak around her aura, and her hair became golden-white and even more spiky.

"What the hell is she doing?" Sailor Venus asked in a semi panic, noting that the ground all over the city was beginning to shake and buckle as its energy was transferred to Chibiusa-D's aura.

"I think," Sailor Mars noted dryly, "she's trying to reach Super-Saiyajin 3".

Eternal Sailor Moon jumped forward, holding up her Eternal Tier.

"Making bad parodies of other people's anime is reserved only for authors of doujinshi and really good fanfiction! You're mocking the work of Akira Toriyama and I won't permit it! In the name of Dragonball fans everywhere and for the honor of Son Gokou, I will PUNISH YOU!"

"I THINK NOT!" Pegasus' voice roared, as Chibiusa-D's hair suddenly tripled in length, and a cranial ridge emerged on the top of her head, her eyebrows vanishing. With a smash, the body slammed down into the ground, sending forth a powerful tremor so strong that several nearby high rises simply toppled. "NOW I HAVE UNIFIED THE GOLDEN AND SILVER CRYSTALS! I WILL RAIN DEATH UPON THE WORLD! I AM SUPER PEGASUS III! SPORE!!!"

Super Pegasus III shook his head. He really had to work on suppressing the Daimon half of himself.

"CRYSTAL POWER KISS!" Usagi yelled, not even waiting for the inners to use their attacks. The titanic force of her attack boiled the air around it as the raw energy coarsed towards Super Pegasus III.

With a deft sideways motion of his arm, Pegasus deflected the energy into high orbit, where it smashed the Hubble telescope into fine atoms and blew a sizeable chunk out of the moon.

"IS THAT ALL YOU PUNKS HAVE?" Pegasus mocked, the electricity from his aura pounding the ground around him. In a flash, he had levitated up into the air. "TIME TO PUT THIS WORLD... ON ICE!"

Screaming, Super Pegasus manipulated the Golden Crystal, the crystal of Earth, willing massive sheets of ice to come forth from the polar regions.

"The Earth is freezing!" Ami exclaimed, her new Mercury computer frantically feeding her visor information.

Luna and Artemis raced towards the inner senshi, walls of ice nipping at their heels.

"VENUS LOVE AND BEAUTY SHOCK!"
"MARS FLAME SNIPER!"
"JUPITER OAK EVOLUTION!
"MERCURY AQUA RHAPSODY!"
The inner Senshi frantically used their attacks to keep the ice from enveloping them.

"The others aren't answering their communicators!" Sailor Venus yelled as she moved at almost insane speed, dodging the hail of blazing electric ki blasts Pegasus was hurling from the sky.

"DAMN!" Eternal Sailor Moon yelled as a stray blast vaporized the wings on the back of her costume. "Haruka and the others sure are taking their time getting here!"

"RAH!" Pegaus launched a blast at Eternal Sailor Moon.

At the last possible second, with the sound of a ricocheting bullet, a rose flew from seemingly nowhere and into the path of the blast...

...and was vaporized by the roiling ki.

As Eternal Sailor Moon tumbled off to one side, badly hit, Tuxedo Mask stepped into the fray.

"Demonically Possessed little girls shouldn't try to freeze the Earth," Tuxedo Mask announced suavely. "It just isn't polite."

"FOR THE RECORD," Pegasus boomed. "I'm a Pegasus possessing a Daimon, who looks like a girl but is actually a guy, and thanks to the power of both the Silver and Gold Crystals, a Super Saiya-jin 3 guy at that!"

"You need psychiatric help, little girl," Tuxedo Mask continued. "Allow me to release your ka."*

*Ancient method of psychological "help." Look it up! LEARNING IS FUN!

Tuxedo Mask hurled a rose at Super Pegasus' head, where it drilled a tiny hole in the side of his cranium.

"ENOUGH OF THIS HORSEPLAY!" Pegasus yelled, absently batting Tuxedo Mask aside with enough force to put him though several sub layers of the street. "THIS WORLD... IS MINE! THE REST OF YOU... DISSAPPEAR!!"

Levitating up further, Pegasus began making a series of complicated hand movements. "10 TIMES... KA... ME... HA... ME..."

"Oh no!" Sailor Mercury exclaimed. "He's concentrating all his power into one focussed blast! If he hits us with it, we'll be vaporized!"

"Combine powers!" Usagi yelled. "EVERYONE!" She pulled out her Silver Crystal, transforming into Neo-Princess Serenity. Sailors Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter channeled their energies into hers.

"SAILOR... PLANET..." they yelled in unison.

"--HAA!" Pegasus yelled, unleashing a horrific lance of energy towards the Senshi.

"--ATTACK!" the Senshi yelled as their energies combined and lashed forth, intercepting Pegasus' beam.

"It's not enough!" Sailor Jupiter yelled, as all five senshi began to be pushed back by the force of the Pegasus 10X Kamehameha.

"It's because we don't have Chibimoon or the outers while Pegasus has both the Silver AND Golden Crystals!" Sailor Mars realized.

"I can't hold off the power!" Neo-Princess Serenity yelled. "He's going to win! There's nothing I can do! I'm not strong enough! Even if I sacrifice my life, I'm not going to be strong enough!"

"There is a way," Sailor Mercury snapped tersely, hundreds of calculations going through her head, "If we give up our Super transformations permanently, the quantum wave burst will be greater than any single effort we could ever provide via simple energy transfer!"*

*see the Manga where the destruction of the Sailor's transformation pens released a massive surge of power.

"That's a pretty permanent step!" Sailor Venus exclaimed, doing her best to stay her ground under the crushing press of Pegasus' beam.

"Well from where I stand being vaporized is pretty damn permanent too!" Sailor Jupiter yelled. "I say we do it!"

Golden light. Blue Light. Red Light. Green Light. Spheres of energy flew from the inner senshi, whose uniforms devolved to their pre-Super forms, and into Neo-Princess Serenity.

"She's transforming!" Sailor Venus yelled.

"How?!" Sailor Jupiter exclaimed. "Sailor Saturn once said this was the final form of Sailor Moon!"

"She was right," Sailor Mars said breathlessly as Neo-Princess Serenity transformed in a blast of white light, becoming the winged form of Neo _Queen_ Serenity.

"Enough!" Neo Queen Serenity said, pressing her right hand forward, pushing Pegasus' attack backwards and doubling it onto him.

"The energy pressure--" Sailor Mercury began, almost in a panic, "--it's too much! Between Serenity and Pegasus, the power is causing a warp in the fabric of spacetime!"

As Pegasus' energy doubled back onto itself, a blinding nuclear explosion rocked the Earth's upper atmosphere. When the light cleared, the senshi, Serenity, Tuxedo Mask, Chibiusa, Luna and Artemis were gone.

END FLASHBACK

As Saturn concluded her tale, a voice suddenly rang out, "HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!"

"That voice..." Saturn said in shock, recognizing it instantly.

"Sailor Venus!" Yuuichiro gasped in awe as the _Hikari no Senshi_ appeared, backlit by the rays of the golden early morning sun. Her outfit was that of the Sailor Soldiers before their powerup at the hands...err, horn, of Pegasus.

Sailor Venus posed and pointing an accusatory finger at Yuuichiro and Sailor Saturn. "You two cosplayers are out of bounds! Get back on the path, or in the name of Venus I shall punish you!!"

Sailor Saturn chuckled. "That's funny, Minako-san--" She paused as she noted Venus' icy glare. Her cool blue eyes reflected stern seriousness.

Saturn's violet eyes flashed and narrowed in response. "Wait a moment," she began seriously.

"VENUS LOVE-ME CHAIN!"

With a blinding blurry blast, Venus' glowng golden chain lashed forth with deadly speed and precision. Saturn deftly managed to entangle its end with her Silence Glave, twisting it into a knot and pulling it safely down to one side.

Sailor Venus raised an eyebrow and released her grip on the end of the "Love-Me Chain" which was in her hand, causing the weapon to vanish into the ether. Saturn's glaive rose automatically, freed from the tension of restraining it.

"That's pretty good!" Venus exclaimed, cracking her neck and posing again. "But you're dealing with the REAL thing, you Doppler Gangster!"

"Doppelganger," Saturn reflexively corrected.

"VENUS, LOVE AND BEAUTY SHOCK!"

"What?!" Saturn exclaimed as she dodged a golden, heart-shaped blast of roiling plasma. How could Venus be using a "super" attack when she was clearly in non-"super" form?

"AIEEE!" Yuuichiro screamed as the energy blast slammed into him full force and he fell backwards, charred and smoking onto the ground, unconcious.

Venus was serious! Saturn frowned and spun her Glaive defensively, ready for the next wave.

"That was LOW POWER," Venus said menacingly. "Go back on the path now or I'll show you my TEN BILLION VOLT ROCK'N ROUGE ATTACK from my days as Sailor V!"

Saturn sighed, casually pointing her Glaive at Venus, tired of the whole thing. "Oh, honestly. SILENCE GLAIVE SURPRISE!"

A ferocious blast of Saturnian energy lanced forth from the Glaive and smashed into Venus, causing a massive explosion.

Both Saturn and a blackened, frizzy, wobbly Sailor Venus now stood in a substantially sized crater.

"That was MY low power," Saturn chuckled. Now maybe Venus would see sense.

"Damn!" Venus exclaimed, the whites of her eyes a stark contrast to the blackened char that covered the rest of her body and hair. Her fists were shaking. "You cosplayers are getting cheekier every day! You think your little SMOKE BOMBS will stop a REAL Sailor Senshi?!"

"Wha--?" Saturn asked, taken aback as a huge gust of energy surrounded Venus, removing most of the char from her. Holding her hands straight up, Venus stared daggers at Saturn, hee cornflower-blue eyes changing to a glowing, golden-yellow color.*

*See how they are in the manga sometimes

A massive globe of Golden energy swirled into place between Venus' hands. The ground began to shake, and Venus' hair began to rise, carried aloft by the waves of her own power.

"What... the--" Saturn muttered, feeling the Venusian energy beginning to permeate everything in the vicinity. The whole area became tinged with the golden light of a summer sunrise.

"I did warn you!" Venus said in a slightly husky voice as she continued to mass power, "Now I'm sorry, but you'll have to pet the pauper!"

"Pay the Piper..." Saturn corrected automatically before catching herself. "That Ki! It's incredible... what kind of attack is she--"

Saturn wiped some sweat off her brow, the heat from Venus' energy globe was incredibly intense, causing waves of heat distortion in the air.

"This is no way to deal with trespassers, you know!" Saturn exclaimed as the Sphere began to crackle ominously. A local drop in the air pressure caused her ears to pop.

"VENUS".... Sailor Venus began angrily. "PLANET... ATTACK!!"

A massive, crackling ki aura burst forward and surrounded Venus, sparks of golden-orange lightning leaping forth and vanishing around unseen lines of bioelectric force. The local air pressure continued to drop as the Venusian energy globe continued to swell in size.

Somehow, Saturn could "see" in her mind a conduit of power stretching forth from the depths of interplanetary space, funneling raw power straight from the harsh surface of the Earth's twin, Venus, and into / through the body of Sailor Venus. It was a spectacle vast in its majesty and terrifying in implication.

As the ground began to shake, an ominious subharmonic thrum pulsing throughout the small forested area, Saturn instinctively brought her left forearm up and over her face in a defensive posture. Even as she did so, she chuckled mentally. _Fat lot of good a *block* is going to do me_, she thought, observing clinically as the edges of the roiling ball of light superheated the air around it into gaseous plasma. _I can already feel the material of my glove beginning to liquify_, Saturn mused.

As Venus' eyes narrowed, and she prepared to strike, a rustling sound in the bushes behind her caught her attention.

"Mina, wait!" Artemis called out in a panic as he emerged from the underbrush several ounces lighter.

With a *pop* the Venusian energy ball vanished, along with the surreal golden sunlight that had permeated the area. The shocking sharp clarity of the untinted blue sky was momentarily painful to Saturn's eyes.

"Artemis?" Venus asked, befuddled. Then, in an instant, her confused look turned into a grimace of pure rage as she turned to face Saturn. "HOW DARE YOU MAKE A 'TALKING PET' THAT LOOKS LIKE ARTEMIS! YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS INSULT!" Trembling in anger at the affront to her best friend, Venus began powering up once again.

_Talking pet?_ Saturn mused in confusion. _What kind of future IS this!?_

"I'm going to *end you*, and this... this... GEEK OF NATURE TOO!" Venus yelled.

"Freak of--" Saturn began reflxively, before checking herself.

"Oh boy," Artemis began quickly, "you have to forgive her, the stress lately's been really bad on her, it's made her more touchy than you might remember--"

"TOUCHY?!" Venus almost roared, firing off a 'crescent beam' shot that streaked at supersonic speed over Saturn's head, effortlessly punching a clean hole through several dozen trees, causing a massive thunderclap and vapourizing a small outhouse several kilometers away. "WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT IT, YOU CAT WITH THE BRAIN OF A PARROT?!"

Artemis scrunched backwards, arching his back in that uniquely feline way that cats employ when terrified. It was all he could do to not flatten his ears and bare his fangs. In a panic, he employed his ultimate technique. He began to blubber.

"Rememberthetimeyouateallthosechocolatesandbecamefatasablimp? OrthetimeyourRussianloveranoffwithsomeoneelseevenafteryouspentallthattimegettinghimtheHachimakistone? RememberthetimeIdraggedyourRibbonthroughthemud?!"

Hearing all this, Venus simply *stopped*. Her posture fell, and a series of varied sweatdrops appeared on her head as her eyes momentarily became small, confused dots. It was such a hilarious contrast to the hyper-agressive rage of the previous moment that Saturn had to stifle the urge to giggle.

"It's really you?" Venus asked, squatting down and petting Artemis on the head as he nuzzled next to her knee and purred a bit. "But wait-- why are you with these cosplayers, and why did you bring them to this secret--"

Incensed, Saturn yelled, "FOR THE LAST TIME, I AM *NOT* A COSPLAYER! I AM THE GENUINE, ORIGINAL, *TOMOE HOTARU*, THE SOLDIER OF RUIN!"

"And I'm Yuuichiro, Rei-san's one true love!!" Yuuichiro, who had just groggily regained conciousness, chimed in.

" ..." Venus stared at the duo incredulously for a moment and stood, spontaneously breaking into knee-slapping laughter.

"What's so funny?" Saturn asked, feeling the tension in her body evaporate as Venus continued to laugh, shakily raising her right arm and pointing waveringly at a mystified Yuuichiro.

"HAHAHA!" she laughed, snorting and doin her best to regain control. "You... you *must* be real, because *no one* would EVER claim to be *Yuuichiro-kun*!!"

Yuuichiro's features fell and his shoulders slumped forward as he hung his head, a defeated man.

"So... hehehe..." Venus continued, clearing the mirth out of her system, "What are you doing here, Hotaru-chan?"

Artemis leapt up onto Hotaru's shoulder. "We time-traveled here with a DNA kit so I could clear my name with Luna..."

Venus lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Oh, *that*..."

She raised her hand and pointed upwards in a profound gesture. "Don't try to hide the truth, Artemis... we all know what they say... 'Men like to "lay the field="'"

"PLAY the field!" Saturn snapped, momentarily scandalized.

"Minako!" Artemis sobbed, sneeing and blowing snot all over the transparent shoulder guard on Saturn's fuku, "You don't believe me!?"

"I saw the DNA test myself!" Venus countered authoritatively.

"*You* can read a DNA test," Artemis replied flatly.

"Sure!" Venus sais cheerfully. "It's easy! If enough of the black squidgy line-things on the left match the black squidgy line-things on the right, you're the papa--"

"Oh my god..." Artemis muttered helplessly.

"and," Venus continued, "if enough black squidgy line-things match in the piece called 'Mitochondria', someone *else* is the mama!! It's like those matching quizzes we had at school!"

" Well there certainly is no doubt as to who *you* are, Minako-san," Saturn said slowly.

"Hohohohoho!" Venus laughed with great amusement. "Sorry about nearly erasing you, Hotaru-chan, but you don't understand these saucy Cosplayers-- they've been getting bolder every day--"

Venus was cut off as Yuichiro yelled "Rei-san!" and ran off through the bushes towards the pedestrian walkway.

"Wait!" Artemis yelled, almost in a panic. "Yuiichiro!"

Venus, Artemis and Saturn watched as Yuuichiro ran up to a long-haired girl wearing Shinto robes and sweeping the grounds with a traditional Japanese broom.

"Rei-san, Rei san!" Yuuichiro blithered, waving his hands about in a blind panic and foaming at the mouth with joy. "It is *I*, your true love, come out of the past to embrace our true destiny in this new shining future!!"

"Huh?" Rei looked up from her sweeping and saw the scuffy, wild-haired over-enthusiatic young man barreling towards her at ludicrous speed. She reached a hand into the folds of her robe and slowly extracted a piece of paper, raising her eyebrow.

"Rei-san, Rei-san!" Yuuichiro yelled, spewing spittle.

"Youma..." Rei muttered under her breath, nodding to herself, and rapidly throwing the slip of paper forwards. "Akuryo Taisan!"

The enchanted Shinto _ofuda_ sliced through the air and slammed into Yuichiro's face. With a jolt, the overanxious lad cried out and dropped to the ground, unconcious.

Nodding to herself in satisfaction, Rei continued sweeping for a moment and walked off.

"What?" Saturn asked out loud. "Rei-san doesn't recognize Yuuichiro-san?"

"That's not Rei-chan..." Venus said matter-of-factly.

"What?" Saturn asked incredulously. "That spirit banishment was perfect! Don't tell me--" she said slowly, blushing for an instant. "This *is the future... is that her daugh--"

"No! hahahaha!" Venus laughed.

"Cosplayer?" Saturn ventured.

"Sort of--" Artemis began, but Venus cut him off.

"That's Keiko Kitagawa-san!" Venus exclaimed with great mirth.

"From the 'Pretty Guardian Sailormoon' live-action series?" Saturn asked increulously. "But that was 1000 years ago!"

Saturn watched dimly as Yuuichiro rose up slowly, dusted himself off, cried out "REI-SAN! WAAAAAAIT!" and dashed off into the depths of Crystal Tokyo.

"You see," Venus said sagely, wagging her finger towards the spot where "Rei" had been, "She believed she was Sailor Mars SO much that somehow she survived all this time. Sometimes we can't tell the difference between the two..."

Venus turned to face Saturn, her arms stretched foward, hands hanging limply forward like a Japanese rendition of a ghost. "It's *scary*..."

"There has to be more to it than that," Saturn mused clinically, totally missing the humour of the situation.

"Anyway!" Artemis cut in enthusiatically. "We should get going. Mina, where's Luna?"

Venus pressed a finger to her forehead for a second as she pondered the question. "It's the early morning, so she should be at Small Lady Chibiusa-chan's 36567th birthday party."

Saturn's jaw almost dropped to the ground. "Surely she's not *THAT* OLD."

Venus grinned. "She's a child who happens to be a *Princess* and a mother who lets her do as she pleases-- EVERY day is officially her birthday..."

Saturn frowned. "So is she still pining after that reprobate equine, Pegasus?"

"Huh? You of all people should know that Pegasus got--" Venus began.

"SHH!" Artemis scolded. "You can't tell her that! It's in her *future*, remember!"

"Oh, like she's not seeing *everything* now, Artemis!" Venus snapped back.

"I don't understand!" Saturn exclaimed in frustration, balling up her fists. "Why are we trapising through the bushes while those people over there are all walking about along magnificent, tree-lined cobbled roads?! Why a wall around the city that has *DOORS* to let people in and salespeople hawking tickets! Why--"

"DAMN!" Venus exclaimed. "Sorry Hotaru-chan, but I was so busy trying to vaporize you that I forgot where I was supposed to be! Artemis, please take Hotaru-chan to the Palace!"

In great haste, Venus leapt over Saturn's head and broke out into a full run, rapidly vanishing into the distance. The cobblestones on which she had run were studded with slight indentations from her medium-heeled shoes.

"Has... she gotten faster than before?" Saturn asked in awe.

"All the Senshi have gotten stronger and faster, even after losing their Super transformations." Artemis said slowly, after pondering whether or not to reveal the information. "It's because they have little to do all day but shop and spar-- outside of their daily tasks, of course."

"So..." Saturn began, remembering the words of the ticket vendor at the front gate, "why is Minako-san signing autographs today? Has she become an idol at last?"

Artemis hemmed and hawed for a moment, not really wanting to bring up the subject.. "Err... how can I put this... *all* the Senshi are idols at this time."

"What?" Saturn asked, not following.

"Though, not in the traditional sense," Artemis said, hoping to stop the conversation at that point. But his hopes were dashed. "Sailor Jupiter" could be seen walking slowly past the bushes, a pink-and-white striped apron slung over her sailorfuku and a large box of freshly baked cookies in front of her.

"Cookies!" she yelled. "Get your freeshly baked Jupiter Gingerbread Cookies right here!"

"Amazing," Saturn exhaled. "That cosplayer really looks like Makoto-san...."

"Ahem," Artemis cleared his throat. "that uhh... 'cosplayer' *is* Makoto-san."

Saturn looked at the cat perched on her shoulder, a million questions burning behind her eyes. However, the only one that made it to her lips was "Selling cookies? As a Senshi!?"

"It's... tough to explain..." Artemis slowly ventured. Suddenly his claws shot out and he scrambled to retain his grip on Saturn's shoulder as it waved and fluxed, changing shape and position as Saturn dropped her transformation and once again became Tomoe Hotaru.

"Wait!" Artemis exclaimed, as Hotaru irately pushed her way through the bushes, passing through a thick, viscous layer of almost solidified air before bursting out onto the pedestrian walkway. Dimly, she noted that the tree-lined forest she had just come from looked totally impenetrable from the point of view of those on the pavement next to it.

"Makoto-san!" Hotaru called out.

"Hotaru cosplayer?" Jupiter asked, confused, turning to face Hotaru. "How do you know my real name?"

"I *AM* Hotaru!" Hotaru said archly, having deja vu and secretly worrying about how strong a "Jupiter Planet Attack" might be.

"Auggh," Jupiter groaned. "Not one of those crazy Cosplayer Otaku again... did you read one of those Toei fanbooks from the Archive Museum?! Don't you have anything better to do than live your whole life dressed up as a historical figure?"

"I AM TOMOE HOTARU!" Hotaru insisted archly. This was getting old.

"It's her..." Artemis offered slowly from Hotaru's shoulder.

"And you even have a talking pet," Jupiter said tiredly. "FYI, Artemis belongs with V-chan, not Hotaru-chan--"

Artemis rolled his eyes.

"And anyway," Jupiter continued, roughly poking the crescent moon on Artemis' forehead, "this isn't a very good one..."

She pointed to many of the other Cosplayers in the area who were accompanied by small talking animals (which where chatting up a storm of short, chirpy-- but intelligent-- phrases)

"This one sounds like a pimp or something," Jupiter continued as Hotaru stifled a giggle and Artemis hissed. "You should have got the new Macaw-Felix hybrids from Mizunomics. Even one of the cheaper FurBots would do better than that thing-- it's so *mangy*".

"GAH!" Artemis exclaimed, firing a beam of energy from the crescent on his head and smacking Jupiter on the forehead with it. It had taken him some years to remember the full extent of his telekinetic powers from the old Silver Milleniuum, but being able to project force from the crescent certainly made moving things around in the human world a lot easier. Not to mention allowing him to chastise rude senshi.

"OW!" Jupiter exclaimed, rubbing her forehead. "It *is* you! Why are you wandering around outside with a cosplay--"

"FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME, I AM NOT A COSPLAYER!" Hotaru screamed.

"Tomoe Hotaru would *never* be that rude," Jupiter said supercilliously, crossing her arms and looking down at Hotaru. .

"OH REALLY!" Hotaru fumed, preparing to summon her Glaive.

"It's the *real* Hotaru," Artemis said. "She's just having a bad day."

"Sorry.." Jupiter apologied sheepishly. "It's been a long time, how are you? Cookie?" She offered up one of the cookies from her box. "Jupiter's Gingerbread is Galaxia Gorgeous!"

Hotaru frowned as she took the cookie and absently nibbled on it. "You said Artemis was wandering around 'Outside'.... 'Outside' what? This *is* Crystal Tokyo, isn't it? The Domain of Neo-Queen Serenity and King Endymion?"

"Oh god, she doesn't know, does she?" Jupiter asked weakly, breaking off a small piece of a cookie and feeding it to Artemis.

"Not really," the cat muttered in between chews. "I was hoping we cvould get her back to the past without telling her."

"Telling me what?" Hotaru said, swallowing a mouthful fo cookie.

"Some legends..." Artemis began slowly... "shouldn't be shattered."

In the distance, the voice of Sailor Mars could be heard yelling out, "Congratulations! You're our 10,000,000th visitor!"

"10,000,000th visitor?!" Hotaru exclaimed. "What's going ON here?!"

Jupiter exclaimed a worried glance with Artemis and opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, the sound of a large gong ringing drowned out every other sound in the area.

A slight feedback squeal could be heard in the air, as a cleverly-hidden public address system crackled to life. "ATTENTION, ATTENTION. ATTENTION, ATTENTION. THE QUEEN WILL GREET HER SUBJECTS AT THE PALACE TERRACE IN TEN MINUTES. CONSIDER YOURSELF ADVISED. ATTENDANCE IS, OF COURSE, MANDATORY. NON-ATTENDANCE WILL BE PUNISHED IN THE NAME OF THE MOON. THANK YOU."

As the message repeated, the various cosplayers "Ooh"ed and "Ahh"ed, making their way towards the large Crystal Palace which was loming in the distance.

"Nuts!" Jupiter exclaimed. "It's almost time for the morning address and I haven't made the concession stand ready! Ja, Hotaru!"

With blinding speed, Jupiter dashed towards the Palace and out of sight.

Hotaru and Artemis slowly pushed their way through the thickening throng of visitors, making their way to the palace.

"Look at the cosplayers, and the stuffed Luna and Artemis toys... this is like a giant Anime convention?" Hotaru asked in awe.

"Err..." Artemis began, finally breaking down and exhaling, "think more along the lines of a 'Disneyworld'.

"What?" Hotaru asked in shock. _The mighty capital of the future world, seat of power to Neo Queen Serenity, a Disneyworld?_

"You've been saying that a lot lately, you know." Artemis said, with no trace of humour in his voice.

"I'm a bit dumbfounded," Hotaru said slowly.

"Get to the palace and you'll understand," Artemis replied.

TEN MINUTES LATER

Dressed in a shimmering, iridescent pearly-white and gold trimmed dress, the almost ethereal form of Neo-Queen Serenity waved out to the crowd from a window within the "crystal parapet". "THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING SUCH WONDERFUL SUBJECTS, WE ARE SO GLAD ALL OF YOU CAME TO SEE US!" she exclaimed as King Endymion nodded stiffly, standing uncomfortably by her side.

Down at ground level, Hotaru tore her gaze away from the royal couple, her eyes taking in the stark lines of the glassy, mirrored silver crystal that composed the walls of the mighty Crystal Palace*

*Sorry Phant, it's mirrored, not translucent, so the outhouse stays 'in' hehehe

and then the vendors at its base, their stalls spreading outwards from the massive locked front gates.

Slowly, Hotaru processed the scene as she spoke to Artemis. "Rei-san is seeling fortunes at the main gate, Makoto-san is selling food from a hot dog stand, and all these toys have a "Mercury Mizunomics" logo on them... to say nothing of booths offering up 'Endymion "fireman cheesecake"' calendars and 'Plutonian Pocketwatches'.... forgive me for saying so, but Crystal Tokyo appears to be... a giant *tourist trap*...?!"

Artemis sighed a leaden sigh. "Oh, it's a trap all right..." he began. "But *not* for the tourists."

Hotaru turned and looked on the cat on her shoulder sharply. Artemis head was hung in shame. Slowly, the cat said,

"You senshi of the Outer Solar System were lucky to not be pulled into this insane future."

Jedite lay on the ground, stunned. The shock of Time Travel had scrambled his senses well and good. "Ugh, my head." Slowly, he got up, finding himself surrounded... by Sailor Senshi. Not just one or two, or even five or ten. There were at least FIFTY, of varying shapes and sizes.

"They must be Sattelite Senshi," he muttered. The senshi who represented the moons of the many giant worlds. The senshi crowded around him, sizing him up like a piece of meat.

"Hahaha," a bulbous Senshi who could barely fit into her poorly-crafted fuku laughed, pointing a fleshy finger at Jedite, "what a stupid-looking costume!"

"What? Look who's talking, Sailor Sumo!" Jedite snapped back, sitting up. "Which one are you, anyway? Sailor Cellulite?"

"I'm not fat,", the massively rotund senshi exclaimed, sweating as she did so. "I'm just calorically endowed!!"

"You're smelly and fat," Jedite replied flatly.

"You JERK!" The Senshi whined.

"Just calling it like it is, sister," Jedite replied coldly.

At that moment, a young man looking somewhat like Jedite, but with bad hair, and a sparklier uniform, complete with cape, arrived.

"Arrogant worngdoer!" He exclaimed. "it is wrong to crush the hearts of young maidens! In the name of justice, I, the noble Jedite, will stop you!"

'*Noble* Jedite?" Jedite asked with a laugh. "Hah! With that lucdicrous wig and bad contacts, you're hardly noble... although I like the jacket--"

The other Jedite was not amused. "Face punishment!" He raised his hands over his head and massed a huge ki ball.

Jedite smiled. Now _this_ was more like it. "Oh, so it's a fight you want, eh?" He raised his fist and began building up bright crackling sparkles of ki around it.

The senshi gasped at the display. "Wow," one of them gapsed in awe. "He's got good FX!"

The two Jedites hurled their ki blasts at each other. Jedite II's blast passed right through Jedite harmlessly, while Jedite's ATOMIZED the bulk of his counterpart, leaving only his jacket and cloak on the ground.

"WOW!" the corpulent senshi exclaimed. "Yyou even teleported him to the Next Dimension! Only high level Cosplayers have that tech!!"

"Huh?" Jedite asked, taking the jacket and cape from the ground and putting it on, not following.*

* And this is how Jedite gets his hands on the PGSM style outfit!

"Hit me too! Hit me too!" Sailor Cellulite cried, ponderously bobbing up and down. "I wanna see what the Next Dimension staging area looks like! No one I know has the gear to send me!"

"What are you blithering about?" Jedite asked with irritation, not realizing that he was, in fact dealing with a clueless cosplayer merely wishing to me mock teleported to another part of the park.

Jokingly, the cosplayer shoved her finger into Jedite's face. "I DARE you to battle me, you wussy Jadeite lookalike!"

"Oh, if that's the way you want it," Jedite replied, atomizng her. Oddly, the other senshi did not get angry, or counterattack. Instead, they cooed and began gathering around him. So did others.

"Ooh!" another ungainly senshi in a cardboard fuku exclaimed. "It's an exhibition!"

"By Metallia," Jedite asked, sweatdropping. "What's going on here? How many Senshi are there?!"

Suddenly, a Tuxedo Mask cosplayer landed on the ground beside Jedite. "Ho! How dare you besmirch the legend of the noble Jedite, who aided the Senshi stranded in the past to save--"

Jedite fumed. He HATED being called noble! "STOP SPREADING LIES ABOUT ME, YOU EFFEMINITE ROSE-THROWER!!"

Tux posed. "I cannot let this Blasphemy go unchallenged!"

Jedite cracked his knuckles. "Oh, I've been wating for this, you weak-kneed poser!" He paused. "Although you look shorter than I rememeber..."

Not letting that stop him, Jedite clashed with "Tuxedo Mask," slamming him into a crater in the ground with one hit.

"This is easier than I remember..." Jedite mused, confused. The cosplayers cheered. He frowned as one of the other "senshi" spoke up.

"Oh, this must be that "Hard Battle" attraction they were talking about! Let's use our DEADLY FORCE energies!!"

The cosplayers shot harmless rays of laser light from their gloves at Jedite. One of them, a cackling, obviously insane girl, fired her overcharged laser toy at Jedite, nicking him.

"DAMMIT!" Jedite yelled, more annoyed than afraid. "That's IT! I don't care about you no-name Senshi! I will desroy you ALL!" Spinning around, he started ravaging them with ki bolts, killing them with ludicrous ease.

After a bunch of the cosplayers fell before him, he chuckled. " If the Senshi of this time are so WEAK, then maybe it finally is time for the Dark kingdom to rise again!"

Slaughtering more and more cosplay Senshi, including Sailor Orion, Sailor Jackelope and Sailor Sedna 2345446, he made his way to the head of the still-growing crowd.

"That's so freaking realistic!" Sailor Earth-2 screeched. "Look at the blood, the actors! So professional! It's got to be a special event!"

"Heck yeah!" Sailor Earth-Terra replied. "You'd almost think he WAS the legendary Jedite!" The next second she screamed in agony as Jedite decapitated her.

The crowd went wild with glee.

TOMOE'S LAB, 2003

Haruka fumed. "Man, I wanna see the future too..." She poked around the Prof's lab. The Prof himself was busy cloning another Kaolinite, so she ws on her own. Picking up a text file she had downloaded from the paranromal KEELYNET, she looked over it and began scrounging parts from the lab to make her own little time machine which she could hook into her Ferrari, Back to the Future Style.

CRYSTAL PALACE BASEMENT 2999

Setsuna groaned as her alarm clock gonged. Sitting up, she looked over to a small ancient post-it note, a scrap of Vellum with glue on the back. The note read: "Today: Do hair. Do nails. APOCALYPSE NOW. Buy lipstick." She sighed and went back to sleep.

CRYSTAL PALACE CORRIDORS

"I don't understand..." Hotaru asked Artemis slowly, as they snuck through dimly lit back corridors of the palace. "Why do we have to enter the palace through a hidden back door? there are enough guards on the front door to make things secure..."

"They're just ushers." Artemis replied absently.

"Ushers?" Hotaru replied quizzically.

"That door you saw at the front leads to a self-contained area in the Palace for the benefit of the public. It doesn't lead to any of the real quarters."

"It's a facade?" Hotaru asked in shock.

"Crystal Tokyo... is not what you think it is, Hotaru." Artemis replied slowly, almost shamefully.

"But when Usagi-tachi went to the future that one time, they never said anything was amiss..." Hotaru protested.

"This hadn't happened yet." Artemis replied. "The aftermath of the Nemesis War changed a lot of things for us. The other nations of the world were never happy being under Usagi's rule... and so when we were disteacted fighting off nemesis, they surrounded the city and aimed their nukes at us. They let us beat nemesis for them, then demanded that we either cede power and become just another nation-state, or they would destroy us."

"I see..." Hotaru replied. "And Usagi-san went along with it?"

"Well, she never paid attention to the rules of statecraft anyway, and the other senshi were tired of governing the whole world, so they accepted it in her stead. The treaty in effect says the senshi have to stay in this city and not leave it-- as they fear our power. This theme park is how we fund the independent state, feeding off our own legends to put food on the table. As far as the public knows, we're all cosplayers. This, the REAL seat of power, is hidden from them, which is why we need hidden passages and things in the palace."

"Ahh," Hotaru said. "But where are we? I mean, Haruka-poppa and the rest of us?"

"You all went to live on... another world some years ago, because you didn't want to be under Usagi's power when she arrived in the future. I'm not supposed to know that, because for some reason I think I'm with you, but Setsuna let it slip one day."*

*See the Sakura's tale OAV series for more details

"You said the others assented in Usagi-san's stead," Hotaru continued as the duo made their way through the palace's private halls. "Does that mean she--"

"SETSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAA! COME HEEEEEEEEEEEERRRREEEEE!!" The unmistakable whining screech of Neo Queen Serenity's voice cut through the air.

"Oh great," Artemis exhaled, shaking his head. "Usagi's on the warpath AGAIN."

The duo snuck into the royal chamber and hid behind a column, where they saw Neo-Queen Serenity standing with her hands on her hips, King Endymion chained to her waist.

"WE CAN SEE YOU THERE!" Serenity bawled. Hotaru and Artemis started, but did not move.

"COME OUT HERE NOW!!!" Serenity boomed. Artemis and Hotaru stepped out from behind the column, skittishly. But it soon became clear Serenity wasn't even paying attention to them. Her gaze was fixed on another person in the room, who sheepishly stepped put of the shadows.

"Yes, your majesty." Setsuna said sullenly.

"Setsuna-momma?" Hotaru asked out loud.

Setsuna looked at them like a kicked puppy.

"Explain THIS!" Serenity bawled, whipping out a slip of paper.

"Majesty?" Setsuna asked, head bowed.

"THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!" Serenity screechedm punctuating her words by jabbing the paper in Setsuna's face repeatedly. " READ IT READ IT READ IT TRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRR!!!"

Setsuna sighed and read the note. "Endymion-sama, I have recieved your latest, most excellent epistle upon the back of the palace rats. I find your cogitations curiously chilling, in a manner that excites the darkest corners of my barren brain. Your dialectic diverts me, dallying in my mind during the long nights. I sup upon your Socratic succor with infinite gratitude and undying appreciation."

"Heady stuff..." Hotaru mused.

"YOU THINK YOUR STUPID CODE WOULD STOP US!!!" Serenity screamed.

"Code?" Setsuna asked, confused.

"Polysyllabic Encryption," Artemis explained sarcastically. Hotaru shook her head and sighed.

"And YOU!" Serenity yelled, jabbing her finger into the helpless Endymion's face. "WE KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE!!! READ IT!" She slapped a paper in his face.

Endymion read it weakly. "Setsuna, thnak you for your kind words and titilatting theorizations. Your cerebral convolutions and intellectual innuendo harden my desire to penetrate the polyphonous patina of your profound postulates."

"OUR SERENITY IT'S LIKE READING VIAGRA 10000X SPAM!!!" Serenity yelled.

"Our... Serenity?" Hotaru asked, incredulously.

"Don't go there..." Artemis replied, sighing.

"ENDYMION, HOW DARE YOU!! HAVING AN ILLICIT AFFAIR WITH SETSUNA, AND THINKING THAT WE, THE GOD-QUEEN OF CRYSTAL TOKYO, WOULDN'T NOTICE!!!" Serenity was livid.

"God... Queen?" Hotaru asked weakly.

"She's...been under stress lately." Artemis snorted.

Finally, Serenity made note of Artemis' presence. " YOU! THE ONE WHO PLAYS WITH THE HEARTS OF INNOCENT MAIDENS! WE PROMISED LUNA WE'D BANISH YOU TO THE BASEMENT!!!"

"Wait!" Artemis said, waving his paws around frantically. "Hotaru-chan has come back from the past with proof of my innocence!"

"LIES! ALL MEN LIE!!!" Serenity screeched. "WITH THE WRONG WOMEN!!!!" Her eyes flashed as she glared at Endymion. Guards appeared and hauled Artemis away.

Hotaur noted this and sweatdropped. "I think I'd better be leving now..."

Serenity walked towards Hotaru and held her by the shoulder. "No, no no! Hotaru, our *friend*, come, stay by our side for a time... it was so wrong of that lecher Artemis to drag you across time to justify his co[BLEEP]k holding."

"Cuckolding?" Hotaru experimentally corrected. "And doesn't that only apply to men who are cheated on--?"

Serenity scowled. "Bother us not with such trivialities as the meanings of mere WORDS! Come!!" Violently, she grabbed Hotaru and took her aside into a side chamber, slamming the door so the chained Endymion was left outside. She snapped the chain off, and Endmion could be heard running off.

"Usagi-san... err, Serenity-sama--" Hotaru hesitantly began.

"Out this window you can see our dominion... all the eye can see is ruled by us." Serenity waved her hand at the skyline.

"Hmm, " Hotaru mused. It was radically different than the true skyline Hotaru had seen outside of the palace gates.

"When was the last time you left the castle, Serenity-sama?" Hotaru asked slowly.

"Oh, let us see.... one, maybe two... decades." Serenity replied.

"Decades?!" Hotaru asked in shock.

Serenity looked at her and smiled. "An eyeblink for us, Hotaru-chan. We live eternally."

"But still..." Hotaru asked, unable to believe it.

"Ever since the Nemesisarians defied us and had their little rebellion, we have stayed in the palace. Our most excellent inventress, Dame Mercury, has rebuilt the palace to attend us in all ways. What do we need with the smelly, foul complications of the external world? Our subjects love us, and know that we will protect them again should the evil arise once more." She crossed her hands over her heart. "In Nomini Lunar."

"But have you never felt the need to survey your dominions?"

"The effort would tax us too greatly. We prefer the pleasant diversions of Holographic Television."

Hotaru frowned. "Erm... did something happen to make you wish to only stay in the palace?"

Serenity shook her head. "The people, they love us too much. There was no peace for us in the outside... always being troubled for advice and special dispensations. We retreated here to live in peace and passion with our mate."

Hotaru blushed. "Ah.h... I see..."

Serenity laughed. "Blush not! It is not as if our passions have been staked!!"

"Slaked"?" Hotaru corrected again.

"That wretched man," Serenity growled. "Always betraying us! We have tried to trsut, but as the immortal words of the Bard say, 'Love falls when you trust a shrew'."

"Love all, trust a few", Hotaru snapped, almost reflexively now.

"That too!" Serenity replied, nodding.

"Wait." Hotaru said, suddely sounding much more confident. "Those constant malapropisms... the ones that make sense eveb when hoplessly incorrect... only one person..."

"What do you mean, child?" Serenity asked, sweatdropping.

"Cease this charade, Minako-san," Hotaru replied dimly.

"Moh!!" "Serenity" exclaimed, shaking her head. "I thought I had it DOWN this time!!"

Hotaru chuckled. "You had me going for quite a while, actually-- I had never realized how much you *do* look like Usagi-san."

Minako giggled. "Eheheheheheheheheeh... I even fooled Artemis! The guards are taking him back to his room, heh."

"But why are you doing this?" Hotaru asked. "Is there some threat on the Queen's life that warrants a double? Or do you like playing Queen?" She smiled.

Minako chuckled. "Hheheh you shouldn't be so cheeky with *us*." She laughed loudly.

"So all that in the hallway-- A farse?"

Minako nodded. "Well Endymion-sama and Setsuna-san have been getting sloppy lately, I had to teach them a lesson, it's lucky I caught them before Usagi-chan did..."

"I thought Setsuna-momma was Mamoru-san's cloned sister?" Hotaru asked in confusion.*

* See the season 1 finale.

:She went back in time and fixed that. Now she's totally Plutonian." Minako nodded profoundly.

How does time travel fix a probem of genetics?" Hotaru asked, even more puzzled.

"TIME TRAVEL CAN FIX ANYTHING." Minako replied flatly, refusing to elaborate further.

"What is it with them anyway?" Hotaru qnquired with a sigh.

Minako shrugged. "What would you do if the people closest to you lowered your IQ by 10 points every time they opened their mouths?"

Hotaru laughed as she thought of Haruka. "I'd retreat to the comfort of a good book."

"Or someone on your own level..." Minako offered.

"Possibly... so Mamoru and Setsuna...." Hotaru began to understand.

"Right now, just two giddly schoolgirls swapping notes in class... I had them going, didn't I? Hehehehehehehehe!" Minako gave a V sign.

"Wait..." Hotaru pressed. "Mamoru-san was chained to you and didn't notice you weren't Usagi-san?"

"He doesn't notice her that much these days."

"What? What of the miracle romance?"

"It's hard to have a miracle romance when your wife is insanely jealous, your kid is an illiterate maneater, and you're too lazy to actually show yourself before 3 PM because you're busy sleeping in."

"Point." Hotaru nodded. "So the Queen at the balcony this morning? That was..." She nodded to Minako's costume.

"I always pull morning shifts... I had one of the cool V-chan cosplayers playing me at the concession stands. She's almost TOO good at faking my autograph..."

"You'd think the ruler of the world would be more consciencious about her duties... but this *is* Usagi-chan..." Hotaru exhaled.

"World?" Minako asked quizzically.

"Oh, right," Hotaru nodded. It was still hard ot believe how far the future legend had changed from the little tidbit everyone had heard from Chibiusa. Speaking of which...

"What did you mean about Chibiusa being an illiterate maneater?"

Minako sweatdropped and began to explain about how Elios, a lack of formal schooling after her last return from the future, and being whacked on the head every time she got too close to Endymion had reduced Chibusa to a gibbering hormone with feet.

CRYSTAL TOKYO MAIN PLAZA

"This is too easy. The senshi of this time period are REALLY weak..." Jedite smiled to hismelf as he stepped through the steaming entrails of the fighters. "How many Senshi ARE there, anyway? I've killed about 30 Jupiters, 10 Venuses, 50 Mars, 35 Mercuries and 10 Chibimoons, not to mention about 1000 Sailor Earths, Suns and Americas..." He sighed. "But merely killing them is boring."

Jedite looked up at the shimmering spires of Crystal Tokyo. "I bet that coward Moon is hiding in there somewhere... it looks fairly fortified... I OWE her for running me over with that plane."

He cracked his knuckles and grabbed a Senshi who was trying to sneak away. After about the 500th casualty, the cosplayers had finally begun to realize that this was the real deal, and panicked. Most were still staring at Jedite like deer trapped in headlights.

"YOU! You will obey Jedite, Lord of the Neo-Dark Kingdom!" Jedite's eyes glowed black.

"I obey," Sailor Nebraska intoned, her spandex fuku splitting at the poorly sewn seams.

"Insanely weak-willed, these Senshi..." Jedite chuckled. This was going to be FUN! He levitated up into the air.

"Come to me, my people!"

The brainwashed senshi gravitated towards him.

"The crowd gave a feral roar.

Jedite smiled as his army of senshi began to take shape.

END OF PART ONE PART TWO (BY YAIJINDEN)
Naoko Takeuchi and Akira Toriyama are thanked for their involuntary contribution to this fanfic.
Dr. Xadium is credited for creating the Suburban Senshi and the subsequent pollution of the internet with these bits of text. XD
There are probably several others to whom I owe credit- references, stolen ideas, and the like- but they will NEVER see the light of day. BO HA HA HA HA HA HA.
You can find all the suggested background music from http://www.snesmusic.org/ if you are so inclined. Super Nintendo is the bomb.

Xadium's note: Chibiusa's text redone by me as with the others.

=Yaijinden, boxboxbox ATTU gmail DAWT com

Suburban Senshi, Episode 20-2
"Smack to the Future"

TEN'OU HOUSE, TOKYO, 2002

"Hey Doc, do you have any plutonium in there?"

Dr. Tomoe looked up from his workstation and adjusted his glasses. The lenses flashed ominously in the flourescent light, obscuring the rest of his face in darkness despite the ambient luminescence of the laboratory. "WHAT DO YOU WANT PLUTONIUM FOR?" the professor inquired cheerily.

"I figure," Haruka said pleasantly, "that if Doc Brown can do time travel with a flux capacitor, I should be able to fix one up myself. To do that, though, I need plutonium or a lightning bolt- and Makoto isn't around, or I'd ask her to help me along."

"MUAHAHAHAHAHA," Tomoe observed gaily, scratching his chin when he was done cackling. "I'M NOT SURE YOU WANT A FLUX CAPACITOR, HARUKA."

"How the hell am I supposed to do time travel if I don't have a flux capacitor?" She frowned. "Marty McFly did okay with it."

"YOU'RE GOING TO PUT IT IN YOUR FERRARI, YES?"

"Well, yeah." Haruka raised an eyebrow. "So?"

"THINK BACK TO THE MOVIE," Tomoe said, grinning sinisterly. "GIVEN THE SPEEDS AT WHICH YOU LIKE TO DRIVE, TRAVELLING THROUGH TIME EVERY TIME YOU GO TO THE GROCERY STORE MIGHT BE SOMEWHAT INCONVENIENT."

"Huh?... oh. Right." Haruka's eyebrows furrowed in thought. "Well," she said experimentally, "if we're not going to put a flux capacitor in there, how the hell am I supposed to get to the future?"

"WELL," the Professor observed darkly after a moment, "I DO HAVE SOME OF THE SPARE PARTS I DISCARDED FROM INITIAL DESIGNS OF THE TURDIS. IF I GIVE IT SOME THOUGHT AND REPLACE YOUR ENGINE WITH A FISSION-POWERED REACTOR, IT WOULD PROBABLY LAST TWO TRIPS THROUGH TIME."

She blanched. "Whoa now, let's not get too hasty. I've spent way too much time on that thing to just throw it out..."

"IF WE DON'T REPLACE THE ENGINE," Tomoe responded, a note of sobriety marring his jovial cackle, "THEN YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO GO TO THE FUTURE. JEDITE WILL NEVER LET YOU LIVE IT DOWN. YOU DON'T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN, DO YOU? MUAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Haruka slapped her forehead. "I'll start dismounting it," she said wearily, trudging back up the stairs.

The Professor watched her go, lips curling in a thin crimson smile. "PEER PRESSURE IS A MARVELLOUS THING," he noted. "NOW WHERE DID I PUT THAT SOMMOFLANGE?"

((Seiken Densetsu 3 - 1-19 - Legend))

CRYSTAL TOKYO, CRYSTAL PALACE, 2999

"You can't be serious."

Minako's bit her lip in silence.

"You ARE serious," Hotaru marvelled. She leaned backwards against the column she had been hiding behind scant minutes ago, facepalming. "How could this have happened?" the soldier of ruin said despairingly. "How could any of us have let this come to pass?"

"Moh! It's not like we WANTED this to happen," Minako said defensively. "It all happened so quickly we didn't have any time to plan for it. Before any of us knew it, we'd saved the Earth from itself, and they needed someone to lead them for long enough to ship themselves freight!"

"'Set themselves straight?'"

"That too," she conceded. "Besides, YOU try to think of a way to keep the wielder of the most powerful artifact in this part of the galaxy from going nutso in five minutes or less."

"I... suppose you have a point there," Hotaru said quietly after a moment. She took a deep, weighty sigh, then turned her gaze back to Minako. "I do have a question for you, though... do you really enjoy what you're doing here?"

"Well... it's not whether I enjoy this or not," she said firmly. "If we don't keep things going the way they are, it won't just be us who suffer. If Usagi figures things out, she might just try to take over again, and then the whole world will be going to melt in a ham's blanket."

"'Hell in a handbasket?'"

Minako sweatdropped. "That too. It's not whether we want to do this- it's that we have to. We really do. It's either that or let everything go to whatever you just said."

Hotaru shook her head. "The future is a darker place than I had imagined," she said grimly. "But if there's nothing I can do to... wait, do you hear that?"

Minako raised an eyebrow. "Hear what?"

The scion of Saturn turned around, head tilted at an angle. "I'm... I'm not sure. It sounds like a rattlesnake warning a hiker of its presence."

"Uh oh." Minako glanced down both sides of the corridor they had been walking down and shuddered. "Remember, Hotaru, I had NOTHING to do with this."

"Nothing to do with..." Hotaru's voice trailed off as she turned around, locating the direction of the noise.

"hshshshshshshsh," the sound cackled. Hotaru blinked in shock as a familiar form manifested out of the shadows before leaping towards her with its arms outstretched...

***

((Final Fantasy 4 - 1:36 - Dancing Calbrena))

"DANCE, MY PUPPETS!" Jedite crowed victoriously, floating an even fifty feet above the inner streets of Crystal Tokyo. "DANCE IN MY NAME!"

The cosplayer mob, progressing slowly beneath him, did a unified little jig. The Dark General's sinister laughter echoed between the buildings as his army made its way ever-closer to the palace. If the Sailor Senshi had given up their powers to this pathetic bunch, then he could sacrifice his minions to ablate the palace's defenses without a second thought. The Maboroshi no Ginzuishou would be an outdated relic of the past by the day's end.

The palace would fall just as it did before. His triumph was inevitable!

Then a massive percussive bang, like an immense thunderclap, caught his attention. Jedite deigned to glance towards the source of the noise, noting a yellow automobile skid down the hallway. Lightning bled off of its frame, grounding into the streets until it came to a halt.

When the driver opened the door and stepped out, a callous grin blossomed on Jedite's face. "You're too late, Ten'ou!" he yelled triumphantly. "Just like last time, you're too late!"

Haruka shut the door and keyed the alarm behind her. "It's good to see you too?" she called back, confused.

"Behold: my invincible army!" He swept an arm to the large crowd beneath him, now several hundred strong. "The Senshi who serve your Moon Princess have grown fat and weak! I have turned the very armies of Crystal Tokyo against it- now NONE can stand in my way!"

"The Senshi of-" Haruka began, head snapping towards the crowd. Her eyes widened in a second of shock that passed just as quickly. Trying to not sound entirely confused by his choice of minions, she looked back to Jedite. "You can't be telling me..."

"I told you, Ten'ou- you, and all your friends are too late!" Jedite threw his head back and cackled, black ki cascading off his body and warping the air.

"Ri~ght," Haruka observed skeptically. This was definitely the future, she noted- the architecture bore an uncanny resemblance to Usagi-tachi's descriptions of Crystal Tokyo, and they also seemed to possess floating cars. (Avery Brooks would have been pleased, Haruka thought amusedly.) However, the future did not seem to lack for the obsessive people...

((Final Fantasy 5 - 1-29 - What?))

It looked like things were going to fall to her. Jedite was hopelessly out of touch with the way the modern world was, sometimes, and it was relatively obvious to her that he didn't know about the scourge of cosplayers. His army was powerless, and he was absolutely clueless. If the Princess saw him attacking the castle, even Jedite's power might not stand against the sheer strength of the Ginzuishou.

On the other hand, though, if she told him the flaw in his plan, she would miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance to watch his dreams crumble into dust.

It was a credit to her nature as a Senshi that she rationalized her next act by remembering that she had no idea what Usagi in the future would do to attacking zombie cosplayers.

"HEY JED!!" Haruka yelled above the drone of the cosplayers, stifling a smirk. "I think there's a hole in your plan!"

"SILENCE!" he bellowed back, whirling about in mid-air. "Your feeble attempt at trickery is beneath my contempt!"

"No, really!" she called, trying to keep from laughing. "Maybe you should take another look at your army! How many Sailor Marses can there be, anyway?"

"That depends on if they are or are not my incredibly hot girlfriends," Jedite retorted fiercely.

Haruka couldn't help but facepalm. "Maybe you didn't notice this, genius, but there's never more than one Sailor Senshi for any planet!" she snapped. "It doesn't! Freaking! Happen!"

"LIES!"

But a look of dismay had crossed Jedite's expression for the briefest of moments, and Haruka knew she was winning. "Tell ya what," she said, leaning against her beloved vehicle. "You tell your army to kill me. If they can wound me, I won't even stand in your way. Hell, I won't even defend myself against them."

The General's eyes narrowed. "I was going to let you live, Ten'ou," he said darkly. "Out of respect for my one rival on this dismal rock, I planned on sparing you to the very last. But if you desire to throw your life away, I can hardly stop you from doing so."

"Yeah, yeah." Haruka rolled her eyes and motioned at the army. "Tell them to kill me already."

"MINIONS!" Jedite barked, folding his arms across his chest. "Destroy her!"

"We hear and obey," the cosplayers droned in unison. As one, they raised their arms and pressed buttons on gloves, sending a multitude of cascading light patterns towards Haruka.

For her part, Haruka merely squinted against the glare of several dozen Love and Beauty Shocks, Shabon Sprays, and holographic roses.

This went on for several seconds. Haruka even bothered to yawn and stretch, her arms barely visible over the special effects, knowing the effect it would have on him. Above her, she could sense his growing fury- his ki control was slipping, probably due to some sort of pent-up fury.

Thankful she wasn't epileptic, she made herself tolerate the wildly blinking lights for about ten more seconds before Jedite decided he had had enough. "USELESS!" he screamed. "Pointless, pathetic humans! GAAH!! Cease your pointless attempts at relevance!""

He swept an arm towards the cosplayers, and they all ceased their attack, arms falling limply to their sides. In the blink of an eye, the black nimbus ki surrounding Jedite dissipated into the air. "I have been ROBBED," he spat, descending to the ground. "I have been ROBBED of a victory that should rightfully be MINE."

"Ah, you never had it in the first place." Haruka patted him reassuringly on the back. "C'mon, help me find Hotaru and Yuuichiro before the Princess finds out you tried to take over the future with a bunch of cosplayers."

He snorted. "I don't see how I have any other choice," Jedite said darkly.

"Good, 'cuz I wasn't gonna let you stay anyway." Haruka smirked and turned off the car alarm, getting into the driver's seat and peeling out through the street. The Ferrari tilted on two wheels as it took the curve, and then was out of sight. One or two of the cosplayers coughed momentarily as the resultant dust cloud wafted over their position.

For a brief second, there was relative stillness before the gates of Crystal Tokyo. Then, in their unholy unison, the cosplayers began following the Ferrari...

***

((Super Mario RPG - 1:25 - Sad Song))

Yuuichiro was not sure how his day could get any worse.

He didn't dare say that out aloud for fear that Murphy's Law would kick in. But he was thinking it. The future was not what it was cracked up to be, all things considered. Sure, there was brilliant mirrored buildings, clean streets, and all the conveniences of modern-day Japan. There was something missing from the city, though. Something... personal. Something alive.

"REI?!" Yuuichiro yelled, spinning another woman in Sailor Mars's garb around. The girl looked at him blankly; he moaned in dismay and apologized beneath his breath, letting her go and trudging back into the crowd. She was the forty-seventh Mars look-alike- they were all pretty good resemblances, but Yuuichiro could tell the real thing from a fake almost instantaneously. All he had to do was look into their eyes, and he could see the lack of power they all had.

That was why Kitawhatserface Keiko had fooled him so readily. She was strong. Not Rei's strength, not her purity of essence- but so close to it to be almost indistinguishable.

Almost.

Lost in his own dejection, he barely took note of the magnificence around him. He knew he'd screwed up really badly this time- not only could he not find his one true love, he'd lost track of Hotaru. Not being close to Rei had only been a terrible thing in the past... but now, now that he was so close and yet so far away from her, the ache in his heart was unbearable.

The outside world existed as flashes of momentary awareness. Accidentally bumping into another pedestrian, irate epithets from drivers, and other such momentary inconveniences intruded on his conscious mind every so often, but his despair was too potent to let his attention wander for long.

When he felt the presence of a slim hand on his chin, Yuuichiro realized he was sitting down on a park bench in what appeared to be the middle of a zen garden. He let the hand pull his face upwards, hoping against hope that he had been found... and found himself staring into the most haunting electric blue eyes he had ever seen.

Then he recognized the face those eyes were set in. "GYAH!" Yuuichiro yelped, scrambling behind the bench in a second and hiding behind it. "Don't hurt me!" he pleaded. "I didn't mean to touch you! I thought you were someone else?"

The Kitagawa Keiko lookalike laughed gently. "my predecessor," she said lightly, her hand returning to her sides. "she does not like intruders- her mind, a cliff face."

When it occurred to him that the girl wasn't going to hit him over the head with paper, Yuuichiro cautiously peeked over the back of the bench. "You... you're not her," he said, relieved. "Sorry, I guess I kind of overreacted."

"perhaps properly," the woman observed with a sly smile. "keiko's path: her own."

"I guess." He glanced around, noting the utter lack of people around. "So... are you two related?" Yuuichiro asked lamely. "Because you two look like, y'know, twins."

"twins only in form," she replied, rolling her eyes. "she seeks to replicate one; I seek to surplant."

"Oh." He scratched the back of his head, noting with some curiosity that she wasn't wearing the traditional miko's hakama. "Come here often?" the young man inquired, smiling half-heartedly.

"the feng shui is off," the woman replied with a smirk and a dismissive wave. "your soul needs guidance. i come to take the winter's blanket from your soul."

Yuuichiro's eyebrows furrowed as he parsed her words. Was she speaking in haiku? "I don't need guidance," he said dejectedly, slumping over the back of the park bench and staring at the ground. "All I wanted to do was find the woman I love so I could tell her everything... all the things I wanted to say to her before she slipped away from me. But there're body doubles everywhere- I've been searching for hours and all I've found are cheap impostors to her beauty."

"you misunderstand," the Keiko lookalike observed, still smirking. "my guidance is literal. i can show you Rei."

"...you what?" He perked right back up, expression torn between hope and incredulity. "But- but I never told you her name! I don't even know YOUR name! Kami-sama, what the hell is-"

"Shh." She laid a delicate finger on his lips, shaking her head. "the way is secret; it will not stay open for even me, for long."

Yuuichiro blinked in bleary confusion. Granted, the gesture was obscured beneath his shaggy mane, but it was intended well. "Buh..."

Without another word, the woman turned around and stepped down the garden path at a brisk walk. "WAIT!" he cried as she turned a corner. "Wait up, I'm coming with you!"

As he scrambled over the bench in a mad dash to catch up to her, the afternoon sun of Crystal Tokyo blazed brilliantly...

***

((Super Mario RPG - 1:36 - And My Name's Bukki))

"OMG horatru-chun itz SOOOO gud 2 c u!!" Chibiusa shrieked happily.

Hotaru's face was twisted in a mixture of bewilderment and relief. "Chibiusa-chan! I thought you were someone else..."

"hshshshs!" the future Queen giggled. "na, sit jsut mi!! neway, its ben sew lang sense wi seen 1 nuther!! whear haf u ben deez pas yars???"

"I... I'm sorry," Hotaru apologized, the relief giving way fully to bewilderment. "I'm... not sure what you're saying."

"dunt be sew stopid!" Chibiusa smacked her playfully on the arm. "ur playink hart to gat an i dant pley tht with garlz!"

This was a little too much for Hotaru. She took a step back, looking from Chibiusa to Minako. "You REALLY weren't kidding," she said grimly.

"I told you," Minako said helplessly.

"hay hay," Chibiusa interrupted, stepping between them. "u tuld horatru-chan whut now?"

Minako's lips curled in thought. "Well... Chibiusa-chan, this isn't the Hotaru you know. This is Hotaru from- what year did you come from, again?"

"It's not important," Hotaru replied curtly, her own mind churning with possibilities.

"From the past," Minako finished, nodding affirmingly.

"ho sit!" Chibiusa said, her eyes opening in amazement. "iz ther a nu enimi u need ur halp wit?!!?!"

"No, Chibiusa-chan... merely fortuituous chance." Hotaru's gaze softened a bit as she regarded her friend. "How low you have fallen," she said remorsefully.

"hshshshshs... u dunt evn no da haf fo ti," the girl chortled ominously.

Hotaru blanched. "Nor do I want to. Ever." Her grimace faded away, replaced by an impassive mask. "But this cannot be allowed to stand," she said resolutely. "Usagi has become corrupted by her own power. She MUST be made aware of this."

"Hotaru?" Minako shrank back, almost fearful. "Don't, Hotaru." she said bleakly. "We're working over mimes to try to keep her here in the palace- it's a delicacy balancing act!"

"'Overtime' and 'delicate,'" Hotaru replied evenly. "I understand your concern, Minako, but I cannot allow this farce to continue. Do you deny that she would have done the same for any of us?"

"Well, no," Minako said quietly. "But..."

"But NOTHING." Hotaru turned on her heels fiercely and stalked down the hallway.

Minako watched in shock as the other Senshi departed. "That's..." she murmured. "Hotaru, WAIT!"

Chibiusa, about as concerned as she could possibly be with this, watched them both go. "wat da fack is har rpoblem neway?" she wondered, following them as they turned a corner.

***

((Super Mario RPG - 1:9 - The Road is Full of Dangers))

"I had THOUGHT," Jedite said testily, "that you said we were going to go look for Tomoe the Younger and the obsessive boy that was always trying to put the moves on my incredibly hot girlfriend."

"We're gonna," Haruka said emphatically.

He glanced around skeptically. "This does not look very much like looking for anyone. In fact, this seems remarkably UN-like looking for anyone."

"We'll get around to it."

Jedite slapped the beer can out of Haruka's hand. "This is NOT the time for drinking, Ten'ou!" he snarled.

"My beer!" Haruka yelped, scrambling for the can.

"This is the time," the Shittenou groweled, "for getting the hell out of this Hell-forsaken cesspool of fluffy good feelings. NOW."

Can in hand again, Haruka took another taste and winced. "You made my future beer flat, Jed," she said balefully.

"Good." Jedite's eyes narrowed. "How does that make you feel?"

"Like getting another beer," she decided, getting another pair of hundred-yen pieces from her pocket.

Jedite slapped the coins out of her hand as well. "We do not have the TIME for you to indulge your petty desires!" he said irately.

She rolled her eyes and gathered her money from the street. "Last time I looked," Haruka observed dryly, "*I'M* the one with the time machine. Don't make me have to buy a third beer, asshat."

Jedite's eyes narrowed speculatively. Abruptly, he nodded to Haruka and brought his newly-acquired cape around him, vanishing in a burst of CGI effects. Haruka's level gaze shifted to the Ferrari, where Jedite was sitting at the wheel and pushing buttons. Unconcernedly, she put the money in a vending machine and purchased another Yebisu of the Future.

She watched him struggle with the machine as she opened the can and began drinking, grinning to herself. "I'll have to tell Tomoe-hakasei to invent vaccuum freezing," the Senshi reminded herself. Truly this had been a good place to stop.

About three quarters of the way through the can, Jedite finally gave up and teleported back to Haruka's side. "You knew I would attempt to steal your vehicle, didn't you?" he growled.

"Lucky guess," she answered, twirling the keys to her car around one finger.

Jedite sneered angrily, then reached out to snatch the keys in a lightning-fast motion. Haruka was quicker, though, and snapped them out of easy reach. Jedite raised an eyebrow, and snatched out at the keys again- only to be defeated by equivallently superior reflexes.

"We can play this all day," Haruka said cheerily, jerking the keyring away again as he snatched at it. "Besides, you don't know how to drive."

"A minor setback at worst," he said darkly. "I could end this little charade in a heartbeat if I wanted to, you know."

"You could," she agreed. "But then I'd have to power up myself, and the last thing I want is the attention of those me-cosplayers you had following you around."

"Keh. Finish your beer, Ten'ou."

"Don't rush me!" Haruka said scoldingly, proceeding to empty the can with a long gulp and a satisfied sigh. She pitched the can into a distant trash bin, pumped a fist in celebration of her good aim, and turned about to Jedite with a cutting remark that died on her lips.

"Oh, please," Jedite snorted as she stared blankly. "Don't hold back your tide of wit on MY account."

"Uh, Jed?" She pointed behind him and motioned with her head. "You're being followed."

"I don't know what sort of sucker punch you're planning, Ten'ou, but you might want to re-think your deceptions."

"No, seriously. Turn around."

"If this is a trick of some sort," he said warily, "I can assure you that I will repay you in more pain than you can conceive of."

Haruka's focus continued to go past Jedite. Conceeding to the inevitable, Jedite turned around and was almost surprised by what he saw; however, like the manly man he was, he merely motioned Haruka to step aside (she did), and regarded the large crowd of brain-dead cosplayers condescendingly. "Didn't I tell you all to go home?"

((Super Mario RPG - 1:18 - Here's Some Weapons!))

"You're the real thing," a girl said, stepping out of the crowd. She was dressed in the fuku of the Sailor Senshi, if one of the many variants- blue skirt, white knee-high boots, blue shirt and a white mask. "You're not a Senshi," she said quietly. "But you thought we could help you."

"That was before I learned the terrible truth about you all," Jedite sneered.

"You wanted to lead us," the girl insisted.

"You wanted to lead us," the crowd echoed as one.

"You thought we were useless," the girl said simply.

"We will prove otherwise," the mass announced.

"Dude, you are on your own," Haruka said, taking several steps back.

Jedite raised an eyebrow at Haruka. "Oh ye of little faith," he sighed, turning to the cosplayer horde. "If you insist on making yourself useful to me," he observed coldly, "then I will use you however I damn well please." He made a twisting motion at the air; the girl in front suddenly fell to her knees as a white mist burst from her body, instantly recognizable by those familiar with it as life energy. "People should learn to be more specific," the Shittenou said with a cruel smile, and then pulled the energy into him.

In the next moment, he was down on his knees, hacking and coughing the color out of his face. "Jed!!" Haruka shouted, running back to him but being sure to stay a few feet out of reach in case he decided he wanted to drain her.

For his own part, Jedite spent a few seconds looking as though he was trying to vomit his lungs out of his body. "Their energy," he sputtered, clutching at his gut. "It's- it's like trying to digest sand... how is that possible?!"

Haruka touched Jedite gingerly on the shoulder. "Dude, are you gonna be okay?"

"I MUST know their secret," he rasped, bringing himself to one knee by sheer force of will and turning a hateful glare on the cosplayer horde. "I must know the secret of how one can turn the sweet, sweet water of life into undigestible s[BLEEP]t."

"It's not hard," the lead cosplayer droned dully, suddenly plucked back to her feet by invisible puppet strings. "Do badly in school. Refuse to take responsibility for yourself. Pretend hard enough and try to be someone else."

"We all did it," the rest of the collective added atonally. "We have been cleansed of our own wishes."

"I... see." Finally mastering his body, Jedite flexed his spirit and let the white ki hiss out of his body. "You have done well to find a way to defeat the most basic of my powers," he observed. "But there is much you have yet to prove before I will accept you as my minions. Do you have more... destructive powers?"

A choked laugh rippled through the cosplayers. "Observe," they said in unison, and in the back of the crowd people began piling on top of one another in a bizarre lock. Both Haruka and Jedite watched with incredulity as two distinct pillars rose upwards, pillars that joined together at fifty feet and branched outwards and upwards from there.

"They aren't," Haruka marvelled.

"I think they are," Jedite responded, nodding approvingly.

They watched for a moment longer as more and more people began filling out the 'torso' of the beast. "I think I'm going to need another beer," Haruka said, and fished another few coins out of her pocket on her way back to the vending machine.

Individual bodies were lost in the mass. It was almost impossible to tell when one gaudy spandex fuku ended and another poorly-stitched uniform began. As the last cosplayer joined the mass, the man-shaped lump of bodies sprouted a poorly-formed head and sagged forward, an eerie parallel to the lean profile of an Evangelion.

Empty sockets swivelled onto Jedite. "LEAD US," the malformed lips boomed.

"Impressive," Jedite conceeded. "Very well, I shall direct your wrath- it should be nothing if not entertaining."

"LEAD US," the giant boomed again, abruptly lashing out with an outstretched hand at the Dark General.

Caught completely by surprise, Jedite found himself almost entirely encompassed by a meaty hand made of people meat. He would have been much less concerned about this if the pressure and darkness hadn't been accompanied by an invasive metaphysical attempt to set roots in his being. "RAH!" he screamed, exploding out of the hand and setting himself hovering fifty feet distant in the air. "What is the meaning of this?!" he thundered, radiating black ki.

((Super Mario RPG - 1:19 - Fight Against an Armed Boss))

"LEAD US," the giant moaned, taking a ponderous step forward. "JOIN US LEAD US."

Jedite dodged nimbly out of the way as it struck at him again, burying its fist into a building. "Not a chance in all the hells of the Dark Kingdom!" he spat. "I would NEVER demean myself to become part of your pathetic horde!"

"JOIN US," it bellowed, reducing another skyscraper to rubble with a swipe. "JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US!"

"Now I KNOW you want to die." He ducked another fist and gathered energy in one hand. "I never should have let you live for your weakness," Jedite sneered.

"Stop right there!"

True to form, both Jedite and the Evangelion look-alike turned to the sound of the voice. "Player-haters might allow this, but I won't!" Sailor Uranus proclaimed, striking a pose from her perch on top of an adjacent building. "Dressing up in costumes is one thing when you're having fun with your love, but this is just f[BLEEP]ing ridiculous!"

"THE REAL THING," the giant whispered in a volume that could still shatter mortal eardrums.

"I mean, seriously!" Uranus said irritably. "What the hell lets you little s[BLEEP]ts combine together into COSPLAYOR, hideous ungainly parody of every bad costumer? This premise is weaker than any Godzilla movie ever! Seriously, what the hell?!"

The giant's head bobbed eagerly. "COSPLAYOR SMASH REAL DEAL!" it screamed, hurling a fist at Sailor Uranus.

"OH CRAP!" Uranus yelped, leaping to another building. COSPLAYOR did not hesitate to follow her, plowing through the rest of the building towards the fleeing Senshi as she met up with Jedite some hundreds of feet away.

"If we die here, Ten'ou," Jedite said matter-of-factly, "I'm blaming you."

"ME?" Uranus's jaw dropped incredulously. "Hey, YOU told the cosplayer horde to turn into a giant monster!"

"And YOU had to have your precious Future Beer," he retorted. "Why the hell did the machine take your thousand-year-old coins, anyway?"

"Well, that's... uh... huh." She scratched her chin thoughtfully. "Beats the hell out of me. But don't we have a giant monster to fight?"

"True." Jedite cracked his knuckles and smiled viciously. "Perhaps a bit of bloodsport will improve my mood..."

***

((Seiken Densetsu 2 - 1:38 - A Conclusion))

The doors to the personal quarters of Neo-Queen Serenity were just as gaudy as Hotaru had expected. It had been a bit of trouble to find the place. The false palace occupied most, if not all, of the parapets of Crystal Tokyo. Instead of being at the top of the tallest tower, Serenity II had chosen to nest deep within the palace's foundation. She could no longer hear Minako following her- if Venus was still in pursuit, she had given up on trying to call her out. Perhaps, in her way, Minako was giving her tacit permission to the confrontation.

There were four padlocks barring the double-doors shut, not to mention several keypads and more few card readers. Hotaru gave an appraising look to all the security systems, considering her next move. She had no idea how to pick a lock, and what little she'd grasped of the technology here suggested that trying to jam the electric devices would be a futile endeavor. Quite frankly, she had no choice but find a way to force through them.

A thin smile found its way onto Hotaru's face before disappearing into her henshin sequence. In the space between heartbeats, the Silent Glaive flicked outwards- a silver flash of light, nothing more- and a large, circular section of crystal collapsed into Serenity's room.

Purposefully, Saturn strode into the darkness, Glaive in hand. "You and I have much to discuss, Neo-Queen Serenity!" she demanded of the shadows.

"Hmm," a woman's voice noted, vaguely amused. "We have a visitor."

"Show yourself," Saturn said menacingly, levelling her weapon at the source of the voice. "Before I am forced to see you are cast from the darkness and into the judgement of a harsh, unyielding god."

Another voice- deeper, male, and weary- groaned for a long moment. "She does not know, my love," the lighter voice- now identifiable as a mature Tsukino Usagi- said playfully. "We wonder if she is just as unconcerned with privacy in her own home as she is in others'."

Despite the gravity of her mission, Saturn found herself flushing uncontrollably. "I'm sorry," she said timorously, "did I interrupt something?"

"No, not really." A tiny silver light illuminated Serenity's face, held in the palm of her hand, and even in the dim light Saturn found her breath stuck in her throat. She was beautiful- no, not beautiful. Magnificent. Regal. Imperious. "[Sleep]," she murmured to the barely-visible figure on the bed, and his breathing immediately lapsed into a more regular pattern. "You will excuse us if we take the time to dress," Serenity said pleasantly, turning her attention to the intruder. "The naked body of a goddess is somewhat overwhelming, even for mortals such as yourself."

Saturn blinked, unable to turn her eyes away from magnificence. "Hai," she mumbled, biting down on the inside of her cheeks and focusing on the pain. Only then could she find the will to turn her head.

The light flickered out, but Serenity's face was still etched on the back of Hotaru's retinas. "We do, in fact, have much to talk about," the Queen of Crystal Tokyo laughed. The sound of silk slipping over skin was almost distracting. "You have chosen an interesting time to come to our realm, Sailor Saturn. Things are about to change, and change very greatly at that."

"What do you mean?" Saturn asked, suddenly very suspicious.

"You will see, Hotaru," she responded in a lilting tone. "We promise you this- all will be explained. Understand- we have long pondered the arrival of the Outers to my realm, and what to say to you when you came here, and we long ago decided that mere words would be... insufficient... to describe our plans for the world."

"You decided correctly." Her mission remembered, the Senshi's strength returned to her in a burst. "I think you will find that the Earth does not bow to you as you thought it did," Saturn said chilly.

"Ah. You refer to the treaty that the others signed in our name, yes?" Serenity's laughter was like church bells, distant but full and powerful. "The inners... have done what they thought was right," she said absently. "We cannot fault them for doing what they have in our absence."

The Queen was showing more stability than Hotaru had given her credit for. "So you're content to let things stay as they are, then?" she said darkly. "Crystal Tokyo is a sham. Your city has become a shallow mockery of a long-dead Utopia. And your daughter-" the Senshi shivered momentarily- "I won't even BEGIN to talk about your daughter."

((Final Fantasy 6 - 2:13 - The Empire Gestahl))

Almost instantaneously, the ambient temperature in the room turned twenty degrees colder. "In that case," Serenity snapped, "let's not talk about our daughter. Let's leave our daughter far away, chained to a stake where she can't ruin the things we love. Or even better, let's leave our daughter in geosynchronus orbit around the sun."

Well, at least one thing she'd been told was right, Saturn reflected dryly. "Crystal Tokyo, then."

"Lux," Serenity responded, and her form was illuminated in pale, silvery light. She was still a beautiful, aweful sight- even clothed. The power of the Maboroshi no Ginzuishou reflected in its spiritual container, perhaps? "We understand that from the outside, this must look like a terrible thing," Serenity said softly, smiling sadly. "That this, the greatest city of human history, has been reduced to a tourist attraction is more than even we can bear."

"You know..." Saturn's eyes widened, then narrowed. "How long have you known?"

"We have always known," the Queen confessed, shaking her head. "When we are at peace, we think clearly. When there is nothing to distract us from the glory of our being, we can prepare to act. This is why we have retreated from the public eye- why we have made Sailor Venus do our job. We must concentrate on bringing the world to its knees, and then turn their eyes to the glory of Crystal Tokyo."

"And how," the younger woman inquired acidly, "do you plan about doing that without causing a nuclear firestorm?"

"You refer to the missiles that every nation on the planet has turned towards us." Serenity sighed the sigh of the weary. "When those weapons were aimed at us," she explained, "we were weak. Battered. Nearly broken. If we had not changed the past in the way that we did, there would be no Crystal Tokyo- and the rest of the Earth would be just as we were. When we were still recovering our strength, those weapons would have done us great harm.

"But as you can see, our glory has only grown with time. At our current strength..." She paused, looking upward thoughtfully. "It would take more missiles than there are silos on Earth to stop us," Serenity calculated. "They will fire their weapons, and we shall pluck them from the air. They will send their armies, and we shall turn the hearts of their soldiers to our own side."

"You... can't be serious." Saturn was aghast, unable to contain her incredulity. "You're planning on taking on the entire world," she said haltingly. "What makes you think you're going to have any more success than last time?"

"Last time," Serenity said mournfully, "We made the mistake of believing that people would be satisfied with Utopia. There were greedy, petty people who refused to believe that we are the best thing that ever happened to the world. We will not make the mistake of letting them seize power again."

"So you're going to kill anyone who doesn't believe as you do, then."

"Kill?" She smiled again. "We are startled you would think that of us, Saturn- but not truly surprised. Your realm IS death, destruction, and the ends of all things, after all. No, we do not plan on killing anyone- a true Utopia does not need to kill anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Our plan is much simpler- we shall simply remove those terrible, awful parts of the psyche from the people we bring back to the fold. They cannot scheme rebellion if they can feel nothing but love for the throne, can they?"

"Then... you're going to purify the entire world's population." Saturn's free hand clenched into a fist. "Did the Nemesians teach you nothing?" she growled. "People will figure out what you're doing."

"But they will figure it out too late. They always do." Serenity closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "We will bring peace to the earth, and bring love to all mankind. It is our duty. It is our PURPOSE, as the God-Queen of Crystal Tokyo. In Nomine Lunar," she said reverently.

The Soldier of Ruin seldom had reason to fear anyone, or anything. In recent memory, she had only ever feared for the world when the greatest threats to mankind brought their full weight to bear against the Sailor Senshi- but in the end, she had always been secure that she could protect the universe from a festering evil by bringing the Glaive down and completing her doomsday attack.

But for the first time in her memory, this was a foe she was not sure she could bring herself to turn against. "This is madness," Saturn said pleadingly. "What if you can't stop all the missiles? What if they just do what the Nemesisians did and use other weapons? If you mess up even the slightest bit-"

"We will NOT fail," Serenity said fiercely, shooting a glare to Saturn. "Not without our servants acting as we demand of them. The power of the Maboroshi no Ginzuishou, when backed by the power of the Sailor Senshi, is the one unstoppable force in the universe. We WILL succeed."

"You don't know that for sure. You can't know that for sure!"

Saturn's words hung in the air, echoing accusatorily against the crystal walls. "So you disagree with us, then." Serenity closed her eyes again and took a deep, steadying breath. "We do not fault your disbelief," she said after a moment, returning to her previous melodic tone. "We have not told our loyal servants of our designs, either. They would be just as incredulous as you. It has been regretful that we have had to keep them in the dark this long, but they would simply not understand the depth and complexity of their plan."

A thin frown crossed Saturn's lips. "I've heard this speech before," she said dourly. "You wouldn't be the first to try to take over the world like this, you know..."

Serenity laughed again, a tinkling of wind chimes. "But we will be the first to succeed."

"What makes you think the others will help you?" she snapped, growing increasingly annoyed by the Queen's invincible self-confident insanity.

"Because they always do," Serenity answered, shaking her head. "They have always stepped in to fill my weaknesses. Back in the day, they helped me fight- in the past hundred years, they've stepped up to fulfill all the duties I needed fulfilled. Minako has even assumed my public affairs. I have let them do these things because I needed my focus- and having to concentrate on matters of state administration or the horrible horrible HORRIBLE THINGS MY DAUGHTER WANTS-"

The Queen coughed lightly, composing herself. "It has been necessary," she smiled. "I will bend the knees of the world to my name, and they will help me do it. They have no other choice- they will obey the God-Queen of Crystal Tokyo. It is their place in the universe, just as mine is at the throne of the world... just as yours can be too, Hotaru."

"Oh no." Saturn took several steps backward. "I want no part of this. I shouldn't even be listening to you!"

"You seem to be trying to convince yourself more than ourself." Serenity nodded gently, condescending. "Surely you did not come alone, Saturn. You and yours have always stuck together in pursuit of your duty. If you did not come here to join us, then why have you abandoned your posts?"

"I... well..."

Serenity nodded to herself. "We have not demanded the Outer Senshi rejoin our court because we respect your wish for privacy," she said matter-of-factly. "But we will not tolerate your nay-saying of our policies- policies you have seen fit to not critizice until the zeroth hour. Until the very eve of our ascension to the throne. Are you here to join us, Sailor Saturn?"

"Um..." Saturn faltered for words, eyes flitting about until she found the Queen's own gaze. There was a terrible clarity in Serenity's eyes- the sort of manaiacal purpose that she had seen in her father's eyes, and Nephelenia's, and Galaxia's, and even sometimes in Haruka's and Michiru's.

Serenity II was not going to stop until all obstacles to her dominion had been eliminated, and there was nothing Hotaru could do to stop her save extinguish the Earth itself.

"No," Saturn said, finding her strength again. "I cannot- I *will* not participate in this tyrranny."

"Unfortunate." A sad smile passed over Serenity's face. "I have another question for you, then... will you and the other Senshi stand in my way?"

"I don't see how we could." Saturn shook her head.

"I will hold you to that, then." Serenity motioned to the hole in the door with an elegant gesture. "Leave us, then, and watch from afar. That has always been what you outer Senshi have preferred to do, isn't-"

A great tremble passed through the walls of the palace, interrupting Serenity's monologue as the both of them nearly fell over to the ground. "Our Serenity!" Serenity spat, looking upwards and straightening. "We can't be under attack again... no. YOU."

"hssssssssssh," Chibiusa hissed, poking her head through the door Saturn had sliced in the door not ten minutes ago. "alwyz monapliznig popa..."

"HIE YE TO A NUNNERY!!" Serenity screamed, turning the Ginzuishou at her daughter. Chibiusa yelped and skittered out of sight, and the God-Queen of Crystal Tokyo took off after her.

***

((Final Fantasy 6 - 1:8 - Kefka's Theme))

SAFEHOUSE, CRYSTAL TOKYO, 5621

"...and then what happened?" a small boy prompted eagerly.

The man telling the story slumped back in his chair, exhausted. "No more," he said weakly. "No more. I've been telling this thing for two weeks straight... I can't go on."

"But it's just getting good!" another small girl protested. "We wanna hear what happens!"

"Look, kids..." Their storyteller leaned forward, haggard look coming to view in the light. "It's not you," he said placatingly. "It's me. I'm at fault. You guys are the..." He paused and glanced at the wall, where a series of tallies had been etched into the metal. "The two hundredth group of kids I've seen in a row. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I haven't slept in days... I can't keep going on like this."

He stood suddenly. "In fact," he decided, "I've had enough of this. I'm leaving, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"Awww," the children chorused sadly as the man turned to the side and strode briskly towards the edge of the platform. His spirits were looking higher than they ever had as he stepped off; a few seconds later, as an invisible wall of flame burst into existence and set him mostly on fire, his enthusiasm was much decreased.

"your sentence not served; your escape: not happening. tell the tale, heartless"

"Curse your warm, synthetic, gorgeous body," the man grumbled, listlessly brushing the ash off of his skin as he slid his way back into the chair. "Looks like you get your story after all."

"Yay!" the children echoed happily, all semblance of prior disappointment gone like the wind.

"Where was I?... right."

***

((Final Fantasy 4 - 1:42 - Within the Giant))

The mysterious girl with the electric blue eyes had led him through tunnel after tunnel, cutting through both heavily populated squares and isolated footpaths. Even Yuuichiro's monomaniacal focus was occasionally diverted by the occasional scene- sometimes he wished he'd brought a camera, the image would last longer- but with the girl moving so quickly, there wasn't time for sightseeing.

Not that there was any sight he wanted to see more than his beloved.

She wasn't movinig at an impossible pace, but she was moving at an extremely brisk one. If he hadn't been well-practiced at running (which Rei-sama and Grandpa Hino had seen to in their own very different ways), he might have been much more tired than he was. By the time she slowed down, they were somewhere inside a large building, in a large corridor, beside a great open doorway.

"what you seek is here," the girl whispered, a thin smile on her lips. "but claiming your desire... may be difficult."

"Pssh!" Yuuichiro threw his shoulders back, grinning widely. "You don't know who you're talking to," he said proudly, strolling towards the door. "I've been waiting for years to say this to her, and there is nothing but NOTHING that will... uh oh."

The Shinto adept glanced backwards to the girl, but she was gone just as suddenly as she had first appeared to him. He took a deep breath, and then looked back into the doorway. Hino Rei was indeed there, sitting silently in meditation.

She would NEVER forgive him if he interrupted her.

Though it pained him to stay silent, Yuuichiro made himself sit down and murmured a mantra beneath his breath. He had waited this long to see her again; he could wait a few hours longer.

***

((Starfox - 1:21 - Fortuna Boss))

"Why the F[BLEEP]ING hell did this thing grow four arms?!" Sailor Uranus screamed in frustration.

"JOY JOY JOY," COSPLAY-OR moaned, punching several craters into the roadway. Some time ago, it had given up on repeating the entirety of its mantra and had settled on repeating the first consonant and vowel. Jedite phased in beside the monstrosity and delivered a mighty blow that sent it tumbling down the block and into the face of a mall.

"All the better to hit you with, Ten'ou," Jedite growled, watching COSPLAY-OR pull itself from the rubble and stand upright again. "A pity I hadn't maintained control of this thing," he added. "It would have made a magnificent weapon, no?"

"JOOOY," COSPLAY-OR howled, and bounded down the street towards them.

"You'd have thought someone'd have come out to solve this by now," Uranus snorted, brushing some stray bits of masonry from her fuku. "Who the hell lets their house get trashed like this and just sits there on their ass watching TV?"

"Besides you?" Jedite said helpfully.

"You know I hate you, right Jed?"

"The feeling is mutual." He eyed the monster as it loped towards them, using two of its extra hands so that it was moving on all fours. "Up for Epsilon pattern again?" he suggested.

"Dude, f[BLEEP]k the patterns. The patterns aren't working because-" she paused as COSPLAY-OR brought two of its hands together in a massive clap. Both Uranus and Jedite were faster, though; Jedite zipped up and delivered a massive bolt of black electricity to its the backhead, while Uranus channelled a World Shaking into its midsection from behind.

The combined blow buried COSPLAY-OR more than thirty feet deep in the street; both warriors took this time to regroup another few hundred feet away. "The patterns aren't working because we can't hurt it," Uranus finished, shooting a glare at the crater COSPLAY-OR was already digging itself out of. "Just like the Spore-bot at the Budokai- we aren't strong enough to tackle this thing individually."

Jedite blanched. "You're not suggesting..."

"I don't see YOU coming up with any better ideas," she snapped.

"Geh." A shudder passed through him. "This is an option I had hoped would not become necessary," Jedite grumbled.

"JOOOYYY!!" COSPLAY-OR roared, finally free of its momentary prison.

"But when you may be right, Ten'ou..." He turned to face her. "Do you remember the gestures that the fat blue man made us perform?"

Uranus nodded confidently. "Let's do this."

Both of them turned to face the giant accumulation of invincible meat. It had locked onto them again, and was barrelling down the street towards them.

((Chrono Trigger - 1:2 - Chrono Trigger))

"Fuuu..." Uranus chanted.

"Fuuu..." Jedite chanted.

"JOOOY!" it screamed, levelling several fast-food restraunts with a wide motion of its arms.

"Sion..." they continued.

With a mighty leap, COSPLAY-OR propelled itself two hundred feet in the air, hurtling towards its two targets.

"HA!"

The resultant shock of ki energy was enough to send COSPLAY-OR flying through the air again, crashing through a five-floor shopping mall as it came to a rest. Brilliant light shone forth from the place where Jedite and Haruka had been moments ago, outclassed only by the massive pillar of dust slowly settling to street level.

By the time COSPLAY-OR had finally stopped moving and was in the process of getting back up, a figure had strolled from the debris plume and stood defiantly against the midday light. A moment later, the figure took a look at itself and realized something was horribly, horribly wrong.

((Seiken Densetsu - 1:33 - To Reach Tomorrow))

"Oh gawd, I'm huge!" Fat Jeruka wailed in hir two resonant voices.

Within the dual psyche, Jedite's consciousness swirled around and levelled the spiritual equivalent of a glare at Haruka. "I know this is your fault somehow, Ten'ou."

"ME?!" Haruka sputtered, taking a look at their shared body. In place of the lean, slim muscle that zhe had sported during the Budokai, they were inhabiting a much more spherical figure. "Why the hell does it have to be MY fault?!" she demanded irately.

"Because, somehow, it always boils back down to your incompetence." Slowly, Jeruka began jogging her preponderous frame towards COSPLAY-OR. "If this body is flawed because you screwed up and we die because of it," Jedite observed darkly, "then I will be certain I choose you to haunt."

"WATCH OUT FOR THE FISTS!" Haruka screamed...

***

((Terranigma - 05 - Unforseen Occurance))

Alone again and suddenly feeling drained, Saturn let herself relax, her power melting away until she was Hotaru once again. Maybe she didn't have the right to stop what was happening, she thought ruefully. Still, the removal of one's free will was a terrible thing to do. She was out of her time, out of her place... if the more-experienced future her thought this was for the best, maybe she was right. Maybe humanity did deserve what it was going to get.

Even if she tried to stop it, victory was unlikely. Hotaru had seen the power of the Silver Crystal too many times to discount it- it was unlikely she could fight Serenity and win. Not without destroying the Earth and all life on it, and not with the other Inner Senshi so close, ready to back her up at a moment's notice... and they wouldn't believe that Serenity was this diabolical. Not without hearing her speak these thoughts themselves.

There was truly nothing she could do.

Defeated, Hotaru turned around and climbed through the door, turned down the corridor, and was completely surprised to see Minako- who had dropped the disguise, and was now in quasi-normal clothes- standing right in the hallway. "I'm sorry I ran off, Minako-san," Hotaru said quietly, eyes to the floor. "I'm beginning to think... well, I think you were right, back there."

"No, Hotaru-chan," Minako interrupted her, shaking her head fervently. Hotaru blinked in surprise, noticing the slight waver in her voice... and tear tracks on her face? "No," she repeated. "You were right."

"Minako-san?" Hotaru asked hesitantly.

"I saw you go in," Minako said, swallowing and biting on her lower lip to keep it from trembling. "I didn't find you in time to stop you, so I thought I'd just- I'd just listen to you and let you see for yourself. But I didn't know she was... I thought- I just..."

She trailed off, voice cracking as a tear ran down her face- and Hotaru, not knowing anything else to do, opened her arms for a hug. Minako embraced her fiercely, squeezing the breath out of the smaller girl for a moment and bawling her eyes out.

Completely unused to comforting anyone over anything, Hotaru just patted Minako's back mutely, waiting for her to regain her composure...

***

((Seiken Densetsu 2 - 1:37 - Oracle))

"So, neither of us remembers exactly how to do the Fusion Dance," Jedite observed.

"I guess," Uranus agreed.

Perched on top of Tokyo Tower, Sailor Uranus and Jedite had put several miles between themselves and COSPLAY-OR. For COSPLAY-OR's part, the distance was barely a consideration- when buildings came between it and their vantage point, they could easily discern its location by the cloud of debris.

"And without the Fusion Dance," he continued, "we're pretty sure we don't have any way of getting enough power to hurt it."

"Looks like it," Uranus assented.

"So, in the end, we're probably f[BLEEP]ed until the Queen B[BLEEP]h herself comes out of her castle," Jedite concluded.

"Probably."

He took a deep breath and scowled. "Let's approach this from a different angle."

She leaned back against the crysteel supports of the tower. "I'm open to suggestions."

"We are, in fact, still in Japan. Yes?"

Uranus scrunched her face in thought. "Yeah?"

"Surely the Japanese would have some way of defending themselves from this sort of threat."

Slowly, the Senshi's head turned towards Jedite. "What," she said blankly.

"There were several centuries that the Senshi did not exist," Jedite said lecturingly. "The Dark Kingdom had several protocols in the event that giant youma broke free of our control and went on a rampage. Surely your mundane governments have similar regulations."

"...riiight." Uranus looked back to COSPLAY-OR. "Japan's army couldn't defend themselves against a mob of angry toddlers," she said resignedly, "and that was back in the twentieth century when things were already going to pot. Japan never defended itself against giant monsters- we always ended up getting saved... by..."

Jedite raised an eyebrow, noting the gleam in Uranus's eye. "Saved by what?"

"I know this is a long shot," Uranus said, standing up, "but can you do stuff like detect radiation?"

"If I look for it, yes. Where are you going with this?"

"We need some uranium- or plutonium. Either one, it doesn't matter." The Senshi cracked her knuckles, grinning manaically. "We're going to get our own giant monster..."

***

((Final Fantasy 6 - 2:2 - Coin Song))

"I just... I just thought we were doing the right thing."

"You couldn't know," Hotaru said quietly. "It took ME by surprise."

Both girls were sitting on the floor of the corridor, leaning against the wall. "I never thought she had it in her," Minako sniffed. "She's always... she'd always sort of been petty, y'know? So we just thought she was better off not doing the work. But to go inside our packs like that..."

"Behind our back."

"Yeah." Minako leaned her head on Hotaru's shoulder. "The other girls aren't going to believe me if I tell them," she said numbly. "And even if they did... what can we do? We can't just let her get away with this."

"You're telling me." Hotaru looked to the ceiling, despondent. "I should just find a way to repair the time machine. I shouldn't have gotten involved. I should've just waited and gone back home when the maternity test was done..."

"I wish I was in your position." She sighed and blew her nose on Hotaru's scarf. Ignoring the disgusted look on Hotaru's face, Minako simply arranged it so that the snotty part was on the other side. "I wish I could just go home and forget about all this... go back with you guys..."

They sat there in silence for a moment, Hotaru gingerly removing her phlegm-laden scarf while Minako just stared into space. It surprised Hotaru, then, when Minako suddenly sat up straight. "I've made up my mind," she said resolutely. "I'm going with you guys."

((Seiken Densetsu 3 - 2:12 - Meridian Child))

"Going with us?" Hotaru repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Where?"

"I'm going with you guys back to the future."

"...past."

"Either way." Minako stood up and took one last sniff. "I just figured it out," she said, a thin smile on her face. "I heard Serenity say that she needs to be able to concentrate to be calm, right?"

Hotaru nodded. "Go on..."

Her head bobbed up and down emphatically. "And she's been able to do that because she's been flaying us like mannequins."

"Playing us like puppets," she corrected involuntarily.

"But since we know what's going on now," Minako continued, ignoring Hotaru for a moment, "we can make her do the work. We can make HER handle Chibiusa!"

"And when she's distracted..." Hotaru found herself smiling despite herself. "She can't use the Silver Crystal to bend the world to her knee. Very, very clever."

"Mama always said I was the sharpest tool in the box," she said proudly.

Hotaru didn't have the heart to correct her. "I guess that means we just have to fix the time machine and get... oh no." She slapped her forehead. "We lost Yuuichiro," she moaned. "I don't know where he is! We'll never find him this far away..."

"Don't worry about him," Minako grinned. "He's not as far away as you'd think."

"So we can go get him?" Some of the immediate concern bled away from her. "Good," Hotaru nodded, standing up herself. "We should get out of here as soon as possible- at least while Serenity is distracted."

"Hai!" Minako agreed, and the two of them made their way upstairs.

***

((Seiken Densetsu 3 - 3:16 - Reincarnation))

"joooooyyy..."

Jedite glanced downwards, noting the slow but steady path of COSPLAY-OR towards Ten'ou. She was perched on top of one of the few remaining skyscrapers in Crystal Tokyo, summoning her power as per her scheme. He was several thousand feet in the air, holding a small lump of uranium that he had acquired from a nuclear power plant somewhere in China.

At least, he was pretty sure it was China. It certainly LOOKED like the Great Wall, but he hadn't been paying much attention until after he plowed through it.

All errant thoughts about human architecture aside, Jedite briefly calculated the trajectory he needed, and tossed the piece of uranium into the air. He teleported after and above it, positioning himself correctly, and called a massive swelling of energy into his hands.

Beneath him, an orange light shimmered and shot out and upwards from the city.

The uranium reached the apex of its arc, and began descending back to earth.

Jedite watched... waited... and then let the bolt of ki fly, teleporting away- FAR away- a split-second later.

When dark energy met with the World Shaking, they caught the chunk of uranium between them. With nowhere to go, the uranium was crushed in upon itself, and fission occurred shortly thereafter.

The resultant nuclear explosion would be felt even in the Crystal Palace.

Once the light had died down and Uranus felt it was safe to open her eyes again, she found Jedite standing next to her and watching COSPLAY-OR trundle towards them. "So," he inquired, "what happens now?"

"Now?" Uranus plopped down on the edge of the building, leaning back and grinning. "Now, we make ourselves scarce before the cops show up."

A piercing roar from the coastline inclined both of them to look in that direction. The cry was singular in its own, produced exclusively by one being in the known universe- a being that, coincidentally, happened to live beneath the seas next to Tokyo.

"You know what?" Uranus observed, watching as Gojira himself surfaced from Tokyo Bay and swivelled its gaze on COSPLAY-OR. "I'm not sure I've ever actually seen him in the scale before."

"JOOOOY!" COSPLAY-OR bellowed, turning on one heel and charging towards the master of all kaiju.

***

((Chrono Trigger - 3:6 - Schala's Theme))

He wasn't quite sure when his legs had gone numb. Yuuichiro banished the extremely irritating sensation from his mind, focusing instead on the one reason he had come to this place. Rei had not moved from her place, so deep in contemplation even his little noises did not disturb her. What was she pondering? he wondered. What thoughts went through the head of the Soldier of Mars? Was she reading the future, or was she calming her spirit for a great endeavor?

The passage of others in the corridor had become white noise to his senses. Even the great tremor didn't stir him much. If it was dangerous, Rei would have awoken from her meditations and seen him and he would have been able to tell her that she was the world to him. It was all the same.

Being shaken from his own minitrance, though, was difficult to notice. The pale face of Hotaru leaned into his field of vision. "Yuuichiro? Yuuichiro, we have to go now."

"I'm not leaving," he said serenely.

Hotaru's brow wrinkled. "No, you don't understand," she said urgently. "We have to go NOW."

"Leave me then." Yuuichiro closed his eyes and shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere without Rei-sama," he replied. "I've denied myself my true feelings. I can't, I WON'T let fate keep us apart any longer."

This brought a pause to Hotaru's thoughts for a long moment. "So be it," she said matter-of-factly, and transformed. Taking a quick step behind the still-sitting Yuuichiro, she delivered a sharp rap with the Silent Glaive to the back of his head. The youth compliantly slumped forward.

Minako's jaw dropped. "Ano..."

"He doesn't know what he's getting himself into," Saturn said coolly, stowing the Glaive away. "We don't have the time for this." With an heave, she threw Yuuichiro over her back- a feat she wouldn't have been capable of as Hotaru- and started back down the hallway.

Minako stared at them for a moment before shutting her mouth and following after them. She didn't have the heart to say anything else...

***

((Final Fantasy 5 - 2:2 - Four Warriors of Dawn))

Blast after blast of brilliant silver magic lanced through the air, crossing paths with intense radioactive breath weapons from Gojira. In between them all, COSPLAY-OR's limp form was knocked back and forth, sometimes through buildings and sometimes through other things.

It had taken Neo-Queen Serenity a while to get herself out here, but Gojira had done a marvellous job of keeping COSPLAY-OR distracted. Haruka had insisted on watching the battle from a safe distance, leaving Jedite to his own devices. She probably figured he was going to do something horrible to the people of Crystal Tokyo- sap their energy or something similar. He had looked almost tired after they set off the miniature atomic bomb- and since it was really hard to kill someone by draining their energy, Haruka wasn't inclined to argue.

The idea that he could simply brutally murder the weakened civilians did cross Haruka's mind, but only for a moment. Gojira was orders of magnitude more important than some random pedestrian, so that was what she watched.

She'd made her way back to the time-travelling Ferrari and was chugging down her fifth Future Beer by the time a few familiar faces turned a corner. Haruka waved with her free hand and tossed the can into the proper recepticle when she was done with it. "I have no idea how you guys managed to find us," she noted, nodding, "and I'm not sure I care, but I am SO glad I don't have to look for you."

"Save the appreciation for later," Saturn responded crossly, throwing the still-unconscious Yuuichiro over the back of the car. "We're getting out of here."

Haruka nodded affirmingly. "That is exactly what I wanted to hear. Hey there, Neko."

"Hi, Haruka-san!" Minako waved.

Haruka tossed the can to the trash recepticle, where it span around on the edge before plunking hollowly to the bottom of the can. "How's the future treating you?"

"Not so good." Minako wrinkled her nose distastefully. "Can I go with you guys?"

"Sure," Haruka shrugged. "S'gonna be a tight fit, though."

She grinned. "I'll find a way to peel and whip it."

"Deal with it," Hotaru corrected.

"And so will I!" a male voice called, its owner jumping on top of the car.

"Artemis!" Minako blurted. "What are you-"

"I know what you were doing," he said accusingly, pointing a paw at Minako. "You were going to leave me behind, weren't you?"

She turned bright red and scratched the back of her head. "Well... actually..."

"You... you didn't!" Artemis's eyes widened in shock. "You forgot about me, didn't you?!"

"Not on purpose!" Minako said quickly, waving her arms about. "I SO didn't forget you on purpose!"

"But you still forgot about me," he said pointedly.

"Wah! I didn't mean it!" She wailed. In a flash, Minako scooped the cat up in her arms, ignoring his surprised yelp, and hugged him fiercely. "I just forgot and I couldn't remember and I wouldn't leave you behind and we're going together I promise!"

"gack!" Artemis observed, flailing wildly.

"Some things never change," Haruka observed coolly. "So we done here?"

"We're done here," Hotaru agreed. "Help me get him in here, would you?"

"Just a sec." The elder Senshi turned around and yelled, "JED!!"

Jedite manifested next to them a moment later. "I wasn't done," he said crossly.

"Too bad," Haruka replied. "We're going."

"JEDITE!" Minako shouted, taking a defensive stance and preparing to transform. "How did you come back from the dead?!" she snapped. "The others said-"

"Calm down, Minako-san!" Hotaru said, putting a restraining hand on her shoulder. "It's okay- he's on our side." She threw him a wary glance. "At least, he's nominally on our side."

Jedite's eyes travelled over the others. "I see they found you," he observed, nodding to Haruka.

"Gah." She rolled her eyes. "Is it too much to presume that I did something ELSE right?" Haruka grumbled.

"Well, we DID find YOU," Hotaru pointed out, smiling thinly. Minako, seeing that nobody was immediately interested in fighting, let herself relax and nodded emphatically.

"That's NOT the point." Haruka grumbled. Resigning herself to Fate, she pushed off the car and opened the driver's side door. "How did you guys find us, anyway?"

Hotaru pointed towards the gutted corpse of a high-rise office building. "This is where the trail of destruction begins," she explained. "It wasn't hard to guess you would lead it away from the time machine."

"Right," Haruka coughed, glancing to the side.

"You... weren't thinking about the time machine, were you," Hotaru noted blankly.

"I might as well have been," she responded, straightening. "It IS in my car, after all."

A thunderous crack from afar punctuated the conversation. "I think we had better get our groove on before Serenity knows we're here," Minako said nervously.

"Get a move on," Hotaru added. "And I agree."

"All right then!" Haruka clapped and pointed to the tiny backseat. "You guys cram mister unconscious back there," she commanded, "and then get ready to get REAL cozy."

"NEH?" Minako gave the Ferrari a second (and pronouncedly more dismayed) first look. "You mean we're... in THERE?"

"I would say it's a small price to pay for freedom," Hotaru quipped, taking hold of Yuuichiro. "Minako-san?"

Haruka quirked an eyebrow. "Wait a tic. 'Freedom?'"

"It's a long story," Minako sighed, assisting Hotaru in cramming the temple-keeper in the car. "I'll tell you when we get back, okay?"

"Works for me," Haruka shrugged, getting in the driver's seat.

***

((Starfox - 1:35 - Ending))

TOKYO, JAPAN, 2002

It was a picturesque evening in the suburbs of Tokyo. In other neighborhoods, children were playing ball; in the park, couples both young and old were taking a long walk; some miles away in the metropolis, some salarymen were even working themselves into an early grave.

These things belonged to the "normal" scheme of things. In one neighborhood of Tokyo's suburbs, the word 'normal' meant a completely different sort of thing- and in that neighborhood, something all too normal was happening.

Space and time rippled briefly before vomiting forth a sports car. The sports car continued travelling at seventy miles per hour for a few blocks, leaving skid marks as it weaved through traffic. Thirty seconds later, the car came to an abrupt and total halt in front of a stately two-story building.

The vehicle stood there for a moment as Haruka popped open the door, pushed Artemis off her lap, and stretched luxuriously. "I am SO glad to be home," she said cheerily.

Not to be outdone, Jedite teleported out of the mass of crammed people and flexed. "That was a thoroughly miserable experience," he noted, mildly disappointed.

"You're telling me." Haruka selected the house key off of her chain. "I'll order pizza before Michi figures out we're home and decides to make dinner herself. You hungry, neko?"

Hotaru didn't have the heart to remind her that Michiru would not likely be making dinner for some time.

"Am I!" Minako replied enthusiastically, jumping up and down in place. "I haven't had pizza in decades!"

"Decades?!" Hotaru said, stunned. "Kami-sama, how long were you in Crystal Tokyo?"

"Ano..." Struck by this thought, Minako scratched her chin speculatively. "What year was it when you came here?"

Hotaru leaned over and checked the timepiece in Haruka's car. "Twenty-nine ninety-nine."

"And we came there in twenty-eight ninety-seven..." She counted on her fingers. "So that means..."

"... one hundred and twenty-four," Hotaru said, startled beyond rational thought.

Artemis nodded. "She doesn't look it, does she?" he observed dryly.

Minako grinned impishly. "And I still sometimes get carded when I go incognito," she added mischeviously.

A groan from the back seat turned Hotaru's attention. "Let's get him out of there," she sighed. "He's probably going to be really mad at me."

"Don't feel too bad, Hotaru," Minako said reassuringly, taking Yuuichiro by the arms. "You're probably right. Rei-chan's going to have her hands full trying to teach Serenity how to rule justly on her own- I don't think Yuuichiro being around would have helped. If she wants to come back to see him, she can."

"I hope you're right." Both girls put their weight into it, and Yuuichiro popped out of the space behind the front seat into which he had been indelicately folded. He immediately collapsed on the driveway, moaning something about the pain.

"Anyway, all smells who ends in hell, right?" Minako twirled around happily, more than pleased about getting out of things. "I wanna see you guys's home!" she announced, skipping up the walkway and making her way into the house.

Hotaru opened her mouth to correct her, but just didn't have the energy. "All smells who ends in hell," she mumbled, a thin smile on her face as she followed.

As the door shut behind them, returning the area to some semblance of peace, Yuuichiro finally found the mental strength to push himself off the ground and stagger upright. "My head," he moaned, swaying in the breeze. "Kami-sama, what did I drink last night?..."

"hshshshsh... kamy-shma kantt protackt u new," a small voice cackled.

((Seiken Densetsu 3 - 3:14 - The Sacrifice, Part 2))

Vaguely recognizing the voice, Yuuichiro staggered one hundred and eighty degrees around. His head caught up with him a second later, and the blinding wave of nausea was enough to make him vow never to turn around ever again. Between the pounding parts of his brain, though, he was able to make out Haruka's trunk pop open- and able to make out a familiar pink-haired form emerging from it.

"Ch... Chibiusa?" he sputtered.

"hshshshsh..." She looked upon her future domain, shaking out some of the sore spots in her anatomy. Riding in the trunk was NOT a comfortable thing. "moma kant fndi mi hear in da pazt sew easelee," Chibiusa observed speculatively, a sickening smile blossoming on her face. "an wats bttar iz tht shi wunt cair bout wat i dew..."

Her gaze latched onto Yuuichiro. "or whu," she grinned lecherously.

"Chibiusa?" Yuuchiro backed a step away. HE recognized that look. "I'm sworn to Rei-sama," he said defensively, taking another step backwards as she advanced on him. "Besides, aren't you... really, really young to be having those kind of thoughts?..."

"CUM 2 MOMA, bbee!!" Chibiusa roared, leaping through the air and latching onto his shirt.

***

((Seiken Densetsu 3 - 2:17 - Three of Darkside))

CRYSTAL TOKYO, 2999

To quote Shakespeare, "Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown."

Serenity II was not merely uneasy. Uneasy failed to describe the intensity of the thoughts passing through her mind. She was livid. She was terrified. She was furious. The betrayals she had suffered today were unthinkable offenses. Even the fact that Chibiusa had vanished was not enough to console her.

She'd seen the images. She'd seen visual records. Everything pointed to an internal coup- an attempt to deprive the throne of its most valuable resources. It was a very tactical plan, now that she could see it from a third-person perspective. Saturn, as the most level-headed of the rogue Outers, had been sent to distance Venus from the throne- and to distract Serenity herself. Yuuichiro, that thrice-damned Shinto cultist, had been sent to try and convince Mars to turn against her. And while she herself was distracted, Uranus and the rogue Shittenou would conjure a massive, indestructible youma as a pretext to destroy her beloved city.

Serenity had managed to defeat the youma. Gojira's presence had not made it any easier, but with a significant effort, she had sent the soulless husk of a creature into low Earth orbit. If it ever made planetfall, she would think about what to do with it then... but all things considered, a hundred-foot-tall youma was the last of her worries.

It was only a matter of time before the Outers tried their plans again. They knew her weakness- that if she was concerned with matters of state all the time, concerned with defending her city, that she wouldn't be able to bring the world into Crystal Tokyo. They executed their plan perfectly- with Venus working for them now, Serenity herself would have to step into place and lead the people.

That wouldn't stop the other Inner Senshi from having their doubts, though. The Outers might not even have to stage a second attack; if she couldn't keep this place together, if she couldn't keep the mortals fat and happy, then they might just decide to leave on their own.

((Seiken Densetsu 2 - 1:28 - Star of Darkness))

Seduction by the enemy was one thing. Her Precious had been seduced away from his duties many times- his mind was weak, and perhaps Venus's was as well. She always was a bit of a ditz. But the others... she could not allow them to leave.

No chance in all of hell.

Serenity motioned at the door before her, sending its doors slowly cracking open. It had been a long time since she had been down here- many, many decades, in fact. The last time, she had felt it necessary to look at the tools of a tyrant, to see what sort of mind needed to wield these weapons in order to promote peace and conformity amongst her subjects.

Now, she almost sympathized with the fallen Galaxia.

She gingerly ran her fingertips along the crysteel box, letting the chill set through her hands before undoing the latch and opening the lid. A pair of golden bracelets shone in the dim light, one set with a green stone and the other with a purple. Serenity tilted her head and appraised them with the power of the Ginzuishou, finding to her satisfaction that they did indeed still work.

They could not betray her if she had their Sailor Crystals, could they? Besides, she needed her city to be rebuilt- why not use witless, soulless Animates to do it?...

Serenity II laughed and closed the box. "Oh, Ma~rs!" she sang, nearly skipping out of the ancient vault.

***

((Starfox - 1:37 - Out of this Dimension))

SAFEHOUSE, CRYSTAL TOKYO, 5621

"In the hearts and minds of us all?" a little girl said excitedly.

"No, children!" His face fell instantly as he stood, pointing upwards with a trembling hand. "COSPLAY-OR lives on in space! GATHERING POWER! And every ten years, the stars are right- and he returns to Earth, seeking revenge against his former masters!"

The sharp tang of alarm claxons blared through the room. The children instinctively huddled together as terror overcame them. "And it looks like it's here!" the man said rapturously. "Raise the shields, rei.bot!"

And several hundred feet above them on the surface, a gargantuan form vaguely resembling Shiva the Destroyer crashed to the earth, bellowing its monosyllabic war cry as it staggered to its feet...

FIN