The Dark Lords Ascendant, Chapter 11 [R/SM Cross]

[claymade]

Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma 1/2 or Sailor Moon in any way, shape or form. All associated characters, trademarks, etc. are the property of Rumiko Takahashi and Naoko Takeuchi. I'm just telling some stories about them.



Chapter Eleven: Clearing the Air



Sailor Mercury sat in the middle of the ruined street, watching as Sailor Saturn used her healing magic to restore the injured members of both the Sailor Senshi and the Dark Lords' group, including the duck that had recently been their weapon master. Her own thoughts, however, were still consumed with the revelation that Ranma's offhanded comment had provoked.

That one, single missing piece of the puzzle—that the Dark Lords had been hiding at Doctor Tofu's—had enabled her to finally see something resembling a reason behind what had seemed an incoherent and demented series of events. Not that it made her any less confused, though. In fact, this revelation raised at least as many questions as it answered.

One way or another, it was obvious that there was far more going on here than they had ever realized, even if everything they learned seemed to contradict everything else. Just what are the Dark Lords' true intentions toward us? she wondered, wracking her brain for something that would make it all fit.

Ryouga and Professor Tomoe had emerged from Haruka's car as well, though the former was making sure to keep a wide distance from the still-spraying fire hydrant. It looked like the Outer Senshi had spoken with him on the way over; Sailor Saturn, at least, was earnestly assuring everyone that there was no more reason to fight. That suggested that there were answers somewhere... even if no one was bothering to tell her.

She looked down again at where Ranma lay flat on the street, eyes closed. "Why?" Sailor Mercury asked, trying with limited success to keep the agitation out of her voice. "Why did you do all of this? You attacked us, you told us you were going to take over the whole world... but you didn't kill me when you had me right in the middle of your hideout, untransformed!"

The pigtailed girl opened her eyes, looking up from the ground at her. "Like I tried to tell you before," she said. "That whole 'evil villains' thing was just a big misunderstanding."

"How do you 'misunderstand' taking over a school for an evil ritual?" demanded Sailor Mercury, her exasperation mounting. "And even if it somehow was a misunderstanding, then why didn't you just explain it to me at the clinic?"

"Nah, we couldn't do that," Ranma said, in the patient tone of someone explaining something self-evident to a small child. "I mean, think about it. If we'd explained it all to you back then, you guys would've stopped trying to kill us."

Sailor Mercury's mouth moved, trying to form words in an attempt at a reply, only to find herself completely at a loss. After a few seconds of failed articulation, she finally noticed the glint of tired amusement in Ranma's eyes as the pigtailed girl watched her flounder. "You're enjoying this," she accused.

Ranma closed her eyes again, the corners of her mouth quirked up in a teasing grin. "A little," she admitted.

"It was a trick to fake their deaths!" interrupted Sailor Saturn. "That youma really did attack you first, but they didn't know she'd done it until later when she admitted what she'd done. They forgave her, but they weren't sure if you would, so they decided to make both you and the Dark Kingdom think they were gone. And since by then everyone thought they were villains anyway..."

The rushed explanation prompted different reactions from the Inner Senshi. Sailor Mercury frowned in thought, her mind analyzing the claim and how it fit with everything they'd seen. Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Venus looked surprised, glancing back and forth between the members of their team who had actually been there for the original encounter. Sailor Moon rolled over to look at Ranma, dismay written across her face. "That's why you did all that?" she asked, clearly distraught. "You were just trying to keep your friend safe all along? I'm... I'm so sorry! We didn't realize!"

"Wait a minute," interjected Sailor Mars, still not entirely convinced. "What about when Luna went to their place? What about all those things she overheard?"

Ranma turned her head to look up at her. "Huh? What're you talking about?"

Luna, who up until now had been hanging back, took the opportunity to come forward, walking up to Ranma from the side opposite Sailor Mars. "I snuck into your home the evening before you came to Juuban to talk to us," she insisted. "I heard everything you said, about how you intended to perform the same ritual you tried four years ago!"

"Look," Ranma said in annoyance, as she turned away from Sailor Mars to look at the new speaker. "Trust me, whatever you thought you—" But she broke off suddenly as she found herself practically nose-to-nose with the small black moon cat.

For half an instant, everything was dead silent.

"Gyaaaaaaaaaaah!" The ear-splitting scream of terror practically made Sailor Mercury's hair stand on end. Ranma moved faster than she'd ever seen the martial artist move, all weariness disappearing as she launched herself away from Luna, scrambling up the tallest thing in the immediate vicinity in a frantic attempt to get away.

And as it turned out, with most of the nearby street lamps smashed and Tuxedo Kamen kneeling next to Sailor Moon, the honor of "tallest thing in the immediate vicinity" went to Sailor Pluto.

Ranma completed her lightning-fast climb before any of them could process what had happened, let alone react. The pigtailed girl wrapped her legs around the Senshi of Time's head in an attempt to keep every part of her body as far away from the ground as possible, even as she constantly kept shifting, constantly trying to somehow climb higher. All the while, her crazed eyes remained fixated on the cat. The other Senshi stared at the bizarre scene, all of them wearing identical expressions of incomprehension.

Even as they tried to wrap their minds around Ranma's abject terror at the sight of their smallest teammate, Akane hurried forward and knelt down, putting herself protectively between the Dark Lord and the housecat. "Please, could you go somewhere out of sight?" she asked Luna. "He won't calm down until you do."

Sailor Mercury looked at Ranma, then over at Luna, then back to Ranma again, and as she did so several other details that had mystified her suddenly clicked into place. The fear in Ranma's eyes wasn't a rational fear. He's ailurophobic! she realized, her eyes widening. That's why his friends always got rid of Luna or Artemis at the very start of every fight he was in! Because he would have been crippled by fear if they didn't!

And it wasn't just that. They had interpreted his nervous behavior under Luna's questioning as evidence that he was lying to them, but with a phobia as severe as this seemed to be, just interacting with a cat, even from a great distance away, would have been more than enough to produce such a reaction. In fact... it could even explain why that Kasumi woman had hidden Luna and lied to Ranma about it. Not to protect Luna from Ranma, but to protect Ranma from her!

The blue-haired Senshi sat there, dumbstruck, struggling to wrap her mind around the implications of all this new information. Even for her, it was almost too much to take in at once. Was that really all it was? she asked herself. It felt like her thoughts were being twisted into a pretzel. Just a trick, this whole time? All the fighting and the worry and those ridiculous Dark Lord outfits and the conquering armies from another dimension and it was all just them faking the entire thing?

Luna, meanwhile, had let Akane lead her out of sight. After she had gone Ranma visibly relaxed, though the pigtailed girl still seemed on edge. Sailor Moon was the first person to speak. "It's okay, it's okay," she said soothingly. "She's gone. So... um... do you think you could maybe come down now?"

Ranma blinked, then looked down, as though registering for the first time whose shoulders she was perched upon. "If you don't mind..." said Sailor Pluto, with as much calm dignity as she could manage, making a valiant effort to hang onto her aloof, inscrutable poise despite having Ranma wrapped around her head.

Tentatively, the "Dark Lord" climbed down, glancing around as she did so to make sure Luna had really left the area. Once she was satisfied, she let out a deep, slightly shaky breath. "Um, yeah..." she said. "I... uh... I don't get along too well with cats. Long story."

The Sailor Senshi just stared at her in awkward silence. Sailor Mars was the first one to regain her train of thought. "You still haven't answered the question," she insisted, although Sailor Mercury could tell that even she was starting to have doubts. "What were you talking about, if it wasn't taking over the world?"

"What exactly cat tell Sailor girls?" asked Shampoo.

Sailor Mercury's face scrunched up in thought. "Luna said that you and Akane were discussing the ritual that you tried to do four years ago," she explained. "She heard you say that there would be more than just three girls trying to stop you this time... and that the real reason the ceremony failed back then was that you weren't really ready for it yourselves... but that no matter what, you were determined to do it, and that you were never going to give up until you succeeded."

"The evening before I went to Juuban... Talking with Akane..." Ranma muttered. Then her eyes lit up, and her voice became animated. "Oh! I know what it was she heard! It was a completely different ceremony we were talking about trying to do again, not the fake one with the bowl. What we were actually talking about was our—"

But she suddenly broke off, her face going pale, and she cast a panicked glance back to where Ukyo and Shampoo were standing. "Um..." she continued, much less excitedly now. "Our... We were talking about our..."

"Your what?" asked Sailor Neptune, suspicion in her voice at the hesitation.

"Yeah, Ran-chan..." asked Ukyo. Oddly enough, there seemed to be an edge of suspicion in her voice as well. "What kind of ceremony were you two talking about?"

"It was... you see..." Ranma was looking back and forth between them, a look in her eyes that reminded Sailor Mercury of a trapped animal. "It was... what I mean is..." Then she drew in a deep breath, and finally burst out with: "It was our wedding, okay? We were talking about how we wanted to try to get married again!"

Dead silence greeted the admission. "A... wedding?" Sailor Mars finally said. "That doesn't make any sense! You said it failed because it was attacked! Why would a wedding—"

"Your wedding?" Ukyo interrupted, her voice tight with a knot of conflicting emotion that Sailor Mercury could not even begin to untangle. "All this happened because you and Akane were talking about... talking about..." Her voice broke off, unable to finish.

"Look... Ukyo..." Ranma said nervously, holding her hands up in an attempt at placation. "I'm sorry we were keeping it a secret from you. We just... wanted to figure out how to work things out first, so it didn't end up like... you know... last time. I mean, you gotta admit—"

"Ran-chan, you jackass!" Her hands tightening on her enormous spatula, Ukyo charged forward, swinging it down from above at Ranma. The pigtailed fighter leapt backward just in time so the weapon smote the street instead, sending concrete fragments flying everywhere. The Sailor Senshi scrambled back to combat readiness, trying to adjust to the unexpected resumption of hostilities, complicated by the fact that said hostilities were now completely ignoring them.

Ukyo continued to chase after Ranma, swinging wildly, but with tears in her eyes. On hearing the sounds of violence, Akane raced back around the corner of one of the buildings, followed by Luna, who obviously thought that negotiations had somehow broken down. No sooner did Ranma catch sight of the cat again than she panicked, bolting away with a scream.

Unfortunately, Shampoo was directly in the path of that flight. The two of them collided with bone-jarring force, falling to the ground with Ranma on top. The force of the collision also carried them close enough to the damaged fire hydrant that a few stray droplets of water managed to hit them, and suddenly Ranma was lying face-first atop a second cat. The resulting shriek of terror was the most unhinged yet.

Ranma and the transformed Shampoo both tried to scramble away from each other, but Ranma's frantic, incoherent attempts only succeeded in accidentally catching Shampoo's claws into the collar of her shirt, dragging the feline with her as she fled, Ukyo still in pursuit. Mousse took to the air in response, flapping around Ranma's head, quacking angrily as he tried to disentangle Shampoo and pecking at Ranma as the pigtailed girl tried to do the same thing more roughly. The four of them careened this way and that, criss-crossing the street in a screaming, quacking, meowing cacophony of violence.

Sailor Mercury watched it all, her hands frozen halfway to a defensive position. Her jaw hung open, as her eyes tracked left and right, left and right, following the path of the swirling knot of lunacy. She didn't know what to do. She didn't even know how to feel. It was just so insane.

In desperation she walked over to Ryouga, who hadn't thrown himself into the fray, but was hanging back by the car, well clear of the spraying water. Maybe he could make sense out of what she was seeing. She stood next to him, looking at the martial artist like a drowning swimmer looking at a lifeline. "Is it always..." She hesitated, trying to find the right words, before finally giving up and settling for a gesture in the direction of the tumult. "...like this? With you people?"

Ryouga looked at the Senshi, considered for a moment, then shrugged. "Like this?" he replied. "No. Not always. Sometimes it gets really crazy."

"Oh." Sailor Mercury looked back to the roiling chaos, then did a double take. Ranma was no longer running around in fear... but was instead leaping playfully around the devastated street like a cat herself, complete with the on-four-legs posture, the feline mannerisms, and even meowing and hissing.

It was around that point that Sailor Mercury gave up any pretense of trying to make sense out of what she was seeing. She simply watched as it unfolded, feeling oddly detached from it all, like she was watching something happen to someone else. Right at that moment, she wanted nothing more than to find someplace safe to rest and sleep. Maybe when she woke up, she would find that the world had decided to start acting sane again.



**********



Beneda, currently in her youma form, looked across the impromptu war council that had gathered in one of the bunkhouses of Metzger's camp, taking in the different types of monsters that made it up. Most of the ones she'd had contact with at first had been fellow youma—Urawa and his direct associates—but now he was introducing her to the broader group. If this was to work, they had to convince them to cooperate, to work with them when the time came to retake the Dark Kingdom from Tanizaki's forces.

So far, it could have been going better.

"Humans?" sneered Jimenko, a stocky, brown-colored monster. According to Urawa, she was the main leader of the lemures in the camp. "That's your secret weapon? A handful of humans? You actually expect them to be able to help us?"

"I think we should try!" chittered Trakil, a small, whiskered monster with steel mandibles for hands, and one of the more prominent daimons at the moment. "If there's even a chance at getting revenge on Metzger for everything he's done to us... Even a chance!"

"Even if it means we all get killed because we went along with his stupid plan?" Jimenko shot back. "Just because you daimons have nothing to lose, don't expect the rest of us to feel the same way!"

"Why you—!" Trakil surged to her feet, eyes blazing with anger. She took a step toward Jimenko, only to have the monster standing to Jimenko's left leap up as well, moving to stand in front of the lemure with a cry of "Yamandakka!"

Everything froze, tension in the air along with the promise of potential violence. Beneda held her breath, watching. Jimenko hadn't been joking about the daimons not having much to lose. As the only monsters whose creation Metzger had never gotten completely right, any daimon grown by him was under a death sentence, subject to the same degeneration that she'd seen Urawa's people trying to treat when they had first met.

And while allies with nothing to lose might make them more willing to join the fight against Metzger... it also made them more willing to lash out against anyone else as well, given enough provocation.

The monster defending Jimenko, on the other hand, was a type that Urawa had called a cardian, one of the non-sapient monster species. Her name was Yamandakka, and it was also the only thing she could say. Along with the Sailor Animates, most of them had found a place in the camp hierarchy by latching onto other, more intelligent monsters, acting as their servant and attack dogs. Seeing the potential threat to Jimenko from the angry daimon, this cardian seemed seconds away from attacking herself.

"Please!" Beneda shouted, drawing everyone's attention away from Jimenko and Trakil's clash and onto herself. "I understand why you might not believe it, but I've seen them fight, and I'm sure my friends are strong enough to help you!"

"Even if what you say is true, why would your friends do such a thing for us?" The speaker this time was the representative for the droids, a green, vaguely serpentine monster named Carda. There was something about her that had unnerved Beneda from the first moment they'd met. Maybe it was the eerie intensity with which the monster looked at everything. Maybe it was the soft, whispering sound of her voice, that nevertheless managed to make itself heard perfectly well.

Or maybe it was the fact that she never blinked. At all.

"Tanizaki is our enemy too," Beneda answered. "And its not right, what he's been doing to you. It wouldn't matter to my friends if you're a youma or a lemure or a droid or... anything else. They even fought the Sailor Senshi to keep me safe!"

That got the attention of many of the monsters. "Humans fighting against their own protectors? For the likes of us?" asked Trakil, a tiny bit of hope building in her voice.

"Fighting, and winning," Beneda said. It was... technically true; the martial artists had won some of their individual fights, even if the overall result of most of their skirmishes with the Senshi had ended in a retreat of one form or another. More to the point, this was what her audience needed to hear. "Compared to that, anything Metzger can throw at us won't be any problem at all."

Beneda could see the effect her words had on those assembled there, the idea that there was someone out there who would—and could—stand against even their races' mortal enemies on their behalf. Ryo added his own words to hers. "It's not just the daimons who are doomed if we don't do anything," he said, looking at them with his bloodshot eyes. "Unless something changes, we'll all keep dying by inches, only surviving so long as we're useful for Metzger's sick experiments. Do you really call that a life? Isn't a chance at freedom worth the risk?"

"What chance?" asked Jimenko bitterly, pointing to her explosive collar. "Even if your friends are as powerful as you say, if we try to escape, Tanizaki's men will just detonate these. Even dying slowly is better than dying all at once."

"We have a plan to deal with the collars," Beneda assured her. "One of my friends is really good at sneaking around. He can get into the control center before we do anything and take it over. They won't be able to broadcast the signal as long as he's there."

Jimenko locked eyes with Beneda, silent for a few seconds as she considered that. Then she spoke again. "And just who are these 'friends' of yours?"

Beneda drew in a deep breath, looking across the room full of monstrous minions that she was trying to win over. There were any number of ways she could answer that question, but she knew the answer that would give them the most hope. "They've been called a lot of things," she said. "But... if any of you youma heard mention of them, back when they were fighting off both the Dark Kingdom and the Sailor Senshi at the same time... you'd know them as the Dark Lords of Nerima."

A low murmur ran through the assembled monsters as they conversed with each other in hushed tones. Finally Jimenko turned back to Beneda and spoke again. "All right," she said grudgingly. "Tell us more about these 'Dark Lords'..."



**********



Far away from the scene of the fight against the horde of portal-spawned creatures, atop the roof of some random store, Ukyo sat with her legs pulled up to her chest, staring off into the horizon. She felt like she should have been crying, but the tears didn't quite come. More than grief, she felt a twisting emptiness churning inside of her, a familiar self-recrimination that she knew all too well.

Every mocking word that those around her ever said replayed through her thoughts, all the whispered taunts and condescending sneers about how unfeminine she was, how she'd never find anyone willing to take someone like her. Because they'd all been right all along, hadn't they? About her, the "cute fiancee". What a joke.

She'd spent all these years deluding herself into thinking she'd prove them wrong, but it had all been false and hollow. She'd tried to deny it, tried and tried not to notice the direction things had been going with Akane, but now she'd heard Ranma confirm it with his own mouth.

"Ummm... hey, Ucchan."

And of course, he had found her.

Ukyo fought the urge to run again, instead pulling her legs even tighter to herself but not acknowledging his presence otherwise. After several seconds of silence, her childhood friend continued. "I'm... real sorry you had to hear it like that," he said. "Akane and me... we wanted to keep it secret how serious it was getting, until we figured out some way to make it work. Y'know... without forcing Shampoo to do something drastic 'cause of her laws... or setting Kodachi off... or having Etsuko try to buy out the dojo again..."

"...or having me bomb the wedding with gunpowder okonomiyaki..." mumbled Ukyo into her knees, barely audible.

Ranma didn't say anything to that, but didn't deny it either. Instead, he hurried on. "...or whatever Miki would do if she heard about it..." The pigtailed fighter shuddered at the thought.

Ukyo didn't reply. What was there to say? That she understood why he had kept it a secret? That she was still furious at him for keeping it anyway? That she still, even now, loved him so much that it felt like she was being ripped into pieces with every word he said? That she couldn't give up, even with reality staring her in the face so clearly?

After a while, she heard him walk across the rooftop and sit down next to her. "I'm really sorry, Ucchan."

A single, strangled laugh escaped her. Such a simple apology. Was it enough for her? Could it possibly be enough? Enough for the heartache, enough for the years of her life, enough for the shame and the loneliness and the damned stolen okonomiyaki cart?

In the end, she knew that she was the only one who could answer that question.

Rubbing her forearm across her eyes, she rose back to her feet and drew in a deep, unsteady breath. It was all too much for her to decide so suddenly. But even if she didn't know yet what she would do, or what was left for her, she did know that she couldn't just stay here like this, not with everything else that was going on. She couldn't ignore a crisis like this, couldn't leave him to face it without her. Whatever else she might be... or whatever else she might have deluded herself into believing she could be... she was Ranchan's friend.

Even if she'd missed the chance to be something more than that.

"Come on," she said, turning back the way they had come, still without looking Ranma in the eye. "We should get back to the others."

"Right," agreed Ranma, though the uncomfortable weight of everything they weren't saying still hung in the air between them. "I mean... Tanizaki's still out there. We gotta get ready to take him on, now that the Senshi are on the same page as us."

Ukyo frowned. "How is this even going to work?" she wondered aloud. "Them and us, cooperating?"

"Don't worry about that," Ranma assured her as they hopped over the rooftops back toward the location of their most recent fight. "I've got a great idea for how we can get the ball rolling."



**********



Sailor Pluto fixed Ranma with a look of disbelief. "You cannot be serious."

"Why not?" Sailor Moon piped up, looking across the battle-scarred street to where Ranma was standing, freshly returned from leaving to chase after Ukyo. "I think it's a great idea!"

The Senshi of Time suppressed the urge to sigh. Of course Sailor Moon wouldn't see any problem with Ranma's suggestion. "I'm willing to agree that the explanations you've given for your previous behavior have been..." Sailor Pluto almost said "plausible", but couldn't quite bring herself to use that word. "...consistent. I'm even willing to agree that you are most likely not the Dark Lords that you pretended to be."

"All right. So then why's it a problem for you guys to crash at the Tendo dojo while all this is going on?" asked Ranma.

"The problem is that just because I believe that you may not be extra-dimensional conquerors does not mean that I know enough about what you are to put all of our lives into your hands by sleeping at your base of operations," Sailor Pluto retorted, her voice flat.

Sailor Moon considered this, turned to look Ranma in the eye for a moment, then turned back to Sailor Pluto. "I trust him," she insisted. "He wouldn't have tried so hard to save Naru if he wasn't a good person."

It was clear from her tone that the princess had already made up her mind, and the headache that had been building ever since Sailor Pluto had come across Sailor Saturn and Ryouga having their little moment increased that much more. The entire situation was spinning out of control. Even if Sailor Moon was right, and their intentions were not malicious per se, Sailor Pluto was still concerned by the fact that they seemed a reckless bunch at best, and flat-out insane at worst.

"Come on, give it a chance," urged Ranma. "Tanizaki is gonna be coming after all of us now, and it'll be safer together. We can help beat off any more monster swarms like that last one, and we'll need you guys if he tries any more of that crazy mind-control stuff again. Plus, there's still a lot of stuff about his operation you still need to hear."

Sailor Pluto grimaced. Unfortunately, he had a point. Still, it went against her nature to be so trusting, so quickly. There was too much about these warriors that they didn't yet know for her to feel comfortable putting the Sailor Senshi and their families into such a vulnerable position.

Even so, she had to admit that the alternative could well be even more dangerous. Perhaps the princess was right. Perhaps it was time for a leap of faith.

At length, Sailor Pluto sighed and nodded in assent. "Very well," she said reluctantly. "Let us return to Sailor Moon's house and join up with those waiting there. Then, from there, we can proceed to Nerima."



**********



The trip back to the Tendo dojo via the Tsukino residence was largely uneventful. They packed the Senshi's families into the cars belonging to Mr. Aino, Mr. Tsukino, and Sailor Uranus, while the Senshi and the martial artists escorted them from the rooftops on either side. Everyone was tense, on the lookout for another attack, but none came.

Sailor Moon made a special side trip along with Sailor Neptune, using her Deep Aqua Mirror to track down Naru's mother and bring her along with her daughter as well. Eventually they all arrived at the dojo, and hustled the civilians inside where they were greeted by the fathers and Kasumi. What followed was a haphazard flurry of activity as they all tried to bring some order to the chaos, working out who would sleep where, who would take what watch, and so forth. The Tendo compound was much larger than the Tsukino residence, but with all the extra people things were packed nonetheless.

The Senshi's families were wary of the martial artists and their sudden appearance, not knowing what to make of them despite the hurried introductions. Ranma noted that Naru and her mother were particularly skittish whenever he was around, something he supposed he couldn't blame them for.

Still, despite the turmoil and uncertainty, everyone was also exhausted, and before long most of them had found a place to grab some much-needed sleep. Bit by bit the Tendo home quieted, until it was largely still. Ranma was finally able to relax, staring up at the night sky as he lay on the rooftop. It had been close tonight—far closer than he cared to admit—enough that his nerves were still on edge. When he thought of how near he'd come to crushing that girl's skull with his own fist...

To his right, higher up on the roof, sat Ryouga. Neither felt any need to break the silence. Ranma recognized the expression that his rival wore, knew that the lost boy's mind was elsewhere, much as his own mind was. From what little he'd heard, it had been a tumultuous day for them both.

When the silence was finally breached, it was by the sound of the ladder being placed against the side of the roof. As they watched, Usagi, Ami and Rei climbed up to join them. Ranma sat up and turned to regard the three Sailor Senshi who'd had by far the longest history with the "Dark Lords".

Usagi was the first to speak. "Ranma... Ryouga... We wanted to say that we're really sorry for everything that happened before now. For fighting with you and your friends like we did."

Ranma blinked in surprise, then waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it," he told them. "It was just a misunderstanding. Trust me, that kinda thing happens all the time around here."

"Still!" exclaimed Rei. "We... ended up hurting you when you hadn't even done anything wrong." She was looking at Ryouga particularly when she said that, and Ranma realized that she was feeling guilty now over the time she had burned Ryouga so badly all those years ago.

"Seriously, don't worry about it," Ranma repeated. "It's not a big deal. You girls were just trying to do the right thing as far as you knew. Hell, more than half the people on my side used to want to kill me too, and for way worse reasons than you had."

"We never wanted to kill you!" Usagi blurted, then hung her head. "Even when we did think you were trying to take over the world. It's always bad when it comes to that. We just wanted to make sure you didn't hurt anybody else."

Ranma smiled at the tenderhearted young woman. "Yeah, I know. And hey, it all worked out in the end. So don't beat yourselves up. After all, we were trying to convince you we were evil ourselves for a while. And I know that Beneda will want to aplologize to you for starting the whole mess in the first place once she gets back from the Dark Kingdom."

At that, Ryouga's head snapped up. "Wait, she's still there?" he demanded. "What the hell were you thinking, leaving her behind someplace like that?"

"It was her decision, all right?" Ranma said defensively. "I wasn't even there. Me and Mousse were keeping watch outside the portal. It's not like I could have done anything to stop her."

Ryouga grimaced and looked away, worry in his eyes. After a while, Sailor Mercury spoke up. "Excuse me, but... what's this about the Dark Kingdom?"

"Oh. Right. That's one of the things we figured out about Tanizaki," Ranma explained. "He opened up one of the portals to the Dark Kingdom again, and he's been doing all kinds of really nasty experiments on the youma who're still there. Beneda's trying to work out a way we can rescue them."

Usagi's eyes widened in horror, and for a moment Ranma wondered if admitting that they'd been trying to free an army of the girls' oldest enemies had been the best idea. But it quickly became clear what she was actually reacting to. "That's terrible!" she said. "Is there anything we can do to help them?"

"No idea yet." Ranma shrugged. "The plan was to go back sometime tomorrow and see what she came up with talking to the other youma who know their way around the place."

The mention of "tomorrow" prompted a stifled yawn from Usagi. "Okay..." she said. "I guess we'll have to wait until then." Then she smiled at the two martial artists. "Anyway, I'm really glad we can be friends now."

Ranma grinned back. "Same here," he said.



**********



Two floors below that rooftop, Mousse sat alone in the Tendo bathroom. He reached out with his senses, checking the positions of all the ki auras in all the rooms surrounding him, listening to the heartbeats of all the people they belonged to. None of them were in a position to observe him, giving him a much-needed moment of privacy. If someone saw him do what he was about to do it would raise questions that he didn't want to deal with.

Reaching deep, deep into his sleeves, he pulled out an unmarked vial. Mousse could not see it with his eyes, but he remembered what it looked like with perfect clarity. Ruthlessly he suppressed the memories and emotions the vial aroused. Instead, he pulled out a small senbon needle as well, and used the vial's contents to re-coat it. Then he sealed the vial again, put it back into his sleeve, and without hesitation jammed the needle into his forearm.

Within moments he felt his throat constricting, his lungs tightening as his entire body convulsed in agony. Violent coughs wracked his frame, leaving traces of blood on the sleeve he used to cough into. It went on and on, seeming to last forever, until at last the effects began to subside, leaving him curled up in a limp ball on the bathroom floor.

"Not good enough..." he whispered hoarsely to the empty air. The poison in the vial was an extremely diluted version of the most common poison used by Four Arts practitioners, the poison with which most of Zhang's blades would be coated. Its formula was a secret, carefully-guarded and age-old, one of the few poisons so potent that it could reliably kill even martial arts masters, despite their superhuman constitution and bewildering array of ki tricks.

New initiates were given vials like that one to begin slowly building up an immunity over the many years of training. Zhang was doubtless completely immune by now, but Mousse had abandoned the practice after he'd fled, wanting nothing more than to forget what he'd done. Now that Zhang was their enemy he had resumed the practice... for all the good it was doing.

As he lay there, he could not keep his half-delirious thoughts from going back to that night, all those years ago. How his heart had hammered in mortal terror as he ran through the darkened forest, branches slapping at his face, Zhang's mocking laughter echoing through the trees as he stalked the two fleeing children from just out of sight.

Until finally, the assassin had made his move.

Mousse let out a rasping breath, rolling over onto his knees in an attempt to get back up. He had to find something else to think about before it went any further, before his memories reached the conclusion of that hopeless battle. Before he was forced to remember yet again what he had done... and what had happened after.

He hadn't lied to Ranma, technically. Everything he'd told his rival about that night had been true. But he had left one thing out, one thing he hadn't been able to bring himself to say.

With trembling arms, he finished propping himself up against the bathroom wall. This effort with the poison was too little, too late; he was sure of that. He didn't seriously expect that he could attain sufficient immunity to survive a cut from one of Zhang's blades. Not in the time they had left. Still, even if it only let him survive a little bit longer, it could possibly increase his meager chances of taking his enemy down with him.

His head fell back to rest against the bathroom wall as he sat there, feeling drained, alone, and a complete and utter failure.



**********



Before long, most of the inhabitants of the Tendo dojo fell asleep, tired from the long day. Most, but not all. Konatsu was standing watch that shift, supported by the Mercury Computer, which Ami had set on continuous scan. She had assured them that it would sound an alert if anyone approached, or if anyone within was targeted by any hostile magic. If their enemy tried that possession trick again, it would be immediately detected.

That should have reassured Akane, but as she lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling of her room, she found herself completely unable to sleep. What had just happened... seeing her fiancé twisted and corrupted like that... it refused to leave her thoughts, unsettling her to the point where she sat up, deciding to get some fresh air rather than chase sleep futilely.

She tiptoed her way across her room, stepping around Makoto, Minako and Mrs. Osaka where they lay wrapped in blankets. Akane had given up her own bed to the girl named Naru, who from what she understood had had a particularly rough time of things. Akane slipped out into the hallway and made her way downstairs, toward the door that led out into her backyard.

As it turned out, she was not the only one to have done so.

Shampoo was standing in the doorway, looking out across the yard. Her back was toward Akane, nor did she turn around, but Akane knew that the Chinese girl was aware of her presence. Silence held between the two young women, until Akane spoke, her voice quiet. "Shampoo. I've... been wanting to talk to you."

The only response she got was a noncommittal murmur. Indeed, Akane had been trying to talk to Shampoo alone ever since the fight at the warehouse, but it had never happened, as though Shampoo was avoiding her. This was the first chance she'd had to talk about what had happened there. So she pressed on. "I wanted to thank you. For pushing me out of the way of that blast."

"Shampoo not do it for you, her rival snapped, not turning around. "Just... Shampoo not want to lose fighter... in middle of battle with..." But her voice trailed off, the lie too obvious to even bother sustaining.

Akane walked closer to Shampoo, until she was almost in arm's reach. "You know that's not true," she said. "You took the hit instead. And you're a better fighter than I am. You always have been."

A short, mirthless laugh was Shampoo's reply. "Maybe. Except somehow, Akane is one who is winning. In all ways that matter."

There was nothing Akane could say to that. Shampoo drew in a ragged breath before continuing. "Yes, Shampoo save Akane. Akane happy? Akane must be. Akane is winning so much that Akane is even having Shampoo help her win. Shampoo break village law, Shampoo save stupid outsider girl that Airen is wanting to..." Emotion choked off the last word, leaving the sentence unfinished.

A hollow feeling in her own stomach, Akane stepped forward and laid a gentle hand on Shampoo's shoulder. Shampoo finally turned to face her, and Akane saw that her eyes were gleaming in the moonlight with unshed tears, tears that Shampoo was too proud to ever let fall.

"Akane take Airen," Shampoo said brokenly. "Akane take Shampoo honor. Akane take any hope Shampoo have of ever going home again. What else Akane want take?"

For a moment, Akane just stood there, transfixed. She had never, ever seen Shampoo this vulnerable before. Over all the years they had spent together as enemies, rivals, training partners and even friends, Shampoo had always felt to her like someone she was chasing, futilely trying to catch up to. Whether it was the astonishing grace and power of Shampoo's martial arts or her delicious cooking or the raw, sensual allure that she usually wore like a second skin, Shampoo had been someone Akane had measured herself against, someone just a little bit larger than life.

But the girl standing before her now was not that idealized figure. Akane looked at Shampoo, looked past the defenses that were lower now than ever before, and saw a girl sent by her tribe into a foreign land, on an absolute mission that she now knew she could never fulfill. In Shampoo's eyes Akane saw the pain of rejected love, and the shame of failing her people, and the desperate loneliness of having no one in all Japan who even wanted her to win her hopeless struggle for Ranma's heart.

Akane's heart clenched in her chest, and she brought her other arm up to Shampoo's shoulders as well, pulling the other girl into a tight embrace. She felt her friend's body tense defensively, but Shampoo did not try to pull away. "I'm sorry..." Akane whispered in her ear. "I'm so sorry, Shampoo."

She didn't say anything else. After a while, she felt Shampoo slowly, gradually relax into the embrace, even wrapping her own arms around Akane as they clung to each other.



**********



Chibi-Usa drew in a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves as she got ready for what she was about to say to the other Sailor Senshi. They had all gathered to hear the plan she had come up with to defeat this new enemy, and she knew she had to get this right. If she said something wrong, if her plan had a mistake, it could doom the entire world! The pressure of that responsibility crushed down on her, overwhelming any attempts to calm the fear building inside her stomach.

Her memory was somehow foggy on just why such a task had been given to her, but she knew it was critical. She walked up onto the stage—why was there a stage?—and looked out at her audience. They were all in Senshi form, all of them waiting for what she was about to tell them. She tried to speak, but her voice caught in her throat, leaving her unable to force the words out. She couldn't speak. In fact, she couldn't even remember what she was supposed to be saying! She began to panic, tried frantically to make any sound at all. Now the other Senshi were laughing at her, their voices mocking her mercilessly.

She tried to turn and run, but her limbs were clumsy and refused to obey her. She saw that both Neo Queen Serenity and Sailor Moon and Usagi were all on the stage now, all of them looking disgustedly at her. She stumbled back, trying with all her might to get away—

—and then, everything stopped.

The most obvious part was that the other Senshi froze like statues in the middle of their laughter. At the same time, the haze muddling her mind and memories also vanished, as did the clumsiness that had gripped her body. With clear vision she looked across the motionless scene, and with a clear head she was finally able to recognize the absurdity of the whole scenario. It obviously couldn't be real. Rather, it was...

"...like a nightmare..." the pink-haired young girl murmured.

"Exactly," said a bored-sounding female voice, coming from out beyond the frozen doppelgängers of her friends and family. Chibi-Usa whirled, straining her eyes to look into the darkness that pooled there. There was something moving, slipping from shadow to shadow, something large and dark.

"And not a very unique nightmare at that," the voice continued. "Fragments of concern over the new enemy you face... Buried insecurities about your ability to measure up to your mother... A bit of simple stage fright..." The speaker snorted. "How very original."

The words themselves were not particularly threatening, but there was something about the voice itself that filled Chibi-Usa with fear. Not the formless, frantic, half-conscious fear of a clouded dream, but a sharp, direct sense of dread. Acting on reflex she reached for her transformation compact, but found that she was not carrying it. Nevertheless, she took a few steps forward, trying to see the mysterious speaker. "Who are you?"

"Someone who has been trying to meet you like this for some time now," the voice replied. "But my little brother has protected your dreams far too closely. This is the first time since he began his... dalliance... with you that my bonds have been weak enough for me to snatch your dream before he realized you had fallen asleep."

By now Chibi-Usa's eyes had adjusted enough that she could see that it was the outline of a large winged horse moving through the shadows. "You're Helios' sister?" she asked. "He never told me anything about having family."

The black pegasus laughed, continuing to circle her at the same time. "My brother's heart is a very gentle one," she said fondly. "So gentle, that he has difficulty watching other beings suffer, even insignificant ones such as you humans. We had a small falling out over the matter."

As the winged horse circled closer, Chibi-Usa's ears caught the sound of clinking metal, and looking closer she saw that each of the black pegasus' legs were bound by thick anklets, connected to chains running back out of sight. The chains had symbols inscribed along them, symbols that glowed with a golden light that was faint, yet still familiar. "He sealed you."

"Yes... aided, I might add, by your father's ancestors and their Golden Crystal..." The pegasus focused her blood-red eyes on Chibi-Usa, who swallowed hard, but stood her ground.

After a few tense moments, the pegasus looked away and resumed circling. "Not that I was ever completely unable to act," she assured Chibi-Usa, a note of pride entering her voice. "If my little brother's seal had been able to cut me off from Elysion entirely then no one in your world would ever have nightmares at all, and he would have been free to fill the nights of humanity with a continuous cavalcade of sunshine and joy." She snorted and shook her head in disbelief.

"You mean... you're in charge of bad dreams?" Chibi-Usa asked. "The same way Helios is in charge of the good ones?"

"A trite way of putting it." The winged horse circled even closer to the young girl, like a shark closing in on its prey. "But you are not wrong."

As the pegasus drew nearer her body shifted, becoming that of a young woman. In appearance she was older than Chibi-Usa, looking about seventeen or so. Her silky black hair ran down her back to waist length, accented by flowing black robes that reminded Chibi-Usa of Helios' own. The manacles and chains remained even in this new form, binding her ankles and wrists, the chains still stretching back out of sight. But they did not impede her approach, and soon she was right in front of Chibi-Usa, looking down at the smaller girl.

Those crimson eyes burned into the Senshi with pitiless intensity, as though they could read every failing, every secret, every fear she had ever had. Chibi-Usa looked down, only to have the mistress of nightmares reach out a hand toward her. At first her fingers simply caressed Chibi-Usa's cheek, but then the fingernail of the thumb slid under her chin, digging in painfully as the dark entity gripped Chibi-Usa's head and twisted it back up to meet the other girl's gaze again.

Chibi-Usa's throat was dry, and her legs were trembling, but she managed a defiant look. "What do you want?"

"I want to understand why my brother is so taken with you, little girl," the entity answered coldly. "Why, after so many countless years of watching over your species, has he suddenly developed such intense affection for one particular human out of the billions that swarm your world? What does he see in you? Because whatever it is, I am completely unable to discern it."

The young Senshi winced at the strength of her assailant's grip. "I... It's... I don't think it's just any one thing," she responded hesitantly. "I mean... I don't have just one thing I love about him. It's everything about him, even the little things that could seem small or silly."

"But why you?" the entity pressed, her ire rising. "I told you, this has never happened before! What makes you so different? What is it about you that makes him—" She broke off suddenly, her eyes losing focus for a moment as though looking at something else. Then she gave a small sigh of vexation. "Damn."

The next moment, a searing flash of golden light tore a gash in the air itself, and Helios burst through it, the wings of his pegasus form beating as he dove toward them. The golden horn on his head blazed with power, and the glowing sigils on his sister's chains blazed to life in response. The chains yanked her away, wrenching her back into the darkness and out of the dream.

Helios landed, skidding to a stop next to Chibi-Usa and switching to his human form. "Are you all right?" he asked frantically, searching her for any signs of harm. "Did she do anything to hurt you?"

Chibi-Usa shook her head. "No, no, I'm all right," she assured him, after lunging forward and wrapping her arms around him, a gesture that he reciprocated. The held each other tight for a while, until Chibi-Usa pulled away slightly to meet his still-concerned gaze. "Really, she didn't do anything. Just... asked me some questions. About me. About you."

"I'll make sure this doesn't happen again," Helios promised her. "She distracted me by causing a wave of other nightmares across Japan at the same time she was doing this. I didn't realize she'd regained this much freedom. But now that I know, I'll be ready. She won't get past me next time."

Chibi-Usa leaned in again, resting herself against him, feeling his warmth dispel the last remnants of the cold menace she'd felt from the previous encounter. She frowned, thinking back on what had happened, chewing on her lip as she considered what it might mean. Finally she spoke. "No. Don't."

Helios looked at her, startled. "What do you mean?"

"Next time she tries to get into one of my dreams... don't stop her," Chibi-Usa explained. "I want to talk to her again."



**********



Morning came all too soon, dawn peeking over the horizon and shining down on the Tendo Dojo. Most of the inhabitants therein awoke both late and slowly; the night before had been a long and draining one for most of them, and draining for Ranma in particular. It was nearly eleven by the time he dragged himself back into the waking world.

It took him a few minutes to arrange his thoughts into coherent order, to remember everything that had happened. Oh... That's right... he eventually thought. We're friends with the Senshi now. And all it had taken was getting possessed, breaking his own leg, and turning into a rampaging tentacle monster in the middle of an extra-dimensional invasion by an unending army of other man-eating creatures.

Huh, Ranma thought. That was a lot easier than I expected.

Once he had gathered his senses, he decided to see what else was going on. That meant heading downstairs, whereupon he quickly saw the first complication in this new arrangement, one that would doubtless test the bonds of their fledgeling alliance.

Specifically, the line to the bathroom.

Just the part of the line he could see ran around the corner by Happousai's currently-vacant room and past the door to the kitchen on his right, consisting of Nabiki, Minako, her parents Haruka, Ryouga and Professor Tomoe. Nabiki was pressing Minako on something—Ranma caught the words "photo shoot"— while her parents watched Nabiki, and everything else, with an apprehension they didn't seem quite sure how to act on. Ryouga and Haruka maintained a tense but respectful silence, while Professor Tomoe looked like he was studying the lost boy closely for some reason.

The Tendo home had sheltered large numbers of people before, but between all the Senshi, their families and the martial artists this crisis had taken things to an entirely different level. It's probably getting close to a fire hazard at this point, Ranma mused. Still nowhere near as dangerous as splitting up, though.

He felt someone's eyes on him from behind, and glanced over his shoulder to see Sailor Pluto standing there. Either she had woken up early and beaten the rush to the bathroom, or she had some other way of washing up, but either way she looked as immaculate as ever. Ranma yawned, then ran a hand through his sleep-tousled hair. "What's up?"

"We need to talk." Blunt and to the point. "Your friend Ryouga gave me an overview of your... situation, but there are still a great many questions I have on specific details. Not to mention the question of where we will go from here."

"Sure, I was thinking the same thing," agreed Ranma. "But still, let's wait 'till after we've eaten, okay? Trust me, this is one meal you're not gonna want to miss."



**********



Hotaru drew in a deep breath, savoring the blend of mouth-watering scents that came with it. She had wondered how they were going to handle feeding so many people, but that had been before she'd realized just how many amazing chefs were among their former adversaries.

Kasumi had been the first to start cooking breakfast—actually closer to lunch at this point—but after a quick run to their respective restaurants for equipment and ingredients, Ukyo and Shampoo had joined in as well, cooking up what promised to be a truly sumptuous feast. Okonomiyaki, ramen, traditional home cooking, all in amazing quantities.

The distribution of the food, once it was finished preparing, was a disorganized, haphazard affair. People milled about, drifting over to whatever cuisine most interested them. Some were hesitant at first, particularly the families who were still adjusting to everything, but hunger and the temptation of the delectable aromas soon broke down their resistance. At first they pecked at their food, but soon started devouring it in earnest. Eventually the air began to buzz with the overlap of more than a few different conversations, as Sailor Senshi, martial artists and civilians mingled and ate together.

Hotaru's gaze swept across the Tendo front yard, but then halted suddenly when her gaze caught on Ryouga, sitting off by himself a ways in the shade of a small group of trees, eating some okonomiyaki. She froze. The whirlwind events of last night replayed themselves afresh in her thoughts. Including the realizations she'd made about her own feelings for the boy who was not actually a Dark Lord.

In a way, it was actually far more terrifying now that he was on their side. It was one thing to have an enemy fall in love with you, or even to fall in love with him in return. Whatever you felt—however fast your heart started beating when you stole glances at him—it wasn't something you could allow yourself to act on. If he asked you to be his, you knew the right answer, the one you had to give. It might have been tragic, but it was also safe.

But now? Now she felt like a tightrope walker whose net had suddenly been taken away. No, the net had never been there to begin with, and she was only just realizing it. If she chose to step off the rope, there was nothing to prevent her from falling.

It still felt unreal, a boy as brave and strong and kind as that being interested in her, like it was too good to be true. But she resolved not to let such thoughts stop her. Despite spending most of her fifteen years of life as a shunned pariah among her ordinary peers and schoolmates, she'd already found friendship among the people she'd met as a Sailor Senshi.

If that kind of friendship could happen, even to her... then maybe love was possible too?

Swallowing, she made her way across the yard, over to where Ryouga sat. "Um, hello..." she said. "Is it all right if I sit with you?"

Ryouga looked up. Then he smiled as he saw who had approached him. "Oh, hello Hotaru," he replied. "Of course it's all right. Please."

Hotaru sat down next to him, and soon they were eating together companionably as they sat there. All the while, a warmth was growing in Hotaru's chest, one that had very little to do with the ramen she was eating.



**********



"...and yeah, it was right around then that Metallia woke up. You pretty much know what happened after that, what with the whole energy-battle-thing between you and her. I tried to get to you, but there wasn't much I could do to help with something like that."

Usagi watched with wide-eyed attention as Ranma related his side of the final battle against the Dark Kingdom, her third helping of brunch lying to one side, all but forgotten. It was all so amazing. To think that even in such a dark hour, they'd had help keeping their enemies at bay, help that they'd never even realized! Usagi felt her heart warm at the thought, regretting only that she hadn't been able to thank them properly before today.

"Do you have any proof of what you're saying?" Michiru asked. She, along with Ranma, Usagi, Ami and Sailor Pluto, were seated around the table in the Tendo living room. They had gathered to sift through all the information Ranma had been hiding from them up until now, in more detail than the brief overview Ryouga had given during the car ride.

Ranma shrugged. "Proof? Not really. We never crossed paths with you girls through the whole thing. Well, except... huh." His voice trailed off as he looked at Usagi thoughtfully. "You looked pretty out of it by then, so you probably don't remember, but... I did get to you right at the end of it all, after you made the whole big pink energy ball. Caught you when your ice tower broke, and started yelling at you about... not giving up or something like that."

Usagi's jaw dropped. Her memories of everything after that final spell were indeed hazy and barely coherent... but she did have a fleeting recollection of someone catching her, their figure barely discernible amidst the raging flow of magic. "That was you?"

"Yeah," said Ranma, while the other girls exchanged surprised looks. "Anyway, once Metallia was gone and the big danger was over, we tried to stay out of Juuban as much as we could. Except for once or twice when something else really big happened, and we heard about it in time to check it out. Like that one 'Death Phantom' guy with the big crystal fort."

Sailor Pluto's head snapped up, her expression incredulous. "You're claiming that you faced Death Phantom as well?"

"Me and Ryouga and Mousse," Ranma explained. "We... didn't do so well against him, though. He got me with a cheap shot 'cause I didn't realize in time that you had to break his crystal ball to actually kill him." He frowned. "That was how you girls actually beat him, right? The way to keep him from just pulling himself back together again whatever you did to him?"

Usagi gave it some thought. "Well..." she said at last. "I guess our last attack did break his crystal ball." She paused. "Along with the rest of him. And the Dark Gate. And his whole castle."

Ranma smiled in satisfaction, and nodded. "Knew it," he said. "I totally would have won a rematch. What was his deal, anyway?"

"He was an entity that drew his power from Nemesis, the outermost planet in our solar system, like we do from our planets," explained Sailor Mercury. "Except the power of Nemesis was corruptive and evil... and his goal was to exterminate all life, not to protect it."

"So... an evil Sailor Senshi?" Ranma raised his eyebrows. "Guess he must have been hiding his miniskirt under that robe of his."

"That thing was no Sailor Senshi," said Sailor Pluto firmly. "We never learned exactly what it was—or how it came to wield the power of a planet like we do—but it was something unnatural. An abomination."

"Beneda didn't recognize it either," Ranma said. "She could explain Senshi stuff to us a lot of the time, but even she'd never heard anything about some crazy skeleton running around wanting to kill everybody in the universe. Not even in her old youma legends."

"Oh! That's probably because Death Phantom was from the future, not the past!" explained Usagi helpfully.

"...the future." Ranma gave her a flat look. "You're serious."

"Uh-huh!" the young princess continued, blithely ignoring the exasperated look Sailor Pluto was directing at her. "We're not really supposed to talk about it, so that we don't mess up what happens, but even Sailor Pluto said that it's all changing now anyway, so I don't think it matters too much anymore."

"All right, now this I gotta hear..." Ranma said. "So what's the story? How'd you get mixed up in something like that?"

"Well," Usagi began. "It all really started when we first met Chibi-Usa. Ummm... did I mention that she's actually my daughter?"



**********



Professor Souichi Tomoe looked out across the Tendo front yard, over to where Hotaru sat next to Ryouga. She was smiling as the two of them talked, looking up hopefully at the older boy with a slight blush on her cheeks. Ryouga seemed to be enjoying her company as well, and their conversation seemed to be as animated as it had been when Professor Tomoe had last checked on her fifteen minutes ago.

This time, though, there was a different reason why he was here. And while he was reluctant to interrupt his daughter's time with the object of her affections, he had news that she would doubtless want to know. He walked across the yard toward the two teenagers, who glanced up as he approached. "Father?" Hotaru asked, then paused, noting his expression. "Is something the matter?"

Professor Tomoe raised his hands. "No, no," he said. "At least... I don't think it's serious. It's just that your friend Chibi-Usa finally woke up, and she was looking for you. She seemed... troubled by something."

A concerned frown flickered across Hotaru's face, and she looked over to Ryouga. "I... I have to go," she said. However much she might be personally enjoying her time talking with this boy, any suggestion that her friends might need her help would send her hurrying to provide it.

"Of course," Ryouga said, nodding in understanding. With that, Hotaru turned and darted away. Both her father and Ryouga watched her go, until she disappeared into the house. Then Professor Tomoe looked down to where Ryouga sat, realizing that this might be a chance to learn a little more about this mysterious young man.

"Do you mind if we talk for a bit?" the scientist asked.

Ryouga blinked, then shrugged. "I don't mind," he said. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Anything you like," Professor Tomoe told him, as he sat down nearby. "I'd simply like the chance to get to know you a little better, since you seem to be getting along so well with my daughter."

"Well, she's easy to get along with," Ryouga remarked. "I mean... she's nice. And friendly. And she's even kind enough take care of injured animals! Not many people out there will take the time to do that, believe me. Hell, if she hadn't been so determined to talk things out—instead of just attacking us when she could've—this all might have ended a lot worse. Your daughter... she's a really special person."

"Yes she is," Professor Tomoe agreed wholeheartedly. Then he smiled. "Though I think she might say something similar about you."

Ryouga responded with a blank look, one that confirmed Professor Tomoe's suspicions. The boy hadn't noticed his daughter's feelings yet. "Me? What do you mean?" Ryouga asked, puzzled.

"Oh, just thinking aloud," said Professor Tomoe. "More than anything else, I'm relieved to hear that you hold her in such high regard. I hope you'll continue to care for my daughter as you have been."

It was obvious Ryouga was still confused, but nevertheless he nodded emphatically. "Of course. I'd never let anything hurt her."

"Good," the professor said, clasping Ryouga on the shoulder and then rising to his feet. "I'm very glad to hear that. I'll take my leave now, so that Hotaru can have you all to herself when she gets back."

He began to walk away... then paused as a mischievous impulse took hold of him. Deciding to indulge it, he glanced back over his shoulder. "Though it's only fair to warn you..." he said, allowing the sun to catch on the lenses of his glasses so they gleamed brightly, obscuring the eyes behind them. "I was a mad scientist once. So if you ever break my little girl's heart..." He let his voice trail off, then laughed menacingly. "Well... Don't think me incapable of making you regret it."

Ryouga's face went abruptly pale. It seems as though I've still got the knack... Professor Tomoe thought, smiling to himself as he resumed walking away.

He did trust his daughter's judgement, and certainly from everything he'd seen this boy was a decent sort. Still, it was a father's prerogative to inject a bit of healthy fear into the men in her life. She'd have to allow him this much meddling, at least.



**********



"...and when I took her hand, that broke the seal that was holding Chaos inside her," Usagi explained. "Once Chaos was free, it left Sailor Galaxia and she came back to her real self again."

The blonde girl was relating all of this matter-of-factly, but Ranma still found himself boggled by the sheer scope of what she was describing. He'd thought Metallia had been bad, but from what he was hearing now she had only been the beginning. The Makai Tree, Death Phantom, Pharaoh 90, Queen Nehelenia, Sailor Galaxia... and now the primeval manifestation of Chaos for the entire galaxy. He'd had no idea that so many other foes of that caliber had been attacking over these last few years.

At first, Usagi had just told him about Death Phantom and the pawns he had duped into furthering his plans, but after that had been explained there had still been plenty he was curious about. Like where the Outer Senshi and the flying horse came into things. So he'd kept asking, and Usagi kept answering with disarming candor.

"So what did you do once this 'Chaos' was out of her?" he asked. "Blast it with more of your love-magic?"

Usagi shook her head. "No. That would have been the same mistake Sailor Galaxia made. She thought she had to stop Chaos completely, and she tried to take the burden all on herself. But in the end, it just made everything worse. Instead of trying to stop Chaos like she did, I let it go back to where it belonged. Not all of it bottled up in just one person, but back into the hearts of everyone."

Ranma looked down at his own chest for a moment, trying to detect any extra chaoticness lurking there. Then he looked back up at Usagi. "Huh. You sure it won't cause more trouble like that?"

"I have faith that it will work out," she said resolutely. "Chaos might be scary, and dangerous sometimes, but it's still an important part of everything. It wouldn't have been right to just get rid of it."

"If you say so." Not like there was much else he could say. All this "cosmic forces, destiny of the galaxy" stuff was way over his head to begin with. "Still, even if you couldn't get rid of it outright, are you sure you couldn't have at least cut it down to size a bit? I mean... I know my life could use a little less chaos in it."

Usagi giggled at his quip, only to have Sailor Pluto interject. "Which brings us to the present time," the green-haired Senshi said, in a pointed attempt to steer the conversation back on some semblance of its original course. "That was the last major battle we faced before the current conflict involving you and this new enemy."

"Right. Tanizaki." Ranma's expression became grim. "I don't know how much Ryouga told you already, but we chased down one of his people after the warehouse fight, and even met him in person. He's got some kind of crazy plan to steal Sailor Moon's power... and it looks like he's pretty close to pulling it off."

Sailor Pluto made a dismissive gesture. "Whatever he imagines he can accomplish, I do not believe that he has any chance of actually seizing the power of the Silver Crystal. Others before him have tried, but it is bound inextricably to the line of Serenity. Indeed, it forms their very Star Seed itself. There is no way anyone outside that lineage could usurp it. Certainly not some upstart businessman."

"You sure about that?" Ranma asked skeptically. "It sure looked like it was doing something from what I saw."

"...true," Sailor Pluto admitted. "Even if he cannot ultimately succeed in stealing the power he desires, a failed attempt alone may prove catastrophic, just as it was in the original timeline."

"Original timeline?" asked Ranma. "What does this have to do with all that time travel stuff?"

It was Ami who spoke next. "She's talking about the Great Freeze. Sailor Pluto told us that before the catastrophe began, Mamoru was exhibiting the exact same symptoms that Usagi suffered during these attacks. And his Star Seed is connected to the planet itself. If Tanizaki tried to steal the power of the Golden Crystal, and something went wrong..."

"...then the planet's soul might have been damaged enough to send it into torpor," finished Sailor Pluto. "If so, then Tanizaki was directly responsible for one of the most terrible disasters ever to befall this world."

"It was that bad?" Ranma asked.

"It was," answered Sailor Pluto. "The onset was slow, at first. Winters increasing in length and severity. If not for Mamoru's symptoms, it could have been mistaken for a natural climate shift. But it continued to worsen, year by year. Soon there were crop failures, mass starvation... until eventually spring never came at all. There was nothing but the ever-growing ice."

"The Sailor Senshi tried everything they could think of to stop the Freeze, but the planet refused to respond. So instead, Sailor Mercury devised an alternate solution... albeit a desperate one. They used the Silver Crystal to send everyone and everything on earth into hibernation along with the planet, preserving their lives. It was a thousand years before the planet had healed enough for even the Silver Crystal to be able to revive it, so deep was the wound."

"Damn..." Ranma muttered under his breath, shaking his head.

"But now that we know what really caused it, we can stop it before it happens this time!" said Usagi, her eyes alight with determination. "Nobody needs to die, or be frozen, or anything!"

Michiru spoke up. "Events appear to be shifting already," she mused. "Tanizaki must have been aiming for both the Silver Crystal and the Golden Crystal all along... but something changed the order in which he went after them. What do you suppose it could have been?"

"I do not know," Sailor Pluto replied. "There is altogether too much that is still a mystery about this. Which is exactly why it is so vital that we learn more about our enemy." She looked over to Ranma as she spoke.

The pigtailed martial artist shrugged. "I'll tell you everything I know," he said. "Don't know how useful it'll be, though. The only reason we're not in the dark ourselves is because Mousse sensed one of Tanizaki's guys watching the fight at the warehouse. After that all went to hell, we tracked him down before he could get away. That was when Tanizaki invited me to his big skyscraper to try and convince me to join up with him..."



**********



Chibi-Usa was wolfing down the delicious okonomiyaki that was both her breakfast and lunch when she saw her best friend round the corner and hurry over to where she sat by the edge of the koi pond. "Hotaru!" the young princess exclaimed, her face lighting up.

Hotaru sat down next to her. "Is there something wrong?" she said, concern in her voice. "My father mentioned that you were looking for me."

"Oh. That." Chibi-Usa offered an apologetic look. "There was something I wanted to talk to you about... but it didn't have to be right away. So when Akane told me she saw you talking with Ryouga..." Chibi-Usa grinned and let her voice trail off suggestively, prompting Hotaru to blush. "...I thought I shouldn't interrupt."

Hotaru studied the ground, her cheeks aflame with an embarrassment that, in Chibi-Usa's opinion, looked adorable on her. "So, do you like him back?" the pink-haired girl eagerly pressed, even though the answer was pretty obvious. "You do, don't you?"

For a moment Hotaru just chewed her lower lip, not meeting her friend's eyes, but then she made two quick, small nods. Chibi-Usa made a small noise of glee and leaned in closer, eager for the chance for some Girl Talk.

"Nothing's... really happened yet..." Hotaru explained hesitantly, leaning in as well, her voice barely above a whisper. "We just talked. Which was really, really nice! But... is that normal? How... fast... do things like this usually go?"

It was clear that Hotaru was out of her depth in these matters, and Chibi-Usa's chest swelled a little at the chance to provide the answers. It was a strange feeling, having Hotaru looking to her like this. The previous times she'd visited this era she'd been quite a bit younger than Hotaru, and the future Hotaru was an adult altogether. But since this time she'd come back from a point when she was almost fourteen it meant that Hotaru was now only about a year and a half older than her.

This trip had been the first chance she'd ever had to relate with her friend as an age peer. And between the two of them, Chibi-Usa was definitely the one with more romantic experience. She relished the chance to help Hotaru like this.

"Well..." she said, stretching out the word. "The first time Helios and I kissed was back when we were fighting against Queen Nehelenia and her Amazoness Quartet. But that was after we'd already known each other for a while, so I don't think you need to worry or rush things if you haven't gotten that far yet."

"How did it happen? Your first kiss?" Hotaru asked, her expression a rapt mix of fascination and nervousness.

"It was right after he helped me break PallaPalla's age-switching magic on me and Usagi," Chibi-Usa recounted. "It just kind of... happened. He started to lean in... and so did I... and then..." She let her voice trail off again.

She could tell that Hotaru was suitably impressed with how experienced and mature she was. Emboldened, she went on. "We also kissed after the battle was over," she said. "And we also go on dates, in my dreams. He shows me all over Elysion, and we sometimes kiss on those too."

Hotaru's eyes widened a little. "Is that why you slept so late?" she whispered. "Because the two of you were...?"

Chibi-Usa's smile fell, and she looked off to one side. "No," she finally admitted. "Not this time, anyway."

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned back to see that Hotaru's insecure expression has been replaced by a serious one. "Something is wrong, isn't it?" she asked quietly. "Tell me about it. Please."

Chibi-Usa sighed, he shoulders slumping. "I... met Helios' sister last night."

Hotaru's eyebrows went up. "His sister?"

"Her name is Melinoe," the pink-haired girl explained. "She... isn't very nice. She controls the nightmares, like Helios controls the good dreams. Except she doesn't care about humans at all. She used to torture everybody while they slept, and do all kinds of crazy things to spread fear, until she had to be sealed away. Except now the seal is really weak, and she managed to get into my dream."

"Did she do anything to hurt you?" asked Hotaru, in a tone of voice that did not bode well for Melinoe if the answer was in the affirmative.

Chibi-Usa shook her head. "She wanted to know what it was that her brother saw in me," she said. "She might not care about humans... but I think she really does love him. Helios and I spent a long time talking after she was gone. About her. About what happened in the past between them. I... I want to try talking to her again. I want to at least try to explain it to her."

Then she looked at the ground despondently. "I just don't know what I'm going to say..."

She could tell that Hotaru was still worried about the danger, but nevertheless the dark-haired girl gave her an encouraging hug. "I'll help however I can," Hotaru said. "Please, tell me more about what happened."



**********



"...so after I got out of that skyscraper, I headed back here," Ranma finished. "I didn't hear anything else from him after that. Well, not until he had his magician try to take over my body, anyway."

Sailor Pluto's mouth was set in a grim line as she considered everything that Ranma had described. "And you're certain that this magician called himself the chosen of the Nameless One?" she asked.

"That's what he said," confirmed the pigtailed fighter. "That mean something to you?"

"I have heard fragments of history, from a time before even the war against Chaos," Sailor Pluto told him. "It is said that the Nameless One was a being that came to our reality from... outside. It was a thing of hunger and corruption, seeking only to devour and defile. Or at least, if it had other motives, they were not motives that creatures such as us could understand. It consumed many worlds, until after a fierce battle it was sealed away by Sailor Galaxia."

"Except it wasn't that easy, right?" Ranma asked.

"It never is," replied Sailor Pluto. "Ever since that day, cults venerating the entity have sprung up on many different worlds. At certain times, the Nameless One is able to send its whispers into willing minds, teaching them heinous rituals by which they can access small fragments of its power as they work to free their master from its prison."

She looked over at Usagi. "There was one such cult during the Silver Millennium, until your mother had it eradicated. They managed to erode the seal to an alarming extent before they were finally hunted down. I have no doubt that this 'Ekim' is following the same path."

"Except it seems that Tanizaki is also using him for his own purposes, somehow," Michiru pointed out. "We don't even know who truly has the upper hand between them, who is really manipulating who."

"Either way, knowing the source of this sorcerer's power gives us important insight into what we can expect from him," said Sailor Pluto. She turned back to Ranma. "For instance, when you visited that skyscraper, did they take anything from you? The type of rituals that the servants of the Nameless One practice usually require some type of link to the target."

Ranma thought for a moment, then his eyes widened and he swore under his breath. "Son of a... That was what he was really after the whole time," he muttered. Then he spoke up. "Yeah. When we fought, one of Tanizaki's attacks sliced off some of my hair." He sighed. "Damn it! All those years of Gosunkugi trying to get my hair for his stupid voodoo crap, and now it happens with someone who actually knows what he's doing."

"At least we know that there is little worry of that mind control attack being used on anyone other than you," Sailor Pluto said. "And even in your case, I suspect that most, if not all, of the stolen hair was required for that one attempt."

"That raises another question, though," Ami interjected. "If a link like that is an integral part of the kind of magic our enemy uses... then wouldn't he also have needed the same kind of link to Sailor Moon to attack her like he did at the warehouse?"

Sailor Pluto paused, considering that. "I would expect so," she agreed. "But what could he be using? Precious possessions might be enough of a link for minor rituals, but never for something of this scale. Even hair would be... imperfect... for a spell designed to affect someone so powerful. To have the best possible chance he would need some of Sailor Moon's—" Then she broke off, her eyes suddenly going wide.

"What? Some of my what?" yelped Usagi, looking a little nervous.

"Your blood," answered Sailor Pluto. "For magic like that, there is no closer link than a creature's own lifeblood."

At that, Ami's eyes went wide as well. "The first fight..." she breathed. "The very first time Tanizaki's grey creatures attacked us, back before we even realized that Ranma and Ryouga were still alive. Just before the last two creatures ran off, one of them cut Sailor Moon! Her blood would have been all over its swords!"

Sailor Pluto nodded. The realization was not a pleasant one, but it explained so much. "That was the entire reason Tanizaki staged that fight," she said. "He needed her blood, and he needed to take it from her while she was in her transformed state. Any blood taken that way would truly be the blood of Serenity, heir to the Lunar Throne, not that of her human form."

"And that's where the future changed!" continued Ami, her excitement mounting. "Do you remember what happened just before that? You and Sailor Chibi-moon arrived, and she blasted away a different grey creature that was about to slash Tuxedo Kamen! If she hadn't been there, he would have been cut, and Tanizaki would have ended up with his blood instead. He would have gone after the Golden Crystal first, instead of the Silver Crystal..."

"...and would have nearly destroyed the planet as a result," Michiru finished.

And the difference between the two futures had hinged on a single Pink Sugar Heart Attack. Sailor Pluto remembered doubting, back when Chibi-Usa had first arrived, whether the young girl had any chance of affecting a disaster on the scale of the Great Freeze. Ironic, since as it turned out, Chibi-Usa had averted the Great Freeze less then five minutes after her arrival, without even realizing it.

Now they just had to survive what had taken its place.



**********



Ryouga leaned his head back against the tree behind him, thinking over the events of the past few hours. He smiled as he recalled the conversation with Hotaru. After everything the two of them had been through together over the past few days—fighting against each other, saving each others' lives, fending off Happousai, hiking through the woods, working through all the distrust and the misunderstandings—it had been very nice to just sit down and relax in each others' presence.

They had talked mostly about small, simple things. Things they liked, things they disliked, silly stories about the antics they and their friends had gotten into. Listening to her talk about the other Sailor Senshi, it had been obvious how much she cared for them. She wore her heart on her sleeve in that respect.

The time he'd spent with her had been refreshing, and he'd enjoyed every moment. There was a... gentleness... about the girl that he so seldom found in the madcap craziness of his usual life. He was honestly a bit mystified why someone like her had wanted to spend so much time with someone like him, but he was very happy that she had.

The subsequent conversation with Professor Tomoe had been... well, it had been something. He'd seemed like a nice person overall, of course. And Ryouga could certainly understand being protective of family. Still, the chills he'd felt when the older man had issued that warning...

Really, Ryouga wasn't even sure why Professor Tomoe had said that to begin with. Parental protectiveness was one thing, but the way he'd phrased his words had sounded more like a warning to direct at a prospective boyfriend than anything else. So why would Professor Tomoe say that to him?

Then Ryouga sat up straighter, his eyes widening. Wait... could that be it? he wondered. Did he say that to me because he saw all the time Hotaru and I were spending together... and he thought that I was trying to get her to fall in love with me?

Seen in that light, their entire conversation made so much more sense. The idea threw Ryouga's thoughts completely into a jumble, as he tried to wrap his mind around the implications. It wasn't something he'd even considered before.

Hotaru... and me? he thought. Why would he think that? I mean... sure, I enjoy spending time with her... And she definitely is a nice girl... I've seen how kind and brave and loyal to her friends she is. And she's so strong too. Not just her powers, but what she's endured, without letting it break her. And... well... she certainly is pretty...

More confused now than when he'd begun, Ryouga let his head thunk back against the tree again. For just one fleeting moment, he allowed himself to imagine what it might be like if somehow it did happen, if somehow that gentle warmth and affection that Hotaru carried with her actually became a part of his life like that. Not just a passing acquaintance, but something far closer.

But then he shook his head violently, trying to clear such thoughts from his mind. It was stupid to even consider. No matter what her father thought might be possible—no matter what he let himself dream—he couldn't imagine that she would ever feel the same way. He knew all too well how that sort of thing ended when he was involved.

Depression—his old friend—coiled around his heart, reminding him once again of all his many flaws and failures. In the back of his mind he heard a memory from years past whisper to him. The voice of the Death Phantom from the fight against him, speaking into Ryouga's very soul. "You lost Akane. You lost Akari. It was inevitable. What did you have to offer them in the first place? A shiftless vagabond, constantly absent for weeks on end. No steady work. No prospects. No future."

All of which he knew full well was true. In the end, he was just a brawler who hadn't even managed to finish high school, a wanderer who was missing from the lives of the people he cared about more often than he was present. The closest thing he had to something special about him was that he could hit things harder than most.

No, he had to forget that conversation with Professor Tomoe had ever happened. And he had to do it quickly. The time he'd already spent with Hotaru had been precious enough to him. He couldn't jeopardize that by entertaining stupid dreams about what might happen.

Ryouga didn't even want to imagine how creeped out she would be if she thought he was responding to the friendship she'd offered him by falling for her.



**********



"There's still one thing I don't understand about all this," Michiru said, her brow furrowed in thought.

Ranma snorted. "Just one?" he asked. He'd been trying his best to keep up with everything the girls had been saying about magic rituals and time travel and Star Seeds and all the other Senshi stuff they'd been discussing, but it was still confusing as all hell.

The five of them had moved their conversation into the Tendo kitchen. All the talking had made them thirsty, and they were standing around the room, each with glasses of water in their hands. Ranma took a sip from his, watching as Michiru ignored his interjection, continuing on. "We've uncovered Tanizaki's plot because of Chibi-Usa coming back again," she said. "But what about the way things went before? After the Great Freeze was over, what stopped him from picking up again where he left off? Why did our future selves never encounter him?"

"Perhaps he learned his lesson against meddling in such forces," Sailor Pluto speculated acerbically. "Or more likely he was simply unable to continue. Much of his influence seems to stem from his financial empire, and the planet-wide devastation and chaos of the Great Freeze would have crushed that entirely. Even after the ice receded, the situation was very dire, with so much of the world's infrastructure ruined by the disaster. Even for Neo Queen Serenity, picking up the pieces of civilization was... not easy."

Michiru still didn't look entirely convinced. Then Ami spoke up. "There's another possibility as well. Maybe the Great Freeze didn't stop him. Maybe he is still continuing with his plans... even at the point in time that Chibi-Usa comes from. From what Ranma told us, he's been planning this move for a long time, with a great deal of patience. What if he's simply biding his time in the future, waiting for another chance at what he already tried once before?"

An uneasy silence fell over the small group, as each of them considered that possibility. It was Ranma who finally broke the quiet. "Well whatever happened with Tanizaki, why waste time worrying?" he said. "As long as we beat him down now it doesn't matter what would have happened, right? We stop him now and we change all of it."

"But... what else will it change?" asked Ami. "If the future can shift so much just from a small action, how much more of a difference would something like this make? If we change too much, might it put Chibi-Usa in danger of starting to disappear again?"

"No," Sailor Pluto assured her. "Not with changes like these. Even if the circumstances leading up to her birth change, her soul—like all living souls—exists independent of time's flow. And that soul will find expression, one way or another."

"But before, when Queen Nehelenia bewitched Mamoru—" Ami began, frowning.

"If Nehelenia had claimed victory then, it would have meant far more than simply separating Mamoru and Usagi from each other," Sailor Pluto explained. "Nehelenia could not possibly have stopped Sailor Galaxia from claiming all the Star Seeds in the galaxy and thus eradicating all life everywhere."

Sailor Pluto let that dire pronouncement hang in the air a second or two before continuing. "But—so long as life itself endures—all those souls will be born. Perhaps into different circumstances. Perhaps facing different experiences. But still connected back to that core of being, that fundamental essence which holds all the memories and experiences from every timeline or incarnation that the soul has lived."

At this point, the concentration of mumbo-jumbo in the room thickened to the point where Ranma felt like his eyes were going to cross trying to keep it all straight. He took another drink from his glass of water, then spoke up. "Okay, great, so... I guess we all agree that Sailor Pipsqueak isn't gonna go poof from this?" he said. That had been all he'd been able to get out of it, at least.

"Correct," Sailor Pluto agreed. "But 'going poof' aside, there remains the much more pressing threat of what Tanizaki and his agents will do to those currently alive. It is that which we must do everything in our power to stop."

"Okay," said Ranma, greeting the change of topic with a grin. "Now this I've got some ideas on..."



**********



While the teenagers were out mingling and talking and planning and scheming, most of the adults in the Tendo compound had gradually clustered in the dojo proper. There they talked over the recent developments themselves, trying to make sense out of what for many of them had been a cataclysmic upheaval of everything they had known about their own children.

Professor Tomoe, being one of the few who had already known the truth, was doing his best to help the others come to terms with it, along with Mr. Tendo and Kasumi from the martial artists' side. Kasumi's serene explanations and assurances were particularly effective at placating the distrust some of the adults had toward Ranma and his compatriots, though even her words could not dispel it completely. Luna and Artemis tried to help out as well, even as the dojo's confines served the double purpose of keeping them sequestered away from Ranma.

The only absent adults were Rei's grandfather and Genma. The former had shown by far the least difficulty adjusting to the revelation, and was out interacting freely with the youngsters. Last Professor Tomoe had seen, he had been trying to hit on Haruka with no success whatsoever. Genma, for his part, had taken panda form and was wandering around, keeping his distance from most of the goings on.

Of the ones in the dojo, the Osaka family probably had the worst of it. Mrs. Osaka had hardly let her daughter Naru out of her sight since they had been reunited after the traumatic attack last night. Naru herself seemed to be holding up, though it couldn't have been easy for her to spend so much time in the same house as the young man who had so viciously assaulted her. Even knowing intellectually that someone else had been controlling him—that the real Ranma had saved her life—it still had to be difficult.

Minako's parents weren't much better off. Even now, Professor Tomoe didn't think it had fully sunk in for them. Minako's father was pacing back and forth in agitation, while her mother sat fretting with her arms folded tight in her lap. Finally, Mr. Aino spoke up. "It just seems like there ought to be something we can do!" he exclaimed.

"What do you suggest?" asked Professor Tomoe mildly.

The man threw up his hands. "I don't know! Call the police! It should be their job to deal with things like this, not... not our daughters!"

"If this Tanizaki has access to power that is capable of challenging Sailor Moon, then it is highly unlikely that the police can do anything to inconvenience him," replied Professor Tomoe, his voice calm. "That is, if he does not simply control them already. As hard as it may be to accept... it is our daughters' job to deal with threats of this magnitude. They have done so before. And I believe they will do so again."

Mr. Aino just turned and resumed pacing, but in the silence Usagi's father spoke up. "But... but this is Usagi we're talking about," Tsukino Kenji said, sounding lost. He looked over at his wife, who was sitting next to him, one of her hands on his shoulder. "She plays video games and slacks off on her homework! She doesn't launch attacks on international corporations!"

Professor Tomoe gave the man a sympathetic look. "I'm afraid that attacking an international corporation is far from the most daring thing that these girls have done," he said. "The world they know is a much bigger one than most people even realize exists. And the enemies they defend us from are more terrible than most people could even imagine."

Ami's mother was next to speak. "So you're telling us to just... sit here?" she asked, her expression pained. "Just wait around, while our children go out and fight for their lives?"

The pain in Mrs. Mizuno's eyes was a familiar one to Professor Tomoe. It was the exact same pain he had felt when Hotaru had become Sailor Saturn, when she had taken onto her small shoulders the full weight of the cataclysm that his own efforts had caused.

Many of the memories from his time in the Death Busters were still hazy and slow to return after the amnesia he'd suffered in the aftermath. But that one moment, when Hotaru had launched her self-sacrificing attack on Pharaoh 90... that was burned into his mind as with a branding iron.

The professor closed his eyes and then nodded. "Yes," he said. "That is exactly what I am saying. You don't know how many times I've wished that I had the strength to fight in her stead... or even just to help protect her somehow, but..." His voice trailed off into frustrated silence.

As he spoke, Professor Tomoe noticed that for some reason Mr. Tendo flinched at his words, turning slightly away from the rest of them as though he were wrestling with something in his thoughts. The mood of the entire gathering grew somber, as each of them considered the implications of the world they now faced, and what it would mean for their families now that they had followed their children into this larger world.



**********



"...and so, before anything else, we oughta smash Tanizaki's operation in the Dark Kingdom and rescue everyone there," Ranma finished.

Michiru raised an eyebrow, then took a drink from her glass of water. When Ranma had begun telling them his ideas for what to do next, she'd been wary of another "plan" like his demented Dark Lords scheme. But what he'd outlined for this situation was much more simple and direct. No tricks or gimmicks this time, just "beating the crap" out of Tanizaki's soldiers in the Dark Kingdom and taking over the portal so he couldn't send any more in.

According to him, their youma was already in there, working with the prisoners to figure out more details. Without that information his plan was by necessity vague, but as general outlines went, what he had come up with so far wasn't bad.

It wasn't without its flaws, though. "Are you sure we should be dealing with this now?" she asked. "Tanizaki himself seems the more dangerous threat at the moment. Not to mention that we have no way of knowing what these monsters will do once freed."

"From what Konatsu told me, it sounds like they'd be more likely to help us against Tanizaki than cause trouble for us," Ranma said. "And if it's really as bad in there as he said, I don't want to leave Beneda in danger any longer than we have to."

"Of course!" chimed in Usagi. "We have to rescue them quick. Also, I really want to meet Beneda. For real, I mean. Not like last time."

"I agree," Ami said. "Those prisoners are the ones in the most danger right now, so it makes sense to concentrate our efforts there. If we're fortunate, we may also be able to discover more information there about Tanizaki's plans."

Michiru still wasn't entirely convinced, and it must have showed on her face since Ranma hastened to offer more reassurance. "Look, if you're worried about what they'll do, the youma who's kinda their leader now seems like a decent guy, not like Beryl. He'll probably keep a lid on things."

"Are you certain?" asked Sailor Pluto. "How do you know that we can trust this youma, whoever he is?"

"Well, believe it or not, Konatsu said he's already gone through a whole lot to help you girls," Ranma said. "Supposedly, the whole reason he got captured was because he was trying to keep things from coming to a head with Tanizaki until you were ready to fight him. Even though it meant that Tanizaki's goons have been torturing him for years now."

Usagi's eyes widened in horror, but Michiru frowned. "That doesn't make any sense," she said. "Why would a youma do that for us? And what does him getting captured have to do with us? Weren't they all just taken prisoner when Tanizaki took over the Dark Kingdom?"

"This guy was different," explained Ranma. "I don't know all the details, but somehow he was outside the Dark Kingdom, kinda like Beneda. He'd been living as a human too, until Tanizaki snatched him. Called himself Urawa Ry—"

The sound of something shattering cut off Ranma's words. Everyone turned to look at Ami, whose glass of water had slipped from her fingers to smash into the floor. Her face was pale, and she looked as though she had just been stabbed in the chest. Both her hands went to her mouth and she stumbled backward, her back hitting the kitchen wall and sliding down it until she was sitting.

Usagi was immediately by her side, arms wrapped around her. The rest of them looked on in stunned silence, before Ranma finally broke it. "Oh. So... I guess you know the guy?"

"He's alive," Ami whispered. "The fire... that must have been how they covered it up. I... I should have looked into it, should have investigated! He's been... All this time he's been a prisoner there. All this time he's been..." She looked up at Ranma, her eyes haunted. "You... you said he'd been tortured? What have they been doing to him?"

Ranma shrugged uncomfortably. "Konatsu didn't give too many details, just that they wanted him to use his 'see the future' power to help them, and they'd mess him up whenever he missed something important or got it wrong. Which I guess was a lot, since he's been trying to sabotage Tanizaki from the inside all this time."

Looking at Ami and Usagi, Michiru knew that their next course of action was now set in stone. If there had ever been a chance of Usagi agreeing to go after Tanizaki himself first, that chance had now been utterly obliterated.

The Sailor Senshi were going to invade the Dark Kingdom once again.



**********



Tanizaki Kazuo sat at the head of the conference room table, studying the four men sitting further down. Zhang was the most relaxed of them, the Chinese assassin regarding the meeting with curiosity, but no alarm. Doctor Metzger, who knew most of what Tanizaki was about to say, shifted in place with a restless mixture of excitement and anxiety. Nagai, Tanizaki's political assistant, was completely in the dark, chewing his lower lip as he tried to figure out what was going on. And Ekim...

Ekim looked miserable. The backlash from having his possession of Ranma forcibly terminated by Sailor Moon's holy power had not been kind to the sorcerer. The man's expression was haggard, his eyes were bloodshot, and every so often he would convulse with a small spasm. He watched Tanizaki nervously, no doubt remembering his employer's reaction to his first failure, and considering what the reaction might be to his second.

"As some of you already know," Tanizaki began, "the Sailor Senshi have learned the truth of the deception that we had been using to disguise our tests as the actions of Ranma and his associates."

Ekim tensed, doubtless expecting another reprimand, but Tanizaki chose not to berate him any further. In truth, he was not proud of how he had let his temper get the better of him last night, when he had been faced with the possible ruination of everything he'd worked toward for so long. But whatever response that debacle might have warranted, it should have been delivered with calculation and self-control, not with his anger controlling him. Anything else was a dangerous weakness.

"Fortunately, however, the deception lasted long enough to serve its purpose," the businessman continued. "Unit Zero is ready." Ekim let out a sigh of relief at the news, as did Nagai.

"What do we plan to do about the other two primary targets?" asked Zhang. "We have Sailor Moon covered, but the original plan was to do the same for Tuxedo Kamen and Sailor Saturn as well, before we faced the Sailor Senshi directly."

"It is unlikely that will happen now, given that the Hibiki boy prevented us from obtaining any of Sailor Saturn's blood," Tanizaki replied. "Nor does it seem likely that we will be able to obtain any more from either of them in time to make use of it. We will have to incapacitate them directly instead. Not ideal, but I believe that it is well within our capabilities now."

"So we go on the offensive, then?" Ekim asked. It was obvious in every word how eager he was for payback.

Tanizaki shook his head. "No. It will work better to let them come to us. We already know what their next move will most likely be. They need to stop us, and this building is the only worthwhile target they know about. Rather than extend ourselves by moving forces through the city, we will face them when they come here, where we have the home ground advantage, and can leverage more of our resources."

"In that case, I will have my people interrogate Project Janus specifically for the time and nature of their attack," offered Doctor Metzger. "If he does see something, we will have extra forewarning."

The suggestion was a good one. Tanizaki opened his mouth to agree... but then paused, frowning in thought. After some time he replied. "...no."

"No?" asked Metzger, surprised. "Why not?"

"Because there is something suspicious with his most recent predictions," Tanizaki said. "That youma has consistently failed to predict major events that would have been invaluable to know about. Ranma's blind ally detecting Zhang at the warehouse. Davidson's escape, killing several scientists on the Unit Zero project. And now Sailor Mercury getting the drop on Ekim and deducing our ploy from what he said. Not a whisper of any of that. But what does he report?"

Tanizaki's expression darkened. "A minor altercation between the Sailor Senshi and some local fighters that would doubtless have blown over into nothing had we not been there to inflame it. Also an opportunity to obtain Sailor Saturn's blood that not only failed when we attempted it, but pushed her closer to the Nerima group."

"You're suggesting that he planned it to happen that way?" asked Metzger. "That's impossible. His precognition isn't nearly strong enough for him to calculate events with such detail. And he wouldn't dare defy me. Not after what my people have done to him."

"Perhaps," Tanizaki said. "But I am no longer convinced that his precognition is as weak as he pretends... or that your torturers have broken his will as completely as he would have you believe. It is entirely possible that he is pursuing his own agenda. I think he offered us the bait he did because he saw that we would take the chance to test Unit Zero, and that it would lead to our discovery despite the precautions we took."

Metzger licked his lips, and Tanizaki could tell from the way the old scientist's complexion flushed that he was considering the possibility that his lab rat had been the one manipulating him all this time, rather than the other way around. "There's... still no proof of this..." he protested, though he did not sound nearly so confident as before.

"It doesn't matter," said Tanizaki. "If I'm wrong, it means his power is weak and unreliable. If I'm right, it means he is a truly grave threat. The gains of the former don't even come close to outweighing the risks of the latter, especially not at such a delicate juncture in our plans." Tanizaki took a deep breath. "And I will not allow myself to dance on anyone else's strings. I want him dead."

Metzger nodded. He didn't seem to like the possibility any more than Tanizaki did. "Yes sir," he said. "I will see to it personally."



**********



Urawa Ryo sat in the small, cramped hut in the middle of the camp, watching with a small smile as the representatives from the various monster groups hashed out the details of their plan of attack. Even the ones who had been reluctant at first had started to get more involved as the sense of hope steadily grew, as freedom from Metzger's cruelty started to seem like it was truly possible.

Beneda was at the center of it all. Her idea to invoke the Dark Lords had brought fresh life to the endeavor. The monsters would never have believed ordinary humans to be capable of helping them, and they never would have believed the Sailor Senshi to be willing, but Beneda was speaking to them in a language they understood. And it was working. They were coming together.

It's almost over... he thought, scarcely able to believe it. After years of drugs and torture, years of meditating on the twisting threads of fate and chance, years of scouring his visions to find whatever means he could to nudge the future in the direction that could stop Tanizaki... it was almost over.

Ryo looked at the various beings in the room one by one, recalling details that he had come to know about each of them over the long course of his imprisonment. Youma, daimons, cardians, lemures, droids... He had started down this road for Ami's sake, but after meeting his fellow prisoners he had soon become determined to save them as well.

And now he had almost pulled it off. He was so very close.

Beneda was saying something about defensive positions, and what would be the best way to take out the guard towers surrounding the camp, but Ryo was having trouble focusing. He was so very tired. The drugs Metzger used to enhance his precognition made sleep rare even at the best of times, and he had not even tried last night. Instead he had spent it searching for yet more visions, trying to discern more details about what they would soon face. The results had been spotty at best.

But then, even as he tried once again to figure out why, a fresh vision did flash through his mind unbidden. He wobbled a bit, raising one hand to his forehead, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach from what he had seen.

It wasn't as though it was a surprise. He'd been prepared for this possibility for a long time. He had played a dangerous game for years, one in which a single mistake could mean his death. And he'd had to be much less subtle lately, both in what he'd told Metzger's men and what he'd kept to himself, in order to give the Sailor Senshi their best chance. It was no great wonder that his "masters" had finally caught on.

And, according to the vision he'd seen, the coming rescue wouldn't come in time for him.

He let out a quiet, shaky breath, trying not to draw attention to himself and his distress. There was nothing to be done about it now. He couldn't risk the lives of the other prisoners by trying anything prematurely. He would have to face what he'd seen, and pray that he'd tilted things enough in the Sailor Senshi's favor by what he'd already done.

He only wished that he'd had the chance to see Ami one last time...



**********



Ranma stretched his arms as he walked out of the Tendo home and into the front yard. His thoughts were still mulling over everything he'd learned from the discussion he'd just had. All in all, though, he was feeling pretty good about how things were looking. They'd gotten past the misunderstandings, and now it was just a matter of taking the fight straight to Tanizaki.

He couldn't wait to get started. He owed that bastard more than a little payback for everything he and his people had put them through.

Ryouga saw him come out, and stood up from where he'd been sitting under one of the trees to walk over to him. "What's going on?" the lost boy asked. "Did you make a decision?"

"Yeah," Ranma said. "The Senshi say they'll help us kick Tanizaki out of the Dark Kingdom. Right now I'm gonna find Konatsu and go get Beneda so we can hear what she figured out about the best way to do that."

"Then I'm coming too!" Ryouga said. "I want to be nearby, in case something goes wrong getting her out of there."

Ranma sighed. "Nothing's going to go wrong," he assured the lost boy. "Konatsu and I can handle it just fine. Come on, Ryogua, we went through all this last time."

"Yeah, that is what you said last time," agreed Ryouga, irate. "And look what happened! Beneda got left behind there! I'm not taking any chances this time."

Ranma recognized the stubbornness he could see burning in Ryouga's eyes, and could tell that the lost boy would not budge on the matter. It had been hard enough convincing him to stay behind when they'd done this yesterday; now it would be more or less impossible. But before Ranma could respond, he heard a voice from behind him. "Excuse me, Ranma?"

He turned to see Ami standing there, looking intently at him. Evidently, she had followed him out of the house. "I... would very much like to come with you as well," she said. "I think I can help you. My Mercury Computer can scan and analyze anything we encounter, and provide extra information about how our enemies are set up." She held the small device out toward him hopefully as she spoke.

It was obvious that—much like Ryouga with Beneda—the more basic reason she wanted to come along was that she just wanted to do everything she could to help make sure that her "Ryo" guy was safe. Ranma sighed again. "Sure, sure, okay, whatever. Both of you can tag along if you want. Now come on, let's go find Konatsu before everyone else decides they want in on this too."



**********



"I think my friends will agree to the plan we came up with," Beneda said. Most of their ragtag war council had dispersed back to other parts of the camp, leaving her, Ryo, Karkala, Boxy, and Yumemi behind to discuss the results. "And it should work. Konatsu should be able to secure the control room easily, and ordinary guards won't be much threat, especially since we'll have the element of surprise."

"The real danger will be Metzger's science experiments," Karkala reminded her. "Make sure to warn them that he's got a bunch of those grey creatures stashed away that he can call on. And I've heard rumors that he has other, older projects lying around that they might try to use if he gets the chance."

"I'll tell them," Beneda said. "They should be coming to pick me up any time now. Then it'll just be a matter of telling them the plan, getting everyone together and coming back for the attack."

"Good," said Ryo. "But before that... there's one more hurdle we have to get past. Beneda, can you come with me for a second?"

Puzzled, Beneda followed as he led her over to one of the bunks on the far side of the hut. "I need you to hide under here for a little while," he explained. "I don't want any of the guards to notice that you don't have an explosive collar like the rest of us."

"Wait, guards?" Beneda asked, even as she obediently crawled under the bunk, an uneasy feeling growing inside her. "What guards are you talking about?"

Ryo hesitated, and for just a moment his self-control slipped. In his eyes, Beneda could see clearly the regret and the fear and the desperate weariness that he'd been hiding. But all he said in answer was: "Just stick to the plan. It will work." He paused, then spoke in a softer voice that only Beneda could hear. "Tell your friends I said 'thank you' for helping us. And tell Sailor Mercury... please tell her I said I was sorry."

Beneda opened her mouth to ask again what he was talking about, but she was interrupted by the sound of booted feet running up to the bunkhouse's door. Ryo stood back up, wincing a little from the strain on his injured leg, even as the door was thrown open and a dozen guards poured through it. Beneda could only see their legs from her vantage point, but she heard what they were saying all too clearly. "You! Doctor Metzger wants to see you, youma!"

"Of course," said Ryo, his voice tight but composed. "Lead the way."

Two of the guards approached Ryo and grabbed him from either side, dragging him off. Soon, all of them were gone. Beneda waited until the footfalls had receded into the distance, then scrambled back out from under the bed. The remaining four youma looked at each other, shaken. "What was that?" Yumemi finally said. "It isn't time for one of his usual interrogations."

"Whatever it is, I'm sure he has it under control," Karkala asserted, though she looked uncertain as well. "He had to have foreseen this. It must be part of his plan."

"I think he did foresee this," Beneda said quietly. "But... I don't think he has it under control. At least not for himself. It sounded... it sounded like he thought he was going to die."

Karkala's eyes widened, and she whirled to Boxy and Yumemi. "No!" she exclaimed. "We have to do something! We have to... to start the plan early! We need to rescue him!"

"If we try, it will be a massacre," said Boxy sadly. "Ryo... probably saw that. And that is probably why he went with them. We need Beneda's friends to deal with the explosive collars if we're to have even the slightest chance of success."

"But none of us would even have that chance if it weren't for him!" Karkala pleaded. "Every single being in this camp owes him their lives! We can't just sit here and do nothing!"

A long, strained silence fell. Beneda tried to think as fast as she could, tried to come up with some way to help. But there just wasn't anything they could do.

Except...

It was a risky plan. Crazy, even. She felt sick with fear just thinking about trying it, but it was the one thing that might save Ryo. And she wanted to try, if she could.

"Boxy is right," she said, speaking quickly. "We can't attack until my friends get here. But they'll be coming soon. Whatever Doctor Metzger is planning to do to Ryo, we just have to stall him long enough for them to arrive. And hope that they have enough people with them to start the attack right away."

"But how can we stall him?" Yumemi asked.

"Not we," Beneda said, taking a deep breath. "Me. Someone find me some cold water. I've got an idea."

[Spica75]

Ooh, excellent chapter.

My reading of it was a bit hurried but I could not find anything that required fixing. Not even a single typo.

[claymade]

Ooh, excellent chapter.

My reading of it was a bit hurried but I could not find anything that required fixing. Not even a single typo.

Thank you! Really glad to hear that you liked it! This chapter was a very tough one to write and wrestle with, and I had to scrap large chunks over and over again because they weren't working (which is part of why it took so long to complete). So it's relieving to hear that all that rewriting paid off for your enjoyment of it!

[Fellow Sufferer]

Couldn't find a single thing wrong with it, either. Bravo!

Still one of the best Ranma fanfics, period.

[claymade]

Couldn't find a single thing wrong with it, either. Bravo!

Still one of the best Ranma fanfics, period.

Muchas gracias! Glad you liked it!

[CRBWildcat]

I concur with the others. I thought I saw something the first time I read through this yesterday, but looking through this tonight I haven't been able to find it. It's probably negligible.

Good job, as usual.

[ijp92]

it lives!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!


thank you so much for this wonderful gift. I could find nothing wrong with it.

[Spica75]

Couldn't find a single thing wrong with it, either. Bravo!

Still one of the best Ranma fanfics, period.

Indeed it is.

[ckosacranoid]

Boy that tookna while to read though. Very well done and nice to see a new chapter. Thanks for sharing.

[claymade]

I concur with the others. I thought I saw something the first time I read through this yesterday, but looking through this tonight I haven't been able to find it. It's probably negligible.

Good job, as usual.

Thanks very much! If it ever does pop back into your mind, I'd definitely love to hear what you noticed, but either way thank you for giving it the read!

it lives!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!


thank you so much for this wonderful gift. I could find nothing wrong with it.

Thanks very much! Heh heh, yeah, still alive and chugging along, even if the writing was coming abominably slowly.

Boy that tookna while to read though. Very well done and nice to see a new chapter. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks! Yeah, the chapter was a bit on the long side, but I wanted to get through this section and get the ball rolling on the next part without breaking the flow of the "talking it out" part into fragments, so we ended up with this size. Anyway, glad to hear you enjoyed it!

[CRBWildcat]

You're welcome.

And I think I found what I was looking for:

Just the part of the line he could see ran around the corner by Happousai's currently-vacant room and past the door to the kitchen on his right, consisting of Nabiki, Minako, her parents Haruka, Ryouga and Professor Tomoe.

[claymade]

You're welcome.

And I think I found what I was looking for:

Ahhhhhh, nice catch! Those sneaky commas, always running off on you the second your back is turned...

Thanks for finding that!

[Alzrius]

One misspelling that I noticed:

He did trust his daughter's judgement, and certainly from everything he'd seen this boy was a decent sort.

"Judgment" is the correct spelling (though "judgement" is a British variant, I believe).

[Spica75]

One misspelling that I noticed:

...

"Judgment" is the correct spelling (though "judgement" is a British variant, I believe).

My dictionaries says that jugdement is the common form in English, while judgment is the form normally used in legal language and US English, however it is also noted that they can be considered interchangeable and variations of the other (especially if the source text cannot be determined to be using specifically either UK or US English).

So yes, you´re sort of right, but at the same time there is no error/misspelling.