A Guardian sequel/spinoff...

Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...


All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.

Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.

Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.

Other Notes: Sounds, techniques or emphasis, 'thoughts', (side comments), +writing, computer readouts+


Millennium
Chapter 8
Premonitions
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"This is just getting ridiculous," Sailor Pluto mumbled as she leaned weakly on the staff of time, massaging her head.

Ironically, the guardian of time had completely lost track of how long she had been trying to locate and eliminate the strange pulses of disruptive temporal energy; in the swirl of power that filled her as she bent time and space in her search, an hour felt no different than a day, and in a search as difficult as hers, either one could prove equally productive.

She had gotten lucky, however, and found a lead on the device that was probably causing the disturbances; a machine called the "chronosphere". Evidently, if the scientists that had been studying the wreckage of the device two months ago were correct, the machine wasn't a time machine at all as she'd originally feared, but rather a temporal teleportation device that had been built for the obvious tactical applications of teleporting soldiers into vulnerable and strategically important positions at will.

It also seemed that this technology had somehow fallen into the hands of the Freedom's Angels.

Pluto snorted. The short-sighted terrorists were the very worst examples of humanity's shortcomings: selfish, hateful murderers with no sense of civility or discipline, who used their twisted ideals as an excuse for their atrocities.

Oh, sure, the fools had their uses. More than one lab investigating Dark Kingdom and Silver Millennium artifacts had suffered crippling attacks by the terrorists in their mad lust for weapons technology, and they kept the defense forces so busy and disorganized that the nation could never manage to come up with a truly effective response to the Dark Kingdom invasions on their own. And the response Japan DID come up with, the DAPC, was both wonderfully myopic in their scope of operations and brutally efficient in their execution. Numerous lesser threats had been wiped out by the department, and yet even when the officers actually arrested the Senshi, they released the girls after a generous donation and a little paperwork without any further scrutiny. To this day, the Senshi remained the beloved heroes of Japan while the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment was regarded as a reckless plague that freely destroyed Tokyo on the taxpayer's dollar.

All was as it should be.

At least, it was if you put aside this "chronosphere" nonsense, anyway. The device was far too advanced to be entrusted to the ignorant people of Earth - much less the violent rogues of that population - and its technologies could be too easily modified to allow for time travel. Naturally, it was HER job to prevent that.

Sailor Pluto frowned. There was something else about her extended search that troubled her. It wasn't anything so blatant as the tremendous pulses of energies or the minor tears in the fabric of space and time, but it kept tugging at her instincts; far too many seemingly benign events had taken place that shouldn't have.

That was it, really. Looking into the future was looking into a billion different possibilities all strung together haphazardly to create a coherent picture. Though there were literally an infinite number of possible futures whenever one looked through the Gates of Time, it was programmed to crystallize only the most probable into a collection of "likely" futures that had any real chance of occurring.

Lately, however, in her search for the strange temporal disturbance, she'd noticed that there were an awful lot of extremely improbable things happening. This wasn't any problem or cause for concern, normally; after all, none of the strange occurrences that she'd noted affected her or the Senshi in any way that she could see. However, there was just something... WRONG about these particular incidences. Besides the fact that they weren't supposed to have happened, anyway.

There were bizarre accidents. People dying in grisly ways. Blood splattering in unusual, cryptic patterns. And then there was the opposite. People surviving who should have died in perfectly ordinary, mundane ways.

If there was anything obvious about the string of improbabilities that should have concerned Pluto, that was probably it: they all seemed to involve the miraculous survival of someone who should have died, or the bloody death of someone who shouldn't have, all by freak chance. A young nun's future murderer dies because of a dog falling into an inexplicable fit of temper and chasing him into traffic. A few days later, the preacher running the very same church that the nun attended was inspecting the bell tower and was somehow struck by a passing bird with enough force to send him plummeting to the chapel roof... to be impaled on the spire above the church entrance. Needless to say, the incidences had numerous ramifications, each one of them meaningless to her: the church was closed after the accident until everything could be sorted out, and the nun had seemed to become catatonic from the experience.

It was almost as if these perversions of chance were... fighting back. Violently. Could there be some intent or reasoning behind this? It didn't seem possible, but the whole affair troubled her greatly.


Sailor Pluto sighed as she continued to ponder the problems at hand. She had been struggling for quite some time to locate the chronosphere, but now that she had found it, honestly, destroying the device and all traces of the technology used to build it was not a terribly pressing concern. The strange improbabilities were probably nothing, and would be very difficult to look into, but had the potential to be EXTREMELY serious. If someone was tampering with fate under her radar, that entity had to be at least as powerful as she, and possessed of artifacts that threatened the future of Crystal Tokyo by their mere existence.

Of course, there was one OTHER important job she had to do that was being somewhat neglected, but she didn't really think she had to check up on the Senshi again to make sure no Earth-shaking changes had taken place and that they were staying out of trouble. Things were going well enough several days ago, and she would have noticed if any Dark Kingdom threats had emerged since she'd left them to their own devices. How much could possibly happen to them in a week?


Pluto made up her mind quickly; she'd give the strange accidents a brief look to check for anything suspicious, and then destroy the chronosphere. Because the device was in the hands of mundane humans, she would probably use an opposing faction to engage them - either the DAPC or the JDF proper - and then slip in when things were convenient and ensure that nothing useful survived the devastation.

But that was for later. For now...

Stretching out her hand, Sailor Pluto willed the gates back to the nun that had inexplicably survived and began checking on the threads of fate that surrounded her.

The most obvious, blatantly likely destinies were all perfectly fine, mundane, and seemingly untouched. They mostly centered around a momentous decision in which the horrible accident that had befallen her mentor in the church either convinced her that dark forces were working against Catholicism and bolstered her faith, or caused her to decide that no caring, relevant God existed and leave the church.

Either one led to a perfectly nice, boring life that had absolutely no effect upon the ultimate fate of whether or not the entire world was nearly destroyed and then purified to become a utopia. If she stayed with the church, she became an idol among the faithful, and soon became a priest herself (as Pope Robot Snake would decree in a year that it would be best to have some female church leaders so that the altar boys would at least have some options). If she didn't, she'd go to college, and then get engaged to a nice young man right before they were both killed in the cataclysm to come. Sad, but irrelevant.

Pluto nodded. Those were the most likely outcomes for this divergence point. Now for the most unlikely ones.

This was rather tricky, especially when the guardian of time didn't know what she was looking for, if anything; there were an awful lot of things that were nearly, but not quite, impossible that could happen to the poor nun at this juncture. The more likely of the unlikely were the decisions to turn over to a Satanic cult or something or commit suicide. Then there were threads that had her becoming a talk show circuit sensation, and then an actor. Or the one where she sought to return her pastor to life using a not-quite-fabled retrovirus.

Pluto winced. THAT one might affect Crystal Tokyo. Severely. But as the chance of her happening upon that information, and then deciding to go through with it, and THEN successfully acquiring the virus and messing up without someone stopping her was an infinitesmally small percentage of a possibility, she felt safe it would not occur so long as elements beyond the mortal scope kept their hands off of the forces of chance.

Sailor Pluto decided to give up, for now. She couldn't sense anything unusual about any of the possibilities to indicate that destiny was being tampered with. She'd try a few more "scans" of a few other individuals after the chronosphere was dealt with.

"...... Wait... Wait just a minute," she mumbled to herself as an image surfaced in her mind. For some reason, the sight of that nun kneeling before a Satanic rune bothered her, and not for the obvious reasons.

Quickly holding out the Garnet Rod, the image before the gates of time shifted back to show the consequences of the nun's unlikely choice to take up Satanism.

'Scratch that. That's not a Satanic symbol... well, I don't THINK it is...' Pluto frowned as she stared at the emblem haphazardly bolted over a Catholic cross. Religious symbols were hardly something that she invested much research into, but this one bothered her. It really could have been Satanic, for all she knew; the only symbol she knew of that was used in Satanic rituals was the pentagram, and any fanatic nutty enough to join a Satanic cult would certainly possess the creativity to make up their own ridiculous symbols.

'An eight-spoked wheel, with the "spokes" drawn further than the circumference of the wheel, with each spoke ending in an arrow... why do I feel like I should know that symbol?' She briefly debated listening in on the nun's ceremony to get a better idea of what she was doing, but decided to simply follow the thread of possibility to see its results; she wanted to get this over with quickly so she could put an end to her recent headaches, and had no time to listen to some cultist's moronic ranting.

Gesturing gently with her staff, she sped time forward... and then raised an eyebrow.

Now THIS was suspicious. Everything past that initiation ceremony seemed to be beyond the sight of the Gates of Time. Blurry images cloaked with murky darkness appeared, the people and places of the future reduced to hopelessly vague shapes.

This was probably what she was looking for; it took a rather powerful entity to foil Pluto's surveillance, and with few exceptions, those entities never did so without cause.

"The recent string of events were not accidents. Something is manipulating fate," she said decisively, frowning. She didn't know what end this entity hoped to accomplish in its ministrations, but it didn't matter. Nothing could be allowed to tamper with the flow of destiny and endanger what was to come to pass!

Oh! Look! There she is!

Pluto's head snapped up, and her eyes widened even as her face remained frozen otherwise.

She seems a bit surprised. They always do when they get caught. Naughty voyeur!

Sailor Pluto could only stare. The dark, shadowy clouds of that young nun's destiny had parted slightly... to reveal the nun herself, staring up at Pluto as if they were separated by a simple window.

The girl had changed, obviously. Her eyes were hard and determined. She still wore her habit, oddly enough, but it had a lot of rough stitching on it now and had streaks of fresh blood on it. An amulet hung around her neck, bearing the same symbol that she had knelt before when she had chosen this dark path, and glowing slightly as the girl stared up at the guardian of time.

What are you so surprised for, fool? How long did you really think you could harness fate before fate got sick of your leash?

Pluto continued to say nothing. Partially because she couldn't think of a damn thing to say, and partially because she didn't want to give anything away. She had spent centuries mastering the "infallible, all-knowing seer of destiny" look, and she'd be damned if some upstart witch was going to spoil it all just by doing the impossible and shocking the hell out of her.

The girl waited for a moment, looking nonplussed at Sailor Pluto's silence. Feh. Lousy conversationalist. No wonder they shipped you off to some non-planet at the edge of the solar system. Then she took a deep, calming breath as she caressed the amulet hanging from her neck. Changer of Ways, your servant seeks your judgment upon a lowly interloper! This shrew freely dabbles in powers within your domain without proper toll or tariff! By the power of Tzeentch, let her debt be paid!

THAT got more than a wide-eyed stare from Pluto. "Tzeentch? But... no. No! That's impossible! It can't-"

A sudden flare of light engulfed the Gates of Time, and Pluto was able to make out a brief, lingering image of a stylized flame within the gates before it started glowing.

Not a good kind of glowing, either. No, the Gates were currently glowing several colors, as if the entire thing had been wrapped in a rainbow. The guardian of time had been at this station long enough to know that they were NOT supposed to do that.

Still, that seemed rather insignificant once she saw a gnarled, misshapen hand reach out of the gates, grasping for her.

"By Serenity! NOOOOOO!!"

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Usagi sighed wearily as she twisted her hands in her lap.

"But it didn't work. After all that, they couldn't get me back into school. Now I've been kicked out, and... well..."

Sitting on the floor of Rei's bedroom, a rather distressed Luna was rubbing her forehead wearily, either in imitation of human frustration, or in some vain hope that if she rubbed hard enough at the moon emblem on her head she could become a normal pet and get away with making a few animal noises instead of providing counsel.

"Usagi, WHY didn't you tell me about this earlier? It was a mistake to trust those foolish policemen!" The moon cat chided.

"It's not their fault," Usagi insisted firmly for the fourth time in the past hour, "and I really wish people would stop blaming them! This was my problem to begin with, and they tried to help me just because they could! Sure, they completely messed up. But I'm not any worse off now than if I hadn't taken their help!"

"Oh? What if that injured soccer player sues?" Rei asked as she entered the room, carrying a bowl of pretzels.

Usagi winced. "Uh... well... Ami-chan said that the school would probably be more liable, or whatever... I'm sure it'll be fine."

"There! You see? That attitude right there. That's what bothers me about this," the raven-haired woman said as she sat down on her bed next to her princess. "What makes you so sure it'll be fine? These people are maniacs, Usagi-chan. First they arrested us, then they nearly blew you up, then they assigned someone to spy on you around-the-clock, then they dragged you along on a vampire hunt, then they made you help fight off a retaliatory attack, then they tutored you so that you somehow did WORSE than usual on your tests, and FINALLY, they make a bogus promise about taking care of the school problem and totally blow it. You have the utmost faith in these idiots, and I can't figure out why!"

"You're not being fair at all!" Usagi accused, quickly stuffing some pretzels in her mouth before continuing. "What about all the good stuff they did? They saved us from the robots AND from that cyborg guy! And I wasn't forced to help against the vampires, I volunteered! Why shouldn't I, when they're trying to help me all the time?"

"All right, all right, shut up you two!" Luna shouted suddenly, her tail twitching in annoyance. "I suppose that in the long run, these police officers solve more problems than they create, but it doesn't matter." She jabbed a paw at the blonde. "Those people are NOT to be trusted! Their loyalty does not belong to us, Serenity, or the Moon Kingdom! It belongs to several corrupt politicians whose only concern is obtaining their next paycheck! Regardless of whether the officers of the department are idiots or heroes, that alone is enough to distance ourselves from them!"

Rei frowned. "Say... while we're on the topic, where's Saotome-san? I know he came in with you."

Usagi frowned as well while scratching her cheek. "Well, it's weird; he followed me in through the front door, but then the moment we stepped into the kitchen and saw you, he said he'd patrol outside and ran out like there was something chasing him." Her eyes narrowed. "I think you scared him off."

Rei recoiled slightly. "What? ME? What did I do?"

"Well, gee, I don't know, maybe he doesn't like you or something?" the cyborg deadpanned, crossing her arms over her chest. "I have no idea why; I mean, it's not like you take every opportunity to call him and his co-workers psychotic idiots when they're constantly risking their lives to keep innocent people safe from robots and monsters."

"Well... not right in front of him, I don't!" Rei countered, flushing slightly.

"Oh. Right. So maybe it was when you almost got him killed in that night club?"

"Hey! I apologized for that!"

"Girls! GIRLS! SHUT UP!" Luna hissed. "Whatever reasons Saotome-san has for keeping to himself is irrelevant; Usagi, you shouldn't have let him follow you here in the first place!"

"But he's my bodyguard!" The blonde protested. "And it's not like we're talking about anything he doesn't know about, anyway."

"True. But he doesn't know about ME," Luna snapped.

Usagi blinked. "... So? Why does that matter?"

A vein popped up on Luna's head. "Every secret we can keep from prying eyes is important! Like I said, these people can't be trusted!"

"I don't think it's that much of a problem, actually," Rei said reluctantly. "He asks the occasional question, but Saotome-san isn't too nosy at all. If he's acting as a spy, he's pretty lousy at it."

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Ranma frowned from where he was hiding underneath the window, clinging to the outside wall. 'Really? I'm a lousy spy? Huh.'

He wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult. He didn't really WANT to be good at sneaking around and prying into other people's business, but his natural tendency was to be offended whenever someone suggested he was bad at anything.

He shrugged and decided to discard the little tidbit. He could always learn more about spying if he felt challenged enough to take up the craft and prove himself.

"It doesn't matter what their 'mission' is, Usagi! They don't answer to us, so we don't work with them!"

Ranma felt another chill crawl down his back as he heard that... that... that THING talking again. He had fled the kitchen the moment he had seen a pet bowl, judging that Rei's apartment was too small to keep a dog in, and then briefly glimpsed the terrible beast through the window before he had abandoned his first position for a much safer one out of sight of Rei's bedroom. And with a nice, open line of retreat where he wouldn't have to stop running or smash through anything for a good two kilometers. Not that he was scared or anything.

"Yes, they do! You're already in a position where everything you do can be judged and penalized by this 'DAPC'! It's unacceptable! You're not a government dog, you're the future ruler of Crystal Tokyo!"

Ranma quickly checked his gun to make sure it was loaded. For the seventh time. Not that he expected mere bullets to stop a talking mutant undead cyborg cat, or whatever ridiculous monstrosity Usagi was currently conversing with. The entire building would probably have to be demolished on top of it, set on fire, and then cleansed with high-yield explosives. And then buried, just for good measure.

"Your status in regards to the Silver Millennium is more important than your citizenship of this country!"

Once again Usagi said something in response, though Ranma wasn't quite able to make it out; while the demon/mutant/kitty was shouting so that anyone standing outside could hear, Usagi's voice was much weaker, and the monster was dominating the conversation.

"I'm through arguing about this! You are to sever all ties to this department at once! If they want to stumble onto the scene of a battle and help out, fine, but we cannot have them following us around! Send that 'bodyguard' back where he came from! And I'll speak to Pluto as soon as possible about having their memories erased; I have no idea why she would allow them knowledge of your secret identities, much less just hand it to them, but if I can't talk her out of it maybe I can at least pry a good explanation out of her."

Ranma scratched his chin thoughtfully. Obviously the little black freak of nature was evil, but it didn't seem to be the obvious kind of evil that stomped around eating people, so it was probably just outside of the DAPC's jurisdiction as of the moment. Also, Usagi seemed to like it and apparently even took orders from it, so she'd probably get upset if he had Rei's apartment complex razed in order to kill it, to say nothing of what Rei herself would think.

'Well played, "Luna"... I'll let you live. For now.'

"It doesn't matter! You have NINE bodyguards, including Tuxedo Kamen! One man with a gun isn't going to make any difference! Get rid of him!"

As for what the monster cat was saying, well, aside from the memory wipe thing - which Ranma scoffed at - it didn't really bother him much or change his current job. It would be more annoying if he had to trail Usagi without her knowing, but it would be a good way to train himself in this "spying" thing he apparently wasn't very good at.

Noting that the voices above had stopped, Ranma gently hopped down to the ground and awaited Usagi's exit from the building.


When the blonde cyborg did come out, she smiled weakly at Ranma and then halted, as if debating whether or not she should approach.

Eventually she steeled herself and walked toward him, maintaining eye contact awkwardly.

"R-Ranma... uh... hi," she tried valiantly, floundering immediately.

"You all finished here?" Ranma asked casually.

Usagi sighed and nodded. "Yeah... there isn't anything else to say."

Ranma smiled. "Wanna go eat?"

"YES," the blonde said immediately, shoving the entire conversation with Luna to the back of her mind. Smiling brightly, she started walking down the street as her sensor fins popped up on her head, scanning for the nearest restaurants. Ranma followed.

As she watched from the doorway, Rei slapped a hand over her face in exasperation. "That girl really is hopeless. I'd better go too." Sighing, she closed and locked the door quickly before dashing after the fools.

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Nal'Shek nodded as his fingers twitched gently in the air, pointing toward one of the empty food crates that floated in mid-air a few feet away.

"-so that is essentially what the Force is. Scientifically it's an energy pattern that forms the very framework of this universe; a chaotic web of subtle energies hiding within chunks of crude matter. However, to our kind, it is something more. It is a source of strength beyond the myopic understandings of science. The Force speaks to us, resonates with us; it is the center of our existence and our reason for being."

Hotaru panted heavily from where she had been doing push-ups as her new teacher requested, and eventually summoned the strength to nod before she grunted and tried to lift herself up again. She was really starting to resent Nal'Shek's request that she revert back from her Senshi form for the training so that her natural body would benefit fully from his exercises, but she kept her peace with little effort.

She never once thought to ask how the spectre knew that she had a civilian form, much less it's name and nature in relation to her Senshi form. She had told him a lot about the Moon Kingdom in the distant past, but never anything from which he could infer her being a relatively normal human being temporarily powered-up by the powers she'd described. Yet the detail completely slipped her mind.

"Of course, in my current state - dead, that is - this is about all I can manage. One's grip on the Force weakens considerably with the loss of a physical vessel through which to funnel the energies." He turned his wispy, translucent hand over, and the crate fell back to Earth in the unchallenged grip of gravity. Then the phantom glanced at his apprentice and sighed. "All right Hotaru, that's enough for now. You can stop. Though in the future, You should aspire to more than seven push-ups before you collapse in exhaustion like that."

Hotaru glanced up at the ancient master in annoyance. "Why do I have to do this at all? What do push-ups have to do with commanding powerful ancient magic, anyway? I can already do that, and all I have to do is wave a stick around and shout."

"The Force is not mere magic. At least, not as you understand it. Both the body and mind must be strong, in order to work in perfect concert with the Force." Then he cocked his semi-transparent head to the side. "You have a point, though: you already have enough power, don't you?"

Hotaru blinked as she sat up, and then lowered her head, frowning. "More than I know what to do with, really."

"Well, that's precisely it," the spectre said smugly. "There is much the Force has to offer. Raw power IS one of the more popular advantages, I must admit, but it is one of many."

Hotaru slowly raised her head to the spirit, obviously intrigued.

"With a deep understanding and connection to the Force, all things are ultimately possible. I stand before you as living proof, having challenged and defeated the boundary between life and death." Nal'Shek smirked wryly. "Well, partially, anyway."

Hotaru looked somewhat interested, but still skeptical. "Okay... so all things are possible... if you have enough power and knowledge. So I could control my powers more easily, and use them without harming myself? Or... Or maybe I could strengthen my body more, so I'm not so weak when I'm not in Senshi form?"

Nal'Shek rolled his eyes. "Well, of course. But I suspect you're thinking a bit too... big. From what you tell me, you have little need of combat power. Even glimpsing the future, if I recall correctly, is of limited use to you." He floated closer to Hotaru, leaning forward toward her ear as the girl stared at him curiously. "Power isn't what you want. You have... other desires. Through the Force, ANYTHING you want is within your grasp. All you need to do is take it."

Hotaru shivered as one by one, images came unbidden to her mind. Nal'Shek was right; she didn't want combat power or the ability to push things with her mind. She'd always wanted more mundane things: health, acceptance, friends... love...

Her face flushed as she considered a certain pigtailed policeman she had grown rather close to over the past month; she had given up on the idea of a relationship with Ranma, but that didn't mean that the attraction had faded in the least. Was it possible? Would mastering the Force really help her in something as petty as romance? The idea of training in the use of mystical, eldritch powers to help her social life seemed stupid, but the possibilities haunted her.

"Okay, fine, I get it," Hotaru said somewhat gruffly, trying to hide her embarrassment as she stood up. "Learning this Force stuff certainly couldn't hurt, right?" Then she frowned. "But... one thing's still bothering me..." actually, there were a few things bothering her, but for some reason it was difficult to think about most them; whenever she tried to focus the thoughts would vanish, as if she was trying to grasp hold of a soap bubble.

"Yes? You can ask me anything," the spirit confided.

"Why are you training me, exactly?" Hotaru asked. "I'm just a random girl who showed up on your doorstep by accident and broke into your home. And I don't even need your training to do anything important."

"Yes, why indeed," Nal'Shek said drolly, "after all, I'm SO busy floating about talking to myself to better retain my language skills, it's a wonder I can find the time."

"Right, right," the purple-haired girl mumbled. "But... why me? Like you said, I don't need the power; why not teach someone else these skills?"

"Force-sensitive individuals aren't so common that you can just start training any old klutz that happens to tumble into your ancient subterranean fortress," Nal'Shek deadpanned. "A certain level of biological intellect is required for a mind to properly grasp the Force; a level that the humans of this planet have only recently obtained. Even then, only one in a million is Force-sensitive enough to possibly learn to utilize these powers."

He sighed, which seemed rather strange coming from a ghost. "When I left my home, I was relentlessly pursued by my oppressors, and my craft was badly damaged before it made the jump to hyperspace. I spent YEARS in that bleak, twilight realm, unable to restore function to the key systems of my ship to revert back to realspace. Until one day, by sheer, freak chance, my path brought me close enough to an astral body for the gravity well to forcibly pull my craft back into normal space." He chuckled ruefully. "My relief was short-lived, as that same gravity immediately brought me crashing down to the planet, demolishing my ship even further."

Then the spirit's expression twisted into a grimace. "I wasn't much better off on the planet than I was trapped in hyperspace. This planet was a primitive world, rich with resources and life, but untouched by civilization. The 'humans' were brutal, disorganized tribesman who had barely begun to cook up a proper spoken language. Weakened considerably from my trials, I barely had the strength to fend them off, much less conquer their tribes in order to create a useful society from which I could get supplies. And training the dirty primals in the ways of the Force was out of the question, of course. I knew my time was short." He gestured to the walls around him. "In my final years I fled underground with all the technology I could salvage and replicate, and a small band of primitives that had seen my powers and were convinced I was divinity. I constructed this lair and prepared for my death, but in a last, brilliant surge of self-preservation, conducted some fervent research on ways I might preserve myself, so that I might pass on the ways of the Force to the humans of this world once they had properly evolved. I imagine that I was long dead and waiting patiently underground during the entire rise and fall of this 'Moon Kingdom' you told me of. A pity, but that's how it goes."

He turned toward Hotaru, smiling. "But now, here I am. Standing before me is the finest potential Force-user I have seen in all my years, alive or dead. Once I pass on my knowledge to you, the circle will be complete, and at last, my spirit can rest."

Hotaru blinked repeatedly, a bit overwhelmed. "Oh... uh... are you... are you SURE that I have that potential? You said that power in the Force needs a strong body and mind, but my body has always been so weak..."

"This is true, to a point," the phantom hedged. "Any real power or understanding in the Force must be obtained through the proper training methods. However, students of exceptional potential often have that potential manifest unexpectedly as they mature. Sometimes they show an uncanny influence over others, or they can glimpse into the future. As for you... well, you said you were a healer, correct?"

Hotaru nodded hesitantly. "Well, yes, but that comes from being the Senshi of Saturn..." then she frowned. "Doesn't it?"

Nal'Shek shook his head. "The power of Saturn is one that can only destroy, my apprentice. And although destruction is an essential force in the universe, it is not the most flexible one. Although this... 'magic shell' that you don from time to time may focus your simmering Force sensitivities, your ability to mend wounds is a more natural skill than that. The Force is strong in you; you are merely unskilled in its use." He smiled kindly at her, and held out his wispy, semi-transparent hand. "With your permission, and a bit of time, I would like to change that."

The teenage girl stared at his hand thoughtfully, searching her mind for something, anything, to cast doubt to his words and justify the nagging unease that she felt deep within her heart.

Finding nothing, she smiled back. "All right... Nal-sensei." With that she took hold of his hand.

Or tried to, anyway. Stumbling a bit from surprise as her hand went right through him, she quickly stood up straight and sweatdropped. "Oh. Right. Ghost. I forgot."

The spectre rolled his eyes, and then floated a few feet higher off the ground. "So. Are you ready to continue?"

Hotaru was about to nod emphatically, but then she stopped thoughtfully. "Actually... I have one more question... if these Force-users were so powerful and rare, did they have a special name?"

Nal'Shek remained unusually neutral as he raised an eyebrow. "...... Yes. They did indeed. Tell me, my apprentice; have you ever heard of the Sith?"

Hotaru shook her head.

The phantom couldn't help his lip quirking slightly into a smile as he continued. "Ah... it is a title you will enjoy soon enough. But before that: training. Come with me..."

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"Oh, wow! This is great!" Usagi chirped between mouthfuls of soba noodles. "Rei-chan, you have to try some! They just melt in your mouth!"

Rei briefly glanced over at Usagi to roll her eyes in annoyance before turning back to watch Ranma, who was in the corner of the restaurant several meters away arguing with the store manager.


"What do you mean, 'no discount'? I'm a cop! You give cops discounts, don't you?" The pigtailed man groused.

The man was firm in his reluctance to give Ranma a damn thing. "You sir, are not a proper police officer, which is why you are not eligible for a discount. We do not give discounts to military personnel."

Ranma crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, why the heck not?"

"BECAUSE, sir, the police officers protect and maintain the peace in our communities. Men of your ilk are paid equal salaries to destroy it, and this restaurant will not subsidize that behavior."

Ranma's hands clenched into fists briefly, and then unclenched. "We do TOO protect the peace! Don't you read the papers?"

"I do, sir. Though there have been no zombie infestations or mutant attacks that I've seen."

"And why do you think that is, huh?" Ranma asked pointedly, jabbing a thumb at himself.

The manager merely shook his head. "I apologize for your dissatisfaction, sir, but if you're not happy enough with us that you're willing to pay full price, I can direct you to several other restaurants with policies that may be more lenient.

"But they gave us a discount the last time I was here!" Ranma tried, trying the last tactic he had for winning the argument.

The manager twitched. "Yes. Yes, you did. That... American was with you then, wasn't he?"

Ranma was silent for several moments. "Oh," he said in a small voice. "You know, I'm awfully hungry. Maybe I should just go sit down and eat."

"Very good, sir. Enjoy your meal," the manager said through clenched teeth.


Rei shook her head sadly as he watched Ranma break off from the argument, sulking. "They shouldn't be surprised that they can't get any respect anywhere. No matter how much good they actually do, they have a reputation." She turned back to Usagi, prepared to brief her on telling Ranma off and cutting her ties with the DAPC as Luna demanded.

Instead, her glass slipped out of her fingers as her mouth moved wordlessly in shock; one of Usagi's articulated arms was reaching out of its shoulder bay, grabbing for a dinner roll.

"USAGI!" Rei hissed, trying very hard to keep from shouting outright. "What do you think you're doing?"

The cyborg in question looked up from where she was attacking the last remnants of her first course. "Hmm? What's wrong? There's plenty of bread Rei-chan, I'm not gonna take all of it."

Rei sat silently in her seat for a moment, counting to ten in her head to calm down. Then she raised her hand and pointed toward the mechanical limb.

Usagi stared at her own appendage for a moment, and then her eyes widened in realization. "OH! Oops! Wow, I didn't even notice this time! It just felt completely natural, you know?" She chuckled nervously as the mechanical limb remained outstretched, not moving from where it clutched the bread.

By now Rei had a hand over her eyes, and was mentally congratulating herself for not screaming in frustration. "Usagi-chan. Please. Put it away. Now."

Usagi started to do so, but then stopped and briefly looked around curiously. "You know... maybe it's okay. People don't really seem to mind it." There were a few children staring at her in awe, but for the most part the other patrons seemed to be quite deliberately ignoring her.

"It doesn't matter!" Rei hissed. "If you walk around with stuff like that out in the open, you're going to cause a panic!"

"Eh, I dunno about that," Ranma said as he finally reached the table once again, sitting across from Rei, "people around here are getting real used to weird stuff. Even when I walk Hunter, nowadays only two or three people run away screaming in terror."

"My gods, you people don't have any propriety at all," Rei murmured, massaging her temples. "Saotome-san, do you ever wonder why people hate you and your department so much?"

Ranma froze with his chopsticks hovering over his plate, looking thoughtful. "... Occasionally. But then I look at all the smoking ruins that used to be buildings, blame everything on Snake, and feel much better."

"While Snake-san is a terrible, terrible man," Rei mumbled, "it's not ENTIRELY his fault."

"A whole lot of is, though," Ranma said as he popped a piece of nigiri in his mouth, "and he does attract the most attention."

Usagi looked thoughtful as she plucked the dinner roll out of the grasp of her shoulder-mounted claw. "You know, I've been thinking about that. Does Snake have a girlfriend?"

Ranma snorted immediately at the thought, barely able to keep the food in his mouth long enough to swallow. "No. No, he does not have a girlfriend. Or a lover, or a wife, or anyone who's interested in being any of those things."

The blonde smiled. "Oh, that's not entirely true!"

"Eh?"

Usagi's eyes sparkled as she smiled at Ranma. "I wanna set Snake up with Mina-chan!"

Rei groaned pitifully as Ranma stared blankly at Usagi.

"But... I... I thought you liked Minako," he said dumbly.

"Of course I do! And I also like Snake! And more importantly, Mina-chan likes Snake! So we should get them together!" She looked intensely happy at the thought, and Ranma sweatdropped.

"That sounds like a very bad idea to me," the pigtailed man said. "Snake is a dangerous guy. Also, he's kinda... cold toward women," he admitted.

Ranma had observed Junko and her alter-ego, Akina, harassing Snake on several occasions in the past, only to be brushed off with a merciless, irritated coldness very different from his own embarrassed, awkward protests. He didn't really know why Snake would object to a relationship or even casual sex, as the man seemed to revel in other dark activities - most often drinking and killing - but had never thought to ask.

"He just hasn't met the right girl yet," Usagi insisted. "Mina-chan is very pretty and easy to get along with. He'll fall for her if he just gives her a chance." She nodded decisively to herself. "I just really want to see Mina-chan try a real relationship again instead of all these wild flings. It's not that-"

Usagi was interrupted as Rei suddenly put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a leaden stare. "What?"

"Isn't there something you're supposed to tell Saotome-san?" the raven-haired woman said. "Something that PRECLUDES setting Mina-chan up with a psychotic, gun-wielding barbarian?"

Usagi's face darkened immediately. "Oh. Right..." It just wasn't fair; why did she have to lose friends just because they wouldn't take orders from her? While she understood everybody's concerns regarding the officers of the DAPC, they had been there to help her when her world had been turned upside down, completely of their own volition and without any scorn for her "condition". Even though they had threatened to destroy her should she turn evil, they were only looking out for the public interest; why couldn't the others see that? At the end of the day, weren't they all on the same side?

"Something wrong, Usagi-chan?" Ranma asked between bites. He more or less knew what was coming, of course, but in the end, it was Usagi's decision to make, and he wouldn't interfere until after she made it.

The cyborg girl scratched her head nervously as she tried to think of what to say. "Well, it's not... uh... y-yes. I guess... something is wrong. Kinda." She started twiddling her thumbs together as she spoke, and above her head, a second mechanical arm joined the first, and the two latch onto each other before twisting back and forth in imitation of someone wringing her hands. "It's just... you know how you're always trying to help me out, but you keep... that is, things don't turn out... uh... good? Like, at all?"

Ranma looked thoughtful for a moment. "That reminds me: have you given any thought to Snake's offer? I mean, you'll need a day job now that you're out of college, right?" He frowned. "We're really sorry about messing up your tutoring, but at this point a job is all we can really offer you."

"Er... right! About that," Usagi said quickly, wanting to put off Ranma's dismissal a little longer, "I really appreciate all that you've done for me, but I don't really know anything about being a police officer, you know? You guys all went to the academy to learn that, right?"

"Do you know how to beat people up and kill monsters?" Ranma asked drolly. "You were Sailor Moon for a long time, right?"

Usagi blinked. "Well, sure..."

"Well, what do you think WE do all day?"

The blonde cyborg blinked in surprise. "But... the academy-"

"The academy only taught me useless stuff that I never use, or already know. Like people's rights when it comes to searching their homes, or how to kill someone bare-handed."

Rei winced. It didn't take much thought to guess which skill he never used and which skill he already knew, and presumably used often.

"The point is that you already have what it takes to be a cop," Ranma confided, nodding to himself. "All that matters is that you want to help people... and that you have a cyborg body with rocket boosters and a plasma gun. That's what counts."

"Really? I... I mean..." Usagi began flushing again, having no idea how she was supposed to continue now. Snake's offer hadn't sounded that bad once she'd gotten the chance to think about it, and reminded her of the conversation she'd had with Ranma when he caught her blowing up someone's car in frustration. Why not become a police officer? It was a useful, productive, and well-respected job (in most departments, anyway), and she had spent most of her teenage life fighting for justice already. Besides, it wasn't as if she had any other prospects waiting now that she had been booted out of school.

Rei groaned. "You know what? The hell with this. Usagi-chan, why don't you take a break in the restroom? I'll take care of things here."

Usagi looked up uncertainly. "Huh? Really?" While she was all too happy to avoid the awkward responsibility of having to tell Ranma to shove off and take his entire department with him, she didn't really want to leave the task up to Rei, the Senshi with the worst opinion of the department in question. Never mind that Rei was stubborn and temperamental on her best days, and was already on shaky terms with Ranma.

"If I leave it to you, we'll be here all night," the raven-haired woman groused. "You go take a break, and I'll straighten this out, okay?"

Usagi looked at Ranma in concern, but the pigtailed man merely shrugged. "Okay... I guess that's fine..." she got up hesitantly, and then scurried off toward the restrooms, not wanting to see the expected explosion from her fiery-tempered friend.


"All right, Saotome-san," Rei began, moving her chair back a bit before crossing her arms and legs, "let me spell it out for you: We can't associate with you anymore. We're grateful for the help - and the attempts to help - and we totally support your crusade against the darkness and whatnot, but from now on we have to go our separate ways. That means no coordinated attacks, no calling the cops for help if a youma proves a little too tough, and certainly no 'bodyguards' for our leader."

"Then we have a problem," Ranma deadpanned, "since I was ordered to keep tabs on Usagi-chan."

"I know. And I would appreciate if you'd help us get that order rescinded. We'll call up your captain if we have to, but you need to talk to whoever you need to talk to and tell them that Usagi-chan doesn't need your protection OR your scrutiny."

Ranma frowned. "That's going to be hard. The lady that appears in my dreams hasn't shown up recently."

Rei blinked. Twice. "Wait, what?"

"Nothing," Ranma mumbled, taking a sip of tea. "So you're in college too, right? What are you studying?"

Rei blinked yet again, confused. "Uh... I'm an anthropology major with a minor in religious studies. Why?"

"Ever had an interest in police work?" Ranma asked casually before taking a sip of tea.

Rei's eyes narrowed. "NO."

"Why not? You already run around searching for evil and injustice and blow it up. You could be getting paid for it." Then he leaned closer. "Also, our uniforms are a bit more... you know... dignified. This way we could still have someone on our team watching her, and you won't have anyone you don't trust snooping around."

"Noted," Rei said sharply, "but joining your department poses the same problems as letting you guys hang around all the time. It's out of the question."

Ranma sighed. "Ah. Well, it was worth a shot. What does Usagi-chan think of all this, exactly?"

"Usagi-chan likes you guys," Rei said bluntly. "Frankly, if it were just up to her she'd probably be employed in your department by now. But this isn't just about her; your actions toward her could be endangering the rest of us, and by extension, a whole lot of other people too."

Ranma looked conflicted at that point. He understood Rei's concerns, but the situation still seemed wrong to him.

"Usagi-chan really feels terrible about this," Rei continued, seeing that the pigtailed cop was thinking seriously about what she had said. "She understands that she has to stop accepting your help, but she isn't the most rational person in the world. She's probably tearing her hair out in the bathroom fretting over this even as we speak."

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In the bathroom, Usagi stared at her reflection, an expression of profound surprise and confusion on her face.

'When was the last time I used the toilet?'

It was a reasonable question, even if some might have imagined she'd have more pressing matters on her mind. The last time she recalled using a bathroom for anything other than showers and makeup was before her unwilling conversion into a cyborg. She honestly had no idea what to think about this.

Frowning slightly, she turned and walked into a toilet stall.

After closing the door and pulling down her pants and underwear, she tenderly sat down on the seat and waited for almost a full minute, thinking intently the whole time.

'Hmmmm... hey, computer?'

A green blip appeared in her field of vision, and a cursor started blinking in front of her.

'Uh... well, this is kind of a weird question, even to ask myself, but... how do I pee?'

The cursor didn't move for several seconds.

+Waste containment units at 16% capacity. Initiate waste disposal?+

The cyborg scratched her head. 'That's not very full, is it? Well, as long as I'm already here, yes, do the waste disposal thing.+ She straightened and briefly adjusted her position on the toilet to get more comfortable.

Shwoop! Usagi felt her shirt tighten and threaten to rip as something slid out of the small of her back, and she groaned.

"What? It comes out of THERE now? Why?" Grumbling irritably, a mechanical arm unfolded out of her shoulder and promptly slipped into her shirt to grab whatever had come out. "I'm going to have to get a special toilet built and everything... this is so... eh?" She blinked and stared at the item her mechanical claw was holding: a small glass cylinder with a metal cap. Within the tube was a strange, blue-green liquid that glowed ominously in the dim lights of the restroom. After a moment, a reticle appeared over the container, and several readouts appeared around it.

Usagi, not knowing what a "Geiger readout" was, shrugged and then stood up and pulled up her pants. Then she took the cylinder, unscrewed the lid, and dumped the unusual - though still kind of gross-looking - contents into the toilet bowl before flushing.

'Well, it's a bit strange, but a lot cleaner, I guess," she mumbled to herself as her robot arm pushed the container into her back once more. Then, without another thought, she walked out of the stall to wash her hands.

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"All right, look, I can accept that you people aren't keen on us following you around, but I still have my orders, you know?" Ranma explained as he finished the last of his dinner. "If we want to work this out, we'll have to have Usagi-chan come to HQ and talk to Asuka herself. If she's convinced, then it all works out."

Rei frowned. "And how hard will it be to talk her out of this surveillance thing?"

"Shouldn't be too tough. She'll want to have as many people together as possible to fight off the vampires, and it seems pretty obvious to me that the Angels are in no hurry to get her back," Ranma explained. "But it'll have to come from Usagi-chan. I mean, she hasn't even met you before, so your argument probably won't hold a lot of weight."

The raven-haired girl nodded, a slight smile on her face. "That sounds fair. We'll do that." Finally letting herself relax again, she slid her chair back toward the table. "I'm glad you're not fighting me about this. I got the impression that you weren't this sensible."

"Yeah. I got the impression that if I tried to argue, you'd hurt me," he explained tactlessly. Years of dealing with assertive women with short fuses had made him quite sensitive to their presence.

Rei's pleased disposition evaporated, and her eyes narrowed. She didn't say anything, to contradict him, though.

"Anyway, if we're not going to be working together anymore, I think you guys should probably lay off the Freedom's Angels," Ranma said, wiping his mouth. "Probably the vampires too. It's really dangerous."

"Thanks Mom, but we're plenty used to dangerous," Rei deadpanned before taking a sip of tea.

Ranma's eyes narrowed back. "Hey, I'm just looking out for you guys. If you couldn't take Igov on your own, you think you can just roll into Wraith Labs and kidnap one of their leaders?"

Rei's hands clenched into fists. "I told you, he caught us by surprise! AND he had artillery support!"

"And you don't think there are more surprises hanging out in their labs?" Ranma pressed, planting one elbow on the table to lean on it. "Or more artillery? You want me to just stand by and let a bunch of girls walk into a deathtrap?"

A vein popped up on Rei's head from the "bunch of girls" comment. "We're stronger than you think. Don't underestimate us!"

"We can talk about who's underestimating who after I appear just in time to save you from a horde of rampaging mecha," Ranma said, snorting.

Rei clenched her teeth. "You start poking around in our battles again, and we'll see who needs saving!"

The pair glared at each other for a moment, and a spark of electricity flashed between them.

"Hey, are you two all right?" Usagi asked as she walked back to the table, looking concerned.

The tension melted as Ranma and Rei turned away from each other.

"Fine," Rei mumbled. 'Egocentric jerk.'

"It's nothing," Ranma said. 'Arrogant brat.'

Rei spent a moment combing a hand through her hair before speaking again. "Anyway, we have it all sorted out, for the most part. But you're still going to have to go down to crazy cop hea-" she stopped speaking, and blinked, as if the statement had been a mistake. "Sorry. Down to DAPC headquarters and tell the top brass that you're going to need some alone time, okay?"

Usagi winced as Ranma bristled again. "Okay... but can we order something else first? I'm still hungry."

BWOOOM!! The entire building shook briefly as an explosion roared from the rear of the restaurant, and after Ranma had helped Usagi get back on her feet (as naturally she had fallen flat on her face), the trio all turned to find the cause of the disturbance, their expressions grim.

The door to the women's bathroom burst open, and a slightly charred woman stumbled out, her hair in disarray and a rather large scorch mark on her dress. "Fire! There's a fire in the middle stall!"

"Somebody call the fire department!"

"It's spreading fast! Someone get an extinguisher!"

"It's blue! Dear gods, why is it blue?!"


Ranma's face darkened. "Ah... something you want to tell us, Usagi-chan?"

A patch of skin over Usagi's wrist popped open like a hatch, revealing a digital watch. "Wow, look at the time! If I'm going to make it to headquarters before they close, I have to go, now!" Usagi said, sweating profusely.

"It's two in the afternoon," Rei deadpanned.

"And headquarters doesn't really 'close'," Ranma added. "At least, not unless Snake is ditching work again."

Usagi wasn't about to let a bunch of petty, inconvenient "facts" impede her escape, and she quickly dumped some cash on the table before latching onto Ranma and dragging him out the front door. "No time to argue! Have to hurry! Busy busy busy!"

Rei rolled her eyes and stood up, ignoring the waiters rushing past with extinguishers and a garden hose. 'I'd feel a lot better criticizing the DAPC if my friends were any better,' she groused silently. 'Oh well. Usagi knows what she has to do and Saotome has been put in his place. Nothing could go wrong at this point.'

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"Hm? What this, then?" Asuka asked, turning away from her coffee to regard Usagi and Ranma.

Usagi bowed low, her face flushed. "I'm really sorry about this! I know you guys are only trying to help and I really appreciate how nice you've been to me, but I can't work with you anymore!"

The bluette raised an eyebrow, and then took another sip of coffee before putting the mug down. "... Are you talking about that job offer from Snake?"

"Er..." Usagi hesitated for a moment. "Well... that too. I can't work for you guys. I mean, it doesn't sound that bad, really, and I DO kinda need a job right now, but things are... complicated."

"Hmmm..." Asuka sat back in her chair for a moment, crossing her arms over her chest. "I admit that I don't know much about the lifestyles of famous magical girls/college students, but it sounds to me like there's some resentment in the ranks."

Usagi chuckled in embarrassment. "Ah, yeah. Something like that."

"I understand. Not everyone appreciates government protection," the police captain admitted, stopping to take another sip of coffee. "Especially when Lieutenant Snake is doing the protecting."

BLAMMO!! Everyone in the room ducked reflexively as an explosion boomed throughout the station lobby, originating from somewhere down the hall.

"Not my fault!" Usagi said immediately, crawling under Asuka's desk.

"Of course it wasn't," a male, accented voice said before Snake emerged from the hallway. He looked slightly scorched, and smoke wafted from the rocket launcher carried over his shoulder. "Somebody call me?"

"NO," Asuka snapped as she stood back up. "Why in the hell are you firing ROCKETS in here?! We've barely started fixing the building from the vampire assault!"

"I was clearing out the sub-levels like you asked me to!" Snake protested, dropping the rocket launcher down at his side.

"What? Something got loose?" Ranma asked in concern.

"Nope. No damage. And man, you should have seen the look on the bloodsucker's face when we told him that his friends busted in here and all died! HA! Priceless!"

Asuka's eyes narrowed. "Then WHAT were you trying to blow up?"

"Roaches."

Ranma's eyes bugged out. "You mean those mutant roaches are back?"

"Nope." Snake said, unapologetic as usual.

Asuka gripped her hands into fists and growled. "We'll talk about this later. Tsukino-san has just arrived to personally decline the little employment offer you handed her without my approval."

"What? Why?" Snake asked, looking honestly surprised.

"Yeah, I can't IMAGINE why she would give up the possibility of working here with you," Ranma deadpanned. 'This is really the kind of person she wants dating her friends? Weirdo.'

"I'm sorry!" Usagi exclaimed, bowing again. "It's not that I don't want the job, but I can't take it! It... well..."

"It's all right, you don't need to explain the particulars," Asuka said gently. "Still... even though I don't like Snake going over my head like that, if you had accepted the job, I couldn't really think of a good reason to turn you down. You have experience, you seem reasonably sane, and you can carry your own personal armory around with you to work. Much better than our last blonde." Of course, Usagi also seemed fairly incompetent, overemotional, and was as irritatingly bubbly as Sakura ever was, but those issues seemed petty when one of her top officers was using a rocket launcher to kill insects indoors.

Usagi felt another pang deep within her at the praise. "Ah, well... yeah... it can't be helped, though."

Snake frowned. This was far from ideal. It sounded like Usagi wasn't just refusing to join the department, but was cutting herself off from the DAPC entirely. And while he found the girl's personality annoying and her combat skills laughable, she had a stomach/fridge full of beer, which more than redeemed the other flaws.

At this point, however, there was only one persuasion tactic he had left.

"Are you sure you don't want to be a cop? All the cool people are doing it."

As Asuka facefaulted, Usagi turned toward Snake, blinking. "What?"

"All the cool people are police officers. Just look at me and Ranma. You want to be cool, don't you?"

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"And that's why I need your help to find a place to stay close to the headquarters. I don't want a long commute to work every day, you know?" Usagi explained.

Ami and Minako stared at her slack-jawed. Behind them, Makoto sweatdropped as Rei banged her head repeatedly against the kitchen wall.

The blonde cyborg blinked innocently as she sat down at the other end of the table, wearing a pair of blue nylon pants, heavy boots, and a black tank top. In her hands was her new police badge, the bizarre emblem of the DAPC gleaming brightly in the dim kitchen lighting.

"You're not serious. You can't be serious," Rei chanted as she stopped smashing her head uselessly and grabbed fistfuls of her hair in frustration. "This is a joke, right? It's a stupid practical joke! KNOCK IT OFF!!"

Usagi winced. "Rei-chan, don't be so mean! It's not really anything worth getting angry about..."

"Not worth getting angry about? You were supposed to go to their headquarters to tell them to buzz off for good, and instead you let them HIRE you!" Rei growled.

"I just wanted to fit in!" Usagi complained, sniffling.

Ami massaged her forehead. "Putting aside the absurd abuse of peer pressure, the numerous complications of your new career and your old one, AND your doing the exact opposite of what Luna asked you to do, you're going to have trouble finding available properties very close to the station. The nearest residential sector is just out of walking distance."

"So what? She can fly," Makoto pointed out.

Usagi grimaced. "Actually, I'd prefer it if I didn't have to fly to work every morning. The rocket boosters are convenient... but flying is kind of scary." She briefly recalled the booster mishaps that had resulted in her crashing through walls, smashing up sections of sidewalk, and smacking her head on lamp posts. "... And painful."

"Well, the other problem is that the only facilities available are upper-income houses and condos. They're probably a bit beyond your pay grade. Besides that, the closer one gets to DAPC headquarters, the more obscenely expensive the insurance rates become," Ami mused.

Minako looked eager as she leaned across the table. "So, how much are you making? Can you buy a car?"

Usagi frowned as she tried to remember the details of her employment. It was difficult, since her "orientation" consisted of Asuka listing the various regulations and responsibilities she had as an officer, and then grumbling about all the different ways everyone always ignored them. She had found Junko and Tiro's disrespect for the department's sexual harassment policy to be particularly galling.

"I think they said... eight million yen a year?" Usagi said, scratching her head.

Makoto blinked. "Wow. That's not bad."

"Yeah, but they said that workman's comp works differently for us than in most jobs," Usagi explained, frowning. "Also, instead of a dental or medical plan, they gave me a business card from the local auto mechanic and a pack of coupons."

"Redundant, I'm sure," Ami mumbled, scratching her chin. "After all, you have a very efficient auto-repair system, and Dr. Tuko seemed perfectly competent when it came to fixing you before."

"Whoa, whoa, WHOA!" Rei suddenly shouted, directing all eyes toward her. "What is WRONG with you people? Don't tell me you've accepted this!"

Makoto shrugged. "Well, why not? At this point she's already employed and everything. Why turn back now?"

"Because instead of distancing herself from a cadre of crazy people with guns, she's supposed to work for them now?" Rei deadpanned. "That seems like a pretty good reason to me."

Minako sighed. "Well... I can understand where Luna's coming from, I guess... and I still haven't forgiven them for arresting us... but on the other hand, this is the perfect chance for Usagi-chan to set me up with Snake!" She giggled as Usagi gave her a bright thumbs-up.

Thump! Rei banged her head into the wall once more, and left it there as she sighed. "Ami-chan? PLEASE tell me you see something wrong with this."

Ami rolled her eyes. "Of course. There's plenty wrong with this." She really felt bad when she saw the glimmer of hope in Rei's eyes, but she had no choice. "Unfortunately, I don't think any of it matters. It's ultimately up to Usagi-chan where she starts a career, and I'm not about to challenge that. Especially if the majority is okay with it." The Senshi didn't operate as a democracy for the most part, but Ami still felt that Makoto and Minako's acceptance precluded any interference on her part.

"Well, that's just great," the raven-haired girl groused. "And so it's up to me to return home and inform our irate feline advisors that Usagi has done the exact OPPOSITE of what she was supposed to do, and then put up with their endless complaining for the rest of the night."

"Sounds like the bun calling the oven black," Minako said, snickering. Rei briefly debated a witty comeback, but decided that Minako was humiliating herself just fine without her help.

"If you don't want to put up with Luna, why don't you just stay here for tonight?" Makoto said, shrugging. "Now that Usagi's leaving, they have an extra bed open. And now that Ami's gone alcoholic, we've got enough booze in the fridge for everyone."

"I am not an alcoholic," the bluette protested weakly. "Really, the moment I open a fourth beer everyone starts getting so judgmental..."

Rei considered it. "So, I guess this means that Saotome-san is going to be around a lot, huh?"

"Not necessarily. I mean, now that she's one of us, we won't need to follow her around to keep tabs on her," Ranma said as he walked up behind the raven-haired girl.

Rei nodded. "Yeah, I suppose that's-HEY!" She whirled around angrily. "What are you doing here?"

Ranma blinked, noting that all the girls except Usagi were expressing various levels of shock from his presence. "I was listening in on your discussion. Why?"

Makoto winced. "Ranma-kun, you're really going to have to learn to be a little more dishonest. This just isn't healthy."

Rei's eyes burned as she stared up at the pigtailed man. "I meant, why are you here at all? You've managed to drag Usagi into your defunct little family, and by your own admission you don't need to follow her around all the time anymore. Don't you have better things to do?"

Ranma crossed his arms over his chest, glaring right back. "Like Usagi said, she doesn't really like to fly. So she needed someone to drive her here."

The Senshi of Mars snorted. "So you've been demoted from bodyguard to chauffeur, have you?"

Ranma's stared hard at her for a few more moments, then wilted. "Well, actually, Snake drove us down here. I really don't have better things to do than tag along."

Slam! Ami briefly glanced behind her as Minako slammed the door behind her. "Hm. We won't see her for a while." She cocked her head to the side. "Saotome-san, how big is your current living space?"

The pigtailed man blinked. "Eh? Pretty big, I guess. More than big enough for me and Hunter, at least. Why?"

"Well, then the housing issue seems fairly simple to me. Usagi-chan, why don't you move in with him?"

Rei groaned as Usagi looked confused. "Eh? Why would I do that?"

"Saotome-san already makes a daily commute to work, presumably without the aid of jet boosters," Ami explained. "Also, you seem perfectly comfortable having him around all the time. Thus, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that you room with him until you find a more permanent place to settle in."

"I don't know," Usagi said, playing with the hem of her shirt nervously. "I mean, I've already imposed on Ranma-kun enough..."

"Nah, it's no problem," Ranma said, smiling. It'd be kind of nice to have other people in the house besides him. The last time he had lived with someone else was when he had lived with Kyle and Sakura, and although that had its own complications, it would probably be a lot easier this time around now that the blonde living with him didn't have a crush on him. "You can stay as long as you want. I've never gotten to actually use the guest room before."

"You're serious, aren't you?" Rei groused. "Hell, maybe I'll just move in here, then. When Luna hears this she's going to bite my head off." She continued grumbling as she walked out the door, figuring that watching Minako hit on the psychotic American would at least be entertaining as well as ridiculous.

Ranma made a face at her as she left, then crossed his arms over his chest. "Man, what's her problem, anyway? It's like she had a grudge against me before I even knew her."

Usagi chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of her head. "Oh, Rei-chan is just like that sometimes. Once you get to know her, she'll... uh... she'll..." the cyborg frowned. "Well, actually, she'll act pretty much the same. But she's a really good friend!"

"I don't doubt that, but if just being around is going to make her mad, I'd rather avoid her."

Makoto snickered slightly. "It's not you 'just being around,' Ranma-kun. You're pretty good at getting under her skin."

Ranma frowned. "Oh. Yeah. I get that a lot." It was strange, really. Most girls he could speak to without provoking them at all, but something about Rei seemed to challenge him, almost daring him to take his jabs at her. And Ranma never could resist and challenge, even when every shred of decency and common sense told him it was a bad idea.

Makoto looked thoughtful for a moment. "Actually... why don't you two start gathering up Usagi-chan's stuff? I have something I need to talk to Rei-chan about." Without waiting for a response, she turned and rushed out of the room.


Usagi shrugged it off and then turned to Ranma again, bowing low. "Thank you very much! I'm sorry that you're constantly helping me with everything!"

Ranma waved her off, smiling pleasantly. "Ah, it's no problem. I like helping you. Also, it keeps the weird ghost lady in my dreams from bugging me."

The blonde cyborg blinked. "What? Ghost lady?"

"It's nothing. Let's start moving your things."

"Oh. Okay." Usagi forgot about the strange comment and pointed toward her room. "It's all in there. Mako-chan helped box up everything, so all you have to is carry it out and put it in the car."

Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Uh... all I have to do? You're not going to help?"

Usagi looked surprised at the comment, and almost insulted. "You want me to do all that heavy lifting? I'm a girl! I could hurt myself!"

"You can lift over a metric ton, easily," Ami deadpanned from where she was opening another beer. "Plus, your skeletal structure can withstand levels of pressure that could crush a tank like a soda can."

Usagi looked adamant as she crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm still a girl! What if I broke a nail?"

"Your nails are made of tritanium alloy, of the sort used in experimental thermonuclear reactors, and shaped by what I can only guess were the most powerful industrial lasers," Ami continued, stopping to guzzle down half of her beverage. "It's no exaggeration to say they're some of the most durable objects on the face of the Earth."

Ranma's eyes narrowed at Usagi.

Usagi's eyes, in response, got wide, round, and wet. And then she sniffled.

"God damn it," Ranma mumbled as he turned around and got to work. Cyborg or not, Usagi was, indeed, a girl. Her mastery of puppy-dog eyes certainly proved that.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Rei-chan! Wait up!" Makoto said as she rushed after the raven-haired girl.

Rei got uneasy as her taller friend reached her and immediately wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Makoto was awfully happy; while she hadn't been too upset about the recent turn of events, this kind of cheer was totally uncalled for. "What?"

The brunette smirked and whispered into Rei's ear. "You know, I knew you had a little crush on the guy before... but you're still hot for him, aren't you?"

Rei twitched and looked indignant as her face turned red. "Wh-What? For Ranma-kun? You're out of your mind!"

"'Ranma-kun', hmm? What happened to 'Saotome-san'?" Makoto's smirk grew longer.

Rei turned her head away. "What of it? You call him by his first name, and you don't know him at all! At least I've had a conversation with him without trying to get him naked!"

Makoto looked disappointed. "Oh. Do you need some tips?"

The raven-haired girl stopped moving down the hall, as Makoto wasn't letting go. "Are you GOING anywhere with this?"

"I just wanted to confirm that you wanted him. I'll back off if you want, you know. There are plenty of guys out there for me."

"What gave you that ludicrous idea?!" Rei shouted. Her face was flushing again, though.

Makoto cocked her head to the side in thought. "Well... it's just a theory, but... you have a lot of admirers, Rei-chan."

Rei raised an eyebrow. "I've noticed. So what?" Her popularity with men came as no surprise to anyone, and despite her frequent complaints of lecherous idiots drooling over her all the time, she took great pride in her looks and the attention it got.

"SO, you could have any guy you wanted," Makoto mused, letting go of the fire Senshi and slowly walking around her, rubbing her chin. "Smart guys, cute guys, tough guys, rich guys... we're talking the cream of the crop, here."

"Could you hurry up and get to the point? If that maniac American tries to kill Mina-chan, I'd like to arrive in time to stop him," Rei groused.

Makoto ignored her interruption. "Yet you don't bother with any of them. I know you're not too busy for a sex life, and God knows we've tried every test we could think of to check if you were after Usagi and just too proud to come out of the closet..."

Rei twitched in irritation. That had NOT been a fun week. Well, not for her, anyway. Usagi apparently enjoyed it a lot, and she imagined that Mamoru had been given enough memories for months of naughty dreams.

"Oh, sure, you go on a date every once in a while, but it never goes anywhere! You're surrounded by good-looking, intelligent men with money who do everything in their power to please you, and you're bored to death with them!"

Rei twitched again. "I'm not sure I like where this is headed."

Makoto stopped circling and turned to stare Rei straight in the eyes. "But Ranma's different, right? He stands up to you. He challenges you. He doesn't seem to have those 'perverted impulses' you're always complaining about. And to top things off, he's some sort of martial artist super-cop." Her eyes narrowed as she grinned. "A guy like that seems pretty interesting, don't you think?"

Rei brushed past the taller girl as she continued on down the hall, avoiding eye contact. "Leave the wild romanticism to the blondes, will you? Ranma is annoying, thickheaded, insensitive, brash, and his butt isn't THAT great."

Makoto blinked. "I never said anything about his butt." It was certainly a topic worth covering, but she knew that it took more than good looks to enthrall the Senshi of Mars.

"N-Neither did I," Rei said quickly, stuttering only slightly as she tried to cover the slip. "My point is, he is NOT my type."

"You've been surrounded by 'your type' for over a year now, and you're still not getting any," the brunette said firmly as she followed Rei down the hall. "It's time to stop meandering around wasting your time and jump Ranma-kun's bones."

"And how the hell am I supposed to do that when he's always following Usagi around like her freaking shadow?" Rei asked heatedly. "...... Er, in the completely hypothetical scenario you're describing, I mean. Because I'm not attracted to him. At all." She quickly turned her head to side and coughed, aware that her cheeks nearly matched her fuku's skirt color by now.

Makoto would have grinned wider if her jaw could have borne the strain. "Ah, so is that the problem? Is Usagi-chan monopolizing all of Ranma-kun's time? I can sympathize, I guess. It was annoying when Usagi-chan kept telling me to stop hitting on him all the time. So what do you want to do about it, hmmm?"

"Absolutely nothing," the raven-haired girl said firmly, her expression hardening. "I'm ending this conversation. Usagi and Ranma are living together now, and they can do whatever the hell they want. So can you, for that matter. It's none of my business, and outside of my opinion that this whole arrangement is crazy, I'm staying out of it."

"Tsk! You're so BORING sometimes, you know that?" Makoto teased. "I'll help you nail him, if you'd like!"

"Do you know where Mina-chan went?" Rei asked, being true to her decision to end the discussion. Makoto looked decidedly disappointed as she shook her head. "Well, then I guess she'd be... wait. Oh! There she is! Mina-chan!"

Rei called out as she spied the blonde walking through the hallway, looking confused.

"Rei-chan?" Minako looked at her, glanced up and down the hallway, and then approached while frowning deeply. "Did you see Snake around here? He wasn't out with his car."

"No, we didn't. You can tell because of the lack of terrified screaming," Rei deadpanned. "Honestly Mina-chan, what do you see in that psycho, anyway? He's not spectacularly handsome or bright, he's senselessly violent, and it really seems as if he doesn't like you at all." Standing behind her, Makoto nodded mutely; while normally her opinions on love and romance diverged considerably from Rei's, she had witnessed Snake's callous disregard for life when she saw him shoot Mamoru repeatedly just to get information. Besides that, Minako wasn't exactly a girl who was hard up for companionship.

The Senshi of Venus frowned and placed one hand on her hip as she rubbed her chin with the other. "Well... it's not easy to explain..." She snapped her fingers. "When I saw him face off against that robot in the junkyard, he... well, that image was burned into my mind, and suddenly I knew what I had to do. That the man I was looking at was a terrible beast that only I could tame. Someone who's known only terror, pain, and death, but no love." She smiled and posed briefly with one hand gripped into a fist. "I will conquer Snake's heart! It is my responsibility-no, my duty as the Senshi of Venus to... what are you guys staring at, anyway?"

Rei and Makoto were currently gaping in shock as they watched a vent swing open from the air duct running along the middle of the hall ceiling with a small, black gun barrel slowly extending out of the opening, aimed down at the distracted blonde.

"HEY! What do you think you're doing?!" Rei snarled angrily. Shooting Mamoru was one thing, but that bastard wasn't going to get away with hurting Minako for no reason!

The blonde in question blinked, and then turned around right after the gun barrel slipped quietly back into the duct opening. "What? Who? Were you talking to me?" Looking around, she couldn't see anyone else...

"In the air duct!" Makoto shouted angrily. "What the hell are you doing in there? Come out now!"

Minako blinked and looked up, and heard a slight rustling noise before a small slip of paper floated out of the opening. She promptly snatched it up and read it aloud. "It says: 'Make me'."

Rei's eye twitched. "Is this really the caliber of the people we're entrusting with Usagi-chan? How childish can you idiots get?"

A second paper floated from the opening, and Minako grabbed it. "'I know you are, but what am I?'"

A vein popped up on Rei's head. "All right jerk, you asked for it!"

Makoto suddenly looked wary as the Senshi of Mars stalked up to the opening in the duct. "Uh, Rei-chan, do you think that's a good idea? He has a gun."

"I expect he has several," Rei growled as she reached the opening. The duct was still almost a meter over her head, though, so jumping up into the system was out of the question unless she had Makoto boost her up. But that was plan B. "You get out of there right now, Snake, or I'll get Ranma over here to drag you out!"

Another piece of paper floated down from above, but Rei just swatted it out of the air. "If you want to be childish about this, fine. Then I'll give you 'til the count of three to come down before I tell on you. ONE! TWO!"

Klonk! "Ow!" Rei exclaimed as a small metal object bounced off of her head and onto the floor. Spinning around, she stared at the object for a moment before her eyes bugged out; the object was a grenade, and a cursory inspection revealed the pin to be nowhere in sight.

"A grenade?" Makoto gasped, frozen stiff from surprise.

"HIT THE DECK!!" BANG!!

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"Pfeh. Dumb girls, freaking out over nothing. Can't even recognize a tranquilizer gun when they see one," Snake mumbled as he climbed out of the ceiling duct, landing on the floor of the maintenance closet and dusting himself off briefly. "Or a flashbang for that matter. What are they teaching kids nowadays in these worthless schools?"

Taking a moment to close the entrance to the air ducts, he slipped the rifle over his shoulder and walked out into the hall. It was certainly unusual for the American to carry anything non-lethal on his person, but he DID have special armaments for the occasions in which he couldn't kill the people that were annoying him.

"You! What are YOU doing here?"

Blinking, the American turned around to look down the hall. He was quite surprised to see Mamoru Chiba stalking down the hall toward him, looking understandably displeased. Well, he wasn't actually "stalking" so much as "limping," as the man seemed to have taken another bullet to the leg at some point.

"Can I help you?" Snake asked, looking honestly confused as to why the man seemed so upset.

Mamoru scowled as he approached. "I asked what you were doing here."

"I just drove Usagi-chan and Ranma down here. What's the problem?"

"What's the problem? WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?!" Mamoru screamed, causing Snake to wince from the noise. "Look at my leg! I was shot AGAIN! Every time I go near you or your headquarters, I get shot! I've had so much surgery recently that the nurses put a nameplate on my hospital room as a joke!"

The American nodded, rubbing his chin. "I see... well, I don't remember shooting you since the last time I was here, but I don't really deserve the benefit of the doubt. I DO shoot a lot of people." He raised an eyebrow. "So, EVERY time you come near me, you get shot in the leg?"

"When I'm lucky," Mamoru growled. "The first time you shot me in BOTH legs! And the second time you got my arms, too!"

"I see," Snake mumbled. "For a man with such intelligent pattern recognition, you sure aren't very bright, then."

Mamoru raised an eyebrow. "Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"

Blam! Blam!

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Igov smiled warmly as he inspected the construction in the Freedom's Angels' special weapons bunker, his hands clasped behind his back.

Robotic drones carrying welding torches scrambled over the smooth curvature of the massive device being built, sealing the seams between long strips of metal bent carefully into a near-perfect dome.

Scientists and engineers scurried all over the bottom of the bunker, attaching cables and building sensitive walls of circuits in the chronosphere's growing metal shell. Outside the huge machine, men worked tirelessly on a huge core of sophisticated magnetic relays, constantly building, fixing, and discarding damaged systems every time a minor error was made.

Next to the core, dozens of smaller devices were slowly constructed under an array of precise, computer-assisted mechanical tools as scientists mumbled and conversed nearby, utterly fascinated.

The Russian shook his head in amusement; the chronosphere technology was always a sure-fire hit with scientists. Whenever one of them complained about being forced to work on technologies used to kill innocent people, or the constant and deadly surveillance of the militant terrorists, all he had to do was let them poke at a temporal-based teleporter for a few hours, and all was well, like some sort of nerd pacifier.

Walking up to another robot - this one with an LCD screen and speakers - Igov spoke. "Cursory inspection passed. Igov request detailed report on construction progress."

Blip-beep! The screen flickered briefly before it showed some wire-frame blueprints, with the completed sections filled in with a translucent gray. Construction on primary unit is progressing at 107% expected rate. Early projections of supply shortages have been corrected for. Unit is expected to be online in three days. Secondary unit progress is lagging at 71% expected rate of progress. The devices recovered from the alien technology cache necessary to reproduce the chronosphere have suffered considerable damage. Cache is 40% unusable.

Igov snorted. "Considering it DAPC to engage the aliens, Igov be thankful." The secondary devices were, naturally, far less important than the primary chronosphere, so the problems that hindered their construction didn't overly concern the general. The smaller chronospheres had a relatively small operational radius, and could not project the proper temporal distortion fields without the devices themselves being dragged along for the trip, which sharply decreased both their strategic value and their average operational lifetime on the battlefield.

Of course, Igov made tremendously good use of his own device, but most of his forces were not so proficient.

"What of U-93 unit?" The cyborg asked. That chronosphere in particular was being designed to be as small and energy-efficient as possible, so that it could be fitted to Shin-Alpha and increase the android assassin's already fantastic tactical mobility.

Progress is stalled. Several design complications have indicated that-

"Igov not need to hear details. Have Professor Konta consulted on complications and add further staff and resource to completion of blueprints. Priority code beta." As always, he hated bringing Yoshi in on his projects, but Igov was more than capable of putting his military objectives before his personal feelings.

Understood. Will there be anything else?

"Indeed. Follow." Twitching his finger at the droid, Igov entered the elevator at the front of the construction area and then pushed his hand into the control dock, the sensors immediately registering his admittedly unique handprint and granting him full access to the facility.

Pressing a button next to the door, the gate and the main doors shut quickly, and the elevator ascended rapidly from the reinforced construction deck to the bio-weapon testing facilities.

The facilities had originally been used to observe and test different strains of vamp mutants, as they were the tamest and least dangerous of the mutant strains, and this particular base was geared toward cybernetic and mechanical research, lacking many of the security measures necessary to handle the devastating power of the T-virus or some of the more dangerous mutants. However, that research wasn't going anywhere fast, so Igov had been all too happy to bring in new test subjects.


"AAAAUGGHIIYAAAAH!!"

The Russian ignored the scream of agony as he stepped off the elevator, his engineering drone following behind him. The entire hall echoed with screams, moans, and pained gasps of varying intensity as he walked through the halls, noting the occasional blood slick on the floor that hadn't been cleaned up; not surprising, really. There weren't any janitors that had security clearance to come down to these levels, and scientists weren't keen on mopping.

Igov sighed. 'It looks like I'll have to design ANOTHER robot to do the dirty work around here. How annoying.'

He pushed a few buttons on a keypad outside of a particular lab, and the door slid open with a hiss.


"Gugh... haaah... urrhn..." lying on a stainless steel table was a vampire captured in the nightclub raid... or his upper torso, at least. His chest had been sliced open for observation, and the vampire's weakly twitching organs were easily visible through the cavity being held open by metal clamps. The undead's lower torso had been severed just above the pelvis, and a small bedpan had been placed underneath the slanted table to collect the various fluids that drained from his sundered body.

The midian was held fast by reinforced titanium arm and neck restraints, and there was an armed cyborg in the room as well, to provide added security for the dangerous creatures.

The two scientists that had been poking around inside the vampire turned and promptly bowed. "Ah! General Yuchtzky! We're honored by this visit!"

Igov bowed politely, then gestured to the vampire. "How are things with new test subjects?"

"These are remarkable specimens, General. We've only had them for several hours, but already we've learned a great deal. Most of our research tends to create more questions than it solves, but even so..."

The cyborg took the partially-dissected vampire by the jaw, lifting the creature's head to stare him in the eyes. "This one still lucid?"

"More or less. They retain mental coherency very well despite massive physical trauma, but this one has been subjected to numerous other chemical and biological substances and has been drifting in and out of consciousness. Tests conclude that these midians do not suffer shock, and are impervious to conventional diseases and poisons. I personally recommend securing a few subjects and transporting them to a more secure compound for T-virus testing to determine if man-made viruses can be made to affect them. We're not entirely sure at this point by what mechanism they-"

"Yes, yes, Igov understand," the cyborg interrupted, once more not wanting to be dragged down by the researcher's enthusiasm for his work. He turned toward the droid following him. "See to it. I want four units transferred. Heavy security detail."

Affirmative.

Igov eventually let go of the vampire, disappointed that the creature didn't even snap at him or mumble an insult; evidently this one was thoroughly broken already. "How are security measures holding up?"

"They've proven adequate, General. There have been a few minor incidents, but no injuries to our personnel thusfar. These creatures are fairly clever, and your cyborgs are quite dull... no offense."

"None taken," Igov said promptly, well aware of the problem. "Do you have proper analysis of vampire capabilities?"

"So far we've identified an unusually enhanced musculature, allowing for strength comparable to our own biologically enhanced soldiers... the interesting note is the corresponding improvements in reflexes and agility that vampires have displayed that we haven't seen with our own enhancements. As midians grow stronger, it would seem they develop the skills to use their powers instinctually. And then of course, there are the considerable regenerative abilities and the ability to sustain the body despite critical damage to normally vital biological systems."

Igov rubbed his chin. There were other abilities, and he knew it. But then, he had only seen an indication of such from the woman who was leading a band of vampires away from the fighting. Perhaps the prisoners were too weak? 'I may have to secure more powerful lab rats if we're to get anything truly useful from wiping out the bloodsuckers.'

"What of midian weaknesses?"

"Ah, yes, my favorite," said the other scientist, who had been mostly quiet and respectful as his superiors spoke. "Vampires have displayed alarming chemical and biological reactions when coming in contact with the element silver, as well as exposure to UV radiation. Silver seems to actually burn midians on contact, and preliminary tests have revealed significant nerve damage. We believe that this damage may somehow hinder the midian's supernatural abilities, as the burns seem to heal much slower than normal. Artificial UV radiation offers a less severe reaction, although all our test subjects have a strong aversion to it. At this point we're questioning the feasibility of UV equipment for tactical use."

Igov nodded. "Understood." Once more he turned toward the droid behind him. "Place order to replace current restraints with silver-plated cuffs. Security is top priority so long as these creatures are in facility."

Affirmative. Placing order... Note: if one more item valued at fifteen dollars or more is ordered, we will qualify for Amazon's super saver free shipping!

Igov blinked. "Order is coming from... Amazon.com?"

"Oh, yeah," one of the scientists said, smiling. "They have all sort of useful stuff now!"

The other scientist nodded as he picked up a scalpel and slowly made an incision in the vampire's exposed heart. "I still use it mostly for books, though. I bought Max Brook's Zombie Survival Guide for my brother working in the main bio-weapon labs."

The vampire made a strangled gurgling noise, but was largely ignored.

"Really? Is book any good?" Igov asked, rubbing his chin in thought.

"A little outdated, since it doesn't address the mutation capacity of advanced strains of Solanum like the T-virus, but still useful. My brother says it saved his life once when he messed up a security drill." He continued cutting open the heart, though he wasn't paying very close attention.

"Fascinating. Igov may get copies for troops. Sounds like worthwhile material."

"I'd recommend it. It really-oops!" He quickly drew the scalpel out of the vampire's twitching heart as the creature screeched weakly. "Aw, dangit... I cut too deeply again."

"Why do you keep slicing up his circulatory system, anyway?"

"For SCIENCE! That's why."

"That's not a real answer, you know."

Igov sighed and shook his head. "Enough. Igov needs tactical solutions to combating midian threat. Silver bullets cost-prohibitive. And UV radiation ineffective?"

"Kind of. I mean, feel free to strap some UV lights onto your machines if you want, but honestly our cyborg and armored forces seem entirely adequate to fight them as they are now." The scientist shrugged.

Igov frowned. "Complacency only lead to defeat and loss. Igov will not let these creatures take forces by surprise." Then he cocked his head to the side. "... How do midian handle electric attacks?"

The scientists blinked in tandem. "Ah... I really have no idea," the first admitted, scratching his head. "I mean, given that high voltage normally causes circulatory trauma, it may be effective, but given that a vampire's heart doesn't need to actually function..." he trailed off.

The other man shook his head. "We could find out, but running a proper battery of tests would exhaust all our current test subjects to make sure the necessary variables are accounted for..."

Igov shrugged. "There no need for all that." Cha-chunk! His tesla claws extended from his right wrist, and then sparked briefly. "Beginning test."

BRRRZACK!! "Guoohaaugh!"

The scientists nodded to themselves as they watched Igov electrocute the mutilated vampire, casting glances at their measurement devices.

"Fascinating. It seems the energy charge actually forced the heart to beat a few times."

"It's as if the muscle, in its dead but preserved state, begins to function again on impulse. Intriguing. And kind of funny, if you think about it. If you were to restore life to a vampire, would that kill it?"

The first scientist narrowed his eyes. "We're going to need more test subjects. And electric generators. And jumper cables. Lots and LOTS of jumper cables."

Igov let go of the vampire and shrugged, noting with disappointment that the midian was still conscious, and thus not truly dead. "Very well. Do as you will. Contact Igov with update in forty-eight hour."

"Of course, General. Have a good day."

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Far, far above the subterranean vaults that housed the next generation of war machines to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting populace, an equally covert force of superhumans had been stirred.

Ran's penthouse nest was a veritable hornet's nest of activity. Enraged shouting dominated the atmosphere, along with a fair amount of panic, and vampires rapidly jumped off of the complex to the surrounding buildings as others leapt and crawled up the side of the building to join the chaos.

It wasn't a fight or anything; really, the mess of shouting, moaning, grieving and cursing could only be described as organized and prolonged panic. The vampires had taken in news of these new assaults on their homes and the scores of dead and captured, and their passionate, impulsive natures had promptly consumed them. Unrestrained fury and thirst for revenge seemed to be the order of the day, but as rumors and accounts of the mysterious cyborg attack began to fit together and crystallize into a picture with more fact than fantasy, the enraged midians were stumped as to where to launch their counter-attack. Although several terrorist alcoves had been raided by hungry undead, the Freedom's Angels were never virgins, and thus there were none among their number who knew the location of the terrorists' strongholds.

Of course, the other culprit was quite assaultable, at least in the sense that they knew where to find it. The DAPC's headquarters was freely available public knowledge.

That said, there were some particularly rash creatures who had decided to launch attacks on the DAPC's base of operations. One of Ran's personal guard kept repeating to the group in no uncertain terms that there were to be no more attacks on the DAPC until their lord authorized it, but that didn't sway many.

What did sway many was the fearful complaints about them being slowly and systematically obliterated. When naysayers described the inevitable failure of an assault on the "invincible, fanatical DAPC," it rang with far too much truth for the vampires' comfort. After all, some of their finest members had fallen in a systematic attack on the officers.

The reputation of the DAPC certainly discouraged rash action as well. With this news of vampires being butchered en masse, was a suicide mission really in order?

Some midians went anyway, but they tended to leave piecemeal, managing to convince a few of their closest friends while others alternated between angry howling and fearful whispers.


Kimiko shook her head sadly as she watched several foolish young monsters run off.

Oh, sure, not all of them were leaving to assault a group of heavily-armed monster hunters who were now expecting an attack. Some were simply leaving to feed, or maybe to flee in an attempt to find their own, personal safe haven, disillusioned that they could defend themselves, or that Lord Ran could protect them.

The fury that her master had displayed at her failure was considerable, though she'd only received a laughable slash across the face for returning alone after so many had been killed. No doubt he expected his servants to either emerge victorious or die fighting.

The vampiress let out a rueful chuckle. Ran was no one worth dying for. His ideas and goals were tired and arrogant. He had wallowed in his strength for far too long, ignoring the noble and cautious practices of the vampire lords that had predated him. And now he was leading a new coven of vampires, greater than any undead force the Eastern world had ever seen, into the jaws of Hell itself at the behest of some insane human.

And Kimiko would follow him. For he was the master, and she the slave.

"Humans choose their own nature..." she mumbled, echoing the words of the strange cyborg man that had struck her down before. "What I would give for that chance again..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Foosh!

"Gugh! Wh-What?" The young vampire looked about wildly as the rooftop he had been using to scope out the headquarters was suddenly painted by a full-power spotlight, utterly blinding him.

Blam! Blam! A pair of rifle rounds bored through his chest before he was able to sort out what was happening, and he fell backwards onto the roof, his body disintegrating.


"Pft. Aren't the big bad guys supposed to send waves of slightly STRONGER enemies after you once the first wave is defeated? This is a joke," Snake scoffed, turning off the spotlight and then turning on the low-light goggles over his eyes once more.

Clang! One midian landed noisily on the spotlight scaffolding opposite where it was pointed, rapidly orienting on the American gunner and leaping straight down at him.

Thock! That vampire didn't get very far as Kyle appeared and snatched him out of the air, wincing only slightly as the nosferatu started thrashing about and scratching at his arms.

"Yeah, this is kinda easy. It's starting to make me nervous," the blonde mumbled before he grabbed the vampire over his face and then lifted the undead into the air.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

Snake sighed as he scanned the rooftops for more vampires, wishing he could enjoy the sight of Kyle smashing a vampire into the ground, but unwilling to lower his guard. "Man, I'm getting bored. They're not even attacking in greater numbers. Losers."


Down below, a pair of other vampires crept through the shadows toward the side entrance of the DAPC headquarters.

"Those bastards are going to pay for what they did!"

"Dude... seriously, though, we should wait! No way we can do this with just us! We're outnumbered, man!"

"Calm down, you damn coward... and be quiet!"

The first vampire snarled as he saw the locked gate that had been hastily attached to the side entrance. "Morons. As if a stupid gate could stop us." His pointed incisors gleamed in the moonlight as he reached forward, grabbing hold of the metal bars.

Fssssss! "GYAAH!! What the hell?!" The young midian shouted as he let go of the gate immediately, holding his hands against his stomach as they burned painfully. "What is this? What is that gate made out of?" This particular vampire, not having read much on vampires and not having been "properly" instructed in some of the more exotic vulnerabilities of the midian honestly had no idea that silver was harmful to the touch.

He grit his teeth, considering trying to rip the gate off once more. He didn't see how he could, though; for some reason, the strength just seemed to seep out of his arms when he touched the gleaming metal.

"Uh... d-dude? I think... oh man..."

Still cradling his injured hands, the rather short-sighted vampire's enhanced hearing picked up a slight, throaty growl coming from the alley behind the pair, and he promptly whirled around.

"Ssssssssrrrrrr..." Hunter's tongue ran along the razor edge of his bloodstained beak as he looked at his new prey. His stomach rumbled, upset that these worthless not-humans turned to dust in his stomach, and left only their agonized screams and absolute terror to satisfy him.

Needless to say, while fun, it WASN'T terribly satisfying. So it was only logical that the alien warbeast was quite eager to feast on as many of the puny not-humans as he could find.

"GUWAAAAAAAH-glurk!"

"AAAAAAUGH-dwugh!"

Skrak! Schlunk! Snap!


Inside the headquarters, Asuka leaned back in her office chair as she read a magazine, smiling slightly at the grotesque screams and occasional gunshots that surrounded the building.

Junko was huddled on the chair next to her, shivering at the screams and the sounds of the dead becoming deader. She was in full body armor and cradled a rifle protectively, as if it would be of any real use in her hands.

Asuka didn't bother with any armor, well aware that anything short of powered armor or cybernetic implants wouldn't be much protection against vampires. Of course, she wasn't stupid, and had a Desert Eagle sitting next to her ever-present cup of coffee.

She was also in a perfect position that she could give Junko a swift kick in the head. As a last resort, of course.

"So... why is it we don't just close the stupid HQ until we can get this vampire thing sorted out?" the redhead asked nervously.

Asuka took a sip of coffee before she answered, "Because it's more convenient to make let these freaks come to us than it is to waste all our time hunting them down at night when we should be sleeping anyway. We have daytime duties too, you know." She turned the page in her magazine. "Besides, how would you suggest we keep the bloodsuckers from getting into the sub-levels if we're not here? Put up an 'Employees Only' sign?"

"We could always just leave Hunter here," Junko mumbled, wincing again as she heard the zergling in question release a feral screech from outside.

"Oh, sure, that's a great idea," Asuka deadpanned, taking a quick sip of coffee, "because there sure isn't enough damage around here to fix already. Why, every morning I walk in here and think to myself how nice it would be if I had to scrub another set of bloodstains off the wall, or install a new section of flooring."

Junko frowned. "But... you always make US do that stuff."

"Yes. So stop your whining or it'll be YOUR job to re-tile the main lobby," Asuka snapped. Snake's penchant for high volumes of firepower and Tiro's penchant for bad aim had combined to really do a number on that section of the headquarters, and most of the time they'd had since the vampire attack they spent reinforcing the building.

The redhead grumbled irritably, once more wishing that all the handsome, beefy men in their department didn't insist on staying outside where the action was instead of inside where it was safe, with her.

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Ran was not a happy bloodsucking monster. No sir-ee.

The vampire lord was trying desperately to calm himself as he entered the mortuary just a scant two blocks from his complex, with only limited success. The rage, the thirst for vengeance was SUFFOCATING, like a hand drawing closed around his throat.

Enemies assailed his people from every side. Nosferatu fell like bowling pins, his brothers and sisters being cut down like mere dogs.

His attempts to strike back had ended in failure. How? How had a coven of mortals with mere guns defeated elder vampires? Some of his best friends were now dust and ash. Were they truly so powerful? Was it possible that these foolish humans, openly reviled by the very people they protected, possessed the strength to defy him? COULD a mere police officer actually hope to protect the citizens from the greatest of the undead? To say nothing of these strange, OTHER forces which dare oppose him. Robots? Cyborgs? Sailor Senshi? Why did every circus freak in Tokyo seem to turn their hostile attentions toward him and his ilk?

These questions gnawed at him like a cancer, and his pace quickened. Of course, he could simply fly toward his destination, or even expend the considerable energy to teleport there, but it was his habit - and a smart one - to resemble a human whenever possible and not attract attention. He hoped that there would come a time that he would never again have to engage in such cowardice, but evidently that day was not yet in sight.

Ran sighed as he pushed his fury deeper, forcing a cool mask over his features as he stared at the mausoleum doors.

It was actually quite unusual for any modern vampire to be found around a graveyard at any time, night or day. Despite being undead, vampires had no use for graveyards; the dead bodies were old, and the blood was no good. Though the bodies could be raised into ghouls, the greater decomposition made them even more worthless than normal, and it wasn't as if there was any shortage of the blasted things. On top of that, vampires were creatures of culture and opulence; the last thing any real nosferatu wanted was to go crawling around some decrepit pile of rock carvings full of the stench of decay.

Ran too found the mausoleum atmosphere distasteful, but it was of little consequence. The... current inhabitant liked it a great deal, and claimed that the atmosphere helped his work. Something about the souls of the departed opening up wider breaches between this world and the next or some such rubbish. Despite being undead himself, he invested little thought in such things.

Entering a room in the center of the structure, he pulled the arm of a memorial statue, causing a stone slab to slide out of place in the rear. Once again, he could have simply phased through the wall, but that would have been rude.

Without fanfare or introduction, the nosferatu stepped into the lair of the prophet.


The space immediately outside the entrance to the prophet's room looked like a poor and desperate attempt to mask ugliness with opulence; bright silk curtains hung from a ceiling laden with spider webs, reaching all the way down to a dusty stone floor partially covered in velvet pillows.

Ran frowned. Laying atop those pillows were the twisted and desiccated husks of the three women he had hypnotized and brought down here the last time he had stopped by. Evidently the prophet had tired of them.

The prophet never actually asked for women victims when he had requested "sacrificial materials" from the vampire lords, but Ran had made assumptions and drawn conclusions, snatching up some of the finer-looking deflowered women he could find in his usual hunting grounds to give the man. He didn't actually know what the prophet wanted them for, but he'd always find their remains lying at the foot of the prophet's lair looking horribly mutilated and usually mutated.

Of the three corpses below him, one looked incredibly gaunt as if everything save the bones had been drawn from her body, while the other three had bizarrely multi-hued skin with patches of scales and thick, spiny hair.

Ran rolled his eyes. He really hoped that the prophet was at least taking the women before he killed them; otherwise his efforts were going completely to waste.

"Ah... Lord Ran... what can... I do... for you?" The vampire lord straightened as one curtain shifted to the side.

The prophet was a strange man, as Ran imagined people of such persuasion usually were. He wore graying linen robes all the time, and his head was wrapped in bandages to the point that only the man's right eye and a few tufts of greasy hair were exposed. His hands, which he insisted need to be free of obstructions like gloves and bandage wrappings to work his arts, were badly burnt and mangled to the point that Ran really couldn't figure out how the old weirdo could use chopsticks without a finger breaking off.

While it was certainly unappealing, the thing about the prophet that actually disturbed Ran were the bandages. They writhed about constantly, throbbing as if they were concealing a host of small appendages or pulsating hunks of flesh.

One would think that a creature that dealt with partially gutted and dismembered zombies would be more used to such horrifying sights, but Ran had always been a lover of beauty, and in his opinion, if one had enough magic power to peer into the murky depths of the future, well, one could spare a few sparks of mana or whatever to put on a third-rate glamour spell so that you looked like a goddamned human being.

The only other thing of note about the prophet was his crystal. It was a perfectly spherical orb that hovered around him in random uneasy orbits, its interior a constant storm of wild colors. It was only due to the orb, which hovered by no natural means that HE had been able to figure out, that he had given the prophet a chance to prove that his so-called "powers" were real. He had been ecstatic when the prophet's visions had proven accurate, guiding him and all the vampires in Tokyo toward a glorious future of eternal twilight.

Of course, now he was less ecstatic about this particular path.


"Prophet, we have problems," the vampire lord said firmly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Ah, yes... tell me... what's on... your mind," the man said slowly, shoving aside one of the corpses below before tenderly taking a seat on the cushions.

Ran remained standing. "We have come under attack. Repeatedly. We are stretched too thin to effectively defend ourselves, and our enemies seem to be uniting against us faster than we can convert their children to undeath. Tell me, does this fit your vision?"

"Hmmmm... yes, yes... I see..." He paused, his good eye staring up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "Surely you... expected... such a response, yes?"

"I did. Although our enemies have proven far more efficient than expected," the midian growled.

The prophet chuckled, and Ran winced at the deep, raspy noise. "This is... a WAR you fight... vampire king. Your enemies... will be many... the battles... will be many... the losses, too... will be many. But the REWARDS..." The bandages shifted slightly, which was the only indication Ran could see that the old wizard was smiling. "The rewards are... the salvation and... superiority of the... nosferatu."

Ran nodded reluctantly. "Yes. As you have foretold. However, we have suffered considerable losses. What is your counsel?"

The prophet nodded slowly and stood up, his visible eye glazing over slightly as he began his ritual.

The crystal at his side shook, and the maelstrom of colors within grew faster and more violent.

"I see... a man of steel, come to wage war... a mighty warrior with eyes of blue and braided hair, emerging to protect the helpless from your predations... these forces... normally grappling each other... will turn on the vampire nation as one... and reduce it to ash... if they are not stopped."

Ran nodded quickly, entranced.

"A plague of undead you do not command! A storm of iron your fangs cannot pierce and your claws cannot rend! A reptile who slinks through your gates, leaving naught but ruin in his path! Dozens of blades, cutting, cutting, never stopping! A ravenous beast, ever-consuming its enemies! A machine from the stars, fused to a princess of the moon! Warriors from lands now dead and barren! The indomitible human spirit! Horrors of science, manifest in a swarm of talons and teeth!" The prophet gasped as his rant reached a crescendo, and his breathing returned to its normal, sedate pace. "One by one... these trials... will test... the vampire nation... will your... people survive?"

"We will win, or we will perish from this Earth once and for all, and leave the human cowards with their coveted 'peace'," Ran snarled, his fangs lengthening.

"Very admirable... but others... may not agree." The prophet grinned. "But there... is hope... great hope... for the nosferatu... a great ally..."

The vampire lord nodded, intrigued. Honestly, he though the prophet himself was a pretty good ally, but it sounded like he'd need all the help he could get.

"The pricess of flames... will be your salvation..." the prophet said, his crystal ball floating in front of his forehead and then flaring a bright, rich red.

Energies coalesced from the jewels, and an image appeared over the ball, flickering before Ran's eyes.

"Find... this girl... TURN her... she can... lead you to... the savior... your champion..."

Ran nodded eagerly, burning the image of the girl in his mind. "I will do as you say, prophet. Your advice has never failed me thus far." Then he frowned. "But there is one other matter. You see-"

Before the vampire lord could continue, the prophet laid a hand amiably on his shoulder.

"Lay off... the DAPC... until you get... the flame girl..." the prophet's single eye looked quite serious as he said this.

Ran sweatdropped. "How did you know what-" he trailed off as the prophet raised an eyebrow. "Oh. Right. Prophet. Duh."

"Seriously... don't mess... with those guys... bunch of... lunatics..." the prophet mumbled

"Okay, okay, fine. Then I take my leave of you."


Ran left the room quickly and promptly jumped straight up through the ceiling, phasing through it and then flying into the night sky.

Partially because he wanted to get out of that dusty hellhole, and partially because he had a new lead on how to get his shadow war back on track.

'Hmmm... I should probably find a few more girls for the prophet. I think he finished with the last batch.'

Smirking to himself, Ran made plans to visit the local bar on the way back and adjusted his course. A quick snack was in order... and then he had errands to run.

********************************************************************

Vampires destroyed: 14
Secondary plotlines sufficiently alluded to: 2
Innocent people killed "off-stage" for storyline purposes: 5
New vacation homes purchased by Mamoru's surgeon: 2

End Chapter 8