Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ A Soldier's Duty ❯ Those who cannot do, fake it. ( Chapter 7 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Fourth Labor, chapter 7

DISCLAIMER: Errr. Naoko Takeuchi owns the characters from Sailor Moon, other people own the other characters, and this really was supposed to go into hiatus with chapter 4. Rest of this mess by metroanime@mindspring.com

"Those who cannot do, fake it." -M.Aino

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

Asgard

A Charm Monster spell went into effect.

Edema made certain that her outfit showed her to her best effect, then leaned over and tapped the stalking vroat on an eyeridge, causing the massive creature to crank open jaws wide enough to swallow a volkswagon on a creature built like an alligator designed for anti-tank purposes.

A vroat was a creature found on 232 dimensional planes. Which meant that, as such things go, it was fairly rare. To someone who had never seen one before, it might seem an unlikely armored blending of a hippopotamous and a crocodile.

Something was cowering under the tongue, shivering uncontrollably.

"Would you believe I'm just a harmless fish?"

Edema leaned down sultrily and lifted a corner of the yellow tongue to peer beneath. "Well, Sugah, y'all coulda done that. But the swallow reflex on this heah vroat is mighty strong. He'd a jest tasted ya and down ya'd a went."

"Perhaps I'm someone else?" The form hiding under the tongue pled.

"The trouble with that there excuse is that, not only is that a philosophical nahtmahe, but ain't hardly a godling up heah knows what a vroat *is*, let along how ta make all pleasant like to one." Vroats were excellent moat monsters, Edema reflected, no doubt cutting down on travelling salesmen wherever they were installed.

The tongue shivered as the form beneath increased in fright. "Um, I don't know what it is I might've done to offend you so... but I'm sorry."

Edema clucked happily. "Now that ain't it at *all*, Sugah."

"No?" A pair of blue eyes blinked open in the darkness under the blanketing tongue. Then they saw what the drow was WEARING... or, almost wearing as the case may be. "Eeep!"

"Why, Sugah, y'all need to get that vroat slobber cleaned off'n you. Let me give you a hand with that. Ah might even be able to find a way to help y'all relax some."

"EEEEP!" *ZOOM!*

Edema smiled, eyebrow raised. "Definitely got good endurance, that boy."

---------

Juuban:

The voice was a sibilant whisper, yet it carried quite well to where the Knight Of Duty was plastered against a wall to eavesdrop.

"yesssss, little ssspy. my massster hasss sssugessted that i make sssure you possse no more threat to him. it ssseems to me, that the easssiest way to do that is to do what i did to thosse two sssimpletonss."

Another voice, that of a woman. "Lethe, the Wizard has commanded. His powers have already erased this girl's past. Her new existance will not require her old memories. Remove them." An evil woman's chuckle sounded. "When she opens her eyes she will imprint on me, and I will be her master! Then her talents will grow within our service."

"Sssss. it isss done!"

Nebula grimaced and summoned the Chain, then tried to roll through the doorway and unleash the moon crescent blade end of the Chain on the boss.

Unfortunately his accumulating injuries from the past two days were getting in the way. He flopped against a wall, but still managed to shoot off the Chain.

*SCHNICKT!*

Kaolinite reached up and determined that she now had considerably less hair. "AAAAGGHHHHHHH! Kill him! Forget the girl, just KILL HIM!"

Grey scrambled out, followed by a lumbering snake-man, a pretty ticked off redhead with a haircut similar to what one gets joining the Army.

Rei's eyes fluttered.

"FIND HIM! HE CAN'T HAVE GONE FAR!"

A chain rattled in through a window, wrapped around Rei, then drew her up to the roof.

Seeing that Rei had opened her eyes, Grey held a finger up before his lips and hoped that the Japanese knew that signal.

"THERE HE IS!"

Grey winced and began to hobble off. He'd abruptly changed from Nebula to Grey but they still were following him. He had to lead them away from that shrine priestess, she looked in even worse shape than he was.

And what the heck was this crystal thingie that the two villains had dropped? No, no time to ponder, Grey just slipped it inside his shirt. If they had lost something valuable, the more reason for him to keep it from them.

Grey had made it to one of those little offices when the snakeman and the seriously ticked off girl cornered him. "Oh crap. This is gonna hurt."

He was right.

--------

A recycling bin marked "cans only" moved gently into place along the corridors leading to the Timeline Simulation Control Room. As it was a robotic device that made the rounds regularly, nobody paid it a special glance.

Of course, most didn't wear "elvan boots of stealth" but you could never tell with some of the tech-heads around here.

Certainly if anyone had paid attention to the fact that this recycling bin had pulled out a device called a Cell Slicer and was entering a "cheat code" to modify parameters of the Fourth Labor scenario in a not-immediately-obvious method, they might have suspected something was up.

"Y'know, sugah, you're carryin' enough magic items to set off alarms." Edema filed her nails while sitting on a nearby desk.

A little panda sign popped out of the robot. [Would you believe I'm just a cute lil' maintenence robot?]

"Not really, sugah," Edema said.

The sign flipped. [This is not the droid you're looking for.]

Edema smiled. "Why, dahlin', that's something ah'm still workin' out myself. However, ah do believe y'all's fiancees are gonna be heah right soon."

The sign flipped again, revealing it had more than two sides. [Oh.]

*ZOOM!*

Edema smiled, dusted her hands off, and stretched. She frowned at a popping noise. "Ah'm only a couple a centuries old, but ah think ah'm getting too old for this."

--------

Ami's mother sweatdropped as she recognized the voice over the phone. "-Ah, Mrs Shard-san. Your son is out with my daughter. Still trying to get the hang of the local language.-"

"-Really? They're getting along well? That's good. How's he doing in school?-"

"-They're getting along like they knew each other in a previous life or something. Tomorrow will be his first day at school. There *may* be some problem as he doesn't speak much Japanese, and he only knows a bit of katakana and hiragana. I don't think he knows any kanji.-" Kumori Mizuno wondered if all superheroine's mothers had to play loose with the truth.

"-I'm sorry. katagana and hirakana and whatji?-"

Kumori blinked. "-Japanese has three alphabets. Katakana is phonetic, and usually used for foreign words or names. Hiragana is also phonetic, and is used more normally. Kanji is the ideographic word-symbol alphabet. It will be very difficult for him without a good grounding in all three alphabets.-"

"-I see. I'm sure he'll manage somehow. Oh dear, I *do* have some distressing news however. Also some good news, but that'll have to wait until I can speak to him directly.-"

Kumori leaned back against the wall. Tired. Worried about her daughter facing who knows what out in a quest to save the world. And quite a few problems down at work due to some strange virus running around in Nerima. "-I believe the appropriate expression, is: 'go ahead, shoot.'-"

"-I've just been contacted by a newspaper reporter for the, errr, My Nichi Daily News? Apparently there are several other engagements to consider.-"

"-Other engagements?-" Kumori didn't like the sound of that.

"-Yes. A... here we go. Well, according to the paper, it was the families Mizuno, Kisaragi, Aino, Natsume, Kino, Tono, Meiou, Tendo, Saotome, Katsuragi, and the... Shinobi clan? Or something like that. I'm told that at least some of the claims will go uncontested as some of them are too old or don't have children or something.-"

Kumori's hair was attempting to erupt in wild cowlicks. "-Ah, yeah, sure.-"

"-Oh, don't worry about it. It sounds like your daughter and my son are getting along fine.-"

"Mrs Shard" continued briefly, talking about nothing much at all before closing the call. Then Celeste sat back, stretched, and gave a thumbs up to the gallery.

----------

"LETHE! Destroy him! Fill his veins with a poison so vile that his innards turn to jelly!"

"Uh, missstresss, well, actually, Lethe can't do that."

*SLAP!* "Find a way!"

Several Senshi running up the stairs saw indications of a building on fire.

When they got to the top, Minako took stock of the situation in the manner of a seasoned trooper. "Yuck. He looks almost as bad after you got through with him, Jupiter."

Jupiter groaned and again wished people would stop bringing that up.

"Never mind that, ahem." Sailor Moon posed.
"Vile creatures who terrorize the sanctity of a shrine,
and beat on poor tourists without mercy,
in the name of the Moon..."

"LETHE! Poison sting attack on that brat! Deal with them while I return to our master." Kaolinite faded away, still looking righteously ticked.

"LETHE!" Lethe agreed, then opened his mouth and started spraying poisonous needles towards Sailor Moon.

"Waaaa waaa waaa!" Sailor Moon, naturally started dodging. "Hey, you're supposed to wait until I've finished my speech!"

"VENUS LOVE ME CHAIN!" Minako struck the snakeman with her attack and then realized something. "Hey! I've seen that in a gaming magazine! That's an Ekans. Except that it's got arms and legs."

"LETHE! The massster created me from that very sssource. Now i ssshall be your downfall!"

"SPARKLING WIDE PRESSURE!"

LETHE dodged and responded with a spray of needles that struck Jupiter.

Sailor Mercury saw her fiance down, Sailor Jupiter down, and no sign of Sailor Mars. One of the shrine buildings was on fire, and it looked like Sailor Moon had tripped over her own feet. Time for defensive moves. "SHABON SPRAY!"

Nobody noticed slender hands from the dark reaching out with surprising strength to pull the fallen Knight away.

--------

The Wizard continued to work. The priestess he'd glimpsed was no more, or close enough. Her identity rewritten in an eyeblink. Soon her memory crystal would be brought to him and he could dissect that while the body grew used to her new identity.

People assumed there was only one SRU Wizard. Actually it was a franchise. They tended to look and mainly act the same, but it was only a matter of time before one of their number decided that the world of the Spell R Us Store wasn't big enough for him.

When he'd been the SRU Wizard for years, he'd grown predictable. Turning all manner of boys and girls into big-breasted strippers and the like. Well, he had his tastes and he wasn't about to change them. Now it was a bit of a hobby.

Those spells and cursed items had generally worked in the same manner, rewriting a person's body and often their mind, then backtracked the change in reality so that only those few people who were magically aware were even vaguely aware that there *had* been a change. When it had amused him, he'd dispensed justice. Far more often, he'd just played whimsy.

He'd have to go see how the new dancer adapted in a few weeks.

And yes, he'd admit it to anyone who asked. He *was* sick and twisted, and damn proud of it.

And already this simulated timeline was beginning to overshadow a real one. He meant to make sure he was in control when they merged.

The Wizard was ready to go into a Crazed Villain Laugh (he thought it likely a requirement of the genre) when he felt the daimon Lethe perish. Kaolinite appeared in the shadows a moment later.

"Wizard, we succeeded in removing that priestess, though the Sailor Senshi arrived before we could imprint her or take her through the gate." Kaolinite paused, knowing full well that this replacement Professor was quite dangerous. "I have the girl's crystallized memories right... here?"

The Wizard observed the way the nearly bald woman was fingering a pocket that had been sliced open. "Kaolinite-kun."

"Eh?" Kaolinite looked up, a sickened expression on her face. She knew she wasn't going to like this.

She was right.

--------

Jared was hiding. He had gotten pretty good at it lately. Against zombie kings, demon lords, dragon dukes, or even assassin princes, he'd always managed.

He'd since learned that *none* of the above could compare with his fiances. Either in terms of potential danger, in terms of skill in finding him, or in terms of potential for wholesale property de-valuation. Nope. Not even close.

So he'd gotten *very* good at hiding.

Unfortunately, they'd gotten *very* good at finding. Which, of course, forced him to get even better at hiding. And so on.

"So Jay-chan saved you years and years ago, you fell in love with him, and then he left you behind? Poor dear," Belle said sympathically to the dark elf.

"Yes, it was all quite distressing, Sugah." Edema made a gesture, conjuring several dishes of mint julep ice cream from her store. "You might imagine it was pretty much the low point of mah life, being hunted by two groups of elves, as well as all manner of carnivorous beastie. In comes mah handsome prince, and out he goes the next day. Ah spent years masterin' the Arts Magical, 'till ah felt ah could follow him. Yet no sign of the fellow, and so ah turned to my other craft. Neither magecraft or that adventurin' fol-de-rol had quite the appeal without my elvan prince. So ah got in touch with a fellow sorceress, who helped to set me up hereabouts."

Shan took a bite of ice cream and agreed that this sounded like she'd earned her shot at her prince.

Edema waggled her finger at Shan. "Mind y'all, Ah ain't yet decided whether Ah'm gonna slap 'em for abandonin' a helpless lil' teenage elf in that swamp, or give him a kiss that'll have him checkin' to see if his tonsils are still there."

"Did that streetlamp just gulp?" Mina asked with a frown.

Edema steered the conversation back. "Besides, never said ah be joinin' the 'fiancee brigade'. Y'all got me kinda in y'all's ranks anyway, and ah nevah did like to be part of a crowd."

Sakyo nodded, though felt compelled to add. "Though I don't seem to have any control over it when I turn into you."

The dark elf smiled amusedly at the cyborg. "That's 'cause, dahling, y'all downloaded me just as ah permitted. Keep in mind though, ah ain't exactly as young and inexperienced as most of y'all's templates. Ah got me a couple of centuries under mah belt over ya. Don't ya fret about it none anyway, y'all got more important manners ta think about."

"Such as?" Minako was quick to pounce on this.

"What's gonna happen when the Mage sees what's goin' on in Grey's timeline?" Edema conjured an image sphere. "These are just the sort of monsters that've popped in recent like. Y'all have any idea how he'll take it?"

Everyone present exchanged a look. They *knew* how eager he was to go after anything evil.

Edema took a dainty ladylike bite of her ice cream. "Y'all might also want to consider why that mailbox is sneaking off like that."

----------

"MOON SPIRAL HEART ATTACK!" This was followed by Lethe hissing something incomprehensible and fading away, leaving a page of a gaming magazine fallen to the ground. Minako picked it up and confirmed it was a preproduction sketch of a creature called an "Ekans" put out by Nintendo.

Mercury immediately did an "Aqua Rhapsody" to put out the burning building, then turned to do a quick scan of the surroundings. "He's gone?" Sailor Mercury was the first to notice the missing Knight.

"Gone?!" Mamoru looked around, finally spotting movement. "There he is!"

"Rei?"

"Why is she crouched over him like that," Usagi was quite curious. "And *hissing?!*"

Minako looked into those eyes and quickly came to a conclusion. "Them lights are on, but I don't think Rei's home right now. Let me just seperate 'em with a quick VENUS LOVE ME CHAIN!"

"...could you not shout so much..." mumbled Nebula from his position on the ground. Naturally he was ignored.

"Urrrrr?" Rei looked down, realizing what she'd jumped on. Was the very guy she'd been dragging to safety.

*WHAM!* Sailor Moon smote Rei in the head with the Spiral Moon Rod while she wasn't looking. Usagi hated to do it. Really she did. Managed to look fairly innocent at least. Well mainly.

*THUD*

"...could someone get her off me?"

-----------

"What do you mean, give Tokyo a break? We're IN Tokyo!" Terurun cast a nervous glance to where Kaolinite and Mimette were sticking out of the wall. "Where better to strike?"

The Wizard sat back and adjusted his glasses, regarding the Witch. "Terurun, do you recall what I said about killing the Senshi or their allies?"

"Not to," sumed up the green haired witch.

"Precisely. Do you know why Kaolinite is drooling on herself now?"

"She killed one?" Terurun glanced to see Mimette was paying close attention. She doubted Kaolinite was capable of doing anything more intellectual than drooling at the moment. Then the Wizard made a slight gesture and Kaolinite's head came up, reason and fear returning to her in that moment.

"She came close." The Wizard considered how to explain that the Knight Of Duty was the central figure here, that most of the people were just simulations, but that he was working on merging it with a *real* timeline - causing the patterns to overflow on a particularly nasty timeline he'd spotted. He'd have a world he owned, the gods of the Yggdrasil system wouldn't interfere because he could screw it up royally and it would still be a damn sight better than the original. But that if Grey were forcibly ejected from the simulation before the merger, all these plans would come to naught. Killing off these 'Senshi' (and the Wizard found himself wishing that he'd researched this Sailor Moon stuff better before coming) would also likely cause the simulation to end quickly.

The Wizard studied Terurun, knowing that she was just an independent AI simulcra within the simulation. So sophisticated that if she was cut she'd bleed, could pass a Turing test, and in fact could communicate with friends and relatives of a *real* Terurun without arousing suspicions. And if plans went well, she'd *be* a real Terurun. "In magic, there are keystones - key objects phrases and places, yes? The Talismans you originally sought, for example, or the Sacred Cup they would have summoned. The Messiah of the Silence and the Messiah of the Light for other examples."

Terurun nodded, accepting this for the moment. Then she understood and her eyes widened.

"The Chain Wielder is one such keystone," the Wizard said with a nod. "Within him is something that could destroy our world here, if he dies and releases it prematurely. In order to assure our victory, it will be necessary to *not* kill him. Now what does that leave?"

Eudial stepped out of the shadows to supply an answer. "Transformation, imprisonment, conversion, subversion, or simply keeping him busy."

Terurun glared briefly at the other Witch.

Steepling his hands before him as he leaned forward the Wizard considered the two. "The girls likewise. If nothing else, doing something to them keeps *him* busy. As far as dangers though, he is a small fish indeed."

"Small?" Terurun looked at Kaolinite's haircut, thinking the boy must have been awfully sure of his power to do this. Overconfident, perhaps.

"Negligible. The true threat has neutralized himself," the Wizard said, silently adding that this was why he had chosen *this* world and timeline. And with the Pheonix Mage away, the villains could truly play. The Mage had stated he would not interfere with this timeline, and that had been all the encouragement he'd needed.

-----------

Kumori Mizuno was up when several refugees came in from the war.

Hotaru was unhurt, at least physically, though she looked like she was in deep thought about something.

Ami came in supporting someone who had cuts, burn marks, wide purple-yellow marks over most of his exposed non-burned skin, and one eye almost completely swollen shut. And... were those bite marks?!

As well as some girl she'd never seen before who was crouched over like an animal and *growling*?!

Professional matters came first and she noticed that Shard-san was about to pass out. Too late, he already had. She ascertained the worst damage, put salve on what needed it, stitched up the worst cuts, lanced some black goo from punctures in the bite, and cleaned up what she could. The clothes, however, would have to be burned. "Dear, does it usually go like this?"

Ami shook her head, letting out a deep breath.

The doctor pursed her lips and considered. "And who is this feral girl over here?"

"Rei Hino, mother, you've met her before."

Kumori looked over the girl crouched down and sniffing the air. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember someone like her."

This was enough to penetrate the layers of exhaustion. "You don't remember her? Shrine priestess at Hikawa Shrine? One of my best friends? You met her when you met Usagi and the others?"

"Hikawa Shrine? There's no priestess there. Just that old man and his apprentice. And they left a few months ago, didn't they?" Kumori shook her head. "She certainly doesn't act like a shrine maid."

"Some sort of attack," wearily explained Ami. "She refuses to part from Shard-san for some reason. As near as I could tell, there's only random activity in the frontal lobes, everything else is basically erased. We'll try to figure out what happened later. Sailor Jupiter was also hit, though it seems mainly to have affected her short-term memory. You really don't remember anything?"

Doctor Mizuno indicated that she was not kidding. An attempt to examine the girl ended up with an uncertain growl but that was the only protest.

"She's gotten a lot calmer, as long as we don't try to seperate them. She watches things a lot, as if she's trying to make sense of them." Ami shook her head. "I really need to get some sleep. Maybe I can think of something else to try when I'm fresh."

"No obvious injuries," declared Mizuno-sensei from her examination. "She seems a little calmer than she did arriving."

Ami nodded while trying to fight a yawn. "She's learning. When we figure out what happened we'll fix it. Weird things have happened to us in the past. It's that you don't remember her, that's..."

The doctor sighed, picked her daughter up with some help from Tomoe-chan, and put her to bed. And with tomorrow being Shard-san's first day of school, she reflected they'd all need a good night's sleep.

--------

Sailor Neptune stood atop the tower and looked off into the distance.

"Anything?" Sailor Uranus looked up at her lover and hoped that she had a better clue.

"The sea is in turmoil, but the pattern is chaos."

"How can a pattern be chaos?"

Neptune looked down at Uranus. "If I knew that we would well be on our way to learning the identity of our new enemy."

"Somehow I doubt it is an enemy from the old days," Uranus said after a moment.

"You're right. They tend to follow a pattern." Neptune looked out at the city and shivered. "With this enemy, we can't be sure what to expect."

"For this, we're out of a nice warm bed," grumbled Uranus. "Come on. If we're going to be awake tonight, we ought to at least get warm."

"Hmmmm," said Neptune, having her own ideas on that matter.

--------

She watched as the lights went off and yawned herself. None of these Others were trying to seperate her from Him. In fact, the older woman seemed to be doing something to help Him, so Rei allowed Older Woman to groom her. Though Older Woman hadn't done a very good job.

Short Fur and Younger Girl were nearby but off in their own lair. She had growled and bared teeth when they'd tried to seperate Her from Him.

She paced briefly in the tiny area, sniffing at the various objects. Everything smelled funny, but nothing seemed threatening.

Her attention finally turned to the odd bindings she had on. The others had become upset earlier when She had tried to get them off, so She had waited. Now there was no reason for her to keep the smoke-smelling things on.

Finally she was able to shred the odd bindings enough that they came off. Freed of the encumberance, she stretched and briefly scampered around the room.

It didn't take long for Her to realize that this cave was cold. In fact, this cave was a poor choice for a lair since there was a cold breeze blowing from that odd hole. She tried to figure out what to do about it briefly, then her eyes fell on Him. It was obvious, then.

She snuggled close, feeling his warmth soak into her, and made a pleased sound. He had odd bindings like She had had, so maybe She shouldn't have removed hers? It *had* been warmer with them on. Oh well, live and learn. She tried to get into his. Naturally it would be warmer if he was still in them.

Keeping body contact, she sniffed him all over as she puzzled out the outer layers of bindings. Many of the things that Older Woman had done smelled funny, and made her snort and draw back with a face. She continued to sniff at Him, though it wasn't until she got to his face that she ran across something even more intriguing. Her hand slid inside his shirt as she sniffed his mouth, then drew even closer to taste.

A hand brushed against a crystalline disc.

Rei spasmed as she pushed aside the animal part of her mind, then realized that she was kissing Ami's fiance. Not only kissing Ami's fiance, but...

"..." Rei tried to get loose quickly but only got tangled worse. Seeing that he was *completely* unconscious, Rei calmed enough for memories to start coming forward. He hadn't done a thing. She had. If he wasn't reacting to her being this tangled up with her, likely it would take a Fire Soul to get him moving. If *that* would work.

Rei trembled briefly, then decided to just spend a moment resting, having passed exhausted some time ago. She was asleep almost before her eyes could close.

--------

A guard flipped his cigarette butt out into the darkness. A faint trail of orange that ended somewhere in a splash out of sight. It wasn't like anything happened out here. This was one of the duller posts one could be assigned to.

The Aleutian Islands were great for a number of reasons. Listening to Russian transmissions, cheap land, and lots of time. Locked in ice most of the time, with a cold wind that would blow in off the sea that made it seem like it was the Fimbulwinter.

There wasn't much to do, and Private Emil Rostovich wondered if it was possible to be bored to death.

"PFEH!"

There were people who, half frozen and bored out of their minds, would have taken a moment to realize that his cigarette had continued glowing past when it should have splashed. That the glowing ember had just been spat out of something else.

Emil would have done his drill sergeant proud. He stepped back into the light, moving simultaneously to put his weapon into a usable position. He wasn't sure what to expect. Crooks maybe, out for a raid on the expensive electronics kept here.

Shambling fish-creatures carrying pitchforks were not exactly on his top twenty list.

"Halt or I'll shoot!"

The only problem with Emil saying this was that he was already firing as one of them lowered a pitchfork and charged forward. It took three shots for the fish-man to die, at which point Emil had switched the lever to make the weapon fire bursts.

Four more fish-men died before the rest swarmed over him, jabbing with their weapons.

Then the sahuagin looked up towards the road, and the prey up there.

One of them expressed the fervant hope that they weren't *all* magic-users like this one had been.

---------

The door shuffed open. "Ohayo!...?! gomen nasai!!" Ami stared. They'd found some pajamas for Shard-san in his pack, and had spread a futon for him. And she realized that they would have had to leave Rei-chan in the room, remembering how she had howled and hissed on trying to get the two seperated long enough to get them in the car. Ami couldn't picture anyone setting the wild child up wearing his pajamas though. Especially as he was still wearing them himself!

Rei woke up, realized she'd gotten tangled up even worse, and really was glad that Ami's fiancee wore boxers. Otherwise... now SHE would have to marry him. "Uhm, Ami-chan, help..."

"I'm not into that!" Ami held her hands over her eyes, then peeked out between her fingers.

"Neither am I," Rei growled, "nothing happened, but I'm kind of stuck."

Ami made a noise and recovered her eyes, imagining all sorts of meanings there.

"Ami-chan, I am genuinely *not* after your fiance. He's not my type at all."

"Then why are you?" Ami had to remove a hand in order to make a gesture at the two.

Rei moved around a bit and then realized the boy she was sharing clothes with wasn't waking up despite her moving around and the two of them talking. "Uhm, Ami-chan. I think he's in a coma or something."

"Uhm, oh yes. Mother left me a note that before setting him off to bed she'd given him something to help him rest. That was why I'd come in..."

Rei began disentangling herself, no longer worried about how it looked or whether she'd wake the fellow.

"Rei-chan? Where's your clothes?"

"Nothing happened! See! He's wearing... I thought all guys wore boxers. Well, they're underwear at least!" Rei blinked and scurried to the remains of her clothes. "Maybe I can borrow something of your mother's?"

Ami took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then peeled back one of her fiance's eyes. Then checked his pulse. "Well, I guess I'll have to use this after all."

Rei watched as Ami cracked open a small capsule. "Smelling salts?"

Grey jerked and groaned as it took effect. "...owie..." *thunk* "zzzz..."

"Coffee?" Rei asked, thanking the kami that Ami was taking it so well.

Ami realized that Shard-san probably wouldn't have known he was in a compromising position with Rei if Makoto had run 10,000 volts through the both of them. And why was that mental image so pleasant? "Yes, I think so."

Rei looked over the fellow and shook her head. No, she had *no* feelings for him. None. Absolutely not. They were 100% not compatible. No how, no way. Besides, Minako would be a better match if Ami dumped him.

---------

Rei had taken one arm, Ami the other, they'd dragged the sleeping boy to the table, wrestled him into a chair, and had decided to catch their breath before doing anything else.

Besides, Rei wanted to find some clothes.

Grey slowly began to come out the muddle to realize that he was in his pajamas, at the dining room table, and... hurt rather severely. He was also stiff as if he hadn't moved all night. He'd also had a funny dream about doing interpretive dance with some girl except that he had all these cords tying him to her so that they had to move in unison.

Rei walked out, wearing a too-large pullover top and knee length skirt. "I'm heading back to the shrine, thank you for being such a gentleman last night, Shard-san."

Grey blinked. "huh?" It was really *way* too early for this. Especially as what he'd understood was something about "the shrine" and "to be".

Ami came out of the bathroom. "-Ah, Shard-san, you have decided to rejoin the living. It is good that you have done so. School is very soon. Do you know what do?-"

Grey nodded, though he didn't really think by any stretch of the imagination he was ready for this. "-First go to the registrar's office, sign forms, then i end up being escorted to the home room.-"

"-Don't worry, it'll be a piece of pie!-" Ami assured him.

"-Piece of cake. The phrase is 'a piece of cake.' Though i doubt it will be.-"

Ami blinked. She'd pulled a Minako? Oh dear.

"Well," Grey said, sounding out the Japanese as best he could, "go we better. Think this long day will be."

---------

Sailor Pluto had discovered something erasing Rei Hino from the timestream. Naturally, she felt this was her responsibility and had begun working at dispelling the ripple. Despite this being something entirely within her domain, she'd run into problems and had only been able to undo parts of it.

Unfortunately, her efforts had apparently tipped off their new enemy that someone *was* moving through time.

Sailor Pluto slept. It was not intentional and it was not planned. She'd had enough time to realize that the new enemy had left a literal "time bomb" to stop people moving through time, and she'd found it. Or, more honestly, it had found her.

She'd survived it however, and tumbled out of the timestream to land here. Unfortunately, she had intended to appear in the early morning at the Mizuno household, dressed appropriately for meeting her iinazuke.

Instead she was in her Sailor fuku, unconscious, and a bit later than she'd intended to be. She was *almost* where she had wanted to show up. Which is why she'd landed in the sliding closet that should have been occupied by Grey's futon thirty five seconds after the front door had been closed and locked.

There had been other changes from her plans, but she would have to be conscious to notice them.

---------

A spell had been unravelled, at least part way.

Some records did indeed show that there was a Rei Hino, who happened to be a high school student at T*A Academy. Though there were some problems as she apparently did not have a home address or guardian.

Some records did indeed show that there was a Hikawa Shrine. Those records would show it had been abandoned recently, the caretaker and his apprentice going to work at other shrines.

The records of Bambi Hino, an entertainer in a cheap club in a disreputable area of the Roppongi district, were likewise nearly complete. Bambi being the sort of entertainer she was, those records were generally not put through a lot of scrutiny under anything approaching normal circumstances.

And a fair number of videotapes showing someone known as "Miss Teapot" were likewise unaffected. Which was really a pity, as Rei herself would have preferred those had disappeared.

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"Yes weedhopper, feedback is an important part of Anything Goes Fanfic Writing. Without knowing which blows strike home, and which miss target, it is impossible to improve score." The old man sighed deeply. "So it is written."

"Why is it written, Master?"

"Because, weedhopper, if you called up the author to discuss this he'd spend all his time talking on the phone about his stances on Genma and Akane. Instead of writing fanfics."

------

The assessment of the Senshi English skills comes mainly from episode #108, "Usagi's Dance is the waltz" (Usagi no dance wa waltz ni notte). Minako is fluent, Ami's accent is thick enough to cut and a bit overly formal, Rei seems to know a few phrases but her reaction later indicates she has little confidence in English skills (no appreciable accent, prob because i've heard her voice actress - Michie Tomizawa is fluent), Makoto's poor, Usagi's hopeless or nearly so.

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