SAILOR SCOUTS IN GOTHAM: Part 4

**

Harley leaped from the fire escape.  "Another score for the one and only
Harley Quinn!!" she cried triumphantly, bounding onto a windowsill, then a
gargoyle, then a series of rooftops leading into the heart of the Gotham
night.  The dress glittered smartly for a few instants after his figure had
darkened into the blue smog, then its light too winked out of view.

The air hung still and heavy for several moments.

Then, a limber silhouette emerged from the shadows, so grey and weightless
that is seemed to be their child.  The figure, poised for the edge of a
second, fixed its sights on the just-departed flash of red, leaning further
and further forward as if it had no fear of toppling over onto cement rooftop
or fifty feet of nothing.

The shadowy form reached the breaking point, but instead of falling, it
tripped itself into the air and across the gap between buildings.  Moving like
quicksilver, it leapt roof-to-roof in the wake of Harley's path.  It tripped
and glided in an effortless contrast to Harley's enthusiastic skips and
bounds, melting several times into the shadows.  The figure finally came to a
stop across the street from a dimly lit warehouse.  It perched in a crouch on
the roof's corner, and listened.

To anyone else there would be nothing there to listen to.  But this apparition
could hear very clearly the subdued snarls of wild animals, some lumbering
dumb conversation over an arm-wrestling match, and a nasal woman's voice
crying "Hey, puddin'!  Look what I got!" At this, the figure's face was caught
in a moment of shifting light.  It bore the beginnings of a female smile.  The
woman adjusted her earpiece and listened on.

Several moments passed.  The spy crouched perfectly still on the gargoyle's
nose.  Then, with a sense of satisfaction, she shook the transmitter out of
her ear and pocketed it in an invisible compartment of her gray-black glove.
"So..." she said in a low voice.  "That's it."

"That's it WHAT?"  came an older female voice from behind her, with a quiet
but insistent tone.

The woman whirled.  "Who--"  Her eyes widened slightly.  For staring intently
at her on the rooftop were two cats.  

"Oh," she chuckled, smiling.  "You must be new around here, because I don't
believe I've met you before.  Have I?"  One gloved hand reached out in
greeting to the two animals.

Luna, the crescent moon on her forehead glowing dimly, hesitated.  "You heard
me, Catwoman," she said.  "What were you listening to down there?"

Catwoman's eyes shimmered softly behind her grey mask.  She smiled.  "When
I..."  All her senses stopped abruptly, and she coughed on gulped air. "I must
be going crazy," she said with a flat edge of sarcasm.  "Either that, or you
just talked to me.. and I wasn't surprised."

"I'm not surprised that you aren't surprised," said Luna, feeling as if she
were addressing a trusted older sister.  She drew closer to Catwoman and
accepted a friendly pet.  "It seems to me you're tuned in to feline energy.
It's strange for a human, but perhaps it has something to do with genetics or
even..."

"Enough of this!"  Artemis sliced through Luna's musings like an arrow and
pounced on Catwoman.  She took a step back and attempted to shake off the
impatient furball, but Artemis held on tight.  His claws scratched against her
catsuit dangerously.  "Just tell me," he cried angrily.  "What are you after,
and what's your new power?"

The woman's green eyes widened and locked with the feline's blue ones.  Then
she laughed.

Artemis, puzzled, made a threatening swipe with his paw.  "You KNOW what I'm
talking about.  Do yourself a favor and give up before our friends the Sailor
Scouts get here.  They're doing a number on the rest of your Arkham pals!"

Catwoman burst into chuckles as if this were the funniest thing she'd ever
heard.  She gasped for breath, and ran two seductively clawed fingers over
Artemis' fur.  "I thought you'd have the smarts of a cat, especially one that
talks," she cooed patronizingly,  Artemis arched and hissed.  "Please, give me
more credit than that.  I don't have any new powers-- because I didn't escape
from Arkham.  I've never BEEN to Arkham.  I've never been to prison."  She
tapped his nose with one pointed claw.  "Period."

Artemis stared.  Slowly, the bristles on his back melted into fuzzy
marshmellow fur.  The cat gave a small embarrased grimace and leapt down to
the rooftop below, pausing silently for a few seconds.  Then he whipped around
at Luna.  "WhatareYOUlookingat!?"
She answered his bellowing accusation with just a twitch of the whiskers and a
smug smile.

"I like to take trinkets.   That's no secret," snapped Catwoman.  Then her
voice softened.  "But I don't hurt people unless they get in my way.  And when
the city's in this kind of chaos, it's no good for me or for anyone else."

She sat back and relaxed.  "When the boys from Arkham take this town for a
ride, the Joker's always at the steering wheel.  So I've been watching his
pigtailed sidekick, knowing she would lead me to his home base.  Now that I
know his plans, I'm going to Batman about it.  Don't look so surprised."  She
scratched Luna behind the ears affectionately.  "After all, I do owe the big
guy, and mine's a debt that I'll enjoy paying up."  Her lips curved upwards in
a seductive smile.

Luna cleared her throat.  "Well.  We are the guardians of the Sailor Scouts, a
fighting team that is here to combat these evil forces.  We know who staged
the breakout and why the escapees have new powers.  You must tell us what you
know about the Joker's plans."

Catwoman arched an eyebrow suspiciously, then smiled.  "All right then.
Here's what I heard..."

**

Heads turned as the tall brunette sauntered down the boardwalk.  Her green
eyes gleamed as she threw flirtatious winks at the local boys, who stood
transfixed by her presence.  Her hands in the pockets of the black leather
jacket, the mystery woman coolly took in her surroundings.  One boy, obviously
the centre of attention, turned away from his group of friends to gaze at her.
Their eyes locked and the girl, equally dazzled, whispered, "He looks just
like my old boyfriend..."

"Yeah, right!"  Lita cut her romance novel fantasy short by kicking an
obstinate pebble into the murky river.  The squalid docks were hardly so cool
as her "boardwalk," though they were every bit as shady.  Warehouses, most of
them condemned, crouched in dark pools of shadow, and figures lurked in their
doorways.  The occasional crowd of rebellious teens passed by Lita on their
way home from arcades or clubs, or just congregated around a wooden post and
shook cigarette ash into the river water.  The only second glances she got
were startled reactions to the loud K-r-u-nch of a soda can, flattened under
Lita's angry foot.  

Boredom was Lita's archnemesis, and it finally spurred her into action.  She
started to sprint down the docks, growling.  "Split up, says Luna," she
muttered to the deep syrup beneath the wooden slats.  "Okay, so we split up.
Why?  To find the action, but noo--"  her feet pounded the boards harder with
each syllable, "no, no, NO!  No action for Lita.  What a major DRAG!"

Ahead of her appeared a huge pile of wooden crates, awkwardly stacked against
a warehouse wall.  "Drag!" she cried as she leapt onto the lowest of the
creates.  "No--" she bounded to another one-- "need--"  another-- "for--"
another-- "Lita!"  She stomped angrily onto a red stamp reading "This End Up."

A startling crash echoed her landing, and Lita jumped.  It had come from
inside the building!  Seeing a dusty little window above her, Lita jammed one
foot into a crevice between splintery shingles and pulled herself up.  The
rusty frame came off in her hand, and the whole windowpane with it. Lita set
the cracked sheet of glass aside, and hoisted herself through the opening.

She tasted dull wood.  Her reckless catapult through the window had thrown her
onto a creaky catwalk up in the rafters.  The dusty wood stung her scraped
knees and fingers, and it was a few moments before she cautiously raised her
head to look down.  Color flooded to her cheeks.  "Tell me this isn't my
imagination again," she grinned to herself.

The room was piled floor to ceiling with huge boxes.  None of them looked as
if they had been touched for years, but beneath the dust balls on each box was
an official-looking seal.  The molten shadows lay in deep pools, but through
the pools moved darker figures, lumbering ants moving the boxes one by one and
opening them, searching through their contents.  In the centre, half-lit and
half-obscured by shadow, someone was growling orders in a voice like muddy
sandpaper.  Whatever was going on down there, it wasn't legal.

Lita saw a spot where the boxes towered up to the catwalk, creating a hiding
place.  She scrambled over in spy fashion, lying low against the floor, and
relaxed.  Grumbling, she rubbed her scraped knee.  "Boxes, boxes
everywhere..."  The bored brunette descended the mountain of crates, in search
of a better view.

"Come on you mooks!  We haven't got all night!"

The voice barked so sharply that Lita jumped.  She was now sitting at the
bottom of a pile, watching the proceedings out of the corner of her eye.  In
the patchy, uneven light she could hardly see anything but silhouettes and an
occasional flash of silver in the hand of the ringleader.  He turned to point
something out to his men.  Lita could see his profile for an instant, and she
blinked.  "He looks like my old boyfriend... only older..."

"Lita?"

The word was whispered, but Lita started.  A blond-haired silhouette put a
finger to her open lips.  "Shh!"

Lita pushed away the cautioning hand.  "Mina!"  she whispered.  The brown
tendrils bounced around her face.  "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question," Mina grinned, squeezing her friend's hand
in greeting.  "Anyhow," she continued in the same hushed tone, "I stumbled
across this place on my way home from the harbor.  Saw this guy and through he
might be worth checking up on.  See if he knows anything about the..."

"Oh, come off it, Mina," Lita teased.  "You're here for the same reason I'm
still here.  You're here to watch the cute guy."

Mina's eyes lit up.  "Who?  Which one?"

"The leader, of course," Lita whispered slyly.  "Who did you think I meant?"

Mina leaned toward her friend incredulously.  "You've got to be kidding me!
The BOSS?  Cute?"  Lita returned her stare with a clueless blink.  "But Lita,
I SAW his face!  Earlier, from across the room.   He's ugly as sin!  Looks
like he has warts all over him or something."

This time it was Lita's turn to gasp.  "You sure it was him?  You saw his
face?"

"Well..."  Mina looked pensive.  "His profile at least..."

The two girls stared at each other silently for a moment.  Then they both
turned, looking through the gaps in the boxes at the room's center.  After a
few moments of waiting, Lita and Mina finally got a good clear look at the man
in charge.  Two voices started out as whispers, growing steadily as they
headed for a nearby door...

"Jupiter..." 

"Venus..."

They burst from the shack as their shouts filled the air with stars and
lightning.  

"--POWER!"

**

"These... are... the... wrong... ONES!"

Two-Face growled out of the bad corner of his mouth as he shoved an open
carton to the ground.  Its contents clattered as they struck the floor or the
skull of the poor henchman pinned underneath it.  He struggled to wiggle free.
"But Boss, this is the part you asked for, the one to activate the laser
cannon!"

"The DOUBLE laser cannon!"  fumed the half-deformed supervillain.  "Mark
2-X-Y-2!  I've only told you twenty times."  He calmed, and said in a more
measured and more chilling voice, "Maybe I should let the coin decide whether
you're really an indispensable part of my team.  Eh, Junior Jr.?"

He brandished in his hand a small circle of silver.  It glinted dangerously.
Panicking, J.J.  started to babble.  "No, boss, hang on, gimme another shot, I
know it's here somewhere!"  He flashed what was usually a disarming smile.
"Second time's the charm, right, boss!"

Two-Face paused to consider this, but before he was able to reply, a sweet
voice echoed overhead.  "Sorry, boys, but your fifteen SECONDs of fame is up!"
As the gangsters lifted their heads, the room flooded with magical brightness,
and a figure appeared atop a rafter.  Another, taller form emerged a moment
later on the opposite end of the beam.  A henchman mumbled, "What the--?"

The blonde figure leapt from the rafters and careened down as in slow motion.
"I am Sailor Venus!"

"And I am Sailor Jupiter!"  A moment after, the other person jumped from her
position.  She crossed in front of Sailor Venus in midair, and they landed a
few feet from each other.

"It takes two to tango," Jupiter continued, moving with Venus in a series of
battle stances, "and we're the dream team all the way!"

"On behalf of Venus and Jupiter,"  Sailor Venus chimed in, "we're sending you
back where you belong!"  Both voices cried, "Sailor Scouts' honor!"

"Hmm," Two-Face snarled, without missing a beat.  He was clearly up to the
challenge.  "Boys, take a breather," he said as he waved away his henchmen.
They filed out the door. "And as for you... I can't decide which one of you to
get rid of first. Might as well FLIP for it!"  A quick flick of his thumb, and
the infamous double-headed silver dollar was in the air.  But instead of
boomeranging its decision back to Two-Face's hand, it continued to wheel
upwards-- growing larger and larger with every turn!  

The Sailor Scouts were frozen.  The coin toss seemed to occur in painful slow
motion and at the same time too quickly for them to do anything about it.  The
next thing Sailor Venus knew, she was making a terrified leap in the air,
escaping the giant coin which had very nearly landed on her!

"Yipe!" she squealed, heart pounding.  The coin, meanwhile, had bounded back
as if a trampoline lay beneath the floor.  It retraced its arc from Two-Face's
hand, shrinking back to its original size as it flipped over and over.  The
now-tiny coin fell with a plop into the mobster's cupped hand.

Sailor Venus gasped.  "I thought he flipped a coin to make decisions!" she
breathed in horror.

"I do," snickered Two-Face with the wickedest of smiles.  "Just a flip of the
coin-- and all my problems are solved!"  His voice scraped like gravel across
a low road, meaner by the minute.  "Let me demonstrate."  And the coin went
flying again!

"Well--"  shouted Jupiter, between frantic jumps as the coin flew again and
again from Two-Face's hand toward the two girls.  "At least--"  *CKRASHT* "we
know--"  *KRAHHKT* "what his new--" *SHHAKKT* "Nega-power is!"  A close call
knocked the words and the wind right out of her.

Seeing the coin about to bounce back, Sailor Venus suddenly pivoted.  ""Enough
of this," she cried.  A gust of wind moved her heavy cloud of hair as the
blonde warrior extended her arms in front of her.  The fingers of one hand
rested in a "v" on her other wrist.  "Venus Crescent... aaaaahhhh!"  The coin
was too quick.  It flipped in and out of Two-Face's hand before the Scout
could finish her attack, and knocked her over.

Sailor Jupiter, meanwhile, had leapt atop a crate and was crouched there
looking quizzically at Two-Face.  He felt her stare, and the chaotic leapfrog
ended as his fingers closed around the lucky coin.  He glared back, trying but
failing to intimidate the girl.  She just stared back with pensively puckered
lips.  Finally, his unease burst forward with a growl.  "What are you staring
at?"

She acted as if she'd been jolted from a daydream.  "Hunh? --Oh.  Well, it
doesn't seem right, that coin... but never mind."  Behind her, Sailor Venus
sensed that her friend was putting on a show, but hadn't a clue where it was
going.

Two-Face looked insulted.  He gave an angry snarl.  "What do you MEAN not
right?  The coin's always right.  Because it's always just plain random."  His
attention turned (as most villains' attentions do) to explaining his unique
philosophy.  "The two Sailor Somethings threaten me... and I hate a pair of
fools.  So the coin offs 'em."

"But there aren't two of us," spoke Sailor Jupiter boldly.

A bullet might as well have hit Two-Face, for he stumbled backwards,
bewildered.  "What... did you say?" he rasped.

She continued flippantly.  "There aren't two of us.  Changes the whole
situation, doesn't it?"

Two-Face looked at the coin in his hand and mumbled.  "Yes, I suppose it
does..."

Jupiter took a long breath in, and hung on the edge of her first word before
plunging into a hyperspeed soliloquiy.  

"Wellllllll...

"There are five Sailor Scouts total, right?  And Sailor Moon is our leader.
Now the question is, which one of us should you try to knock off?  I mean,
it's hardly a victory unless it's a double whammy, right?  Now Sailor Mercury
was the second scout to appear, unless you count Sailor Venus, who operated
solo before Sailor Moon arrived.  In which case Sailor Moon's number two.  But
since Sailor Moon's the leader, that makes Sailor Mars the second member to
actually JOIN, if Sailor Mercury was the first.  Or if the Sailor Scouts were
actually born AFTER Sailor Mercury joined, which makes it a team, then Sailor
Mars was the first to join, which makes me the second to join.  And Sailor
Venus is the only Sailor Scout that's gone by two different names, and she has
an attack that uses two crescent moons..."

Venus, who had gotten the drift, now jumped in to challenge her final
sentence.  "And Sailor Jupiter was the SECOND to last to join the Sailor
Scouts, not to mention she always has her eye on at least TWO guys at once!"

"And Venus reads TOO many romance novels," Jupiter growled. 

"Now, Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars both have two attacks," prattled Venus with
a blindingly charming smile, "unless you don't count Moon Healing as an actual
attack, in which case it's only one, or if you count that amazing thing she
did a few weeks ago at the Starlite Tower, in which case it's three.  But
Sailor Mer--"

As the girls chattered,  Two-Face slowly backed away, his hands on his aching
head.  The Scouts were inflicting severe sensory overload on the tormented
criminal.  "Too many twos-- too many choices-- they all sound right-- but what
do I choose, what... do... I ... DO??"  His frustration finally built into a
scream of outrage that cut Sailor Venus off in mid-babble.  Unable to do
anything else, he flashed open a tight fist and unleashed his coin once more.

It flew towards them, but this time, Sailor Jupiter was ready.  She lashed out
with the fury of a typhoon.  "Jupiter... Thunder... CRASH!"

The crackling blast of energy hit the coin head-on, sending it flipping back
towards Two-Face.  Stunned, he flailed his arms in front of him, trying to
catch the unruly weapon.  It collided with his outstretched hand.  He gave a
yell of pain as electricity surged from the coin and sent shocks through his
body.  Sailor Jupiter gave a nod to Sailor Venus, who pointed her finger right
at the coin.  "Venus Crescent Beam SMASH!"  A sharp ray of golden energy cut
right through the coin, leaving it a blank silver washer with no center.  Both
the faces were burned through.

Two-Face collapsed onto his knees and wailed pitifully at his coin.  "Noo..."
The last jolts of electricity passed down through the floor, and he stared at
the now-useless piece of metal in his shaking hands.  "My coin..."

Venus looked at Jupiter.  "Maybe that was a little rough of us....  after all,
he is kind of dependent on the thing isn't he?"

Jupiter shrugged.  "I'm sure the doctors at Arkham will make him a new one."
She grinned at Two-Face triumphantly.  "Hey... at least it'll buy you a pretty
decent donut!"  
Her friend laughed, and the two walked towards the door.  "Nothing like Scout
power, eh, Venus?"

"You better believe it!"  the blonde Sailor answered, smiling
enthusiastically.  "You know, it's too bad... for a moment there I though
maybe there WAS a cute gu..."  

She stopped short.  Sailor Jupiter looked alert as well, and opened one closed
hand.  In it sat a tiny purple calculator, so solid and real that one would
think Jupiter had been holding it the whole time.  In truth, though, it was a
special communicator, one of the many magical objects that simply appeared
when the Sailor Scouts needed it.  The device was emitting a small but firm
beeping, and at the touch of a finger, the circular display filled with
static.  Then the static melted and Luna's face appeared.

"Hey, Luna, what's up?"  Jupiter spoke enthusiastically into the communicator.
"We just trashed this guy good over here..."

Luna's serious expression halted her babble.  The cat spoke earnestly.  "You
girls are needed in Gotham Square right now.  The Joker's about to drain
energy from the whole city!"

**