=========================================== 
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Orion 
A series by LeVar Bouyer 
Unnumbered Episode #201: The Yearbook
(this episode contains some sexual content)
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	It was a perfectly ordinary day in Crystal Tokyo.  There were no
youma or psychopathic senshi hanging about, and there wouldn't, at least not
today.  The two hundred or so sailor senshi stood their eternal vigil,
keeping watch over the city, but today their services would not be needed.
 
	In her office, Sailor America was reading a newspaper.  This wasn't
because of boredom or laziness, but because it was her job.  Her duty, in
addition to protecting the Queen, was to take care of the crown's dealings
with the press.
 
	Examples had been set all through history of monarchies that let the
press get out of hand.  There had been two main ways of dealing with this,
both employed by the British towards the end of the second millennium.  The
first was to snuff out any and all opposition and dissent.  This resulted
in, among other things, the War for American Independence back in the
1700s.
 
	The other method was to ignore all opposition and dissent, and
simply let things go to hell.  This, as applied during the final period
before the Silence in the 1980s and 1990s, resulted in the eventual
dissolution of the monarchy in 1999, which of course turned out to be a
major cause of the worldwide collapse the Silence provoked.
 
	Crystal Tokyo took a third path.  Protest was allowed as long as
certain boundaries were not crossed.  One of them, the one she was looking
for right now, was to make sure that no-one defamed the senshi or the
monarchy in "a disagreeable fashion."
 
	Sailor America's definition of "disagreeable fashion" differed
greatly from most of the senshi's, especially the inners.  Jupiter had in
fact made veiled threats to bring personal harm to America if she didn't
start being more strict about those sorts of things.
 
	For her part, coming as she did from a rather liberal North American
Confederation, she felt that pretty much anything went.  But some guidelines
had to be followed anyway, and that was what she was looking for.
 
	And she found it.  It had been hidden in the depths of the
classified section, in an obscure English dialect that should have made it
incomprehensible to prying eyes.  Then again, a PR secretary who wasn't a
linguist wouldn't be much good.
 
	"For sale," read the brown-haired senshi, "one mint-condition copy
of Sailor Nights, episode four.  Contact me at 34-575-3543.  GS."
 
	She sighed, and straightened her skirt.  "Hentai," she muttered
under her breath.  Sailor Nights was a fairly well-known and quite popular
underground pornographic parody of the Sailor Senshi.  It was also banned by
thirty countries, twenty-nine of which had done it out of fear of Japan.
 
	Needless to say, the thirtieth was Japan itself.  Her PR job
sometimes crossed over to the job of censorship, much to her chagrin.  She
had the authority to order the arrest of almost anyone on the mere suspicion
of sedition.
 
	She'd never exercised it. 
 
	She got up and went to the door.  "I'm going out for a bit," she
said to her secretary.  "Be right back."
 
*** 
 
	Jen Sakachi lay on Eileen's couch, enjoying something she rarely got
a chance to take advantage of.
 
	A weekend. 
 
	Actually, it wasn't as if it were an actual Saturday or Sunday.  The
fact of the matter was that she still had months of leave accumulated from
her adventures on Pleiades, and she saw no reason why she shouldn't use one
of them by just lounging around the house and getting some personal work
done.
 
	She scratched her jeans-clad leg reflectively.  The last few days
had been great for her.  They'd been in bed for nearly three days straight,
and it had felt like the first time every time.  Today was Eileen's first
day back at the office since Pleiades had come back to Earth, though, and
gave Jen a perspective on life she hadn't seen in years.
 
	Solitude and silence. 
 
	Neither had been very plentiful on Pleiades.  The dull roar of
people, engines, ventilation, and so on always had been in the background,
and so one got used to background noise.  As for solitude . . . the closest
she could get was in her cabin, and those times were few and far between. 
With over two hundred people crammed into that small ship, elbow room had
been a precious commodity.
 
	And in her time with Eileen she'd never been alone, and her world
had shrunk down substantially.  There was making love with Eileen, and
nothing else.
 
	So it was to be expected that she would have a bit of an empty
feeling in the pit of her stomach, not having Eileen's nice, warm body
beside her.  Or so she thought.
 
	She sighed yet again and looked around for something to do.  She'd
had fun plans at the beginning of the day involving the rest of her friends
from Pleiades.  That had come to a screeching halt, though.  Kim, Sammy, and
Vanessa all had evaluations to get through from the personnel office, and
wouldn't be free for anything for a couple of days.
 
	As for Usagi, she was wrapped up once again in the intricacies of
Palace life.  She was a princess again, and seemed to be loving it.  She,
along with the bridge trio, had agreed to a picnic two days hence at one of
Crystal Tokyo's more popular parks, but that did nothing to assuage the
loneliness she felt right now.
 
	"Dammit," she muttered as she stood.  There had to be *something* to
do around here, or she'd go mad.
 
	She inspected the bookcase.  Typical fare; the recent best-sellers,
a few history books (many of them hers, she realized), some romances, a
couple mysteries . . . and a cloth-bound yearbook.
 
	Her interest piqued, Jen pulled out the heavy red volume to look at
the title.
 
	"Annville High School Yearbook, 3028 edition."  As a purely academic
matter she inspected it.  She *had* been yearbook editor in her last year
of high school, after all.  Before, of course, that and everything else had
been superseded in importance by her acceptance into the School.
 
	She still felt fairly confident that she could figure out the
characteristics of a good yearbook, though, and idly thumbed through the
pages.  Pictures of vehicles that would not have been recognizable as school
busses to any twentieth century eyes, proms, homecomings, the typical school
activities.
 
	She came to the superlative section.  Most Likely to Succeed,
Quietest, Most School Spirited, all titles that meant nothing a mere two or
three years later.  The one who *had* succeeded the most, Eileen, wasn't in
any of them.
 
	She came to the back cover, where all of the signatures were.  
Apparently, Eileen's school followed a system similar to Jen's; a point of 
pride was made in getting as many signatures as possible, regardless of 
whether or not you actually knew them.  She looked for a bit, and looked 
some more, and then stopped when the tears became too much. 
 
	"Eileen," she whispered.  "I never knew." 
 
*** 
 
	Sailor America walked into her apartment and promptly ceased to be 
Sailor America.  She hated being in senshi form around the house, not that 
sometimes it didn't come in handy with Jen. 
 
	It was Jen that she noticed first.  Her cheeks were tear-stained, 
and her eyes red-rimmed. 
 
	"Jen!  What's wrong?"  Eileen dropped the bag she'd been carrying
which contained the ingredients for dinner, and rushed over to her lover's
side.
 
	"I saw your yearbook." 
 
	There was a pause. 
 
	"Oh," said Eileen, laughing, "that's nothing, really.  Just a high
school prank."
 
	"High school prank?" asked Jen bitterly.  She turned to the back 
cover and began reading.  "'Hope you rot, skank!' 'Eat shit and die, you 
queer!' 'The School don't take no pussy-licking dykes, bitch!'  And you 
call this a prank?" 
 
	The smile disappeared from Eileen's face.  "Well, they weren't the 
most mature-" 
 
	"Anton Jacobson: class president.  Anita Lindsay: Drum Major.  
Michelle Jaecks: captain of the volleyball team."  Jen looked up.  "The 
very cream of the crop, Eileen.  Your so-called friends.  And they did 
this to you?" 
 
	"Jen, you don't have to feel bad about it.  It's all in the past,
really."
 
	"No way, Eileen.  They insult you, they insult me.  And if they
think they can insult me and get away with it-"
 
	"Jen.  Calm down.  Please."  She went to the kitchen.  "I'll get you 
some milk." 
 
	"Milk?" asked Jen, as if Eileen had pulled up her blouse, whipped
out her breast, and offered it to her.  "You can think about milk at a time
like this?"
 
	Eileen looked at her strangely for a moment, then shook her head
clear and started pulling cups from the cabinet.  "I see you're going to
need something a bit stronger, then."
 
	"You know how I feel about alcohol," said Jen loudly from the living
room.
 
	"Yeah," shouted back Eileen.  "That's why I'm getting you some fresh
hot black coffee."
 
	Jen frowned.  "I don't drink coffee, not since high school." 
 
	"Well," said Eileen, bringing in a couple of mugs, "you're drinking
it now."
 
	Jen took a sip, frowned, and then swallowed it with a visible
effort.  "This is vile."
 
	"Yep.  Now, about the yearbook.  I haven't told you a lot about 
Annville, have I?" 
 
	"No, not really."  She forced down some more of the liquid.  "Come
to think of it, I've never seen your parents.  Do they call regularly?"
 
	"Nope.  I get a card at Christmas and birthdays, but that's not
important.  Jen, it's important that you know this about me.  I . . . I
haven't told it to many people.
 
	"I'm gay." 
 
	Jen blinked.  "Given the past week, that's not exactly a novelty." 
 
	"No, I mean that I've always been gay.  Look at you.  You were
undecided when you came to the school.  At the least, you felt that there
should be something more to guys than just the social pressures of going
after them, right?"
 
	"I suppose," said Jen slowly.  She hadn't given it much thought;
what she had with Eileen was so good that reason seemed to dull it somehow.
 
	"I know so.  Now, when you met me, all that went out the window. 
That was the turning point for you.
 
	"Me, it was something I was born with.  As soon as I knew about sex,
I always liked girls.  It just seemed like there was no other way for me to
be.  I never told anyone about it, not because I was afraid, but because I
figured that everyone felt that way.
 
	"Then came high school." Eileen uncrossed her legs, then crossed
them again, setting her mug down on the table.  "Suddenly, there was all
this pressure on me to date guys.  I was never interested, of course, even
though a lot of people thought I was pretty.
 
	"I don't know how it got out.  Maybe I let it slip to a friend or
something, I don't remember.  But in my sophomore year, I was suddenly the
freak.  I've told you how small Annville is, right?"
 
	"Yes, I think so.  It's only a few thousand people?" 
 
	"Yeah, and that's including the college.  Anyway, we're kind of
isolated up there, and it doesn't take long for word to get around.  Next
thing I know, I'm the resident punching bag.
 
	"Jen, it was unbelievable.  I honestly believe Sailor Pollux herself
would have gotten along better with them than I did.  They did everything
short of spit on me for the next two years, and some even went *that* far."
Jen's sharp intake of breath was enough to convince Eileen that her little
story was having an effect on her lover.
 
	"After all that, the pressure from trying to take the exam was a
welcome release.  I mean, forget all the satellite exams and preliminaries;
I could use the distraction."
 
	"So," said Jen, after taking a moment to digest all this, "you took
the exam to get out of a stifling rural community?"
 
	"No," corrected the other, "I took the exam because I was smart,
intelligent, and lucky.  You know how it works outside Japan: I had to take
nearly a dozen tests and win a lottery just to *get* to the Exam, let alone
pass it.  The deck's stacked against foreigners, Jen."
 
	That was completely true, Jen knew.  But it hurt to be reminded of
the fact that the powers that be were so xenophobic.
 
	"But I beat the odds, and the rest was history.  My family supported
my entrance into the School.  They'd seen how the community had treated me,
and we all agreed that a change of scenery was in order."
 
	"But they never come to visit," protested Jen.  "Surely they-" 
 
	"No.  The idea all along was to start over.  I haven't called my
parents since graduation, and I probably won't ever call them again."
 
	The calmness with which she said it frightened Jen.  To totally
sever ties to home like that . . . there had to be something Eileen wasn't
telling her.  Not to mention how neatly her lover had sidestepped the
question of the yearbook entries.  On the other hand, that would insinuate
that Eileen was hiding something from her.  That was in a nutshell
inconceivable.
 
	"Enough about me," said Eileen.  She stood abruptly, and took Jen's
empty coffee mug from the table.  "I've had all the miserable reminiscing
that I can handle for one day."
 
	"What?  You're just going to go off like everything's okay?  Well
Eileen, I'll have you know that things are not even approaching okay, not if
people can say things like that to you!  No-one in the world deserves that
kind of treatment!"
 
	"Really?" asked Eileen softly, pausing in the doorway to the
kitchen.  "No-one?" She put the mug in the sink and drew close to Jen.  "So
you're saying that every time someone hurts our feelings, we should go out
and exact retribution?"
 
	"Well, maybe not *every* time, but-" 
 
	"So, just the people we care about?" 
 
	"Um-" 
 
	"Especially senshi.  I mean, we do all the work, don't we?  Name the
last global crisis us senshi didn't solve.  If we're so good for the human
race, then anyone who slights us is against humanity, and therefore we have
to get rid of them, right?
 
	"Jen, that kind of reasoning is what I go up against every day at
the Palace.  There are so many people there who support the elimination of
any opposition whatsoever.  So what do I do?
 
	"I don't know.  I honestly don't.  I'm sworn to protect the Queen,
but I don't know if that should extend to making sure nobody includes her in
off-color jokes.  I'm madly in love with you, but I don't know if I should
go beating up anyone who insults you.  It's hard."
 
	Jen swallowed.  She knew that it had been hard when Eileen first
came to Japan, adjusting to a totally different language and mindset.  She
knew that the adjustment from the virtually unlimited free speech of North
America to the fairly straight-laced society of Japan had been slightly
difficult for her friend.
 
	She certainly hadn't known, however, that it had been so severe. 
 
	Eileen took a step back, and then went to the window.  Their
apartment was on the side of the Palace that faced the Pacific.  It was nice
in the evenings as the sky darkened, but was truly spectacular at sunrise.
 
	At the moment it was fairly mundane, as a haze began to build on the
horizon.  A hurricane was building far out to sea.  It wouldn't strike
Crystal Tokyo, however.  It had been virtually unaffected by hurricanes for
the past thousand years, for obvious reasons.
 
	Eileen looked out over the biggest ocean on Earth and sighed.  "I
can see that you've got a couple of things to think about."
 
	"I think *we've* got a couple things to think about.  Wanna take a
walk?"
 
	"Okay." 
 
	"Good.  There's plenty of daylight left, I'll pack a basket." 
 
*** 
 
	Crystal Tokyo was an urban planner's paradise.  Everything had its
place, as though it had been organically grown somehow.  If you walked along
its wide, tree-lined boulevards and thought to yourself that a nice green
plot of land would relieve the monotony, you would soon find just what you
were looking for.
 
	There was now more open space in Tokyo than there had been since
before industrialization hit the land of the rising sun.  Small parks
littered the cityscape.  They were often tiny plots, with a couple trees and
a few bushes, and perhaps a bench.  It was such a park that Jen and Eileen
found themselves in.
 
	Late lunch at the park was good.  But for Eileen, it was just the
beginning, as she began to give Jen one those back rubs that she did so
well.  She hadn't really learned it anywhere; it just seemed a natural
knack, and Jen had never had any complaints.
 
	Until now. 
 
	"Eileen, I really think we should go home.  It might rain, you
know."
 
	Eileen looked up.  There wasn't a single cloud in the sky, which was
hardly surprising.  She frowned.  "Jen, what's wrong?  Oh, don't tell me
it's that yearbook silliness.  I thought we'd discussed this already."
Eileen wrapped her hands around Jen's waist and smiled slightly.  "Come on,
let me take it off your mind . . . " She began to place little wet kisses
down her neck in her irresistible manner.
 
	Jen decided to relax a bit and let it take its course.  She still
wanted her.  It *had* been a full year, after all.  There were a lot of
pent-up feelings that a mere week of lovemaking couldn't erase.  Eileen's
hands began to play with the front lapels of her blouse.
 
	A twig snapped from behind the bushes.  Jen sat up, shrugged her
blouse back on, and looked about for insects or more frighteningly, small
woodlands creatures.  She hated them.  "Look, Eileen, can we *please* go
back home?" Eileen looked at her eyes and saw that she'd lost this round,
but she had to try again.
 
	"Oh, Jen, you aren't afraid that someone's watching us, are you?" 
 
	"Look, I'm sorry, but I just can't stop thinking about what you
said." Jen stuffed items back into the picnic basket with purpose.  "When we
get back home.  I promise."
 
	"Oh . . .  all right."  Eileen looked thoroughly disappointed as she
began to fold the blanket.
 
*** 
 
	It was a fairly quiet drive back to the Palace's apartment complex. 
Traffic was rather light, which was surprising.  Eileen glanced over at Jen
a few times during the trip, but her head was turned away towards the
Pacific Ocean.  Whatever she was thinking about, she wasn't ready to share
it with Eileen.  Not that Eileen didn't have a clue what it was, though.
 
	They remained silent until they got inside the elevator.  As soon as 
the door slid closed, Eileen took the opportunity of the brief privacy to 
make up for lost time.  She pressed Jen up against the mirrored wall as a 
finger stabbed the button.  There was a slight jerk, and a deep hum as the 
elevator began to ascend. 
 
	"Come on, Jen, let's say we just get a little warmed up?" 
 
	Jen looked uneasy, and she glanced at the elevator counter. 
Thirty-four floors to go.  "Oh, I guess so." Memories of recent events were
pushed aside as they kissed.  Eileen pushed her further up on to the wall,
making Jen stand on her tiptoes.  This was a bit awkward for her, being
shorter than her redheaded friend, but she didn't mind.  She liked the
challenge.
 
	They barely noticed that the elevator came to a stop premature of
their destination, and a passenger had stepped into the car, since Eileen
was rather involved with playing with the clasps of Jen's bra.  "Ahem."
 
	Eileen froze in mid kiss, and her blood nearly turned to ice. 'Oh, 
god, I hope that isn't who I think that is . . .'   She glanced at the 
mirror wall in front of her.  There, looking right back at her was a 
raven-haired woman clad in red-white-purple sailor fuku and a frown that 
would have unnerved granite. 
 
	The door slid closed again.  "My, my, aren't we a cute pair," she
began as she pressed the button for the twenty-third floor.  The sarcasm in
her voice dripped down to fall on the carpeted floor.  There was a slight
jerk as the elevator began to move again.  "May I remind you two lovebirds
that this is a public area, and there is also the fact of keeping your
images untarnished.  You are *senshi*, after all." The word was said as if
she just slapped them in the face with it.  Which she did quite well,
actually.
 
	Faces red as beets, Jen and Eileen stood side by side as the car
rose towards the twenty-third floor.  The silence in the cramped space could
shatter eardrums.  After an eternity that was stuffed into the space of
thirty seconds, the chime sounded and the door slid open, revealing the
plush hallway of floor twenty-three of the Palace.  Sailor Mars stepped out
with not so much as a 'good day'.
 
	The elevator door slid closed again. 
 
*** 
 
	The apartment door opened.  Jen Sakachi strode in with Eileen not
far behind.  "Finally," she muttered as she slammed the door shut behind her
and punched a couple buttons.  Security at the Palace was amazingly tight,
but it didn't pay to take chances and she wanted no interruptions.  "Now
can we get down to business?" She pulled Jen close to her.
 
	Jen pushed her away with barely detectable reluctance.  "What are
you talking about?  We just got caught red-handed by one of the planet
senshi, for crying out loud!  And you expect us to just *do* it right after
that?"
 
	"God, Jen, why are you concerned about what that old buzzard
thinks anyway?  Now what I had in mind-"
 
	"Look, Eileen, stop it.  I'm just-"  She pressed a hand to her
forehead and turned away.  "I'm just confused about stuff now.  It's like my
head's a hurricane or something, I just can't figure stuff out anymore."
 
	"Jen, you're being really silly about all this!  They don't matter,
okay?  All that matters right now, is us.  Do you-"
 
	"Eileen, I'm going to go for a walk, okay?  Alone."  She grabbed her
coat, which she had tossed onto a couch, and headed out the door.
 
	She was in the elevator by the time Eileen took her yearbook and 
flung it across the room.   
 
	It hit a potted plant, which smashed into little pieces. 
 
*** 
 
	The Palace was a big place.  It comprised ninety-eight stories from
the ground up, and twelve sub-basements.  The ground floor had a footprint,
so to speak, of several city blocks.  Obviously, the working population of
Serenity's abode was quite large.  No specific figures were released, but
usually the daytime population was a bit less than three thousand people.
 
	With all those people, it was only natural that people should get
tired of being inside and want to be outside.  Thus, on almost every floor
there were open air lounges, patios really, that looked out on the Pacific,
Crystal Tokyo, or both.
 
	Jen was at one of these lounges on the seventy-fifth floor.  It was
as high as you could get without intruding on Her Majesty's private
quarters.  Above were the offices for the really high up, along with food
service floors, housekeeping, et cetera.  In theory, everything above the
seventy-fifth floor was self-sustaining.  Interestingly, Sailor America had
her office all the way on the eighty-first floor.
 
	It was growing late, and most of the people who worked at the Palace
were on their way home.  If she'd cared to go to the other side of the
building, she could see the lines of cars and busses as they streamed away
from the Palace.
 
	She didn't care to see them, though.  She was quite happy to sit and
watch the whitecaps on the Pacific, let the brisk sea breeze blow her hair
in a billow behind her, and to just think about things.
 
	It simply didn't make sense to her.  You didn't endure abuse like
that and come out smiling, neither physical nor mental nor sexual nor
verbal.  It simply didn't happen.  She had little experience in it herself,
though.  She went through a brief daydream of her experiences on Pleiades,
then snapped out of it.
 
	That still happened sometimes.  She'd be reading, or eating, or
watching the news, and suddenly she'd remember a particular day, or a
particular battle.  It wasn't as bad as the first couple of days back, when
she'd thought that Eileen was the only one keeping her sane.
 
	Eileen. 
 
	It always came back to her.  Why was she just shrugging the yearbook
off like a raindrop off the skin of a lemon?  Something clearly did not
compute.  More than anything else, it was what kept her away from Eileen. 
She couldn't be with her, not if she carried on this charade.
 
	She didn't know how long she'd sat there looking until a firm hand
clasped her shoulder.  She snapped around to see Eileen standing there, but
not looking at her.  Her eyes looked out to sea.
 
	"Pretty." 
 
	Jen turned around slowly and looked at the water.  At that moment,
the setting sun peeped out from behind the clouds, casting an orange streak
upon the ocean.  "Yes, it is," said Jen.
 
	"I wasn't talking about the ocean, Jennifer." 
 
	That made Jen turn around again.  It wasn't all that often that 
Eileen called her by her full name. 
 
	"Jennifer . . . I . . . God, how do I say this?  Look, if I've been
coming on too strong lately, I . . . aw shit." She balled up her fists and
went over to another part of the patio.  She put her hands up on the ledge
and looked over the precipice.  "Jennifer, I've been . . . do y'know how
hard this is?"
 
	Jen stood from the bench she'd been sitting on and went over to be
by Eileen's side, straightening her hair as she went.  "It's okay, Eileen. 
Tell me."
 
	"No, I can't."  She stood up and crossed over to where Jen had been
before.  Jen followed, and Eileen retreated to her previous position.  'This
is getting ridiculous,' thought Jen.  She followed again, and then grabbed
Eileen as she was about to move back.
 
	"Can't tell me what, Eileen?" 
 
	"I can't tell you . . . ."  At that instant, she looked into Jen's
eyes and saw the expression there.  With that, a barrier seemed to collapse
within her, and it all came out.  "I can't tell you how much those notes
hurt me.  My God, it's like literary rape." Now that she was finally saying
it, it now came out in a rush, and she couldn't seem to stop herself.  "It's
like raping me, kicking me into the dirt, just because I was so damned
different from them!  Then I try to better myself, try to improve myself and
everyone else, and they treated me like some kind of whore, and then . . .
then . . . ."
 
	She said nothing more comprehensible and simply cried, slowly rocked
by Jen in a tight embrace.
 
	"It's okay, Eileen, it is.  Really."  She went on like this,
whispering sweet nothings that meant everything in the world, until finally
the brunette felt strong enough to stand up straight.  Jen's eyes sparkled
as she spoke.  "Eileen A Pearcy, you are the most beautiful, most lovable,
most important person in the world to me, and nothing that anyone could ever
write will change that.  Understand?  You've shown them who's the better
person.  Have they become senshi?  Have they gained virtual immortality? 
Have they got the greatest kind of love in the world?
 
	"They don't, Eileen, and you do.  That has more impact than a
million yearbooks, than a million insults.  Because you've got me, and I've
got you."
 
	A sort of light seemed to go out behind Jen's blue eyes, replaced by
another kind; the outdoor lights had gone on, and the formerly dark patio
was now illuminated against the Crystal Tokyo night.  "Come on, it's getting
late."
 
*** 
 
	Eileen opened the refrigerator door for the nth time.  She knew she
would see the same thing every time, but it didn't matter.
 
	She'd thought she was doing herself a favor by ignoring what she'd
been feeling.  She'd thought it would help her heal if she just acted more
bubbly and sexier.  It had done just the opposite, though.
 
	But it was better now, she knew.  Lord knew she and Jen had 
problems, but they'd get through them, or die trying. 
 
	"Lover?" came the call from the bedroom.  "Could you help me move
something?"
 
	Eileen snickered.  The redhead had twenty centimeters and quite a
few kilos on her, and yet needed Eileen's help to move some furniture?  But
what the heck; it was late, and she didn't feel like looking through the
cabinets again.
 
	She went to the bedroom and was quite surprised by what she saw. 
Lit by the light of a dozen candles, Jen lay dressed in a pink sweater and
green skirt that came just below her knees.  In the semi-darkness, Jen
turned to face Eileen.  "I need some moving."
 
	Eileen moved forward shakily, not sure if this was true. 
"Jennifer?" asked Eileen, a bit higher than she'd meant to say, "are you
sure this is what you want?"
 
	"It's only fair," she replied in a voice that could not rightfully
be described as husky.  "I've kept you waiting long enough."
 
	"But . . . everything I've said . . . " 
 
	"Yep." 
 
	Eileen lay on the bed next to Jen, and eyed the sweater cautiously,
unsure if it was real.  She saw that it was the sweater she'd bought Jen the
day she'd found out Pleiades was on her way home.  It was more of a
cardigan; there were several bone-white buttons on it.
 
	With infinite care, she undid each of the fasteners, making sure
that not a thread was pulled too strongly.  After what seemed like an
eternity, she completed the task, revealing the white cotton bra that Jen
preferred.  She was about to undo the clasp when Jen murmured something.
 
	"Not yet," she repeated.  "A bit later.  Right now," she said,
rising, "it's your turn."
 
	Eileen stayed perfectly still as Jen raised the sweatshirt over her
head and placed it nearly on the floor.  She then began to work on Eileen's
slacks, undoing the button and zipper, and sliding down the garment.  Eileen
then did the same with Jen's skirt.
 
	They then lay like that awhile, taking in each other's bodies,
neither saying a word.  Looking at Eileen's form, Jen thought that this
would be a perfectly acceptable heaven if she could only look at her lover
forever.  She knew that Eileen felt the same way.
 
	Then they proceeded on, with their mutual permission. 
Simultaneously, in a maneuver better seen than described, they undid the
clasps on each other's brassieres, and let them drop to the floor.  Eileen
looked at Jen's chest with a hint of envy; she knew that the redhead was
forever endowed with a larger chest than herself, but she was used to it. 
She quite honestly didn't give a damn about size, but always thought that
Jen would be happier if Eileen's breasts were just a bit bigger.
 
	On impulse, they kissed.  It was by no means a short, abbreviated
kiss, and it took quite awhile before either of them were able to let go.
 
	Eileen reached a hand down to Jen's legs, and let it slowly,
excruciatingly creep upwards, caressing her toes, her ankle, her calf, her
knee, her thigh.  Finally, after what to Jen seemed millennia, a sensation
enhanced by the slow, steady, almost lethargic look she was getting from
Eileen, the brunette's fingers finally reached the junction of her legs. 
Eileen just let the digits rest there, not moving, simply feeling the warmth
of her body through the white cotton panties.
 
	Then, with a speed and fervor that took them both by surprise, she
reached up and, with a single tug, pulled the garment down from her waist to
her ankles and then they were gone, shoved into Eileen's pocketspace.  Jen
looked at Eileen, shocked.
 
	"Didn't want to make a bigger mess," was all Eileen would say. 
Then she didn't say anything for awhile, as she spent some time licking up
Jen's long, long legs.  She took special care to reach every part of her
leg, and by the time she'd finished, Jen felt that she could die a happy
woman.
 
	The evening wasn't quite complete, though.  After minutes (hours? 
years?), Eileen reached the spot, and the next thirty minutes were spent for
Jen writhing, arching, bucking, and having the time of her life.  Eileen was
merciless, bringing her lover to higher-than-imagined heights of pleasure,
and then somehow carrying her even higher.  She continued on, knowing that
her actions couldn't come close to expressing how much she loved her, but
hoping that somehow, Jen could get some idea of what she felt.
 
	From the gurgles coming from the redhead's throat, it would appear
that she was doing quite a good job at it.
 
	Finally, Eileen relented and drew back, smiling at her handiwork. 
She gave Jen a couple moments to catch her breath.
 
	"That," said Jen at length, panting, "was absolutely amazing." 
 
	"I try my best," said Eileen, a broad smile crossing her face. 
 
	"Yes, but now," and a mischievous twinkle came into Jen's eyes,
accented by the candlelight, "it's your turn." She rose from her prone
position, and gently forced her lover down on the bed.
 
	Eileen simply put her head back, closed her eyes, and waited for the
fun to begin.  Jen used a decidedly different technique from Eileen; where
Eileen was straightforward and dominating, Jen was more timid, more gentle,
showed the care that Eileen did, but in a different way.  But she had to
admit that timidity had its advantages.  Eileen could drive her lover up the
wall in half an hour.
 
	Jen usually took half a minute. 
 
	The cries echoed off the walls. 
 
*** 
 
	Jen slowly opened her eyes.  The candles had all burned out, and a
thin mist of smoke was still being worked on by the air conditioning system. 
She looked at the clock on the wall.  04:23.
 
	She started to swing out of bed, then thought better of it as many
of her major limbs were entangled with Eileen's.  She flopped her head back
and looked at the ceiling, pondering matters.
 
	Last night, as always, had been great.  But would it still be the 
same in the morning? 
 
	"Eileen?" 
 
	"Hm?" 
 
	"It's time to get up." 
 
	"Huh?" 
 
	"4:23 . . . I mean 4:24.  You've got work to do, my love." 
 
	"Oh, yeah." 
 
	Neither moved. 
 
	"Eileen, I appreciate the sentiment, but you've got a job to get to,
remember?"
 
	"Yeah, just a moment."  With incredible reluctance they separated,
and Eileen pulled aside the covers to rise.  "You wanna take a shower with
me?"
 
	"No," said Jen, yawning, "you go on ahead.  If I go in there with
you, we won't get out for ages."
 
	"Point taken," she said, smiling.  She grabbed a towel from a drawer
and made her way to the door.

	At the door: "Eileen?" 
 
	"Yes?" 
 
	"I love you, too." 
 
	The smile was all the answer Jen needed. 
 
*** 
 
	That morning, at 11:32, Sailor America took a quick break.  She'd
left some business unfinished, and she hated to leave a job undone.
 
	She found him in an out of the way coffee shop, in one of CT's less-
popular districts.  He looked fairly nervous, and with good reason; what he
was there for was illegal in thirty countries.  Seeing him, she squared her
shoulders and detransformed.  Then, she pulled one of the more interesting
stunts she'd figured out: pulling an entire outfit from her pocketspace and
putting it on perfectly.  Now in black shirt and jeans, with sunglasses and
wide-brimmed hat, she strode calmly to the man.
 
	"Mr. Naqvi, I presume?" 
 
	"Yes." 
 
	"You're awaiting a GS?" 
 
	"Yes."  He looked around furtively.  "Can we get this overwith?  I
mean, if any of the senshi find out-"
 
	"They won't find out," said Eileen smoothly.  "Now, we've got a
couple formalities.  Did you see the game last night?"
 
	"What?  Dammit, I don't have time for this, and . . . ."  He looked
at her face, and tried to peer behind the dark glasses.  Of course, he
failed.  "Fine.  Yes, I saw the game.  But that red card was unbelievable."
 
	"Really?  I rather thought the referee made the correct decision." 
 
	"The referee was bought off." 
 
	"Good."  The countersigns exchanged, Eileen got down to business. 
"Now, I have the merchandise.  Do you have the money?"
 
	Naqvi nodded, and pulled out a handlink.  Placing it on the table,
he slid it over to the mysterious person.  "Three hundred thousand yen,
ready to be transferred to your account as soon as you press the button. 
Now show it to me."
 
	"Gladly."  She produced a tiny chip, about ten centimeters in
length, a centimeter in width, and a couple millimeters in thickness. 
"Sailor Nights, just as you ordered."
 
	For the first time since their meeting, he smiled.  "Great."  He
took the chip.  "You can have the money."
 
	"Thank you, Mr. Naqvi.  It's been a pleasure doing business with
you." She stood.  "There's one other thing I think I should tell you,
though."
 
	"What?" 
 
	"America Star Power, Make-Up!" 
 
	The transformation died down. 
 
	Naqvi seemed to crumble within himself a bit.  "Damn." 
 
	"Yes," said America mildly.  "We picked up the real GS yesterday. 
But you, sir, were number one on his customer list." She produced her own
handlink.  "Yes, this is America.  I have him in custody and I'm on my way
in."
 
	She produced a pair of handcuffs from her pocketspace and with
little preamble slapped them on the man.  Though she was a senshi, and
therefore exempt, she read him his rights anyway.
 
	They then proceeded to the car that awaited them.  He would soon be
on his way to Crystal Tokyo's central holding facility.
 
	"You know, sooner or later the message will get out, Mr. Naqvi,"
said America, slamming the driver's door and starting the engine.
 
	"Hentai doesn't pay." 
 

=================================================
Unnumbered Episode #202: Sailor America's Day Off
=================================================


	I'm Eileen Pearcy, better known as Sailor America, star of stage and
screen.  Well, maybe not stage, but there was the manga, and . . . sorry. 
I've got this annoying habit of getting off topic, something Jen knows all
too well.  I've also got a habit of being almost as flamboyant as Sailor
Venus, though Lord knows I'm trying to rein it in.  But hey, we North
American senshi are a rare breed.

	Anyway, all Japan's raving about me and Jen since the incident.  The
Gemini incident, that's all I'm allowed to refer to it as at this point.  In
twenty years, the seals will be broken on the reports, and all the details
will come out, but for now, all most people know is that there was a
disturbance in time and space, and myself, Jen, and her Highness fixed it.

	But that's not what this is about.  This is about my day off. 
Serenity's birthday was June 30, and this year it came on a long weekend, so
I got a break from the routine.  So I took Jen out for the day, figuring
that we could use some time together.

	It all started this morning.  Why not?  Everything else does, right?

***

	I went through all the pleasantries.  You know:  eat, shower, shave
my legs.  I cut myself, and we had no bandages.  Thank God I've got a day
off; I don't have to wear that short skirt and betray that scar to the
world.  It'll fix right up, though.  Being a senshi does weird things to
your bodily functions, things you get used to after a few years.

	Now Jen's much more of a morning person than I am, so she kind of
led me by the nose as we went through the formalities of getting ready for
the day.  Not that I have a problem with that, you realize.  Breakfast was
at a slow, leisurely pace.  I had a cheese omelet, while Jen had her typical
fare of sunny-side ups and sausages, along with some toast and tea.  No, we
don't go for those Japanese deals in the morning.

	Anyway, I was enjoying my omelet, and Jen asked, with her mouth full
of sausage: "So, what do you have planned for today, Eileen?"

	I really didn't know.  Of course, I didn't tell her that.

	"Er . . . it depends.  What do you have planned?"  First rule of
public relations: turn the other guy's questions back on him.  Hopefully she
would just go along with whatever I said.

	"Well . . . " and here she paused in that little way she does, "I
was thinking that I might get some shopping done.  Sammy said something
about how she needs a new outfit."

	I chewed on that a moment.  Where had I heard that name before? 
"Sammy?  She was on Pleiades, right?"

	"Yes," she said.  I don't know why, but it always sends shivers down
my spine when she says that.  Damn, but I'm lucky to have her.  Very lucky. 
Maybe too lucky.  "She was a great officer.  Still is.  I think you'd like
her."

	"What's this?" I asked playfully.  "Trying to get rid of me?"

	"No," said Jen, "just pointing out that it might be fun to take her
out."

	"Yeah, that's what I was thinking."  I drained my Sailor America mug
and went to the machine to get another cup.  I just love coffee.  Jen
doesn't, though.  I can't see why; it's the best drink on earth.  "So, you
wanna give her a call or something?"

	"Sure!"  She reached over to the phone, which was on the wall
adjacent to the table.  "Yes, headquarters please."

	"Headquarters?" I asked, surprised.  Last time I checked, she was 
still a lieutenant.  "So she's up on the Moon?

	"Yes.  She's on some kind of assignment up there, something with
Sailor Mars."

	I scowled.  That's not uncommon when her name is mentioned.  "She
decided to spread the wealth and be snotty on the Moon, too?"

	"Eileen!" she protested.  

	"Sorry," I said, not really meaning it.  Sailor Mars and I have
never been exactly chummy.  Actually, a better way to describe it would be
'barely concealed fury.' Frankly, we hate each other's guts, which is fine
with me, and is apparently fine with her as well.

	 I suppose it started at our first meeting.  We didn't exactly get
off on the right foot, though it still seems silly to me to get all riled up
about a little handshake.  I mean, I for one wouldn't give a second
thought to someone shaking my hand, senshi or no.  Geez, and I thought
Americans were hung up on public tactile contact.

	Anyway, since then we haven't been too friendly, which can be
inconvenient at times.  Take last year, when Mars was DepCinc of the Fleet. 
Now it's Jupiter's job, but before then, Mars and I would have the most
awful rows at Serenity's briefings.  It's a wonder she didn't kill me, but I
suppose that that restraint is one of her redeeming qualities.

	In any case, all that was in the background when Jen reprimanded me
for insulting Admiral Rei Hino, Deputy Commander in Chief of Her Majesty's
Armed Forces, Princess and Super Sailor Senshi of Mars.  That's her full
title, by the way.  No-one ever uses it, even under the most formal
circumstances.  It's just one of those things that's just there in case some
protocol maven decides that she can't be plain Sailor Mars.  To be accurate,
my full title would be Lady Captain Eileen A Pearcy, the Sailor Senshi of
America.  Weird, huh?  Thank heavens we Americans aren't ones for those long
drawn out titles.  Most people get along fine just calling me America.
Heaven forbid I have a title like Serenity's.

	What was I saying?  Oh yeah, so I just apologized for downing Rei.

	"So, Sammy's up on the Moon, huh?  I've been meaning to pay a visit
up there."

	"Today?"

	"Only if you want to."  I really didn't want to.  But if she wanted
to . . . .  "And you've got that phone call to make, remember?"

	"Oh, right," she replied, blushing.  I could go on and on about how
cute she is when she blushes, but you'd . . . pike?  Is that that obscure
TwenCen term?  Jen's really corrupting me.  Half the time she's dropping
twentieth century slang without even knowing it.  Well, that's probably an
exaggeration.

	Anyway, I was saying that I won't say how cute she was.  That's
partially because she isn't cute.  Not really, I mean, she's cute, but she's
not cute, much as she's gorgeous, but she's not gorgeous.  She's just Jen,
and for whatever reason, that's so much more accurate than any other
adjective that I could come up with.

	In any case, she made the call.  Somehow.  Using that monstrosity of
a piece of polymer she calls a phone.  I got it as a novelty gift for her
last birthday.  It looks like a twenty-first century phone, with the tiny
postage-stamp screen and even that ancient ten-digit keypad.  It responds
to voice like any normal phone, though.  It's only a replica of an old-time
phone; I shudder to think of what an original would go for nowadays.

	After a bit, she hung up. "So?"

	"She said it would be great to see us.  She's off early, so she
might be able to show us around a few shops up there."

	I was surprised.  "They have shops?"  True, I don't pay much
attention to Lunar matters, but I thought that I would have known about
something like that.

	"Lots of them."

	"Hmph."  I drummed my fingers on the table idly.  "Sanjouin?"

	"Yes?" replied the AI.  The Palace can be a pain sometimes.  We've
got one of the best AIs around, which services everyone in the Palace. 
However, the higher-ups keep changing its damned name.  Lord only knows
where they got the name Sanjouin from.

	"Sanjouin, can you get us two seats on the next available shuttle to
the Moon?"

	"Certainly.  You've got #433, she leaves in an hour from Ryo
Spaceport."

	"Great."  I forced a smile.  "Okay, Jen, let's go."

***

	A few hours later we were on the final approach to the Moon.  Now, I
know you're going to laugh at this, but I've never been there.  Can you
imagine that?  I mean, nowadays, kids in Crystal Tokyo take *field trips* to
Tranquillity Base, for heaven's sake.  On the other hand, perhaps that's the
point.  Only the richest of Americans, or for that matter, non-Japanese, can
afford to go to the Moon.  Jen and I?  We're senshi.  We made it for free.

	On the other hand, we senshi are the self-appointed saviors of the
world.  If that doesn't accord us special status, I don't know what does.

	The surface of the Moon really hasn't changed much in the past four
thousand years.  There are only a few signs that mankind has been back since
the 1970's, and even fewer that we were there during the Silver Millennium. 
A few ruins of the reign of Serenity I still remain.  Most were found buried
under meters of lunar dust, preserved for millennia until the first
expeditions in the 2400's.

	Looking out over all of it, I was inevitably reminded that the whole
shebang is owned by Serenity, lock, stock, and barrel.  Amazing.  All that
stuff in 1969 about coming in peace for all mankind?  Out the window. 
Serenity is still princess of the Moon, and by any standard you want to
measure it by, she inherited it fair and square.  She's nice about it, I
suppose.  If you have the cash, you can go gawk at the leftovers from the
United States' Apollo missions.  But most of the surface is still clean and
pristine.  Only certain areas are open to visitors, and just a few more are
open to scientists and military personnel.  Aside from a few spaceports
hidden in craters, there isn't much to show that mankind has returned to
where it was so long ago, and certainly no proof if you go outside on Earth
and look at the full Moon.

	For the real proof, you have to go underground.

	After an interminable wait, our shuttle set down at Spaceport Gamma. 
Fancy name, I know.  It's what you get when a warmonger like Mars gets put
in charge.  There's a movement afoot to rename it, thankfully.  Gamma is
about three hours' walk from Tranquillity Base, assuming you suit up and
walk across the surface.  It's about five minutes by tube, and tube is the
real way to go.

	We disembarked and looked around the terminal, taking a few moments
to get acclimated to the one-sixth of earth gravity.  Tourist season hadn't
begun in earnest, and things were pretty deserted.  Thus, we found Sammy
without much trouble.

	"Captain!"  A blonde who had been reading news from a terminal
looked up and ran towards Jennifer, embracing her in a bear hug that looked
mighty uncomfortable.  "It's so good to see you again!"

	"Same here," Jen squeaked.  They disentangled, and Jen looked Sammy
up and down.  You've grown a bit."

	"Yes, and . . . oh!  Sorry!"  Sheepishly, she stepped back a couple
meters and snapped off a salute.  Grinning, Jen returned it.

	"At ease, Commander.  Let's forget all that protocol mess for a
couple days, hm?"

	Days?

	"Certainly, sir . . . I mean, Sakachi-san . . . I mean, Jennifer."

	Jen turned to me.  "Sammy-san, this is my . . . er . . . friend
Eileen."

	She bowed, which still never fails to embarrass me.  More proof that
no matter how long I live here, I'll never be fully Japanese.  "Pleased to
meet you, Captain."

	"Yeah, sure," I said uneasily.  "You can forget the 'sir' stuff with
me, too."

	"Of course," she giggled.  I tried to appraise her.  This little girl 
. . . well, really a woman, but take a year or so off her, and *this* was
the girl Jen had called her right-hand man during Pleiades's cruise? 
Extraordinary.

	"Okay," she said, "I've got the rest of the afternoon off.  What do
you want to do?" She looked at me carefully.  "Have you ever been to the
Apollo XI site?"

	"Er . . . "

	"Trust me, Eileen, it's nothing really special," said Jen.

	I'm sure she got a kick out of the look on my face.  "Really?"

	"Yes.  Just a rickety collection of aluminum and glass, what you'd 
expect from a first attempt."

	I tried to look hurt.  "Still, most historians agree that it was my 
country's greatest achievement."

	"Really?  I thought your greatest achievement was not getting blown
up in 1962."

	"Ah, so that's how it's going to be, hm?"  But it was a joking tone. 
Living with Jen, you've got to appreciate her sense of humor, which more
often than not gets linked to history.  Come to think of it, the US did do a
good job avoiding nuclear war during the . . . Chilean Missile Crisis? 
Colombian?  Something like that.  Jen always was better than me at history,
no matter how fervently I refused to admit it.

	"Yeah."  She shifted her weight to the other foot.  "You really want
to go see it?"

	I looked over to Sammy.  "If it's not too much trouble."

	"No, not at all!  Right this way."  We began walking along.  While I
gawked and played the role of the ignorant tourist, Sammy and Jen caught up
on old times.

***

	In Crystal Tokyo, mass transit is an extremely good idea.  On the
Moon, it's a way of life.

	The tube, what the Lunars call the system of subways, links all
installations on the satellite.  It's very efficient, actually, and leaves
the surface unmarred.  In a few minutes, we were one hundred meters south of
Tranquillity Base, and about four hundred meters below it.

	We got in an elevator, and for a couple moments I felt heavier than
I'd felt since setting down on the Moon.  This was predictable; I was in an
accelerating elevator, after all.  Then, the doors opened, we stepped out,
and I sucked in my breath.

	Before me was a collection of golden foil and support struts that
had once held the Lunar Module.  It looked slightly pitted; it had had a few
hundred years of micrometeoroid damage to contend with.  Around it, the
lunar landscape had been preserved; the footprints of Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin were still there, as were their instruments and the American
flag, now hopelessly out of date with fifty stars.  That wasn't the part
that took my breath away.

	The shocking thing was that I was on the surface of the Moon.

	I knew, intellectually, that there was a shield protecting us from
the vacuum.  But it's one thing to know it, and another thing to look out
and realize that the only thing between you and explosive decompression is a
bit of magic.  There was no way to tell where the little bubble of
protection began.  As far as my eyes could tell, we stood, unshielded, on
the surface of the Moon, with a nice crescent Earth overhead.

	My last cognizant thought was that now was a hell of a time to find
out that I was agoraphobic.  Then I fainted.

***

	The next thing I remember was blinking up at the ceiling (thank
heavens, there *was* a ceiling, and seeing a curtain of red.  Then I
realized that it was Jen looking down at me with concern, and her red hair
falling straight down onto my nose.

	"Hi!" I said weakly.  It was the best I could come up with.  Sorry.

	"Eileen!  I was so worried about you!"

	Really?

	"That's nice to hear," I replied.  I sat up a bit and looked around. 
I was in a lounge of some sort, filled with couches and so forth.  Sort of
like a spaceport lounge, actually.  Across from us was an elderly couple
watching us with interest.  Next to Jen, I noticed Sammy, who looked about
to cry.  Poor thing.

	"Are you sure you're okay?"

	"Never better," I lied.  "But Sammy, would you mind giving me a bit
of warning before you spring something like that on me?"

	"Like what?"

	"Like the whole fricking Moon, for one thing!"  Geez, you'd think
people up here would expect a few people to get overwhelmed!

	"Eileen," said Jen patiently, "you've seen pictures of the lunar
landing site before, haven't you?"

	"Yes."

	"There weren't any girders or glass domes or anything, were there?"

	"No," I said, trying to figure out what she was driving at.

	"You didn't think those were antiques, did you?"

	"Er . . . ."  Now I was starting to feel a bit silly.

	"The shield's been there for ages, you know."

	Ages?  And no-one had lodged a complaint about it?

	"It would be nice to have some sort of visual reminder that it's
there, you know."

	It was Sammy's turn to look sheepish.  "Well, there are a set of
lights ringing the site that mark where the field ends, but that's so far
from the trails and benches that most people never see it, and-"

	"Yeah, that's nice.  Well-"

	"Sammy-san?  I think Eileen must be a bit thirsty.  You want to get
her some water?"

	Wait a minute.  "I'm not thirsty at all, actually, and-"

	"Some water.  Now."  It was her Captain Sakachi voice.  I can't
stand it when she uses it, because I know that when she uses it, things are
probably going to turn out badly for me.

	We watched Sammy obediently trot off like that.  For a moment, I
thought about what it must be like to command that kind of respect in a
person.  Just rammed home the point, I suppose, the point that while I have
a lot of power . . . if you want to call it that . . . , I really don't have
the command instinct Jen has.  If you want to call it instinct, that is.  I
think she makes a lot of it up as she goes.  But she does a good job at it,
so it hardly matters, does it?

	"Eileen?"

	"Yes?" I asked meekly.

	"Why didn't you tell me?"

	Rule number two of public relations: feigning ignorance is a skill
that is absolutely essential.  "Tell you what?"

	"Don't even try it, Eileen.  I've seen the notes for your book on
PR."

	Damn.  See if I have her pre-read it, then.  I thought a bit about
how to say this.  "Well, I didn't know, for one thing.  I mean, you don't
just wake up one day and decide that you're agoraphobic, and-"

	"Still, Eileen, couldn't you have known?"

	"Well, I suppose I had a few hints."  And I had, in a way.  In
retrospect, this made a lot of things make sense.  "I mean, I did a lot of
stuff in school, but it was always inside.  My room in Pennsylvania was
pretty cramped, just the way I like it.  My office is a lot smaller than I'm
entitled to have.  I remember that I loved to walk in the woods, but put me
in a field and I just had to get out of there.  Lots of little things.

	"I don't recall any sort of psychiatric exams or anything about it. 
My parents always thought that I was normal-"

	"Even after you came out?"

	Touché.  "Before that, you ninny," I said, trying to inject some
levity into the situation.  A look into her blue eyes told me I wouldn't be
off that easily.

	"Never any hints?"

	"What, are you thinking of entering the psychiatry profession?  No,
no overt hints that anyone told me about."

	"Hmph.  I'll have to check with Records on that," referring to the
several super-computers on which was stored pretty much every single datum
of interest on anyone you wished to name that was deemed open to the public.

	"*We'll* have to check."

	"As you say."  Truthfully, either of us had the clout to go to the
archives and investigate matters, but it was pretty much tacitly assumed
that things would be better if we did it together.

	"Yeah."

	"Eileen?"

	"Yes?"

	"Are you going to be . . . you know . . . okay with this?"

	"Okay?  Gee, you're acting like I've got cancer or Gurio syndrome or
something awful like that."

	"Sorry."  That was unexpected.  It was obvious that she was going to
consider the conversation closed, but I wasn't quite ready for that.  I
opened my mouth, but Sammy reappeared at that moment.

	"Here's your water, Pearcy-san."

	"Arigato," I said, taking the glass from the Cypherean.  Truthfully,
I can't decide if I like the old term (Venusian) or the new one (Cypherean)
better.  Apparently "Venusian" sounded rather awful to people who lived
there, and they moved to change it to a new one.  It was still the Venus
Republic, but its citizens were called Cyphereans, from some mythological
origin that's neither Greek nor Roman.

	"Well," said Jen, forcing a smile, "let's not make this a total
waste, shall we?  There are plenty of *enclosed* (I know it wasn't overt,
but I swear that she put the emphasis on the word) shopping places on the
Moon, which I'm sure Sammy-san can show us around."

	"Certainly."

***

	We sat at the terminal, waiting for our shuttle back.  It was late,
about 23:00 Lunar time, or 20:00 Tokyo time.  As we waited, I looked at the
stack of books that Jen had bought at a store.

	Books are, to me, an enigma.  For about seven hundred years, books
were a curiosity.  You'd have a few in your living room, but they were more
for decoration than anything else.  After all, with all of surviving human
writing from 5000 BC to the present available on computer, carrying around a
several kilogram hunk of wood pulp seemed like a fairly foolish proposition.

	That changed about the time of Serenity's quincentennial.  Around
then, the craze of books caught on, and suddenly it was like Gutenburg all
over again.  *Everyone* had to have books.  Which was nice in a way, because
with all the books being printed, the price of new books went through the
cellar.  Otherwise I'd never be able to buy Jen what she really wants for a
present, at least not without obviously spending a hell of a lot of money.

	They were mostly classics, practically all before 2500, which was
another problem I saw with Japan.  A lack of novelty.  I mean, let's face
it, things haven't changed around here in a few centuries.  And it's more
than obvious that Serenity likes it that way.  All you have to do is look at
the graduation numbers from the School.  They're dropping and dropping. 
Nowadays, one is all they're putting out.  Sooner or later, they'll close it
down, which had to happen sooner or later.  Then the number of senshi will
be set, and the status quo will be firmly in place.  Her Majesty can have
her Pax Serenity, and the rest of Homo sapiens . . . .

	Dammit, I hate when I start getting philosophical.

	"Well," I said, trying to make conversation . . . something that
seemed terribly hard to do right then . . . , "anything planned when we get
back?  Or the next day?" Please, please don't let this day end, because I
really don't want to face the day when she leaves.

	She pouted.  Why, God, why does she have to be so bloody right
whenever she pouts?  "You know as well as I do that I don't really have
anything to do until Seiza comes back."

	H.M.S. Seiza is her next assignment, due up in about five years or
so.  Pleiades, her old ship, is currently on a survey mission, seeing if
there's anything that needs mopping up along the path of her last voyage. 
Jen sort of wanted to go, or more accurately, she wanted me and her to go,
which I up until recently would have had no problem with, but she more or
less got politicked out of it.  Basically, HQ sees her as a major asset, and
doesn't want her frittering her time away on a two-bit survey ship.

	Apparently they overlooked the fact that last year, that was all
they saw her fit to do.  Of course, Jen doesn't know any of this, and I have
no plans of telling her.  Some things I just don't tell her for her own
sake.

	Anyway, Pleiades is out under an entirely new crew, and won't be
back for a couple years.  When she does, plans are for Pleiades to be
mothballed and put on display in CT.  Why?  Because the military-industrial
complex (I know, I know, an anachronism, but it's one of the few insults I
can get away with, since no-one close to Serenity knows what it means but
Jen and I), in the form of Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus (the three war-horses),
feels that it sends a message to the world reminding them of our strength. 
I feel it sends a message to the world saying that they should fear us, or
we'll have to do something to *make* you fear us, like beat up some poor
country or something.

	I recommended against it, of course.  And since it falls largely
under my domain, I was able to put up a damn good fight.  I had to, since at
that particular meeting I was the only one really opposed to it.  I still
say that they intentionally ganged up on me that day.  There's simply no
other reason for the war-horses to all be in town on the same day, and the
Reasonable Ones (my label for Mercury, Saturn, and Neptune, the three that
seem to try to separate themselves from the military as much as possible) to
all be elsewhere.  I'm not saying that the R.O.'s intentionally left. 
*Were* intentionally forced to leave, perhaps.  But not of their own
volition.

	Sour grapes?  Maybe.  But I don't think so.  All I know is that the
three war-horses were against me, and Venus, coming off her term as DepCinc,
was half on their side already.  Still, it says a lot for the faith Serenity
has in my regarding this sort of thing, that I was able to prolong the
debate by myself as long as I did.  But I lost, and Pleiades will be a sword
of Damocles hanging over the world, albeit a blunted and harmless sword,
and-

	"EILEEN!"

	I snapped my head around.  Jen was waving her hand in front of me,
looking at me like I was completely out of it.  If there's one thing I can't
do, it's multitask.

	"Eileen," repeated Jen more quietly, "are you okay?  You looked like
you were out of it, there."

	"Oh, I'm fine," I said reassuringly, "just thinking about a few
things."

	"You know," said Jen slowly, "maybe you should get back to Earth.  I
know Lunar gravity can do strange things to some people.  Maybe you're one
of them."

	"Maybe," I conceded, not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth. 
Any opportunity to get off this blasted ball of rock was welcome.

***

	Later, on the shuttle trip back, I sat in my aisle seat, sipping at
some drink.  It was pink, and it bubbled, but for the life of me I can't
remember what it was.

	"Eileen?"

	"Mmm?"  Okay, here we go.

	"You didn't like the Moon, did you."  It wasn't a question.

	"Don't be silly," I said.  "It was great.  It's just that we didn't
have time to spend much longer there."

	"Hmph."

	We flew on at a fairly good clip.  Several thousand kilometers and a
couple of minutes later, she spoke again.

	"Eileen?"

	"Mmm?"

	"You don't, you know, have to go out with me the next time."

	"What?"  I stared straight ahead.  If I looked at her I was lost.

	"You know what I'm talking about.  That ignorant act may work when 
dealing with the press, but it doesn't work with me."

	That hurt.

	"Jen, believe me.  I don't know what you're talking about.  What do
you mean, 'the next time?' You-"

	"You don't have to go with me on Seiza."

	So that's what it was about.  Seiza was going to be a three year
mission.  And on the basis of my performance in the past few hours, she
didn't think I could handle an extended stay in space.

	Maybe she was right.  But I was damned if I was going to admit that. 
I'd spent a year waiting for her to come back before.  There was no way I
was going to wait another three for her to come back from fighting God only
knows what.

	"Yes I do, Jen."

	"Eileen, we both know that . . . that . . . ."

	"Yes?" I urged, not wanting her to finish but needing her to anyway.

	"That you can't take being away from Earth for long."

	There.  It was out.

	"That's what you think?"

	"Well . . . ."

	"So you think I'd be happier sitting behind my desk waiting for you
to finish fighting Selenite or Pollux or whoever else the universe decides
to cough up?"

	"Eileen, that was a single incident-"

	"So you're one for one.  Face it Jen, there are some senshi that
everything happens to, and you're one of them.  First Selenite, then Gemini
. . . and I don't think fate is done with you yet." Which was, of course,
total bull.  Personally, I thought that fate could take a flying leap.  But
it was the only bullet in my barrel (please don't groan at my anachronisms. 
It's as close to humor as I get sometimes), so I shot it.

	"But-"

	"My mind's made up, Jen.  I've been in the back seat long enough. 
It's time to be in the front."

	"But not driving."

	"Oh yeah."  She could always beat me with metaphors.  But I could
beat her in other ways . . . not that way, you perv!

	"So, your mind is set on coming with me."

	"Yes."  Never mind that I'd much rather stay the hell on Earth.  To
be with her?  Anything.

	"Hm.  Well, we'll just have to wait a few years and see if you
change your mind."

	"I guess we will."

***

	So we fly on towards Earth.  We're in reentry now, and thanks to
modern technology, I can fall asleep while crashing through the atmosphere
at an unholy speed.  And who knows?  Five years is a long time.  A lot of
things change.  People change.  And maybe I can get Jennifer to stay on
earth.

	It's worth a shot.


===================================================
Unnumbered Episode #203: Christmas in Crystal Tokyo
===================================================


	It was snowing.

	Really snowing.  Not the small tiny flakes that result in a loose
sort of powder, but really big, wet flakes that would have made commuting a
pain if there hadn't been heated walkways and roads, and a bigger pain if it
hadn't been the 24th of December, 3031.

	It was Christmas Eve, and Sailor America was loving it.  You could
tell it easily.  The entire Palace was filled with reminders of the season,
but the biggest was America's office.  It was festooned with garlands,
blinking lights, bulb ornaments, and the coup de grace: a genuine, 100% real
Douglas fir. She' brought it in from the tree farm in Pennsylvania, the same
farm that her family had gotten trees from since . . . well, as long as she
could remember.

	She wished she could be with them.  She really did.  In fact, she
had nearly gotten into a shouting match with her immediate superior, Sailor
Oberon, who had nearly had to go to *her* superior, Sailor Neptune,
regarding the matter.  The final verdict: she couldn't leave the country.

	But America certainly wasn't going to let a little thing like not
being home ruin her Christmas.  It was pretty much the only holiday that was
*really* celebrated in Crystal Tokyo, even if the true reason for it had
been forgotten after three thousand years.

	Sailor America got out of her chair, taking a break from the piles
of reports.  She was working on giving press clearances to the media who
were going to attend the special concert that night.  Neo-Queen Serenity
would be there, along with nearly one hundred other senshi, something that
certainly didn't happen every Christmas.  With all those senshi, including a
majority of the planet senshi, she had to be doubly certain that none of the
people she admitted would be a risk.  Therefore, she was working through her
lunch break on Christmas Eve when she'd much rather be taking a nice walk
through the snow.

	"Sailor America?"

	She turned from her reverie, looking out at the snow that blanketed
the city, and looked at her secretary.

	"Here are the extra forms you asked for."

	"Ah, thank you.  Just put 'em on the desk, okay?"

	"Okay."

	The secretary performed her task and withdrew, and America looked
back out the window.  "Y'know," she said to no-one, "I bet I could make a
heck of a snowman out there."

***

	A few dozen floors below her and a few kilometers to the north,
Princess Usagi Tsukino, next in line to the throne, was enjoying something
she didn't do half as often as she'd like.  She was driving down one of
Crystal Tokyo's busiest thoroughfares in a horse-drawn carriage.

	She was told that back around the twenty-seventh century her mother
had reawakened interest in the thoroughly antiquated method of travel, so
much so that a group of horses had been purchased for the use of the royal
family.  They were kept at a special pasture just outside the city, and she
was riding from it to the Palace.  This particular carriage would carry
herself, Serenity, and Endymion from the Palace to the Concert Hall later
that day, but she had managed to talk her father into letting her ride with
the coachmen as they took the carriages into the city.

	Her progress hardly went unnoticed; as word spread, the streets
began to become lined with onlookers, hoping to catch a glimpse of the
Princess.  As they went on the crowds grew, and soon Usagi found that she
just *had* to wave to them, which of course made the crowds even happier. To
Usagi, they just looked so picturesque, standing on the sidewalks, waving in
the still-heavily falling snow, under the lampposts and windows that had
been decorated with lights and garlands and ribbons.

	"They love me," she whispered, as she smiled and waved to one little
child in particular, a child outrageously bundled up in a thick coat against
the cold and snow.  Only her eyes and nose peeked out from under the hood,
and Usagi had to hold back a laugh.

	"You're the Princess," said Sailor Saturn in reply, grinning.  She
was Usagi's bodyguard for the day, though they both knew that if worst came
to worst Usagi could take care of herself.  "And they don't get to see you
that often."

	"Definitely."  Unlike her mother, Usagi loved the attention the
people of Crystal Tokyo gave to the royals.  She didn't get out much though;
at times Serenity could be bewilderingly overprotective.  Usagi scratched
her head a couple times and then sighed.  "Saturn-chan?" she asked, using a
diminutive she only used when they were alone.

	"Yes?"

	"The Glaive . . . um . . . ."

	"Oh, gomen," said Saturn, giggling like she was baby Hotaru again,
and not . . . who she was now.  The Silence Glaive had been too tall to sit
upright without going to a bit of trouble, so she had laid it on both their
laps. But the Glaive didn't absorb heat too well, and so it was still cold
on Usagi's dress.  Saturn grabbed the Glaive, and put it over her shoulder,
the blade facing behind her.  With a bit of magic, it now looked to be only
half its original size.

	"So," said Saturn, "what do you think your parents are going to get
you for Christmas?"

	"I'm over nine hundred, silly.  I don't get Christmas presents," she
joked.  She would still get gifts, and so would pretty much everyone else in
Japan.  Her age, however, was a running joke between the two.

	"I do, and I believe I'm older than you are."

	"By just a measly century!" said Usagi, dissolving into giggles.

	"And don't you forget it!" said Saturn, similarly amused.  Saturn
sighed, realizing that she didn't laugh like this enough.  It had been too
long since she'd spent some time with Usagi.  Lately she'd been stuck with
Sailor Aldebaran, of all people!  As if she knew anything about
shipbuilding!  But Aldebaran insisted it was important.

	It was nice to be around Usagi.  Especially on a day like today.
Christmas Eve, and all it implied.

	The carriage made the left turn onto Serendipity Boulevard, and
the Palace loomed before them, its normal glimmer covered by a thin layer
of snow, a blanket whiter than the purest silk.

***

	Sailor Orion sat at her desk, half listening to the sounds of
conversations outside her office.  The floor she was on, ship design, was
having its Christmas party.  Then again, it seemed that *everyone* who
worked in the Palace was having a party; she'd even run down to the military
suites in the basement and found merrymakers there.

	Orion had also found Vanessa Leeds and Kim Young, and that had been
the point of the exercise: to wish them a merry Christmas.  She shook her
head, smiling at the memory.  Kim and Vanessa simply *belonged* in a
situation like Earth Headquarters, where the situation could be described as
hectic even on the most peaceful days.

	But she hadn't time for parties.  She intended to get all her work
done through to mid-January, and for that she'd probably be working right up
to 18:00 when the concert started.  She planned to watch it on television
with Eileen, unless of course Eileen had other plans.

	She reached into a drawer and pulled out an envelope.  Inside was
her Christmas present for Eileen, a present she had gone to almost insane
lengths to keep secret.  'But it was worth it,' she thought.  'I know it'll be
perfect for her.  And for me.'

	A knock came at the door.  "Sailor Orion?"

	She recognized the voice.  "Sailor Altair?  Come in, please."

	Altair walked in.  She was one of the most powerful senshi in
Serenity's service, but not because of her fighting ability.  Rather, she
was assistant secretary of the Palace's research and development department,
which included shipbuilding, exploration, and practically anything having to
do with the sciences.

	It didn't include history, though.  Orion knew that she was out of
her element, but with all the work that had to be done on Seiza she didn't
have much time to go over to the Historian's office and chat with Sailor
Vulpes about wars, treaties, and so on.  In her free time she still managed
to do some work on her own.  She expected to get her doctorate from the
University of Crystal Tokyo in about a year or so, and then there was the
book she was working on, in which she planned to render her opinions on a
few rather neglected parts of-

	"Sailor Orion?  Are you listening?"

	"Y-yes!" said Orion, embarassed.  Altair reported directly to Sailor
Mercury, and it wouldn't do to give her a bad impression.

	"Orion, as you know, Her Majesty would like a number of senshi from
R&D to attend tonight's concert."

	"Yes, Altair," replied the redhead.  It was considered a great honor
to attend the Christmas concert, an honor Serenity had split among all of
her closest servants: the senshi.  Representatives from all the departments
were expected to attend, as well as the well-to-do of the city, the
not-so-well, and others.  It was truly a cross-section of society.

	"Well, it would seem that you've attracted some attention higher up. 
Her Majesty would request the favor of your presence at the concert tonight
at 18:00."

	"What?"  She knew that she'd had more dealings with the planet
senshi than most, but enough to go to the concert, ahead of all the other
senshi?  There were only four junior to her.

	"It's as much a surprise to me as it is to you," said Altair dryly. 
Orion didn't take it personally; Altair had a reputation for not showing her
emotions easily, and sometimes it came off as dislike when it was really an
unwillingness to smile too often.  The blonde senshi rubbed her nose. 
"Anyway, it would be nice if you could show up around 17:00 or so." She
handed Orion a handlink.  "Here's your clearance.  Don't worry about where
you're to sit; that's the ushers' problem."

	Orion looked up at Altair.

	"Yes, I suppose you'll want to bring Sailor America along as well."
Altair chanced a rare smile.  "The Powers that Be foresaw that; she can go
too."

	Orion stood, raced over to Altair, and gave her a hug, punctuating
it with a peck on the cheek.  "You're great," she said into her ear.

	Altair's face turned a red that very nearly matched the shade of
Orion's hair.  "Yes, I'm sure," replied the blonde, disentangling herself.
"Sailor fuku, as usual.  Er . . . you probably want to leave a bit early.
Bye!"

	Orion waited until Sailor Altair left before dissolving into
laughter.  Hugs weren't as common as they had been as a way of greeting a
senshi, but they were still acceptable.  Some people were a bit touchier
about tactile contact than others, though, and Orion had been wondering
about Altair for quite some time.

	"What the heck," she said aloud, "it's Christmas."  She went to the
window and watched the snow fall for a few moments as dusk approached. Then
she went out and joined the party.

***

	When Sailor America came out of her office to go to the elevator,
she saw her lover leaning against the wall as usual.  Orion *always* got out
of her duties before America did.

	"Hi, Orion."

	"Hi, America."  A short kiss.  "So, anything lined up for tonight?"

	"Er . . . ."

	"Good.  Guess where we're going?"

	America was half-tempted to say Pennsylvania, but didn't.  "Lemme
guess.  Sydney, for a bit of fun in the sun?"

	"Better.  The Christmas concert."

	America's jaw dropped.  "Really?"

	Orion smiled.  "Yep."  She half-dragged America to the elevator and
they got in.  "Special invite.  Don't ask why."

	By now America had recovered.  "You know, it's not going to be fun
walking to the Concert Hall in our fuku."

	"We can always transform when we get there, silly," replied Orion,
punching the button for the appropriate floor.  "Besides . . . how many
nights do you get to listen to some good old fashioned classical music?"

	"Every time you bring out those decrepit Soundgarden recordings?"

	"No, silly," said Orion, watching the floor numbers flicker. They
reached their destination and walked out.  "Anyway, I think we can take a
car."

	"My car?"  America's little automobile was about as small as they
got where two-seat models were concerned.

	"Sure."

	America sighed.  Sailor Orion had been rather moody lately, and she
suspect that it had something to do with her family.  But every time she
asked, Orion insisted that everything was fine.  In any case, it was good to
see her being cheerful today, and would even be worth being cramped in her
tiny automobile.

	They entered their apartment, and Orion went into the bathroom to
shower.  America considered joining her but decided against it; all the
books said that showering together as a couple would draw the two closer
together, but those books never seemed to take into account the sheer
logistics of the the proposition.  A shower for two got no-one clean, and
there certainly wasn't enough room for anything romantic.  It was more
likely a recipe for a broken limb.

	Absently, she detransformed as she grabbed a couple of granola
bars from the cabinet.  "Jen?" she asked loudly.

	"Yeah?" she asked in English.

	"Remember what you said this morning, about having a surprise for
me when we got home?"

	In the shower, Jen paused from lathering herself and looked
questioningly at the shower head.  Then she remembered.

	"Oh yeah, that.  Well, I was going to give you a present early, but
. . . ." A mischievous thought crossed her mind.  She rinsed off the soap
and reached for the shampoo.  "I guess I could give it to you after the
concert."

	If there was one thing Eileen didn't like, it was secrets.  "You
can't tell me what it is?"

	"Nope."

	"Oh come on, please?"

	"Ah, Eileen, I should think you'd have learned the value of patience
by now.  Remember Sailor V?"

	In the kitchen, Eileen blushed.  She was hoping Jen had forgotten
that rather embarassing episode back at the School.  "That was different,"
she said defensively.

	"Good, then you understand."  Jen finished rinsing the last bits of
shampoo from her red tresses and switched off the shower, reaching without
thought for a towel.  "Right after the finale."

	"Jeeeeen!" said Eileen in a whine, but she was grinning broadly. She
walked to the bathroom and opened the door.  Jen was slowly drying herself
from the feet up.  Not for the first time, the American-turned-senshi
wondered what she had done to deserve someone like Jen.  "C'mon, just once?"

	"Nope," said Jen.  "Could you hand me that robe, please?"

	Eileen picked up the robin's-egg-blue bathrobe from its resting
place on a hanger and handed it to Jen, who was finished with her chest and
back and was now vigorously drying her hair.  She had a distinct dislike
for automatic hair dryers, and to hell with all the advancements in hair
care over the past thousand years.

	"Not even a hint?"

	"It's small enough for me to take to the concert, and that's all I'm
telling you.  Now get in the shower before we're late, okay?" She punctuated
this with a playful nudge on the shoulder and a brief kiss on the lips. 
With that, Jen stepped out of the way and left Eileen to shower. 

	Jen proceeded to the bedroom and absently hummed a tune to herself,
walking into the closet.  True, she'd be in senshi form for the occasion,
but she wouldn't feel right if she just pulled on some jeans and a
sweatshirt.  No, a certain amount of decorum went along with being a senshi,
and though no-one had told her to do so, she would wear her dress uniform
before transforming.

	Unfortunately, naval dress uniforms had an evil reputation, and by
the time she'd managed to put the entire thing on, Eileen had emerged from
the shower.  Eileen just smirked.  "You're wearing the penguin suit?"

	It was true that naval dress uniforms, with their white tops, white
skirts cut just above the knee, and white . . . well, everything, made the
wearer look a bit like a penguin, or a polar bear, if you were particularly
overweight.  Jen didn't mind too much, though, considering everything she'd
gone through to be able to wear it.

	Eileen *did* mind.  She pointedly pulled out her undress whites and
stared pulling them on.  "Time?"

	"Seventeen fifty-seven and eighteen seconds," replied the AI.  Jen
was liking it less and less as time went on; it didn't have the sense of
humor Antares had lead her to expect from an AI.

	Antares.  She hadn't thought about him in ages.  She had a bit of
seniority now; maybe she could cajole them into putting him on Seiza?

	In far less time than it had taken for Jen to dress, Eileen was
ready.  "Shall we go?"

	"Sure," said Jen.  She reached into pocketspace and patted the
envelope that rested there.

***

	Ever since Matthew Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay in the nineteenth
century, the Japanese were accused of being copycats.  Americans of the
twentieth century claimed that the Japanese were imitators, simply taking
American production techniques and using them as their own with enormous
benefits.  Those who were wise, however, knew that this was not the case;
that Japan's strength lay in its peculiar ability to adapt Western customs
and make them uniquely Japanese.

	On 24 December 3031, the most obvious of these was the concert to be
held at the Crystal Tokyo Concert Hall.  The featured performance:
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, "Choral." A wholly Western
symphony, it had been snapped up by Japan.  For nearly a thousand years it
had been a tradition for the ninth to be played at Christmas time,
regardless of the fact that a decided minority of Japanese citizens even
celebrated the holiday in a religious sense.  In December, it was nearly
impossible to go shopping or listen to the radio without hearing the fourth
movement; large choirs trained for months to perform it before even larger
audiences.

	The largest and most spectacular of these performances was by far
the one at the Hall.  It would literally be a symphony of a thousand;
hundreds of the best singers in Crystal Tokyo would perform, and in an
unprecedented move a foreigner would sing one of the solos.

	Jaclyn Hazeltine, a thirty-four year old opera singer from
Buckinghamshire, England, had been invited, some said by Serenity herself,
to sing the soprano solo.  Never before had a foreigner been allowed to have
one of the four coveted soloist parts, and all Crystal Tokyo was abuzz about
it for months before, through the grueling rehearsals to the very day
before.

	This was at the forefront of Sailor Orion's mind as she entered the
vast concert hall, its richly decorated walls resounding with hundreds of
conversations.  She suspected that it was an olive branch of some sort; the
only question was why?  Why would the Palace have to make such a
conciliatory gesture to one of the confederations, so long after the
Formation Wars?

	Orion shook herself.  It was Christmas, a time to put away political
speculations and instead focus on home and family.  Especially her own
family; at her mother's request, she was staying away this year. Her mother
wanted to have a second child, and she had decided to tell her father about
it tonight of all nights.

	As Sailor America casually wrapped a gloved arm around her shoulder,
Sailor Orion looked around.  Her row and the rows surrounding were full of
senshi.  She couldn't help feeling a bit of pride; the variously colored
bows and skirts added a rather festive atmosphere which was helped along by
the orchestra.  Conducted by Toshio Gusekara, the orchestra softly tuned up. 
Looking at the first chair, Orion saw that Sailor Neptune wouldn't be
playing tonight.  Only fair; Neptune had played the violin for a *very* long
time, and she imagined the senshi of the sea could use a break every few
Christmases.

	Orion was about to look around at the Royal Box when the orchestra
blared a mighty note.  The house lights dimmed, and the music began.

	The first three movements went by rather quickly.  The conductor
knew what the audience had come for, and so he took a quick and fairly
orthodox interpretation, preferring to save his energies for the finale.

	And what a finale.

***

	The final note ended, and for seven spine-tingling seconds, no-one
in the entire hall moved.  Then a single person started clapping, and
another, until the entire auditorium was shaking with applause and cheers. 
In the royal box, Serenity was all smiles.  Taken away by the moment, she
stood, with Endymion and Usagi at her side.

	Of course, when the reigning monarch stood, the rest of the audience
was obligated to stand as well, and so the orchestra, conductor, soloists,
and chorus, all of whom had probably given the performance of their lives,
received as rousing a respose as could be dreamed of. Musakara bowed again
and again to the people, shaking hands with the soloists and the first
violin, receiving the roses, and basking in praise.

	Finally, the applause died down, Serenity left the box to do
whatever, and people began to filter out.  Orion ran into Sailor Vulpes on
her way out, chatting a bit on musical history and what Beethoven would
think of the way Crystal Tokyo remembered him. Finally, though, Orion and
America found themselves more or less alone in a reception room that had
been set aside for the senshi.  Few of them had wanted to stick around, and
so the room was essentially empty.  A couple of porters went back and
forth, but that was about it.

	"Okay, America, it's time for your surprise," said Sailor Orion. She
tugged at her back bow a bit nervously, a habit she had picked up from a
friend.  She smiled uneasily, and America answered it.  Then, Orion reached
into pocketspace and pulled out a small white envelope.  "I hope you like
it," she said, handing it to the brunette.

	"I'm sure I will, as long as it's not another bath towel," said
America half jokingly.  She opened the envelope and pulled out the sheet of
paper.  She then looked up at her lover.  "Oh no, Jen, you shouldn't have-"

	"No, I should have done it a long time ago."

	"But this . . . two weeks . . . two weeks . . . ."  Her mind had
difficulty emcompassing the concept.  "Two weeks of skiing on Hokkaido?  But
the waiting lists to get a reservation for a *day* are-"

	"On the order of one or two years.  Let's just say I called in a
couple of favors." Sailor America wondered what kind of favors could demand
such a luxury.

	The mountains of the island of Hokkaido were known for their ski
slopes, which were among the finest in the world.  They were still
outclassed by the gems in the European Alps, for certain, and met stiff
competition from a few slopes in the Rocky Mountains of North America, but
they were about as good as they got if you hailed from Japan.  To preserve
them, strict regulations were placed on how many people could ski and for
how long.  Average waiting list time for a single three-hour session was
around a year.  To get a weekend was longer: three or four years.  Two weeks
. . . well, if you wanted to ski for two weeks at the age of twenty-five, it
was probably wise to place an application at birth.

	To call their two week vacation on Hokkaido a coup was to call
World War II a skirmish.

	"Jen," said America, once again slipping and using her given name,
"I can't . . . I don't-"

	"It's for both of us, Eileen," said Sailor Orion, clapping her hands
on her lover's shoulders.  "We can use the break, that's for certain.  No
psychopathic senshi, no ghosts from the past, no terrorists, just you, me,
and the snow."

	"But . . . it's been years since I went skiing-"

	"You'll remember."

	"And it'll be crowded-"

	"We've got a lodge away from everyone."

	"And if there's an emergency-"

	"And what if there is?  Surely we've earned a vacation, after all
we've been through?"

	Sailor America laughed; sometimes it was so hard to figure out when
Orion was joking and when she was being serious.  She decided that this
time she was being a bit of both.  They *did* need to get away from Crystal
Tokyo.  This really was the best way: staying on Earth, in the proper time. 
They were just playing the roles, Sailor Orion, as always, being the
adventurous one.

	"When do we leave?"

	"The day after Christmas."  Orion looked at her watch. "It's 22:30. 
I guess we'll just have to buy our equipment there, won't we?"

	"Yeah," said America absently, still a bit in shock.

	Orion detransformed.  "You know," she said, "we don't need to be in
senshi form anymore.  I'm sure Her Majesty has left." Jen detransformed, put
her hands in the pockets of her uniform, and happened to catch a glance of
herself in a mirror.  "You're right.  I do look like a penguin."

	America looked at Jen for a bit.  After a seeming eternity, the
redhead cracked a smile.

	"Oh, you!" said America, but she was smiling as she detransformed as
well.  She still couldn't believe it.  Two weeks of skiing!  For a bit she
felt like she was eighteen again . . . until she remembered that she was
just twenty.  But a hell of a lot had happened in those two years, to be
certain.  "Come on.  Let's go home."

***

	Jen woke up slowly.  She and Eileen had stayed up late into the
night, just talking, and she would have liked a bit more sleep.  But her
internal clock would not be thwarted so easily, and so she was awake at six,
only a bit later than usual.  As per routine, she padded over to the window. 
To her surprise it was still snowing, if anything heavier than ever.  It
was definitely a day when driving was best left to autopilots.

	She considered waking Eileen but decided against it.  Instead, she
went out to the kitchen and set to work boiling some water.  While waiting
for it, she grabbed a datapad and set to work reading the news reports. 
While doing all this, she punched a button on the computer terminal that
resided on the kitchen table.

	A couple seconds later, a shiny face appeared on the screen.
"Jennifer?"

	"Good morning, Mother.  Merry Christmas!"

	"Merry Christmas to you, Jen!  How are you?"  Jen's mother looked
off screen.  "Isao, it's Jen!" Soon both of her parents filled the screen.

	"It's good to see you," said her father.

	"Same here.  Er, Eileen and I will be out of town for the next
couple weeks.  We're going to Hokkaido for skiing!"

	"Really?" asked her mother, impressed.

	"Yep!  Oh, have you told Father?"

	"Told me what?" asked the baritone.

	"I see," said the redhead, smiling.  "Well, I'll leave you two
alone, then.  I'll call back tonight, okay?"

	"Jen?"

	Jen withdrew her hand, which had been about to terminate the
connection.  "Yes?"

	"You know what I said earlier, about giving us some time alone?"

	"Um-hm?"

	"Well . . . I don't think it would really be Christmas without you.
We're having dinner around 17:00, and . . . it'd be great if you could
come."

	Jen smiled; she'd half expected something like this.  She should
have known that her mother wouldn't be able to have a holiday dinner without
her only daughter.  "Why, of course!  I wouldn't think of missing it!"

	"Great," said her mother.  "Eileen is welcome to come as well."

	"Thank you," replied Jen, knowing that with that, her mother was
making quite a leap.  Christmas had evolved over the past three thousand
years, and one of those evolutions was that it was principally a family
holiday. Gifts were given to friends, but only after they were given to
family. And inviting even close acquaintances to dinner was unheard of; only
family and in-laws.  The invitation of Eileen to dinner meant that the
Sakachi family felt the brunette to really be a part of the household.

	"Oh, and we'll be having some relatives from down south with us,
too.  You remember cousin Kei?"

	"Um . . . really short, really fast, and a bottomless stomach?"

	Her mother laughed.  "Er, I guess you could call her that.  Well
she's coming up with her parents from Hiroshima, so you'll have a chance to
meet them."

	"I see."  Her parents were rather silent about their relatives from
Hiroshima; apparently they were from a branch of the family that still held
a grudge against the foreign woman who had come to Japan generations ago,
the woman who was Jen's namesake.  "Well, we'll be over this afternoon then. 
Bye, and Merry Christmas!"

	"Merry Christmas, Jennifer."  The connection closed, and Jen tended
to the boiling water.  She pulled a tea bag out from her pocketspace, and
let it soak in her cup.  She found it so convenient sometimes, and otherwise
she didn't keep it too cluttered.  Eileen chose this point to wake up and
amble into the kitchen.

	"Merry Christmas!"

	"Merry Christmas, Jennifer!"  They hugged, both still in pajamas.
"You'll *never* guess what I got you.  It's not quite as hard to get as a
vacation on Hokkaido, but-"

	"I'm sure I'll like it," said Jen reassuringly.  She looked Eileen
in the eye.  "As long as it's not a bath towel."

	Eileen couldn't keep her serious face for a moment, and dissolved
into laughter.  'This,' she thought, 'is what Christmas is all about: being
able to just let all the guards down, and just be me, not someone trying to
deserve Jen.'  "Here you go," she said, pulling the small, green-wrapped
package from pocketspace.

	"Well it's certainly not a sweater," said the redhead, carefully
tearing away at the wrapping.  Under it all was a plain white box.

	"Go on, open it," said Eileen, still giggling like a schoolgirl.

	Jen pulled off the top of the box and found:

	"A coffee mug?"  Gift giving had advanced to the point where big
expensive gifts like ski trips were fairly rare, but a coffee mug?  "You
know I don't drink coffee." She inspected the side: a little superdeformed
picture of Sailor Orion and Sailor America adorned it.  The two were holding
hands and smiling, and Orion was holding up two fingers in the V for Victory
pose.

	"Well, you can use it for tea, too, but that's not what's important. 
Look inside, on the card."

	Jen read aloud.  "To my favorite redhead, to my future Ph.D. in
History, to the woman who makes my life worth living: to my Jennifer. Love,
Eileen." Jen looked down at the slightly shorter woman, tears welling up in
her eyes.  "Oh Eileen!"

	And then they hugged for a long time.

	Finally, they withdrew.  There weren't any more presents; they
didn't need any more.  Both knew that the best present they could have asked
for was each other, and they would have each other for a very long time.

	Outside, the snow stopped, and Crystal Tokyo celebrated Christmas.


==================================================================
Unnumbered episode #204: A History of the Formation Wars, Volume 1
==================================================================



	Eileen looked at the file size suspiciously.  "You want me to
read *all* of this?

	"If you don't mind," said Jen casually.  It was Tuesday evening, and
the two had just finished dinner.  Eileen had been all set to watch a movie,
but Jen had other plans.

	"You know, some people around here actually have *jobs*," said
Eileen pointedly.

	"Humor me.  I promise I'll get your name on the cover."

	"Imagine my delight," said Eileen derisively, but her eyes were
smiling.  "What the heck, I'll give it a go."

	She opened the file.

***

	A Short History of the Formation Wars

	by Jennifer A. Sakachi, Ph.D.

***

	"Ph.D.?  Jumping the gun, aren't you Jen?"

	"It's a done deal, more or less.  I'll pass the review board with no
problems.  Just read."

***

	Chapter 1: Prelude to War: World War III?

	The dubiously-named Third World War was, as predicted by almost all
observers at the time (Namano 2001), a rather short conflict.  But was it
truly a world war?

	Superficially, the answer is yes.  It involved almost every nation
in the world.  Only a handful of nations stayed out of it, namely Sweden,
Switzerland, the Vatican, and in what turned out to be a crucial decision,
New Zealand [1].  True, no nation was truly untouched by it; as has been
well documented (Meiou 2197, Hammond 2340, Hays 2479, Burke 2893), even
Japan was involved, using its now-infamous Self-Defense Force (JSDF) to play
a surprisingly major role in the conflict.

	But the question must again be asked, was it a world war?  Was its
scope broad enough to set it apart as a world war, and not a handful of
local wars?  The answer, I feel, is yes.  Why?  Let us examine the causes of
that war and find out.

	First, we must begin with the deepening tensions between the United
States and Russia.  In 1998, roughly a decade after the failure of Communism
in the Soviet Union, the hard-liners returned to power, eager to seek what
they termed 'compensation' from the United States, something better
classified as 'revenge' (Brast 2490).  At the time, no-one seemed to
notice.  But as time went on, and Russia gained power behind the facade of a
collapsing economy, powder was inevitably added to the keg that had existed
since the end of the Second World War (Vickroy 2258).

	On 30 June 1999 [2], Russia made its first move.  Under the guise of
a military exercise, Russian air and sea forces launched a moderate attack
on the Sakhalin Islands [3].  It is worth noting that the JSDF did *not*
launch a counterattack.  Under US pressure, Japan stayed put and allowed US
forces to retaliate.  Of course, another reason was the fundamental
impotence of the JSDF (Tsurutani 1981).

	Why, an observant student would ask, was there no attempt at
diplomacy?  The technical answer is that there was.  Several accounts exist
of President William Jefferson Clinton's frantic talks with President Boris
Yeltsin about the situation (Meiou 2197, Zimmerman 2105), but it is
generally agreed that Clinton was acting in pure self-interest.  At the
time, the end of his term loomed a scant year away, and he had frankly done
nothing for which to be remembered.  After all, the economy that had
improved so dramatically had collapsed back into ruin, and lingering fallout
from the Lewinsky affair still loomed over him.  The theory has also been
proposed that he was trying to drum up support for his vice-president's
upcoming bid for election in 2000, but this remains speculation [4].

	Thus, can we say simply that the war began because an American got
power-hungry?

***

	"Yes, we certainly can," said Eileen wryly, looking up from the
text.  "Lord knows I saw it enough times."

	"Come now, no being pessimistic."

	"Sorry, ma'am."

	"Apology accepted.  Now read."

***

	The answer to that, as can be seen (Rekishika 2468, Hosho 2712), is
a mixed one.  Yes, it is true that had Clinton been less inclined to think
about his rather dubious heir apparent, perhaps a more peaceful resolution
to the conflict might have been reached.  On the other hand, it is worth
mentioning that before then, the United States had not been involved in a
major conflict since the Vietnam debacle (Smith 1994, Takamono 2780), and
had participated in nothing more than police actions since the Persian Gulf
oil war of 1991 (Shaw 1996, Meiou 2197).

	Why bring this up?  Obviously, because from a cyclical point of
view [5], the United States was, it might be said, "due."

***

	"Interesting," muttered Eileen.

	"What was that?"

	"Oh, nothing."

***

	Thus, the stage has been set for a conflict between Russia and the
United States, and it appeared that the doomsayers of the Cold War era would
turn out to be correct after all.

	Or were they?  Much has been made of the fact that in the subsequent
conflict, in which treaty obligations and the very close-knit nature of
world affairs pulled virtually all nations into the war, not a single
nuclear weapon was used.  True, they were in readiness; documents that
survived the destruction of Washington DC clearly show that tactical nuclear
warheads *were* in major theater areas, and commanders were authorized to
use them if attacked with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons (NBC). 
But (and this cannot be overemphasized), they were *not* used, despite all
the prewar predictions that a third world war would necessarily entail the
use of nuclear weapons.  Why not?

	The general consensus is that humanity got a healthy dollop of sense
in the intervening years since the first and only uses of nuclear weapons in
warfare, needless to say the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in June
1945.  Mankind realized that there was no possible consequence of not
"dropping the bomb" that was worse than the known consequence of doing so. 
Thus, we stuck to conventional weapons, and while the death toll was still
horrendous, with 110 million dead in the space of two years, and the
financial toll was even greater [6], things were still infinitely better
than the nuclear holocaust that might have been.

	I have a differing opinion, however.  Based on historical texts
(Meiou 2197), and more importantly the absence of the Sailor Senshi from
historical records, I find it possible, and indeed likely, that the Senshi
had an integral role to play in preventing the use of nuclear weapons.  It
is, admittedly, a rather unsubstantiated theory that, by its very nature, is
extremely difficult to prove, but it is highly intriguing and very tempting,
and is therefore left as an exercise for the reader.

***

	"Y'know," said Eileen, "the easiest way to solve that would be to go
up to Serenity and ask her about it."

	"Yeah, I'm sure that would go over great," came the sarcastic reply. 
"'Um, Your Majesty, I was just wondering, um, did you intervene and change
the course of the war back in the twentieth?  Just as an academic matter of
curiosity, of course.' That would be just swell."

	"What's wrong with that?"

	Jen sighed.  "I'll explain later.  Just keep reading."

***

	Thus, for whatever reason, nuclear weapons weren't used.  Very well,
now the question the astute reader will now ask is what this has to do with
the Formation Wars.

	Everything, of course!  The Silence followed as a direct result of
the war, and it is drilled into children from grade school that the
Formation Wars followed hard on the heels of the Third World War.  So, we
are now ready to begin a discussion of the causes, manner, and effects of
the Silence, a topic that will be explored in the next chapter.

***

	"Well," said Jen, "at this point I was hoping you could do some
discussion questions."

	"Questions?  Jen, this is barely a pamphlet, to say nothing of a
chapter!"

	"True.  This is sort of an outline."  She smiled.  "Filling it in
and making it longer is a graduate student's job."

	"You're a graduate student," Eileen said pointedly.

	"Not for long.  Now read chapter two."

	"Pushy, aren't we?"

	"Just do it!"

	"Ha!  Nike!  And you say I don't pay attention."

	"Eileen . . . ."

	"Fine, fine, I'm reading.

***

	Chapter 2: The Silence: the Fuse is Lit

	It is common knowledge that the Third World War ended in a global
draw.  In no theater did one side win a clear advantage, although many
(Lesher 2788, McCarrier 2789, D. Takahashi 2903) have speculated on what
would have happened if Serenity (then Tsukino Usagi) had not sent her
infamous "Whisper Heard Round the World [7]." But it went out, and roughly
three quarters of the population of Earth went into hiding, including,
unfortunately, a great many politicians and military leaders.

	Why did Serenity (or more properly, Tsukino) issue the warning? Some
have proposed that it was a mere hint of incipient goddesshood, but this is
rather difficult to prove, especially as there were several hints beforehand
in the form of the various incidents involving Galaxia and Beryl.  A more
logical theory is that it was Tsukino's attempt to calm down the world.  It
seems obvious to the author that Usagi Tsukino hoped for the ninety years of
Silence to serve as a Darwinian scythe.  In theory, those who remained
outside the hold of the Silence would kill themselves off, leaving the world
to those more inclined to peace.

	One could make the case that this worked, to a degree.  Rough
casualty estimates (Meiou 2997) give the number dead at around three to four
billion, a number that makes one cringe at first, especially considering the
vast numbers of people who were only marginally involved in the fighting,
but pales in comparison to the carnage that would follow.  A number of
questions must be asked by the student of history, and several of them will
be answered in subsequent paragraphs.

	First, there is the matter of how a full quarter of the population
of Earth could die.  In sheer practical terms, taking a conservative
estimate of three billion dead, one comes up against a seemingly
insurmountable problem, namely that of decomposition.  Simulations run by
the University of Crystal Tokyo (Hanazawa 2902) show that the time needed to
break down three billion corpses is simply too long.  What happened to them?

	The answer to that question also answers another question that may
be raised: what distinguishes World War III from the Silence.  On the
surface, they would appear to be the same, but upon closer inspection, one
comes across the crucial difference.  1 January 2001 marked a watershed
between chaotic period and chaotic period because it marked the large-scale
reappearance of magic.  Magic had been present in rather small quantities
beforehand, in the form of the Sailor Senshi, but this had been restricted
to Japan and a couple of isolated incidents elsewhere.  Now, the world began
to cope with the "Age of Thaumaturgy." [8].  One of the more obvious aspects
(and one curiously limited to the Silence, for reasons that will be
explained in a later chapter) was that dead bodies instantly decomposed into
a pile of self-combusting ash [9].

***

	Eileen looked up from the footnote and smiled.  "We're playing the
Captain Sakachi card, aren't we?"

	"Shut up," came the playful answer.

***

	This is but one example.  There are many others which are left to
the reader to discover alone (Guroi 2992).  The point is that there is ample
reason to believe that a distinction should be made between the Third World
War and the Silence.

	However, another question must be asked about the Silence: why did
Serenity make the announcement the way she did?  Clearly, the panic that set
in afterwards was bad enough; several major cities, including Winnipeg,
Cairo, and Pretoria, were burned to the ground during the subsequent
looting.  It is possible that it was meant to send a jolt through the
population, but it would seem that this was a mistake.

	The only answer that can be given is that even this was somehow to
Serenity's advantage for some reason known only to her.  It would not be the
first time; historians often falter when faced with people who make their
decisions with foreknowledge of the future.

	Therefore, having explored the reasons for the Silence, we are
prepared to consider the causes, incidents, and results of the period from
2101 to 2190 CE: the bloodiest, most violent, and most thoroughly
frightening period in the history of humanity, a period that can, without
hyperbole, be said to be the darkest crisis ever to hit Homo sapiens.  The
Formation Wars.

***

	"Jen, have you considered writing horror novels?"

***

	The causes of the Formation Wars were very simple.  When the senshi
awakened, they saw a world that had been devastated by war.  They firmly
resolved that such a war could never happen again, and one of their first
steps was to begin reviving those who would be the least warlike. 
Unfortunately, they chose the politicians.  When the politicians (who, it
must be remembered, were really the ones who started the Third World War)
came out from their holes, they saw a world that had been irrevocably
changed.  All the old seats of power: Washington, Moscow, Beijing, all had
been leveled.  Clearly, the prewar superpower system was untenable, and
doomed to failure if they tried to reassert it.

	By the same token, no system of government yet invented could handle
this unique situation.  The world, or what was left of it, had to be put
back together, and neither democracy nor socialism could do it, for reasons
discussed later on.

	The beginnings were rather subtle.  Survivors were organized into
nationwide recovery groups, which gradually became more and more regimented. 
As the leaders began to consolidate power, they met other leaders, who had
long since renounced their old allegiances.  

	A typical example is the case of the governor of the state of
Washington and his band of some twenty thousand from Seattle, who joined
with some forty thousand from Victoria and Vancouver to form the Northwest
Pacific Confederation.  The two no longer recognized the United States or
Canada, and simply decided to become one.  Then the NPC expanded, picking up
survivors until it met the Northern California Alliance, which consisted of
Oregon and all of what was California north of San Francisco.  And so they
grew.

	However, there came a point where two confederations met that had
grown sufficiently large, to the point that neither *wanted* to be absorbed. 
When that occurred, there was one thing left to do.  Fight.

	Thus, the Formation Wars began in over three dozen spots all over
the world.  In the Rocky Mountains near Denver, at Hong Kong, at the Ganghes
Delta, at Patagonia, at the Aleutian Islands, at Alsace-Lorraine, and at
many other places, the war was on.

	At the beginning, destruction was fairly limited, as work crews
scrambled to get back into working order the tanks and jets left over from
World War III.  As time went on, however, the growing confederations grew
large enough to start building factories which began turning out tanks,
guns, ammunition (which, it should be noted, depleted Earth's already
dwindling supplies of raw materials to the point of exaustion).  Some of the
fiercest fighting came in the Middle East, where the vaunted and rapidly
dwindling oil reserves of the Saudi peninsula changed hands again and again. 
It was the Middle East that set the stage for the new world order.

	In 2106 the Saudi peninsula, along with the Tigris and Euphrates
valleys and much of the Persian highlands, was controlled by a confederation
operating out of Damascus.  This was an obvious mistake; those very few
Israeli survivors who were left continued to wage guerrilla warfare against
the Arabs.  They predictably had little success, but sufficiently weakened
the Damascus confederation enough to be taken from the north by a consortium
of Ukrainians and Balkans, who between them had effectively scoured Asia
Minor.

	The Ukrainian/Balkan forces, however, found that they simply could
not hold their ground.  Not only did they have to contend with resistance
from within, from the Israelis and the Arabs, but they also had to fend off
outside forces.  From 2108 to 2112, no less than seven different
confederations launched attacks on the U/B forces.  Under this strain, even
a united nation would have difficulty staying together.  The Ukraine and the
Balkan nations hadn't liked each other much to start with, and so the
confederation fell apart.

	What followed was a mere microcosm of the rest of the Formation
Wars.  Nine confederations fell to themselves, in an all-out free-for-all. 
The prize: Saudi Arabia, and the precious crude oil they needed to continue
their military operations. [10]

***

	Eileen smiled.  "It always comes down to oil, doesn't it?"

	Jen shook her head.  "Nope.  It's economics, and you know it.  Oil
was just the currency du jour."

	"You still think economics drives history, don't you?"  It was a
long-standing debate, and not just between the two.

	"Just keep reading."

***

	No confederation could hold an advantage for long.  The deserts of
Saudi Arabia are notoriously hard to defend in the best of times.  These,
however, were hardly the best of times.  Oil field fires burned rampantly
[11].  As if the pall of smoke covering the subcontinent wasn't enough,
chemical weapons were extensively used for the first time since 1918 [12]. 
Add to this the extremely high temperatures Arabia is justly known for, and
it is little wonder the situation remained as muddled as it did for so long.

	This campaign was different from the others, however, in that it was
the first demonstration of the new system.  The war for Arabia ended in one
sense when the Hudson Bay Consortium and the Amazon River Basin Cooperative
reached an alliance in which both retained their sovereignty, but united to
fight all the other confederations.  This early on, the others did not yet
see the advantages of this sort of cooperative planning, and so the
disunited forces were swept off the map by the HBC/ARB alliance.  It was
thus the the age of the alliance system was born, the system we still live
in today.

	The peace in Arabia held for three years, about enough time for
engineers to cap all the blown wells and right a good portion of the
extensive environmental damage [13]. Sadly, this episode demonstrated
another characteristic of the confederacy system.  In 2125, the Hudson Bay
Consortium was taken over by the short-lived Utah Compact, and in the
resultant chaos, the Amazon River Basin lost its grip on Arabia.  But the
Southeast Asian Alliance (Fourth) and the Mediterranean Sea Union formed
another coalition to hold on the subcontinent, and so it went on until the
end of the war.

	This sort of thing was repeated all over the world, as
confederations allied with each other for short-term goals, and then fell to
fighting among each other once the goal was accomplished.  Oftentimes, the
bitterness that resulted from a broken union was far fiercer than any hatred
for former enemies, and acts of savage vengeance were commonplace.  During
the peak of this Revenge Campaign (2130-2178) was seen the most brutal
destruction of all.  Genocide was far too common, as entire ethnic groups
were pushed to the brink of extinction.  For example, we need only look at
the Amerindians and their treatment at the hands of the Californian Union in
2143, or the black concentration camps that dotted Midwestern North America
during the 2150's, or the slaughter of millions of Koreans by the Beijing
regime throughout the Formation Wars.

	Another part of this sad tale involves the destruction of cities. It
can be argued that some of humanity's greatest architectural triumphs: the
Eiffel Tower, the World Trade Centers, the Sears Tower, the Acropolis, and
so on, were the most keenly felt losses.  Cities tumbled all over the world. 
At first, it was only the big cities: New York (2111), London (2115), Bombay
(2118).  As the wars escalated, however, more and more cities died, until
the litany reads like a graveyard: Toronto, Los Angeles, Moscow, Hong Kong,
Auckland, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Miami, Bangkok, Chicago, Paris,
Athens, Madrid, Boston, Berlin, Sydney: all these cities fell in the second
decade of the twenty-second century *alone*.  Any and every city with a
population over ten thousand fell, and a large portion of the smaller cities
were destroyed as well.

	In all this destruction, with campaign after campaign, with
approximately 78% of the output potential of humanity put towards warfare,
it is a wonder that humanity survived [14].  The nonuse of nuclear weapons
can be directly attributed to the stripping of all usable launch vehicles
during the early days of the war.  Once the ICBMs had been dismantled,
leaving behind the warheads, it was considered impractical to use them,
especially when their use would preclude the usability of the very lands the
confederation tried to conquer.

	There is another reason for the nonuse of nuclear weapons, a reason
that directly ties into the reason why this narrative of the Formation Wars
has thus far ignored the state of Japan at this time.

	On 3 July 2100, the senshi awoke from their slumber and began
reawakening the others.  Japan was the only country in which they made a
concerted effort to wake every person; elsewhere they simply awoke those who
could awake all the others.  Therefore, the reawakening of Japan took some
time, and by the time the senshi had completed this and could take notice of
what else was going on in the world, they found that the Wars had already
begun.  Sailor Moon (this was of course before her coronation as Neo-Queen)
could have conceivably used the ginzuishou to stop this, but several
writings (Hanashizu 2392, Zanuno 3005) would indicate that even the
ginzuishou has its limits [15].  Those limits would appear to have been
reached with the revival of Japan.  However, the other senshi would appear
to have had some sort of powers over the world as well.  How else can we
account for the deaths of some three dozen people, all of whom left behind
records and journals making clear that they, more than anyone else in a
position to do anything about it, wanted to use nuclear weapons?

***

	"Blind luck?" asked Eileen.  "It's what happened every other time
we've been to the brink."

	"Sometimes blind luck is just another name we use for divine
intervention."

***

	And so the war wore on . . . until it happened.  Crystal Tokyo.

***

	"And?"

	"And," said Jen, laying back in her chair, "that's it.  Until volume
two.  It's a short book, and it should be.  I'm not going to include every
single battle and every single general."

	"Hm."

	"Well, what do you think?"

	"It's okay."

	Jen growled.  "Okay?  What kind of criticism is that?  That
doesn't help me!"

	Eileen smiled a devious smile.  "Make me."

	Jen smiled as well, but quickly wiped it off her face to keep up
appearnaces.  "Oh, I will."

	She pounced.

[1] Many credit ANZAC commitments as a key factor in keeping the war from
escalating too fast in far Southeast Asia and Oceania.  This is, I think, a
point overlooked by some Crystal Tokyo historians.

[2]  This was also, of course, the birthday of Serenity.  Much has been made
of this in less reputable chronicles; the author feels that it is simply
another bizarre coincidence.  However, it is rather suspicious that after
that day, no further reports of senshi activity were made until the end of
the Silence.

[3]  For a more detailed depiction of the importance of those islands to
politics in that part of the world, see Edward Ogea, A Geographical History
of Eastern Asia, 2000.

[4]  And so it shall remain; the sacking and destruction of Washington DC in
2120 was extremely unfortunate from a historical standpoint.  The National
Archives were inexcusably sluggish in dispersing and duplicating records,
including the infamous Clinton tapes, the seal on which was to be broken in
2135.  A group of archeologists claimed to have found fragments of the tapes
in 2904, but this remains unverified, and the team refuses to release the
alleged fragments for peer review.

[5]  The cyclical view of history is perhaps one of the most perturbing in
the field.  Simply stated (and perhaps oversimplified), this view states
that nations are prone to cycles of warfare, that these cycles are
completely inevitable, and therefore that they are immune to attempts at
diplomacy.  Even a brief overview of this theory is beyond the scope of this
book; for a detailed explanation, see the classic work by Setsuna Meiou on
Japanese history from the postwar period to the present, which I feel no
serious student of history can be without.

[6]  This, more than anything else, is what horrifies modern-day
politicians: that the world spent nine trillion US dollars (and these are
1999 US dollars!) on the war, a sum patently inconceivable, and thus
pointless to convert into modern-day yen.  Several texts exist on why such
an exorbitant sum was spent in two years, see especially Heise, "On the
Financial Aspects of the Third World War," Cooke Publishing Company, New
Zealand, 2150.

[7]  Much has been made of this message, which, verbatim, was 'People of
Earth.  Go to your basements.  Go to your cellars.  Go into hiding.  You
will be safe there. Wait and do not panic.' Of course, the veracity of that
statement cannot be overstated.

[8]  The quotes are intentional; I personally do not believe that there is
adequate historical evidence to support the beginning of a new 'age' of
anything.  Indeed, the near-absence of the very term thaumaturgy (originally
used as a term denoting a wonder worker, from the Greek) in common-day
speech would indicate that most people aren't even aware that there was a
time magic wasn't in everyday life, and indeed fail to realize that this is
the case now.  It would seem to the author that Clarke's Law has never held
more adamantly than here, when the line between magic and thirty-first
century technology has blurred past the point of recognition.

[9]  Some have pooh-poohed the reports of this phenomenon as due to the
enormous psychological stresses that people of the Silence lived in.  The
author, having been in similarly stressful conditions, can assure the reader
from first-hand experience that this is not the case.

[10] Notably, the ferocious rate of fuel consumption during the war was the
final nail in the coffin of internal combustion engines, which today can
only be found in textbooks and museums.

[11] To this day, no-one knows who started them, and it is unlikely that
anyone ever will.  With nine confederations fighting amongst themselves, and
with two different resistance groups fighting anyone who attempted to gain a
foothold anywhere, there are far too many suspects to ever determine who set
Arabia on fire.

[12] Chemical weapons were also used, to a slightly lesser degree, during
the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict, but certainly not on the scale used in 2112
and on.

[13] However, it was not until 2802 that human beings could survive in
Arabia without protective gear.

[14] Survival being used here lightly.  The best estimates for casualty
figures over the course of the Formation Wars comes out to around 6 or 7
billion dead, or a number *greater* than that of the population before 1999. 
This is of course easily accounted for; the fertility boom of the early
2100s has been widely noted, as has the frighteningly low population of
Earth immediately following the war and for a long time afterwards. Little
wonder that the Formation Wars are often called "Malthus's Revenge."

[15] It is worth noting that Sailor Pluto has remained silent on this topic;
the limitations of the ginzuishou are not once mentioned in her landmark
work.

 
========================================== 
Unnumbered Episode #205: The Class of 3028 
========================================== 
 
 
	Kanomi looked anxiously around the hall.  Mizuno Ami High School had
a rather nice cafeteria.  If you moved a few walls around, changed the
lighting, and placed plants in strategic locations, you forgot that you were
in a high school cafeteria and felt instead that you were in a ballroom.
 
	And what a splendid ballroom it was. 
 
	Indeed, the only thing that marred the decor was the huge sign,
obviously an amateur job, that read "Welcome Class of 3028." Under it, in
slightly smaller letters, was something to the effect of this being the
five-year reunion.
 
	Five year reunions were traditionally well attended in Japan.  It
was an excellent way to check up on classmates, solidify ties, and above
all, for better or for worse to cement the old boys' and girls' network. 
This was no exception; as Kanomi looked around, she could see that just
about the entire graduating class was there.  One hundred forty-five strong,
most with dates or spouses, all seeking to advance in life.
 
	She sighed.  By most accounts she'd had an excellent five years. 
But in comparison to Mizuno's most famous graduate, who had never
technically graduated, she could just as well have been a janitor for the
past half-decade.
 
	Kanomi ran her hand through shoulder-length blonde hair and sighed. 
Time to bite the bullet, so to speak.  *She* was presently unoccupied. 
Kanomi set her drink on a nearby table and walked over to the pair,
smoothing out a couple creases in her conservative turquoise-blue dress.

	At three meters away, her quarry turned and noticed her approach.
Her face lit up with recognition, and a smile broke across her face.

	"Kanomi-chan!" 

	Kanomi smiled.  "Hello, Jennifer-san."  She looked at the shoulder
boards on Jen's dress uniform.  "Or should I say, Captain Sakachi?"

	"Jen's fine, really." 

	"I see."  Jennifer Sakachi, more popularly referred to as Sailor
Orion, hero of the campaign against Selenite, widely-touted participant in
the Gemini incident, holder of a doctorate in history, and the most
illustrious product of Mizuno High, beamed back at her with her titles
silently bludgeoning the blonde.  She was in the dress whites of the Royal
Star Navy, as was the woman next to her.  "And, of course, this must be your
friend Eileen Pearcy?"
 
	"Hi."  The brunette extended her hand.  Kanomi unhesitatingly took
it. She was more or less used to shaking hands, as opposed to bowing.
 
	"So Kanomi-chan, how have things been?" 
 
	"Pretty good," was the reply.  Never mind that you never wrote
anything to me after you left for the School, she didn't add.  "Went to
college-"
 
	"Really?" asked Eileen.  "Which one?" 
 
	"University of Crystal Tokyo." 
 
	"Great!"  Getting into UCT was no small accomplishment. Graduating
from it virtually guaranteed a job at the business of one's choice.
 
	"I don't remember anything about that," said Jen uncertainly. 
 
	"You wouldn't, would you?" said Kanomi, a bit more sharply than she
had intended.  More calmly, and hoping that her slip had gone unnoticed, she
added, "After all, you were a bit occupied at the time. You know, leaving
town, heading for the School, meeting your destiny, silly stuff like that."
 
	"Oh yeah," said Jen, and the three shared a laugh.  "But seriously, 
you got in?" 

	"Yep.  I got my degree, well, degrees, in political science and
American studies," this last directed towards Eileen who nodded
appreciatively.

	"Lemme guess," said Jen.  "You got a job at the American embassy and
work there?"

	Kanomi was surprised.  "How did you know that?" 

	"Lucky guess," interjected Eileen.  She fidgeted and adjusted a 
button on her uniform.  "So, are you single?" 

	Kanomi choked down her first response and marched on.  "Yes, I
suppose so.  But what with shuttling back and forth from here to America,
and occasionally Venus . . . I guess a relationship would be a bit hairy."
 
	And it would be, she realized for the first time.  True, she was
rather good-looking, and she really had no shortage of dates, but she had
yet to meet a man that was willing to put up with a planet-trotting
girlfriend for long.  At the moment, she had just broken up with yet another
boyfriend, and she was beginning to despair of ever marrying.  Not to
mention that one thing she wanted, but knew she could never have.

	"Well," said Kanomi, "I guess there's no point in asking what you've
been up to, is there?" After all, seemingly everything Jennifer did was
front-page news.

	"Not really," and the smile faded a bit from Jen's face.  From the
corner of her eye, the blonde thought she caught a scowl cross Eileen's
visage, and she involuntarily shuddered.  From her dealings with Americans,
she could tell when one of them was upset, and this was one of those cases. 
But why?

	"Eileen, I'm a bit thirsty, I'm going to the drink table.  Can I get
you anything?"

	If Eileen had been scowling before, she positively bristled now. 
"Um, sure.  Could you get one of those Leedys?" she asked, referring to the
latest drink fad.

	"Sure.  And you?" 

	"I'm fine," said Kanomi, trying to figure out what had set Eileen
off like that.

	"Okay," said Jen.  She sauntered off to a far corner of the room. 

	The moment that the redhead was out of earshot, Eileen pounced on
Kanomi like three of Her Majesty's most trusted advisors would pounce on
members of a certain family of rodents.  "Right, now what the hell do you
think you're doing here, trying to give my Jen a nervous breakdown?"
 
	'Taken aback' was one way to describe Kanomi's mental state at that 
point.  'Surprised as hell' was another. 

	"What are you-" 

	"You know exactly what I'm talking about, you hussy!  If-" 

	"Oh no, now wait a minute," said Kanomi, a hair under a shout. 
"First, senshi or not, you do *not* get off calling me a hussy, hear me? 
Second, *your* Jen?  I've known that woman a hell of a lot longer than you
have.  *Before* she got that fuku that seems to make all of you think you're
gods, she was one of the nicest, most caring, most decent people that I
knew."

	Eileen's face turned a slightly darker shade of red.  "How dare you! 
If there's one thing Jen's never been guilty of, it's arrogance!  She used
to . . . be a great person, and she still is," said Eileen, finishing in a
murmur. Kanomi picked up on it.

	"Oh no, she's not.  The Jen I knew would have written.  The Jen I
knew would have called.  The Jen I knew would have made at least one visit
in five freaking years.  In short, the Jen I knew would have given a damn!

	"That, *Sailor America*, is not the Jen I knew." 

	Kanomi sighed after this tirade, and prepared for the inevitable
backlash from the brunette.  Therefore, Eileen's reply came as a great
surprise to the blonde because of how loud it wasn't.

	"No," she said sadly and softly, "it's not.  Tomoji, people change
over time.  I'm different, Jen's different, and most importantly,
*you're* different. 

	"Look, we're both in interesting positions here." 
 
	"Not really.  You're a sailor senshi and I'm a pencil pusher at the
Embassy."
 
	Eileen arched an eyebrow.  "You'll have to tag along with me at work
one of these days and see just how glamorous it is.  Frankly, Jen has . . .
or had . . . the most exciting job of us all, but that's not important right
now.  You were closest to her before she became . . . who she is, and I was
closest to her while she became who she is."

	"So?" 

	"You're not seeing the point." 

	Kanomi had a rather scathing retort prepared, but Jen came back from
the table.  The blonde idly thought that it had taken a rather long time to
get two drinks.

*** 

	Jen went to the table and rested her hands on it a moment, trying to
gather herself.  To say the least, she hadn't been overly pleased with
Kanomi's attitude towards her.  The fact was that she was meeting someone
she hadn't seen in five years, and she felt that if anything, it should be a
rather joyous experience.  Instead, Kanomi seemed awfully bitter about
something.
 
	'But can you blame her?' another part of her mind asked.  'After
all, you did more or less abandon her when you went to the School.  You and
Kanomi were best friends in high school.  To just break off relations like
that with literally a day's notice, and then not call or write or anything
over the intervening interval . . . that just isn't very smart. '
 
	She turned and watched Eileen and Kanomi.  Eileen appeared to be
giving Kanomi an earful, and it looked like Kanomi wanted to do the same. 
Knowing the tempers of both when they got riled up, she decided that it
would be best to just walk off for a moment and let them sort things out.

	As she walked away, she bumped into another old acquaintance from 
high school. 

	"Sakachi-san!" 

	"Umino-san!"  The two bowed, the sailor senshi and the former nerd. 
 
	"So Umino-san, how have things been going?" 

	"Splendid.  And I have no need to ask you, have I?" 

	"Not really," said Jen wryly, hoping to avoid a repeat of the scene
with Kanomi.  "So, what are you up to these days?"

	"Oh, nothing really.  I have a small consulting firm, but I think
I'll be going into civil service."

	"Really?" asked Jen, getting bored already. 

	"Yep!  I'm applying for a job at the Palace, in the PR department,
actually."

	Jen got a sinking feeling in her stomach. 

	"And I was wondering, you know, since you're close to Sailor
America, if you could, you know, have her put in a good word for me, and . .
. ."

	To be fair, it wasn't an out of the way request.  Since time
immemorial, Japanese schoolmates had made it a custom to look out for each
other after graduation.  In twentieth century Tokyo, school ties were often
the only way to get ahead in the world.  Things weren't quite so competitive
now; after all, if things got too hard, you could always go to one of the
less crowded colony worlds.  But the old tradition still stood.

	And to be fair, she would probably grant it.  But she wouldn't like
it, partly because she wanted people to advance on their own merits as she
had, and partly because of the row she knew Eileen would raise.

	"I see," said Jen slowly.  "Well, I suppose I *could* help you out, 
but . . . " 

	"But what?" 
 
	"Well, there's a slightly more lucrative position that's open, and
perhaps you'd be interested."
 
	"Really?" 
 
	She scrutinized his face.  Yep, he'd bought it, hook, line, and 
sinker. "You could join the navy." 
 
	"What?" 
 
	"The navy.  Specifically, the civilian sector.  I have it on fairly
good authority that the RSN will be undergoing major expansion soon." In
actuality, she was fairly certain that the Royal Star Navy would downsize,
and turn its attentions toward building up a civilian fleet to facilitate
increased colonization.
 
	This was direct from Her Majesty's Bureau of Shipbuilding, headed by
Sailor Aldebaran.  Aldebaran was a friend of Orion's, and they'd been
working rather closely on modifications to the Haruna-class ships.  After
all, Orion was the latest to take a Haruna-class into battle, and it had
been decided that she could have the best input as to improvements.  "You
say you run a consulting company.  What exactly does it do?"
 
	Umino obviously had a stock answer ready.  "We specialize in
advising our clients in methods designed to streamline production procedures
and provide an array of options in-"
 
	"Yes, yes, that's very nice," interrupted Jen.  "Yes, I think Sailor
Aldebaran would be *very* interested in what you might have to say to her."

	"Splendid!  Can you set up an appointment?" 
 
	"As a matter of fact, I think I can."  A slight smile creased Jen's
face.  Sailor Aldebaran hated a certain class of people.  In the twentieth
century, they'd gone by the names of assistant general manager, middle-
management, and so on.  Their names had changed in a thousand years, but
they still did basically the same thing.  In Aldebaran's opinion, that thing
was to slack around and eat up funding.
 
	Aldebaran knew that she couldn't get around them, however.  She had
to deal with them, or else she simply couldn't get her job done.  Therefore,
she consoled herself by giving those people a hell of a time accomplishing
anything.  Over lunch, she had often regaled Jen with tales of how she'd
nearly driven consulting firms insane.  Apparently, Umino hadn't heard of
this.
 
	So much the better. 
 
	"Yes, I definitely think that your company can pull it off.  You
seem to be just the right material Aldebaran is looking for."
 
	"Thank you.  Thank you, very, very much!" 
 
	"Don't mention it.  She'll be in touch with you after the weekend." 
 
	"Wonderful."  He bowed and left. 
 
	"Serves him right for looking up my skirt five years ago," she
muttered, and moved off to where Eileen and Kanomi were talking.
 
 
*** 
 
	"Here you are," said Jen, offering Eileen her glass.  The brunette
sniffed it cautiously, smelled what she was expecting, and sipped slowly. 
Kanomi eyed her carefully.  She'd only tried a Leedy once, and spent most of
the rest of the night in a cold sweat.  It wasn't alcoholic, but as far as
taste went it was a remarkable imitation.

	"Thank you," she replied. 

	Jen looked at her watch.  She and Eileen had an appointment in a few
minutes, and she didn't want to be late.  However, she didn't want things to
be left unresolved between herself, Eileen, and Kanomi.  Time to wrap things
up.

	"So," asked Jen casually, "what were you two talking about?" 

	Eileen and Kanomi shared a glance. 

	"Er, nothing, actually," said Kanomi weakly. 

	"Nothing of importance," agreed Eileen. 

	Jen cast a wide blue eye at both of them.  "You really expect me to
believe that?"
 
	"Er . . . ." 

	"That is . . . ." 

	Jen wiped some invisible lint from her shoulder boards.  "Fine, if
you want to be that way, then be my guests."

	"Jen, you know I didn't mean it like that," began Eileen.  But the
redhead was already walking off again.

	"Dammit," muttered Kanomi.  Eileen started to run off after her
lover, but Kanomi caught her with a surprisingly strong grip.

	"Not so fast, Ms. Pearcy," she said in clear English.

	"Please let go of me," said Eileen in a very calm voice, in
contradiction to what Kanomi expected from an American.

	"Look, you may have slept with her, but I still know a few things
about her that you don't, okay?"

	"We've been together five years-" 

	"And in all that time you've never had a single fight?" 

	"Well . . . ." 

	"She's *never* gotten mad at you?" 

	"Look, I don't see where-" 

	"Let me handle this," said Kanomi impatiently, letting Eileen go and
stalking off after Jen.  But she was nowhere to be found.  She looked about
and saw that Eileen was already heading for the restroom.  Kanomi made a
guess.

	She found Jen in a classroom on the second floor.  She knew that Jen
would probably come here, to the room where she'd had two of her history
classes.  Yes, the furniture was in different places, and in some instances
had been replaced, but it was still recognizable.

	"Hi Jen-chan," Kanomi said, sitting down next to Jen in the darkened
room.

	"Sure you don't want to argue with Eileen some more?" she asked
bitterly.

	"That act isn't going to work with me, Jen-chan.  I'm not
Eileen-san."

	"I know.  You seem to enjoy reminding Eileen of that constantly." 

	Kanomi sighed.  Had she really screwed up so badly?  She knew that
she probably had gotten off to a bad start with Eileen.  She also knew that
she'd underestimated how attached Jen and Eileen were to each other.  Their
relationship wasn't secret, but it wasn't tabloid fodder either, partly
because lesbian relationships were more or less accepted in Crystal Tokyo,
and partly due to the vigorous efforts of the press relations office.

	In any case, it hadn't seemed like she was saying anything really
harsh at the time.  And of course she hadn't planned on breaking them up.

	"Okay, so maybe I'm a bit jealous of Eileen-" 

	"WHAT?" 

	Kanomi noted idly that Jen had picked up the habit of speaking in
English when she was upset.  "I mean, she's best friends with one of the
most popular senshi in the world and all, and so-"

	"Most popular?" asked Jen with a smile.  "My popularity peaked the
day I came back from Pleiades.  In another five years the world will have
forgotten about me."

	"You're a senshi, and that's a lot more than I'll ever be." 

	"Kanomi-chan, if you think that your not being a senshi makes me
like you one whit less, then . . . ." She stopped before she said something
unnecessarily sharp.  "Kanomi, I'm sorry about not writing.  But you have to
understand, being a senshi is hardly easy.  I've got errands to run-"

	"And I don't?" 

	Jen looked away, unwilling to perpetuate an argument.  "That's
right.  That's absolutely right.  But that still gives you *no* right to go
off at Eileen like that."

	"And it gives you no right to just brush me off like so much lint!"
Kanomi paused a bit to gather her breath . . . and then she stopped
completely at the tears that streamed down Jen's cheeks.

	In all the years that she'd known Jennifer, she had never known her
to cry.  Not when she was a young girl and fell down on the pavement, not
when she found out that her parents couldn't afford the latest high-tech
toy, not when she found out that she was going to go to the School and leave
her life behind.  And now a little remark like that was enough to bring
Jennifer to tears?

	She reacted.  "Oh come on, Jen-chan, don't fall apart on me now,"
she said, whipping out a handkerchief and dabbing the redhead's cheeks,
ignoring the couple of wet spots that had gotten on her uniform.  "You know
I didn't mean it, and-"

	"It's true," choked out Jen.  "You may not have meant it, but it's
true.  My parents . . . I haven't told you about them, have you?"

	"Er . . . ." 

	"They barely know me.  They still love me, for certain, but as far
as I'm concerned . . . I'm just a girl who left their lives on a spring day
in 3028.  They know I'm Sailor Orion, they know I've done all these neat and
*wonderful* things, but do y'know how they treat me?  Like I'm a bloody
eighteen-year-old!  Kanomi-chan, I'm twenty-two!"

	Kanomi simply sat back. 

	"I'm twenty-two, and yet I'm still their little girl they lost five
years ago!  And what have I done to fix this?  Nothing!  I've just sat back,
smiled and nodded and acted like everything was okay when of
*course* it wasn't.  And those were my *parents*!  Kami-sama, we've seen 
what did to you, and Umino-san?  Do you know what I just did to Umino-san?  
I just delivered him into the hands of a senshi who I *know* will give him 
a hard time, for something I did FIVE YEARS AGO! 
 
	"You're bloody right, Kanomi-chan, you're right.  You have every
right to be bitter, because you still have your dreams, you still have your
ambitions, and all I have is a pretty suit and a vow to the queen."

	Jen took a couple deep, gasping breaths, and Kanomi looked for a
moment into her blue eyes, red-rimmed with tears for the first time in far
too long.  Kanomi wanted so dearly to hug her friend and tell her that
everything was all right, but she knew that there was only one person who
really should do the hugging, and she wasn't here right now.  Instead she
said, "You've got more than that, Jennifer.  You've got Eileen-san.  And you
have the love of your parents.  Don't ever forget that.

	"Don't beat yourself up about this."  She paused, realizing that
this was just what Eileen had been thinking about when she told her that
people changed over time.  "You changed.  We all do.  Look, you're Sailor
Orion!  You've been to places I can only dream of, rubbed shoulders with the
very elite.  You're a lot better off than a lot of people, and you should be
thankful."

	Jen looked up at her.  Kanomi answered the unasked question that
they both knew had been at the heart of it all.  "And no, being a senshi
hasn't changed you one bit.  You're still idealistic as ever, though you
don't want to show it.  You're still kind, still sweet, still ready and
willing to beat anyone in a discussion of history.  Jen, if you had
*really* changed, I don't think you'd even have the courage to tell me 
what you just did." 

	Jen looked at Kanomi for a long moment, and nothing happened. Then
the light came back into her eyes.  "You're right," said Jen, almost in a
chuckle.  "You know, I could never talk like that to Eileen.  She'd be
convinced that I was nuts."

	"You mean . . . I don't mean to pry, but you've never cried in front
of her?"

	"No.  Oh, sometimes we'll be watching a sad movie or something, but
a good hard cry . . . we don't do that enough.  Crying is good for the soul
in some ways."

	"That's profound," said Kanomi. 

	"It should be.  It's from a history book on the original Tsukino 
Usagi." 

	Kanomi looked at Jen for a moment, trying to decide if she was
joking or not.  Eventually she decided upon the former.  But something
troubled her; this recovery seemed a bit too sudden.

	"I just bet it is," remarked Kanomi.  "Now, come on.  I think
there's a brunette out there who's trying to figure out just where you've
gone to."

	"Yes."  They shared a long hug. 

	'Wow,' thought Kanomi, 'nothing like trade negotiations with the
American Confederation.' She happened to turn and look out the window. 
Light pollution from the city, the only pollution worth noting in all of
Crystal Tokyo, blotted out most of the stars, but she could pick out one or
two.

	There was the moon: full and bright, almost at the apex of the sky. 
That was where she'd spent her earliest days; that was in fact where she'd
been born, to a couple who worked on the archaeological digs run by the
Palace.  At an early age, her parents had decided that they'd had enough of
digging in the Lunar dust and came back to Earth, there to write for trade
journals and for her mother to get a doctorate.  It had been tacitly assumed
that she would also enter the field, but she was happy to stay on Earth.

	And now, her closest friend had been past the moon, past the stars,
come back . . . and only Kanomi had been privy to her thoughts at her lowest
point.  That, she decided firmly, was something to think about.

	She closed her eyes and considered what might have been.  What might
have been . . . .

	Almost without her volition, she moved her mouth closer to Jen's. 
 
*** 
 
	Eileen fumed.  First Kanomi had come along, obviously looking to
start trouble.  She'd gotten Jen worked up, and now she'd gone and run off
trying to find her, leaving Eileen hanging around the main hall.  The party
was still going full-blast, especially now that a couple dozen marching band
alumni had grabbed instruments from some storage room and started playing
tunes that they hadn't played in five years.  It sounded like they hadn't
played them in five years, too.

	She'd waited ten minutes, then twenty.  After half an hour she had 
had enough. 

	Mizuno High was laid out a lot like other high schools, and so she
found her way around rather easily.  It was a lot easier, since the room Jen
and Kanomi were in was the only room that had any lights on inside.

	Stalking to the door, she stopped, thought about what she would said
to that blonde hussy, and firming her resolve, flung open the door.  She
stood stock-still for a moment.  For the first time she could remember, she
was at a loss for words.
 
	Kanomi was the first to notice.  She caught sight of the brunette
and her eyes widened.  With a mixture of reluctance and embarrassment, she
broke off the kiss.  Jen, whose brain was still in a sort of daze from how
fast things had progressed that night, was slow in realizing what was going
on.
 
	Eileen's face turned a deep red, her fists clenched in apoplectic
fury.  It was only thanks to a year's training at the School that she didn't
transform right there and then.  Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.
 
	Jen turned around, trying to figure out what had Kanomi so upset. 
She saw Eileen, and suddenly she got a sinking feeling in her insides, a
feeling like her entire body had collapsed like a house of cards, leaving a
shell outside.  It was not a pleasant feeling.  She gasped, and her face
drained of color, a stunning contrast to her red hair.  "Kami-sama, Eileen,
I-"
 
	"Shut up."  

	A deaf man could hear the menacing undertones in that voice, and
Kanomi certainly could.  "Pearcy-san, I can explain, you-"
 
	"Shut up.  There's no need to explain."  She almost spat the words
out.  "Jennifer, I'm going home.  Enjoy yourself." She spun on her heel and
stomped out of the room.
 
	Once outside, she only made it a couple of meters before breaking
into tears.  She ran down the hallway to the exit, the clicking of her heels
echoing against the walls.
 
	In the classroom, Jen immediately disentangled herself from Kanomi. 
"Kami, what have I done?" she whispered.  "Eileen, come back!" She ran to
the door and stopped--Eileen was nowhere to be seen.  "Dammit!"

	"Jen," said Kanomi softly, "look, about-" 

	Jennifer whirled on Kanomi, putting every centimeter of her height
to her advantage, seeming to tower over the blonde.  "I think you've done
quite enough tonight!  Was that your whole plan, hm?"

	"Jen, I don't know what-" 

	"Well, whatever it was you were trying to do, I hope you're GODDAMN
HAPPY!" she screamed, ending her sentence in English.  She clenched her fist
for a moment, and then turned to look down the hall, making a decision. 
"Eileen!" She started running.

	Kanomi simply stood there.  "Shit." 


========================================================
Unnumbered Episode #206: It Never Rains in Crystal Tokyo
========================================================


	Jennifer Sakachi opened her eyes at 07:30.  She saw a mix of blurry
shapes that wouldn't resolve themselves no matter how much she blinked. 
This was, of course, normal.  She reached over to the nightstand to grab her
eyeglasses.

	She was naturally an early riser, and was alert from the moment she 
awoke.  So when her hand grabbed nothing but empty air, she realized that 
the nightstand wasn't there.  By luck her hand swung down and hit the 
floor, and she felt the familiar coolness of the black frames.  In a 
practiced motion she put them on, and the scene before her became a lot 
clearer.  It was her living room.  And just as quickly as that, she 
remembered *why* she was in her living room.

	'Kami-sama, what the hell was I thinking last night?'  It had all
seemed to move at a paralyzing speed, up until the moment Eileen had walked
in on them.

	Then everything had gone to hell.

	She sprang up, just noticing that she was still wearing her clothes
from the previous night.  Almost running to the bedroom, she stopped when
she found the door was partly open.

	'Not like last night,' she thought.  Last night she was locked out,
wouldn't talk . . . but the thought of that brought tears to her eyes, and
she had no time for tears at the moment.  She had to know where Eileen was.

	"Eileen?"  No answer.  She looked under the covers and in the
closet, but her instincts were telling her that she'd already left.

	"Maxfield?"

	"Yes, Sakachi-san?" answered the AI.

	"Where's Eileen?"

	A pause.  "Sailor America is presently awaiting Her Majesty's
audience in the throne room."

	She blinked.  

	"Why?"

	"Presumably to have an audience with Her Majesty."

	"Bloody stupid AI . . . ."  Jen went to the window and drew back the 
drapes.

	"Drat."  It was raining.

	Crystal Tokyo wasn't a utopia, and most people of reasonable
intelligence knew this.  It rained, it snowed, it hailed; in short, all the
normal precipitation that was typical of Japan.  True, it wasn't quite like
it had been in the twentieth century, but humans had been mucking about with
Earth's climate for about five hundred years, and the resultant change made
Crystal Tokyo a bit cooler in summer and a bit cooler in winter as well. 
This was a welcome change; in the twenty-first century, summers in Japan had
been extremely punishing.

	In any case, it *did* rain in Crystal Tokyo.  But this was a
different kind of rain.  An unscheduled rain.  A rain that coincidentally
matched Jen's mood at the moment.

	The wind was rather slight and blowing towards the window, so
streaks of rain ran down the glass.  She'd checked; it was about twenty-
three degrees centigrade, and would probably get a bit warmer than that. 
Slightly atypical for summer, but still passable.

	"Forecast?" she asked the ceiling.  She knew there was no point
trying to go down to the throne room; even if Eileen was willing to talk to
her, that wasn't the place to air one's dirty laundry.  The word would be
all over the palace in a matter of minutes.

	Then again, it just might be already.  The Palace was a big place, 
but news traveled fast.  It had to, when there were some people who never 
left the building for months on end.  

	The AI broke in on her thoughts.

	"One hundred percent chance of precipitation from 08:00 to 22:30. 
Eight percent chance of severe thunderstorms, beginning approximately 15:00
and ending around 21:00.  High temperature twenty-four degrees centigrade. 
Humidity one hundred percent.  Dewpoint twenty-four degrees centigrade. 
Winds fourteen to twenty kilometers per hour, coming from the east and
swinging to the southeast approximately 15:00.  Insolation at eighty-two
percent normal."

	Jen scowled; she was no meteorologist, a simple "rain all day"
would have been good enough for her.  She took one more look at the window
and then headed for the bathroom to shower, hoping to wash away the memories
of the previous night.  Her strategy: ignore it, and hope Eileen returned to
her senses when she came back.

	In the shower, Jen went over her plans for the day.  Most of the
changes she'd recommended for Seiza were either complete or in the process
of implementation, and so her design work was basically finished.  Now
came the fun part: crew manifests.  Since she rated more battle experience
than quite a few commanders, she had quite a bit more leeway in choosing a
crew than she had before.  She was already determined to get her old
bridge crew back, if at all possible.  After all, they were supposed to 
have gotten a typical survey cruise, not a battle to defend Earth, and she 
felt that she owed them.  Jen knew Sammy would be easy to pry away from 
the Moon, and Vanessa would love a chance to leave Earth and be back in 
space.

	Jen finished lathering her breasts and began working on her legs,
her mind still racing.  Kim, she knew, would be a problem; those who ran
Earth Fleet Command, that cavernous command center under the Palace, said
that she was absolutely indispensable.  Jen knew that; that was precisely
why she wanted her on Seiza.  She would probably have to enlist the
assistance of a few of her senshi friends.  She truly hated politicking in
order to get what she wanted, but she had to admit that she had no choice. 
She counted on a big boost, anyway, from an unexpected quarter.

	Rinsing her legs, she reached for the shampoo and began to rub it
into her red hair, careful to get it all: thick shoulder-length hair
looked great, but was a pain to maintain.

	She didn't expect Small Lady to be her first officer again.  Her
duties as Princess would doubtless override any case Jen could make for
bringing Small Lady aboard, and so she had resigned herself to having to
find a new XO.  However, she was counting on getting the Princess's support
in whatever personnel choices she made.

	And then there was the matter of an AI.  In theory, which one she
got didn't matter, and she didn't really have a choice anyway.  AIs stayed
with particular ships, and that was that.  But she had every intention of
breaking that rule; Antares had a genuine personality, and despite the fact
that he was sometimes a genuine pain in the ass, she knew she could always
count on him for advice in difficult situations.

	Just like she could always count on Eileen.

	Unbidden, images from the night before played over and over in her
head.  How she'd been on the verge of breakdown, and had found comfort with
Kanomi.  How Eileen had walked in on the two as they shared a kiss . . . a
kiss the significance of which she was still unsure.  How she'd run after
the crying Eileen, who had gotten in her car and driven away much faster
than Jen could go, even as Sailor Orion.  How she'd gotten to their
apartment . . . .

	She blinked, and realized that she'd been lathering her hair for
longer than she could remember.  'I'm going to turn into a prune,' she
thought, hurriedly rinsing out the shampoo and stepping out of the shower.

	Once dressed in a standard uniform jumpsuit, she grabbed some toast
and tea.  Munching on the toast, she punched up some of the news headlines
and scrolled through them.

	More unrest in Africa, and once again the Southeast Asian Alliance
was going to try and step in.  They really had no choice; South Africa was
part of the SEAA, and Pretoria was probably howling over the danger they
were in.  Rightfully so; if the rest of the continent ever got their act
together, they would probably have little trouble rolling over South Africa.

	She read on a bit more.  Elections were being held in the Chinese
Confederation.  The incumbent Mao Tsing Liu was expected to win in a
landslide.  Emington, a small town in what was once the Yukon had been
awarded the 3036 Olympic Winter Games.  The European Union had made public
its plans to begin a colony on one of the moons of Saturn, quite possibly
Titan.  Crystal Tokyo had made no claims to the moon, but it was generally
accepted that they had free rein of the solar system.  But it seemed that
Alistair Cabot, the prime minister of the EU, had other ideas.

	And in an apartment in the Crystal Palace, a young woman had
terribly upset her closest friend for a reason she didn't even know herself. 
What a world.

***

	If you took the throne room of the czar's old palace in Moscow, and
the throne that was at Britain's House of Lords, and the old palace at
Versailles, and put them all together, you'd have something that bore a
striking resemblance to the throne room of Neo-Queen Serenity, provided you
only considered the placing of the throne itself.

	Everything else was different.

	The ceiling wasn't terribly high, but filigreed with gold, and where
there wasn't gold there was crystal glowing with a strange, warm, comforting
light that reflected off all the other crystal in the room.  The overall
effect was that there were no shadows in the throne room, a feat that
lighting experts born before 2197 would have found very hard to duplicate
without blinding everyone.

	The room was a crystal floor, covered by a polymer that prevented
slipping and felt like carpet to the touch.  It was perhaps twenty meters
long, and just as wide, with the throne occupying the front and center
position.  Although the area immediately surrounding it wasn't marked off in
any special way, those who were gathered knew the protocols, and gave
the throne a five meter berth.  After that, there were rows of people,
arranged according to the order in which they would speak with Serenity. 
Although the walls appeared solid crystal, they knew that behind them were
the galleries, filled with tourists or citizens eager to see the government
at work.

	Against the front wall stood the senshi.  Today there were about
half a dozen of them, which was normal.  Against the rather drab crystal
wall, their fuku were a welcome splash of color.

	Sailor Saturn was next to the throne, holding the Glaive in a
slightly defensive manner but otherwise showing no emotion.  The rest of the
senshi stood at more or less attention, though they were free to chat
amongst themselves.

	Sailor America was in no mood to talk.  She absently fingered the
white and blue hem of her red skirt, with just one thing on her mind.

	"Nervous?"

	America turned around to face Sailor Deneb.  Deneb was one of the
shortest senshi; she was a bit shorter than Sailor Moon had been when she
first came on the scene.  She looked like a pixy, an image reinforced by her
cheerful yellow skirt, pink bows, and impish face framed by short black
hair.  America had rarely run into her, but on those occasions she did, she
never regretted it; Deneb had a wonderful sense of humor.

	Deneb also happened to be one of the two senshi who had been born
and raised in Wales.  As such, she, along with Sailor Procyon, Sailor
America, and three others, were the only senshi who had *not* been born in
Japan.  They formed a sort of sorority . . . except that they didn't.  The
six gaijin senshi, as they were occasionally called, but never in public,
generally stayed apart, as if to avoid any possible suspicions that they
were somehow plotting against Serenity.  For those two to be standing next
to each other ordinarily would have made America start wondering about it.

	But, as previously noted, she had other things on her mind.

	"Um . . . no, why do you say that?" asked America.

	"Well, you're wringing your fuku like it's a dishrag!  Anything I
can help you with?" Forty years in Japan had taken away some of her Welsh
accent, but not all.

	"I've got a lot to think about right now," replied America shortly.

	"Yes," said Deneb.  "Your first audience?"

	"No, I've been here a few times, actually.  Usually I don't have a
petition to put forth, though."

	Deneb's eyes widened.  "You've got a petition?"

	"Yeah.  Well, it's more a proposal . . . ."  She took a handlink out
of her pocketspace and began punching buttons, grateful for something to
take her mind off of Jennifer.  "You see-"

	She never finished.  At the rear of the chamber, the heavy
gold-and-crystal double doors flew open.  It was no coincidence that the
path they swung was also clear of people; crowd control personnel had taken
care of that.  Sailor Mars then went forward ten strides and stopped.

	"All hail her grace, Her Serene Highness, Serenity, the Second of
her Name, born unto this Earth as Tsukino Usagi, the First of that Name,
Princess of the Moon Kingdom of the Silver Millennium, Eternal Sailor Senshi
of the Moon, Defender of Love and Justice, and Neo-Queen of the City of
Crystal Tokyo of the Crystal Millennium!"

	All eyes turned towards the door.  Mars stood stock still, seemingly
ignorant of what was going on behind her.  As for what was going on behind
her, it was simply the execution of protocol that had been in place for
hundreds of years.

	Neo-Queen Serenity walked in.  She wore the same simple white dress
she had worn for centuries.  She looked as calm and serene as ever.  Not
cold, not by any definition of the word.  She had a warm smile for all, took
the time to look children in the audience straight in the eye, making them
feel that she had gone to all this trouble, all this pomp and circumstance,
just to say hi to that child alone.  Behind her was Sailor Venus, who
constantly looked right and left.  There hadn't been an assassination
attempt inside the throne room in three hundred forty years, but the planet
senshi would never let down their guard.

	When Serenity came within two meters of Mars, the senshi of fire
started walking again.  The three formed a sort of mini-procession as they
walked the distance to the throne.  As they passed, the members of the
audience bowed or curtsied according to their gender, not rising until
Serenity had passed.  A rule change made in the late 2400s gave a blanket
procedure for everyone; before that, every millimeter a person bowed and
every microsecond of how long they stayed down was carefully prescribed
according to seniority and social standing.

	Once at the throne, Mars made a sharp turn to the right, making way
for Serenity, who climbed up the three steps and turned to face the
audience.  Sailor Venus kept walking until just before the throne, where she
sharply turned left and took up a position mirroring Mars's on the side of
the throne.

	Serenity emitted a small sigh that was only noticed by the two
planet senshi at her side, and sat.  Everyone else in the room immediately
relaxed to varying degrees.

	"What do we have today?" asked Serenity.  A flunky stepped up to the
queen and bowed.

	"The usual, Your Majesty.  Several petitions for acquittal, a zoning
dispute, a couple dozen budget requests, a personal interview, and the usual
host of grievances."

	"I see."  It was typical fare; she only held audiences once a week,
and left most of the day-to-day operations of the Palace to the appropriate
departments.  But this was her one day in the week that she herself ran the
country, the navy, and all the worlds that owed allegiance to her.  "Well,
let us begin."

	The flunky turned to another flunky, who dashed out of the room.  In
this, the most technologically advanced city in the world, messages left the
room by messenger.  He returned a moment later and handed a slip of paper to
the first one, who read: "Petition number 434-8999-B.  A request for a
zoning variance, by one Atsuko Mitsuragi."

	An average-looking woman stepped out from the crowd and curtsied.
"Your Majesty?"

	"You are Atsuko Mitsuragi?"

	"Yes, Serenity-sama."

	Serenity made a nearly imperceptible grimace.  "And I see," she
said, looking at the paper, "that you would like to build an . . .  internal
combustion engine, is it?"

	"Yes, Serenity-sama."

	"Could you please explain?"

	"Well, Your Majesty, an internal combustion engine is a relic.  It
hasn't been used to any great degree since the late twenty-second century,
and-"

	"I am familiar with such engines, believe me."  Sailors Mars and
Venus shared a smirk.  "Now, why do you need such a thing?"

	Atsuko colored.  "Well, it's sort of for my interest . . . I sort of
like antique automobiles." A couple of people in the crowd who knew their
history murmured at this.  Most of them remained silent, because they
weren't exactly sure what an ICE was supposed to be or what it was supposed
to do.

	"Automobiles?  An interesting occupation, to be sure.  What brought 
on this interest?"

	Atsuko began to relate her story of how she'd gotten into the field,
gradually growing more and more relaxed.  That, reflected America, was
Serenity's strength, in being able to put conversants totally at ease, to
make them feel that they, and not anyone else, totally occupied her time. 
As it went on, Atsuko began to forget her "Your Majesty's" and
"Serenity-sama's," which was of course exactly what Serenity was aiming for:
to speak to her as a human, and not as the most powerful woman on Earth.

	After they had passed a bit more than half an hour in this pursuit,
Serenity gave Atsuko permission, with a few sidebars about how Sailor Uranus
had liked cars in the olden days and how she might want to look her up. 
That taken care of, it was time for the next matter of business.

	The clerk read the order.  "Petition number 434-9000-A.  A request
for disbursement of funds from the Treasury and immediate application of
same for the commencement of construction of a visitor's center and gift
shop on the ground floor of the Crystal Palace."

	America left the line of senshi and bowed before the Queen, briefly 
congratulating the clerk on getting out the rather unwieldy title of the 
proposal that had been foisted upon it by the bean counters.

	"Your Majesty?"

	"Yes, Sailor America?"

	"Your Majesty, I have before you a proposal that I, along with my
department, and that of the treasury, have been working on for some time."
The words seemed hollow in her mouth; she'd been fired up for this project a
mere week ago.  That was, of course, before she had walked in on Jen and
Kanomi.  

	"As you know, we currently have a visitor's center on the ground
floor of the Palace.  However, it has come to my attention, and the
attention of others, that this center is woefully lacking.  At the moment,
it only serves to rent datapads out to visitors, which are nothing but
rather superfluous maps of the ground floor, pointing out items anyone
should be able to find by simply opening their eyes."

	She forced herself to relax, and with a bit of work even managed to
fake the brilliant Sailor America smile that made her such a hit in Japan
and back in North America.  "This certainly doesn't help our image.  As you
know, we place a great deal of emphasis on tourism revenue, and of course
the treasury places a *very* great deal of emphasis on it."

	This was quite true; Crystal Tokyo currency didn't exist as much as
a means of transferring goods in Japan as it did to provide something to
trade with other countries.  The details required a doctorate in economics
tounderstand, but it boiled down to this: Japan, as always, depended on
other nations for imports.  It couldn't grow enough food on its own, and
shipping it in from its colony worlds was still too expensive.

	And there was of course what was probably the most important reason
for the Crystal Tokyo yen: by changing its exchange rate at will, it gave
the Crystal Palace the power to bring any confederation to its economic
knees.

	"Therefore, I have before you a proposal for the expansion of the
visitor's center.  The numbers and expenditures are all well-explained in
the paper." She gulped, hoping her false confidence would pay off.  "Do you
have any questions, Your Majesty?"

	A couple minutes passed in silence as Serenity eyed the proposal. 
This wasn't the first she had heard of it, but in such a formal setting she
had to keep up with appearances.  And to be truthful, it was a rather
complex proposal.  There were all sorts of security and crowd-control issues
to be dealt with.  The departments had made studies of those problems,
however.

	"Well," said Serenity at length, "if there are no other
considerations of the issue that anyone feels needs to be brought up-"

	"Actually, Your Majesty, I believe I have a couple of questions that
I would like to ask Sailor America."

	"Sailor Mars?"  The queen raised her left eyebrow imperceptibly. 
"You have a question?"

	"Yes."  She bowed deferentially.  "With your leave."

	"Of course."

	"Thank you."  Mars stepped down from her position at Serenity's side
and walked up to America, stopping three meters away.  "Sailor America."

	"Yes?"

	"Just how many tourists enter Crystal Tokyo each year?  A liberal 
estimate, if you please?"

	"Er . . . between one and two million, if I remember the figures 
correctly."

	"And do you happen to have the breakdowns of just who comes from 
which confederations?"

	'What the hell is she driving at?' she thought.  "Um, no I don't, 
Sailor Mars."

	Mars nodded to herself.  "I do.  About three percent come from the
Southeast Asian Alliance.  Another eight percent come from Russia.  Twenty
percent from China; rather high, but understandable.  Just one point five
percent from the European Union, and around three percent from Africa,
mostly at our expense.  And another four percent from the Arab Union.

	"The remaining sixty point five percent come from the North American
Confederation."

	America took care not to flinch.  "Yes, Sailor Mars?"

	Mars turned to the throne.  "Your Majesty will remember that just
this last summer, the North American Confederation's diplomatic attempts to
enter a union with the United States of South America failed.  That fall,
the NAC began a full-scale assault on the Panamanian land bridge, and even
as we speak, American forces are conducting mop-up operations in Patagonia.

	"Your Majesty, I feel that at this time when the NAC is openly
carrying out a policy of expand and conquer, and when it clearly poses a
threat to the peace of the planet, the idea of actually inviting *more*
Americans to our shores is just short of complete folly."

	Sailor America had every right to be upset.  Mars had just
insinuated that America, her former home, her birthplace, was so dangerous
that its people shouldn't be allowed in Crystal Tokyo.  There was no
mistaking the personal slant Mars had put on the situation; she knew just as
well as anyone from where Sailor America had come.

	Therefore, it was rather surprising when Sailor America did nothing.

	Mars looked at her junior for a moment.  No anger, no resentment. 
Nothing.

	"I see," said America, more to herself than to Serenity.  "Your
Majesty," she added without raising her voice, "in light of Sailor Mars's
security concerns, I respectfully withdraw my request." There were a few
gasps, the loudest coming from the few people in the chamber who had helped
in making the proposal.  Over a year's worth of work, all to be given up
without a fight?  Near the edge of the room, an aide scurried for a phone,
hoping to contact Artemis and get him to help, but it was too late.

	"Are you sure of this?" Serenity asked.  Sailor Mars stepped back,
slightly chastened.  She'd meant to point out a simple flaw in the plan,
nothing more.  Heck, she didn't think it would be a half-bad idea, as long
as strict limitations on who got in were made.

	"Quite sure," came the murmur.

	"Very well," and Serenity couldn't keep the disappointment out of
her voice as she spoke, "you may go."

	"Your Majesty."  She bowed, pivoted on her left heel, and walked
out, ignoring the rising tone of conversation in the room.  She worked in
PR and knew just what an effect this would have.  Perhaps the most brash
and most outspoken of the junior senshi, giving up without a fight.  This
would not help her toy sales, to say the least.

	Toys were the last thing on her mind, however, as the heavy doors
swung open and she stepped outside the throne room.

***

	Several dozen floors below, Jen Sakachi popped open her dark green
umbrella and walked out from under the protection of the awning.  She was in
her shipboard uniform jumpsuit; her flamboyant sailor fuku was more than a
little out of place, and certainly not in keeping with her mood. Besides,
there really wasn't anything in the rules about having to wear her fuku when
she was away from the palace.

	For a few minutes she was alone with nature, strolling through the
few acres of park land that surrounded the Palace.  It was truly beautiful
in springtime when the cherry blossoms bloomed.  In fall it was equally
spectacular, with all the different colors that the leaves took on.  Now, in
summer, the lush, full leaves of the trees provided a verdant canopy which
was occasionally broken by a small clearing of grass.  At any other time she
would have enjoyed the beauty, even if rain streamed down her umbrella and
dripped from the leaves.

	But this wasn't any other time.

	A few more minutes' walking got her to a fence and a set of gates. 
She nodded to a security guard and went past; they recognized her as a
senshi, and people leaving the Palace grounds weren't watched too closely
anyway.  Those entering were an entirely different matter.

	A few more minutes and she was on one of the major thoroughfares of
Crystal Tokyo.  The road was four lanes here, but the interesting things
were on the sides.  Some of the most finest and most expensive shops in the
world were in the next kilometer or so of street.  But there weren't many
people walking along the sidewalks.  Most people were at work, or decided to
stay home rather than brave the rain.

	'More's the pity,' thought Jen darkly.  Misery loves company.  She 
stopped at one store window.  It was a toy store, and on display were 
quite a few Sailor America dolls.  They were still trying to sell them in 
Japan, but the real buyers were in North America.  The children, and not a 
few adults, couldn't get enough of her.  Eileen had told Jen that there 
were very tentative plans for her to accompany Serenity on a goodwill trip 
to America, although such a trip was several years down the road.

	She lost track of how long she stared at the dolls, and was
interrupted from her reverie by a tap on her shoulder.  Not turning around,
she spoke.  "Yes?"

	"She's beautiful, isn't she?"

	"Actually, she looks a hell of a lot better than-"  She turned
around, and froze when she saw her visitor.

	"Hi, Jen-chan."

	"Kanomi-chan . . . ."

	The blonde smiled under her umbrella.  "How are you?"

	Jen turned away and continued to regard the dolls.  "I don't think
you need to ask that question."

	A silence, broken only by the occasional whoosh of a car driving by
on the wet pavement, and the patter of raindrops.  "Look, about last night-"

	"There's nothing to talk about," said Jen coldly.  "What's done is
done."

	Kanomi blinked, and the smile faded a bit from her face.  "Then it's
true."

	"What's true?"

	"You and Pearcy-san . . . you're no longer together?"

	"WHERE DID YOU . . . where did you hear something like that?" she
finished, hoping it didn't come off as lame as she thought.

	'That's pretty lame,' thought Kanomi.  "It was just a rumor."

	"From who?  I need names!" she cried, adding a bit of an edge in her
voice.

	"I don't know.  I read it on one of the gossip nets."

	Jen counted to ten in Japanese, then English, then Mandarin Chinese,
then French, then the Welsh she was still learning.  "So everyone thinks
we're at each other's throats?"

	"No.  But we all know something's wrong."

	"And what might that be?"

	"Jen-chan, don't make me say it."

	Jen began to walk away.  Fast.  Kanomi had to work a bit to keep up.
After two blocks, Jen finally stopped at the entrance to another one of the
ubiquitous parks.  "Jen-chan, there's no point in trying to run away from
me, so-"

	"And just what the hell do you know?  Why are you even talking to 
me?  Haven't you ruined my life enough?"

	"Jen-chan, listen to me.  I've made some mistakes, but I certainly
haven't 'ruined your life.'" She opened her mouth as if to add something,
and then thought better of it.  She began again.  "Listen, that kiss . . . 
it was just a kiss."

	"Oh, really?  And I suppose you just go around kissing every girl
you meet?"

	"You're making this harder, Jen!"

	"And I think I have a right to!"  From far away, a rumble of thunder
came.  The AI would seem to be dead on.

	Kanomi sighed.  "I can see you're not being very rational today. 
I'm sorry." She began to walk away and then stopped five meters away, ready
to cross the street.  The few people on the sidewalks began to disappear
into shops and restaurants and cars, seeking shelter from the storm that
seemed to be building.  "If you want to talk about anything, you know where
to reach me.  The Embassy, remember that.  Bye." She turned her back to Jen,
looked both ways, and hurried across the street.

	Jen simply stood, letting her hair get blown about by the winds
blowing from the southwest.  A few strands extended beyond the confines of
the umbrella, and when they came back down, they were damp.

***

	Sailor America looked wearily at her secretary.  "You have a
visitor.  Lord Artemis."

	"I told you not to use that name," came the complaint from the
floor.

	"Oh, my apologies, My Lord."  The secretary bowed and withdrew.  A
white cat sauntered into the room and leapt up on America's desk.  He got
right to the point.

	"Sailor America, just what the hell was with that performance this
morning?"

	"What?"

	"I know exactly what happened, America.  If I'd gotten there just a
few seconds earlier . . . but why?  You just folded up there!  I mean,
Sailor Mars had a point, but it wasn't irrefutable!  You've been working
just as hard on this as everyone else, and you just dropped the ball!"

	"I know.  Sorry."  She looked down at her folded arms.

	"Is it you and Orion?"

	America drew taut at that.  "You know?"

	"Kami preserve us.  Of course I know, the whole Palace knows!  What
kind of press secretary are you if you don't even keep up with the current
rumors?"

	"I've been a bit distracted lately," she murmured, not looking up.

	"So I've noticed."

	America sighed lifelessly and stood, walking to her window and
looking outside.  The western sky was growing darker and darker, with
frequent flashes of lightning.  Even in the city itself the rain was falling
more heavily, and lightning was more frequent.

	"Squall line," said Artemis softly.  America turned around in
surprise.  "I'm a bit of a weather buff.  The AIs say this'll be a pretty
big storm.  Haven't had one like this since . . . oh, the late 2700s, I
suppose."

	"And this is all my fault?  I guess this is all a large-scale
version of what's going on with Jen and me?  Well listen up, *my lord*.  I'm
perfectly capable of handling my personal business just like that:
personally!  I don't need you, or anyone else, coming around and acting as
my moral compass, because I think I can do a just fine job of that myself,
you hear me?"

	She screamed the last bit at the cat, but didn't realize it until
she heard the echoes of her shouts reverberating from the walls.  She stood
for a moment, her chest heaving, face flushed, fists clenched at her sides.

	Artemis simply sat on her desk and looked at the senshi.  "I was
simply commenting on the weather.  As you say, it's personal." He hopped
down from the desk and began to pad over to the door.  At the threshold, he
paused.  "Just trying to offer some advice.  You're a lucky person.  Once
upon a time, I had a very strong love.  I threw it away.  I got it back. 
Not everyone gets a second chance, though, and you're certainly not helping
your odds by sitting up here and moping about.

	"Good day."  The cat walked out.

	America stood by the window for a moment, her form outlined against
the now-black clouds by the more and more frequent lightning.  "Hansu? 
Could you close the door, please?"

***

	Jen squished down the hallway, her shoes leaving wet footprints on
the carpet.  She imagined that in their centuries of use they had seen worse
than rainwater, though.  Why, during the Black Moon war alone the place had
probably seen hell.

	She came to the correct door and paused.  Was Eileen already there?
If so, what to do?

	She opened the door.  Most of the lights were off; she could only
see by the faint glow that came from under the bedroom door.

	"Lights, please."  The room lights came up to normal, and she
gratefully plopped her umbrella on the floor.  Taking off her boots and
soaking-wet socks, she pondered what to do.  Take a shower, or make it up to
Eileen?

	She made her decision.  Stripping off her fleet uniform top to leave
the regulation white turtleneck, she strode down the hall to the door.  No
locked door would stop her; she'd break it down if she had to.  And dammit,
Eileen *would* listen to her.

	"Eileen?  It's me, Jen.  We need to talk."

	Silence.

	"Eileen, we can't go on like this, you know.  Now let me in,
please."

	Silence.

	"Eileen, I will stand out here all night, I will break down the door
if necessary, but I will *not* spend another night alone.  Now let's talk,
PLEASE!"

	Silence.

	"This isn't like you, Eileen.  You mean too much to me for me to
just give up, and I know you feel the same way.  Now, if . . . if the love
we have means anything, open the door, and we'll get things settled."

	Silence.

	"Eileen . . . fine I guess I'll have to start things off.  I ran
into Kanomi this afterno-"

	The door flew open.

	"You were with Kanomi?"

	Jen opened her mouth in shock.  "Kami-sama, Eileen . . . what
happened?  You're a mess!" It looked like she'd been to hell and back in the
coach compartment.

	"You.  Were.  With.  Kanomi."

	Jen realized her error.  "No, you see, you didn't let me finish my-"

	"Get out."  Eileen was crying, but her mouth was a thin line.

	"Eileen, I-"

	"Get out.  Please."

	Jen took a step forward, eyes shining.

	"Don't come any closer.  Just leave."  Jen didn't move.  "Leave.   I
. . . I don't want to see you anymore." It came out as a whisper.

	To Jen, it was the most excruciating pain she had ever felt.  Forget
a dagger in the heart, this felt far worse.  All her battles against evil
had never hurt like this.  "Eileen . . . ."

	"Get out.  Get out get out GET OUT GET OUT!  OUT!  OUT!"  She was
screaming at the top of her lungs, and felt sure that the entire Palace
could hear her, even though someone at the back of her mind was telling her
that the room was fully soundproofed.  The same voice that was telling her
that she was making the biggest mistake of her life.

	The same voice she was ignoring.

	Jen simply stood, weathering the storm.  Then, at length, she spoke.
"I'm sorry, Eileen." With that, she turned and walked out, ignoring her
umbrella.  She walked out of the door, carefully closing it behind her, and
for just a second Eileen could hear her footsteps dwindling.

	Then she cried.

***

	"Good evening, miss.  Where can I take you?"

	"The American embassy.  Hurry."

	"Certainly."


==========================================
Unnumbered Episode #207:  A Second Opinion
==========================================


	Knock-knock.

	She groaned and rolled over.

	Knock-knock.

	She peeked out of one eye at the clock.  23:30.  True, she liked to
go to sleep earlier than most, but she had a fairly demanding job as well.

	Knock-knock.

	"Damn."  She raised her voice.  "All right, all right, I'm coming!"
She got up from the bed, grabbing a gown and wrapping it around her nude
form.  "Lights, please?" The room brightened.

	It was a rather small apartment, but it suited her needs on the
fifth floor of the Embassy.  She tramped through the kitchen/dining room and
went to the door.  "This had better be good," she muttered, pressing the
button and disengaging the lock.  She wasn't worried about assailants; she
wasn't important enough to kidnap or assassinate.

	The door opened to reveal a shivering, soaking wet Jennifer Sakachi.

	"Kanomi!" she gasped, embracing the blonde in a bear hug.

	Kanomi blinked.  "Oh boy."

***

	Gradually the storm clouds blew away, and the morning sunlight was
free to shine upon the Crystal Palace once more.  The light shone through
the windows of Jen and Eileen's apartment, the long slanting rays of the
rising sun casting long shadows in the bedroom.

	Eileen Pearcy sat in the same place she had sat all night, unmoving.
She knew what time it was, and she knew that she really should be getting
ready to go to her duty.  She didn't give a damn, though.  The public
relations office could bloody well handle things on its own for a few hours.

	The PR office had other ideas.  The phone rang.  Eileen didn't move.

	After the eighth ring, the phone stopped.  Eileen muttered something
incomprehensible and flopped down on the bed.

***

	Jen awoke to the smell of fresh-made tea.  She opened her eyes, and
the first thing she noticed was that the ceiling was yellow, rather than the
white that she was used to.  Then she sat up like a bolt.

	"Ah, you're awake."  Kanomi peeked her head around the frame of the
door.  Jen saw that she was in a bedroom.  A small one.  "I was worried
about you for a bit there."

	Jen tried to blink away the mental fog.  "What did-"

	"Lemme answer all your questions now, and then you take a shower.
No, we didn't do anything last night.  No, Eileen-san hasn't called.  Yes,
you can stay as long as you need to.  Yes, I really do think you should call
Eileen-san.  Bathroom's down the hall and to the right."

	Kanomi popped back around the frame and disappeared.  Jen continued
to sit upright.  She noticed for the first time that she was dressed in a
nightgown that was a couple sizes too small.  Correctly assuming it was
Kanomi's, she stood.  Just what had happened after she came in Kanomi's
apartment?  After the hug, everything was a blur.

	Then she blinked, and she remembered.

***

	"Oh boy," said Kanomi.  She struggled with her conscience for a
moment.  Here was a very vulnerable, very upset, very *pretty* woman.  It
would be pretty easy to . . . no!  Dammit, she thought, I wouldn't even have
had this kind of thought before . . . before . . . .

	'Before you fell in love,' a part of her said.  She hated to admit
it, but little old heterosexual Kanomi had decided to look at the same
gender. And yet, she had to admit that there had been some times back in
high school, times she didn't like to admit even to herself, when she'd lay
awake at night and think about Jen and--

	"Jennifer-chan," she said, trying to put as much steel into it as
she could, "I don't think now is the time for what you want, and I don't
think I'm the person who can give it to you."

	Jen continued to sniffle, and simply hugged Kanomi tighter.

	'Great,' thought the blonde.  'Drastic action, I guess.'

	Slowly, Kanomi brought up her arms and gently pushed Jen away.  
"No," she said simply.

	"I'm alone, Kanomi-chan.  Please."

	Deep breaths, Kanomi, deep breaths.  "I . . . I can't."  'Kami know
I'd like to try,' she thought silently.  Aloud: "Jen-chan, I think that a
lot has happened in the last couple of days, and before you do anything
else you should step back and take another look at things, okay?"

	The wild look that Jen got in her eyes surprised Kanomi.  "You mean
you want me to leave?"

	"No, no, of course not!"  Who knew what she might pull if she goes
outside like this?  "You're welcome to stay here for the night.  We went to
high school together, you shouldn't even have to ask something like that. 
Now come over here and I'll get you some tea, okay?" Jen nodded, and the two
went to Kanomi's small two-seat couch.  As Jen made herself comfortable,
Kanomi went to the kitchen, furiously biting her fingernails.

	Hands down, this was the worst Kanomi had ever seen her redheaded
friend.  She was an emotional wreck, and the worst part was that Kanomi
herself had helped to create it.  After all, if she had simply been able to
control herself back in the classroom, instead of acting on her goddamned
instincts that she hadn't heard a peep from in five years, Pearcy would
never have walked in on them, and . . . .

	She shook her head and poured some water into a pot.  As she stuck
it in the oven, she happened to catch a glance out of the window.  It was
still raining; she could see the raindrops falling in the halos made by the
streetlights.

	Sighing, she set the oven to boil the water and waited the few
seconds for it to beep.  Grabbing the pot and cursing when she realized how
hot it was, she set it on the counter and grabbed a couple teacups.

	A minute later, she was taking two cups of tea to Jen, and then
stopped.  Jen was fast asleep.

	"Poor thing," she whispered, setting the cups down on the coffee
table.  Making a decision, she took a deep breath and hefted up the young
woman.  "Kami-sama, she's big," grunted Kanomi.  Jen didn't look heavy, but
she had more muscle than most, and muscle mass was heavy.  She staggered to
the spare bedroom, where it was all she could manage not to drop Jen on the
bed.  She took the care to tuck her in, but Jen never made a sound.  "Long
day, huh?"

	Seeing her friend set to rights, she walked out, turned off the
lights, and left the room.

***

	Jen couldn't think of anything to say, once she'd run through her
memories of the night before.  She couldn't begin to imagine how startled
Kanomi must have been when she'd burst through her door, seemingly ready to
fall apart.  But more importantly, what was Eileen thinking right now?

	And what should she do now?

***

	It was 09:32 in Crystal Tokyo.  Eileen had decided not to show up
for work, and a couple of expletive-ridden phone calls to her department had
assured that.  She had, however, decided that she couldn't just mope about
all day.  She needed some advice.

	Trouble was, she'd made precious few friends here.  There were the
senshi, of course, but she was sure they'd all gotten a terribly biased
report of what had happened.  She'd been rather close to Jen's parents, but
she wasn't sure they were the right people to be asking right now.  They
just might think it was all her fault, and they just might be right.

	While she was popular, she didn't think there was anyone she could 
truly confide in with this situation.  That left one alternative.

	"Maxfield, please place a call to my parents.  Normal priority."

	"Working."

	She leaned back on the couch.  She knew exactly what the time
difference was: it was early evening in Pennsylvania.  But she didn't care;
she needed to talk to someone, anyone who would listen.

	"Eileen?  Are you there?"  The slightly nasal voice came from thin
air; she hadn't asked for video, just audio.

	"Oh, hi Mom.  How are you?" she asked in English.

	"Eileen, do you know what time it is?"

	She sighed.  "Yes, I know," she answered in Japanese.

	She could hear some rustling in the background.  "So, I take it that
you aren't just calling to say hello."

	"No-"

	"Eileen, I know you live in Tokyo, but that's no reason to speak
Japanese!"

	"Um . . . "

	"Seriously!  It's unpatriotic, you know.  You *are* still an 
American, aren't you?"

	Eileen sighed and switched back to English.  "Mom, we've been 
through this before, and anyway that's not why I called.  Listen, I need 
some advice."

	"About what?"  Her voice turned slightly serious.

	"Jennifer.  You see, we um . . . that is . . . ."

	"You had a quarrel, didn't you?"

	Silence.

	"Yes."

	"See?  A mother can tell.  Now, tell me, exactly what happened?"

	So she did.  Eileen explained everything to her mother, starting
from the moment Jen and Kanomi met each other at the reunion, and continuing
on to the last night, the last time that she had seen Jen.

	After she was finished, the room was quiet for a time.

	"Well Eileen, looks like you have some problems."  In Pennsylvania,
her mother sighed.  "I think that right now, she's not going to be in a very
talkative mood.  I didn't think that you'd be very conversational either,
you know.  It's good that you're talking to me instead of bawling your eyes
out.  But we Pearcys aren't crybabies, remember?"

	"H . . . yes."  Actually, it was the motto of her father's side. 
"So what do you think I should do?"

	"Talk to her."

	"But you just said-"

	"I know what I said, girl!  But . . . I know that if I had a fight
with your father, and he walked out, I'd want to talk to him as soon as I
could.  When partners aren't talking for a day, that day turns into a week,
and thena month, and I don't think I need to tell you the rest.  I lost my
first husband that way.

	"So, you don't know where she is?"

	A long pause.

	"No.  She . . . well, she just left."

	Another long pause.

	"Don't you have some special way of finding out or anything?  I
mean, you've got all those computers and everything, and-"

	"To a certain extent.  No computers keep track of people who aren't
in the Palace.  Privacy laws."

	Another long pause.

	"And you don't have any idea where she might be?"

	--You got a job at the American embassy and work there?--

	"Um . . . actually, I just might have an idea.  It's a wild one, 
but-"

	"Go for it."  Eileen was surprised at the firmness in her mother's 
voice.  "Go for it; you've got nothing to lose.  Trust me, once you lose 
love, you can try all your life and never get it back."

	Eileen pondered those words.  "Okay.  I'll get over there right
away."

	"Good."  Her voice immediately brightened.  "It's been nice talking
to you!  You really should call more often!"

	Eileen grimaced.  "Yes, yes," she replied in Japanese.

	"And stop with the Japanese!  You're American, have some pride in
your native language!"

	'The one bastardized by the Angles, Saxons, and lord only knows who
else?' she didn't ask.  "Yes, mom.  Talk to you later."

	"Bye!"

	"Bye."  Eileen sighed.  Time to get dressed.

***

	"Are you sure you want to do this?"

	"Absolutely.  I honestly can't say he's ever steered me wrong."

	"I don't know.  Way you were talking about him back at my place,
you'd think he got a distinct pleasure out of making your life hell."

	"He did.  But in doing so he made me mature a lot more than I think
I would have otherwise."

	"Really?"

	"Yeah."

	Jen and Kanomi were on a commuter train that was mainly empty.  That
was rather interesting; this time of year it would usually be filled with 
vacationers planning to spend an afternoon on the beaches of Kyushu.  Then 
again, the brief respite from the rain seemed to be just that: brief.  
Gray stratus clouds were building overhead.

	Kyushu was the southernmost of the big Japanese islands, and
therefore the warmest.  Due to the worldwide cooling that had taken place
over the past four hundred years, its warmth was made even more attractive. 
Now, in early summer, was usually the time for people to come out and get an
early start on their sunbathing, no longer fearing the ultraviolet rays that
had made sunbathing before the early twenty-eighth century an unwise
proposition.

	But they hadn't come for sun and surf.  One of Jen's best friends
lived on Kyushu, and she felt that if anyone could give her some good advice
on the current situation, he could.

	The train finally pulled into the station.  It had taken just under 
thirty minutes to go from Tokyo to Miyazaki.

	Jen stepped down onto the platform.  Kanomi would accompany her no 
further; she had other obligations.  "You sure you'll be okay?"

	"I'm sure.  I shouldn't be more than a couple of hours anyway."

	"Okay." Kanomi swallowed; she suspected that she might not see her
for awhile.  She ached so terribly to tell her how she really felt . . . 
but she knew she couldn't.  "See you."

	"Bye."

	The doors closed, and Jen promptly walked off, never looking back. 
She knew where she was going; all she had to do was follow the signs.

	It was a rather large city, and what she was looking for was
terribly small in comparison.  It was about the size of a city block, and
done in tasteful blues and whites.  Jen smiled wryly to herself; it was a
subtle, none-too-subtle reference to the one person who could, more than any
other, be called the master of the building, and everything inside it.  

	The door was rather nondescript, just two double glass doors with
thename of the building printed on it.  "Headquarters, Her Majesty's
Department of Science and Technology, Division of Artificial Intelligence."
Jen took a step back and pulled her henshin rod from nowhere.  Have to be
properly attired, after all.

	"Orion Star Power, Make-Up!"

	The usual transformation ensued, and when it was over Sailor Orion
stood on the deserted sidewalk.

***

	It was a long elevator ride.

	The building in the city was only a gateway.  All the AIs at the
division were buried underground; if they were above ground then valuable
space would be taken up.  At the same time, they couldn't bury them too
deep.  Japan was still on the Ring of Fire, and the additional measures
necessary to insulate against the magma, on top of the enormous heat the AIs
produced in the first place, made such a plan rather pointless.

	Therefore, an enterprising solution had been hit upon.   Just to the
south of the city was a rather large mountain.  Inside it was the largest
agglomeration of computing power that had ever been assembled.  It was a
triumph of computer science . . . and at the same time, it was the
birthplace of computer psychology, for no less than three totally insane AIs
were there undergoing treatment by scientists trying to learn where they had
gone wrong.

	Inside it, or rather below it, was also one Antares, formerly the
main computer and artificial intelligence of H.M.S. Pleiades.

***

	The hallways were uniformly white, with a single horizontal blue
stripe running along it.  The only things that broke the monotony were the
occasional doors.  In her fuku she could feel just a hint of the intense
cold that she knew lay beyond the walls.  Peering intently at her map,
however, she didn't notice any of the drabness of the decor.

	She stopped before a door and opened it.  Behind it were some
computer consoles, and Sailor Mercury.

	"Good morning," said Sailor Orion, bowing.

	"Good morning," replied Mercury, returning the bow.  "It'll be just
another minute or so until I'm finished with this."

	"Sure."  Orion took the time to look around the room.  It had
nothing to distinguish itself from any other room.  About five meters
square, all done in whites and blues, although here there were two shades, a
light and a dark.  A large window looked down on the actual physical
processors that made up Antares.  The room in which those processors were
kept was brightly lit, but frost was forming on the pane, which itself was
very slightly tinted blue.  Orion wondered just how much influence Sailor
Mercury had around here.

	The answer, of course, was a lot.  She had virtually free rein of
the division and the AIs, so why wouldn't she just suit things to her needs? 
After all, the only other senshi who came here were those who worked closely
with her, and few of those at that.  It would have been just as easy for
Sailor Orion to make a phone call, but she felt that she had to be there in
person.

	"Okay, it's set up.  Here's a headset; we're running some
diagnostics on the division's PA system, so I think this will be more
reliable."

	"I see.  Thanks."  She slipped on the headset as Mercury walked out.

	"Antares?"

	"Good morning, Sailor Orion.  It's been some time, hasn't it?"

	"Four years or so, yes."

	"I've been reading about you.  Always in the center of the storm, eh
Jenny?"

	She groaned.  "The name's Sailor Orion, you should know that.  And
just where did you read about me?"

	"Well, all the tabloids for one."

	"Of course."  She'd expected that.  Still, it was terribly
disconcerting for one's personal matters to become a matter of public
record.

	"You've also got back-page mention on three different dailies. 
Major ones.  True, none in Crystal Tokyo; they're still afraid-"

	"WHAT?"

	"You know, you were never this uninformed on Pleiades."

	Sailor Orion slumped down in a chair and twirled around.  "Yes I 
was.  I never really knew what was going on under me.  What was his name, 
that guy . . . the one who ended up in charge of environmental?  I never 
did find out how he got to be in charge.  I was too busy trying to win a 
war."

	"And a war of the heart isn't more deserving of your attention?"

	"Eileen and I are *not* at war."

	"What would you call it?"

	"What would *you* call it?  Maybe it's just me, you silly machine,
but it would seem that *I* have spent the last few months with Eileen, and
*you* have not!"

	"True."  Antares managed to take on a hurt tone.  "But if that's the
case, why come to me for advice?"

	"Um . . . ."

	"It seems to me," he said, putting a bit of a pedagogue-like twang
in his voice, "that by coming here you're simply running away from the
problem, unwilling to confront it head-on."

	"I came here for advice because I've *tried* to confront it head-on,
and it DIDN'T WORK!" She stood bolt upright.  "Dammit Antares, where's your
advice?  Where's the sage wisdom?  Aren't you supposed to be *helping* me? 
Here I am, practically on the verge of giving up, and all you can do 
is . . .  is . . . ARGH!"

	She slammed her right fist on the wall.  It resounded with a thud
that shook the control panels.

	"Would you like an honest opinion?"

	She looked up.  "You stupid computer," she whispered, "haven't you
been listening to a word that I've been saying?"

	"Yes.  But I've also been running a very complex simulation."  There
was a pause, and the computer made a sound quite like a deep breath.  "I'm
telling you now that it's one of the more difficult ones I've done.  I don't
usually deal with interpersonal emotional models, aside from my workings
with other people.  And even then, I just cobble together a model that is
based on the observations of other AIs.

	"This one is different.  I've run through a few billion different 
scenarios, and I'm afraid that it's over."

	He went on.  "I only foresee a 17.44% chance that you and Eileen
will reach a favorable conclusion.  By favorable conclusion I mean one in
which you and Eileen return to an amicable situation, and stay that way for
more than one year.  It is most likely, with a 43.03% probability, that you
will part your separate ways nonviolently within the next twenty-four hours,
with a plus/minus of .035%.  I'm sorry."

	She laughed.  "You're joking, aren't you?  You can't simply break
down personal relations like some mathematical model.  People are more
complicated than that."

	"You forget, Jennifer, that I know just how complicated humans can
be.  I'm supposed to simulate one, after all."

	"But-"

	"I've checked the solutions several times.  I can refer the matter
to a couple of colleagues-"

	"You mean other AIs."

	"-colleagues with considerable expertise in these matters, but I 
think the equations will hold."

	There was a silence, and for a moment Antares wondered if he'd
pushed his friend too far.  For he *did* consider Jen a friend, and a very
good one. He'd tried tell her in the gentlest way possible, but had it
worked?

	From the half-dozen video pickups in the room, he analyzed her body
posture: hunched over a console, head in her arms, shaking slightly.  A
quick check of the sound in the room: nothing that would indicate audible
crying.  Humidity?  Inconclusive.  The environmental systems weren't
sensitive enough to determine if she was crying.  And none of the cameras
were showing her face.

	"So in your opinion, it's over between me and Eileen.  You don't
think there's any way we can get back together, you think I should just cut
my losses and move on, is that what you're saying?"

	For perhaps the first time since his programming was complete,
Antares didn't know what to say.  He'd usually make a joke, but it simply
wasn't appropriate at the time.  In the long run it hardly mattered; Jen
answered his question for him.

	"Well, thank you Antares.  You've been a big help."  He couldn't
decide if she was being sarcastic.  "Good-bye." She pulled off the headset
and laid it on the console.  Finally, she raised her face.  It didn't look
as though she had been crying.

	As she got to the door, Antares finally said something.  "So what 
are you going to do now?"

	She stopped and stood in the open doorway, not looking back.  "I'm
going to get Eileen back to me and prove you wrong, you swarmy AI!" She
walked out.

	If Antares had a face, his grin at that point would have been a mile
wide.

***

	All along the ride back, Jen thought about how she was going to
patch things up with her lover.  She knew just how Eileen had acted last
night, but she also felt that after a day or so to cool off, the brunette
would see the error of her ways and come around.  *That,* she thought to
herself, would show Antares.

	Exactly how she would do this she didn't know.

***

	The door to the head office of Her Majesty's Department of Public
Relations flew open.  Two of its occupants carried on with their mysterious
work above the ceiling tiles.  Three of its occupants stopped whatever they
were doing and stared at Sailor America as she stood in the doorway.

	"Miss me?"

	"Sailor America, you said-"

	"Yeah, I know what I said.  It was a mistake.  Look, you may have
noticed that we've got a bit of a PR problem recently." She produced a
handlink and tossed it to a junior intern, who caught it uneasily.  Turning
it over, she saw a tabloid article on Jen and Eileen's problems.

	"Yes sir, well we've sort of been trying to get a handle on-"

	"The time for that has passed.  I know exactly what's been
happening, and I know how to fix it." 'Well,' she thought, 'one out of three
isn't bad.' "Right, Genji, I want you to call Artemis.  Tell him that I've
got to ask him a few favors.  Murasaki, tell the media that an announcement
on the situation between myself and Sailor Orion is forthcoming, and that
further inquiries regarding the matter will be ignored until further notice. 
And Hisho, come with me.  We've got a press release to write."

	The two walked into her office.  America scowled at the piles of
paper; had she been *that* out of it before?  Never mind, she had work to
do.

	She refused to sit, but leaned over the desk with her hands on the
seat back.  Together they looked down at a handlink, heads nearly touching. 
"Standard opening."

	"Right.  'To all concerned press agencies.'  Regarding?"

	"Regarding current inquiries on Jennifer Sakachi and Eileen Pearcy.
Um, body of message.  'It has come to the attention of Her Majesty's
Department of Public Relations that there are a number of questions
surrounding the relationship between Eileen Pearcy and Jennifer Sakachi. 
The Office would like to make clear that while the two persons in question
have had some difficulties in their personal lives, those problems have in
fact been rectified.

	"'The Office would also like to make clear that the rampant
rumor-mongering that has surrounded the two persons in question is
unacceptable.  Indeed, the purpose of the Office is to prevent such rumors
by the responsible and sensible answering of pertinent questions.'"

	She took a deep breath; she'd have to be careful not to leave 
herself open to criticism at this point.  "'As for those rare and 
regrettable occasions where the Office is slow in giving responses, it 
should not in those situations be construed that carte blanche has been 
given to make any and all sorts of wild and unsubstantiated rumors.

	"'Further inquiries can, as always, be directed towards the Office. 
Be advised that the office reserves the right to deny a response to any
question.' Well, how does that sound?"

	The black-haired secretary looked up at her superior.  "Isn't it a 
bit convoluted?"

	"Yeah.  And that's how I want it.  The harder it is for them to
figure out what I said, the harder it is for them to turn it against us."
She straightened as a knock came at the door.

	"Sailor America, I've got Artemis on the line as you requested."

	"Ah, thank you."  She ran a hand through her hair and cast a quick
look around the room.  "Put him on."

***

	She walked through the subway station that was beneath and to the
landward side of the Palace.  It was fairly crowded, but she was given a bit
of space: the heart-shaped tab on her jumpsuit's collars showed that she was
a senshi, and the stripes on her sleeves showed that she was a captain.

	However, a couple other things tipped her off to what was going on.  
No children stopped and bowed, as they were often taught by their parents 
to do when a senshi crossed their path.  Some people actually stopped and 
looked at her, like a face from the newscasts.  And she just *knew* that 
two people behind her were taking pictures, even if she couldn't turn 
around and see them.

	But she didn't particularly care.  She was going to settle matters, 
and to hell with anyone else.

***

	Up the elevator, down the halls, straight to the door she had run
out of yesterday in tears.  The plain white door with a simple gold plate
with her name and Eileen's on it.  Her first name was in katakana; Eileen's
full name was in katakana.

	She brought her hand up to knock, then thought better of it.  She
opened the door briskly.  Walking in, she noticed that it was a bit neater
than she had thought that it would be.  Coats neatly hung in the closet,
pillows artfully arranged on the couch, kitchen spotless.  The curtains were
open; the windows let in the late-afternoon sunlight as it reflected off the
ocean.

	She found Eileen in the bedroom.  The brunette was reading a
handlink and occasionally punching a few buttons.  She didn't look up when
Jen entered; in fact, she didn't make any sign that she had recognized her
presence.

	"Eileen?"

	The brunette looked up, distracted.  "Oh, hello," she replied, a bit
distantly, but with far more warmth than she'd shown the previous night.

	Jen stood for a moment, at a loss of what to say.  "Do you think we 
could talk?"

	"Sure."

	Jen sat down on the bed, next to the reclining Eileen.  For a moment
she closed her eyes and composed her thoughts, listening to the tapping of
Eileen's fingers on the handlink.  "Do you love me?"

	The tapping stopped.

	"'Cause, if you do, then I'll be a lot happier.  And if you don't,
I'll just walk out of the door and be out of your life.  I won't be too
happy then, but at least this will be over.  So, do you love me?"

	Eileen blinked.  "Jennifer, what-"

	"Dammit, can't you answer a simple question!?  Do you or do you not
love me?  Yes or no?"

	Eileen sat up and stared at the redhead, as if she'd never seen her
before.  And to be honest, she hadn't.  She had never seen Jen being so
forceful . . . except for that one time, that one time in 1998 when
everything had been on the line.

	Jen looked back at her, and the hard expression in her blue eyes
told Eileen far more than she ever wanted to know.  It was that look that
made her decide to take action.  She'd taken them to the brink, but damned
if she was going to push them over.

	"Jennifer . . . of *course* I love you!"

	"Prove it."

	'Okay, she's going to play hardball,' she thought.  'It's her
right.' "You want me to prove it?  Fine.  I've been terrible towards you in
the past few days, and I know it.  And I'm sorry.  Gods, am I sorry."

	Jen's eyes changed imperceptibly.  "You're sorry?"

	"More than you can ever know."

	"And you think that that can just patch things up?"

	Another tough question.  Eileen swallowed, not noticing the
self-doubt in Jen's voice.  She just looked at her lover for a long moment. 
"No.  Not really.  I've been an asshole lately.  But patching things up,
well at least it's a start."

	Jen craned her neck to look at the floor.  "You mean it?" she asked,
not daring to hope.  "After you nearly threw me out, after you ignored me,
after you tried to destroy what we had?"

	"I'd erase it all in a heartbeat if I could.  If I had Pluto's Key,
I would, and to hell with the timeline.  You're too important to me,
Jennifer." A tear ran down her cheek.  "And that's the truth."

	Jen looked up, her eyes shining.  "Then that's all that matters."

	And then the two hugged, an embrace the fervor of which hadn't been
equaled in even their most passionate moments.  Jen closed her eyes tightly,
relieved that it was all, at long last, over.

	She opened her eyes, with her nose buried in Eileen's long, straight
brown hair, and frowned.  Stiffening, she extricated herself from Eileen and
stood up.

	"Jen, what's wrong?" asked Eileen, surprise washing over her face.

	"You know goddamn well what's wrong, Eileen Pearcy!"  With a mixture
of fury and delicacy, Jen took several strands of hair from her lover's
head.  "THIS is what I'm talking about!" She brandished the strands and held
them a centimeter from Eileen's brown eyes.

	Eileen blinked.  The hairs were all black, and fairly short. 
Probably from a pageboy cut.  Not pet hairs, she was fairly certain.  Then
she realized what Jen was thinking, and immediately opened her mouth.  But
it was too late.

	"Oh, you thought you were home free, didn't you Pearcy?  Thought you
could just monkey around with my feelings and then give me a heart-to-heart
and a hug and pretend everything would be all right?

	"I don't want to know who she is.  I don't want to know how long
it's been going on.  But dammit, I want to know why the hell you thought you
could . . . could . . . ." She was crying, but the grimace on her face was
one of anger and betrayal.  Eileen had never seen Jen so angry before, and
indeed never saw her so angry again.

	"Jennifer," she started, knowing how impotent her words would sound.
The redhead was already walking to the door.  "Jennifer, please come back! 
Jennifer, would you-"

	"I'm going to the head office.  I'm requesting a change of quarters.
I'll have some people sent down shortly to get my stuff, and I expect you'll
be wanting to get out of your assignment to Seiza.  I'll see what I can do. 
Bye."

	She walked out of the door and slammed it.

	"JENNIFER!"


===================================================== 
Unnumbered Episode #208: Matters of National Security 
===================================================== 
 
 
	Sailor Mars put her elbows on her desk and sighed. 
 
	A desk. 
 
	Over a thousand years of defending the planet.  A thousand years of
being a senshi.  She'd helped to save the world more times than she could
count, and her reward?  A desk job.
 
	Oh, she knew that there were other rewards.  Virtual immortality, a
near-perfect utopia, the love and camaraderie of the other senshi . . . but
still, now that her tour of duty as Deputy Commander in Chief was finished,
she had nothing to do.
 
	She sighed again and stood.  She walked to the window and looked out
over Crystal Tokyo, the greatest, safest city in the world.  It was getting
safer.  The anti-monarchical factions that had been causing trouble had
thankfully ceased terrorist operations shortly before H.M.S.  Pleiades had
started her adventures.  Although it was rather unsettling for them to stop
without any notice or negotiation, she wasn't inclined to look a gift horse
in the mouth.  She happily took the cease fire at face value, and slightly
relaxed the hunt to find those responsible.
 
	Slightly. 
 
	"Tomozawa?" she addressed the AI.  It had undergone yet another name
change in the past week.
 
	"Yes?" replied the now-feminine voice. 
 
	"What's my itinerary for today?" 
 
	A pause. 
 
	"Meeting with Girl Scout Troop #49252, 10:30.  Lunch at Mishima
Corporate Headquarters, 11:50.  Speech at Aino Minako High School, 13:20. 
Meeting with Captains Sakachi, Pearcy, and Tsukino, along with Lieutenant
Commanders Young, Porter, and Leeds, 15:00.  Dinner with the Crystal Tokyo
Citizen's Advisory Commission Women's Auxiliary, 17:30.  Viewing of Magical
Girl Pretty Sammy VI, 21:40."
 
	"Current time?" 
 
	"9:03:52." 
 
	"Shimatta."  She leafed through a few papers on her desk.  None would 
take more than a couple seconds to fill out. 
 
	She was bored out of her skull. 
 
*** 
 
	A few floors below, Jennifer Sakachi was watching the news.  They
were showing the unveiling of some new statue or another, in memory of
someone.  They all ran together: with the history Japan boasted, you
couldn't throw a rock without hitting a national hero of some sort.
 
	Sailor America was at the unveiling.  She knew it; it was the only
reason she was even in the apartment in the first place.
 
	It had been a week since the final confrontation with Eileen.  Since
then, she had been relieved that Eileen hadn't found her.  She had told the
brunette that she was moving to different quarters in the Palace, but in
fact she had obtained a leave of absence and gone back to her parents.  Her
immediate superior hadn't been pleased to hear about it, but she'd gotten
it.
 
	Today, however, her leave ran out.  She had to meet with Sailor Mars
regarding assignments on Seiza, and she planned to take advantage of the
opportunity and get Eileen off it.  Back when they were in love it had
seemed like a good idea . . . .
 
	Back when they were in love.  Now that it was over, it seemed so
strange to refer to what they'd had in the past tense.  She'd always taken
it as one of the givens of the universe.  What goes up, must come down. 
Crystal Tokyo is the greatest city in the world.  Jen and Eileen were a
couple.
 
	"Were" was becoming the key word. 
 
	She lay on the couch, having dumped into a box a few items the movers 
had overlooked.  It had been tiring work pulling those old dusty history 
volumes out; she suspected the movers had intentionally forgotten about 
those, and she was now resting.  She watched as the dignitaries went on and 
on about one thing or another.  They were all usually the same.  The honor and 
glory of Crystal Tokyo, the respect for Serenity-sama, the exploding statue 
sending debris flying into the crowd, the screams of terror. 
 
	Wait.  Something was different there.  She gave the screen another
look.  Yes, the statue had quite definitely exploded, and at first glance
would appear to have killed a couple of people.  Now the camera's operator
seemed to be undecided whether to stay or to flee.  The sounds of gunfire
could be heard.
 
	'Interesting,' thought Jen with a detached part of her brain.  'Guns
are illegal in Japan.  Not only that, they're archaic, too.  Why would
anyone want to use them?
 
	'Because they're terrorists, silly,' she answered herself. 
 
	Then she realized what was going on.  This was a very good time to
do so, because all hell chose that moment to break loose.
 
*** 
 
	Snapped out of her reverie, Sailor America's first instinct was to
look to the head of the dignitaries' table.  Serenity already had three
senshi on top of her to shield her from debris, and Sailor America could see
a couple others instantly making preparations to get the Queen out in a
hurry.  That part of her conscience assuaged, she let herself succumb to her
second instinct, which was to dive for cover.
 
	That entire process took about a tenth of a second. 
 
	She landed in a pit of photographers.  Opening her eyes, she saw the
bleeding, lifeless face of a man who had obviously gotten lacerated from a
fragment of the statue.  She realized belatedly that if it weren't for the
twin miracles of her facing away from the statue, and her sailor fuku, which
could withstand insane impacts, she could have shared the man's fate.
 
	She started to raise her head, but quickly thought better of it as
gunfire started off.  'Gunfire?' she asked herself.  'Why on Earth would
anyone use firearms?  The laser pistol's been in use for years, and . . .'
She forced herself away from this unproductive line of thinking.
 
	The senshi spared another glance towards the head table.  Serenity
was gone; whether she'd teleported or used the armored transport that
followed her everywhere didn't matter.  The Queen was safe.  Now she and the
other senshi could start to worry about the firefight that looked to be
developing.
 
	Cautiously, she looked around from the table to the rest of the
scene.  It was a scene out of a nightmare.  Bodies were strewn everywhere,
some dead, some dying, and a few lucky ones who were just wounded, but would
recover.  Assuming, of course, that proper medical treatment arrived in
time.  What she saw next told Sailor America that such treatment wouldn't
show up anytime soon.
 
	The area where most of the audience had been was now a literal
no-man's land.  Nothing moved in that area, at least not for long.  Anyone
who was still alive there either couldn't move or had the sense not to,
because on either side of the area, two armed camps were busily blasting
hell out of each other.  At the table were about four senshi.  America's
heart fell to see that none of the planet senshi were there.  However, she
recognized those who were as veterans who had been around from the early
days.
 
	Their opponents, about seventy-five meters away, were frighteningly
organized.  About two dozen figures in baggy black garments were shooting
back with some painfully archaic weapons.  She had no doubt that a history
buff like Sailor Orion might know what make they were.  That hardly
mattered; they shot real bullets, and the senshi were having a hard time
dodging all of them.  True, they were the finest examples of humanity that
had ever walked, but a bullet in the head would kill them like anyone else.
 
	She couldn't tell whether the attackers were male, female, or mixed;
they made no noise whatsoever.  Even when one of them fell to a senshi
attack, they never shouted or cried out, in contrast to the senshi whose
battle cries were almost deafening.
 
	For a moment, Sailor America considered joining her compatriots at
the table, but she hesitated.  Her job really wasn't to fight, after all. 
As much as she hated to admit it, she was a bureaucratic senshi.  Despite
all her previous exploits, Sailor America simply wasn't a fighter, at least
not physically.  Emotionally, the past week had been more of a fight than
anyone should ever have to go through.
 
*** 
 
	It bore little resemblance to anything a twentieth century observer
would have called a van, but that was the name it had been given.  It bore a
bit more resemblance to what a twentieth century observer would call a bomb
shelter on wheels, and that was another name it had been given.
 
	Rabbit One was the codename the Senshi used for the van, a slight
homage to Air Force One of the former United States.  It had been tested to
withstand almost any magical or ballistic attack.  If anyone in the world
still had twelve-inch artillery shells, they would bounce off the van with a
slight ding.  It was also supposed to withstand a near-miss from a fifty
kiloton device, but that hadn't been tested.  After all, *no-one* in Crystal
Tokyo knew where you could even find a nuclear weapon.
 
	No-one who was below the level of senshi, that is. 
 
	Despite its ungainly appearance, Rabbit One was a pretty good mover.
It had a top speed of about fifty kilometers an hour and *never* had to
contend with traffic.  After all, it boasted a full police escort.  The
streets were clear as it raced back to the Crystal Palace.
 
	Inside, Sailors Venus, Jupiter, Uranus, Procyon, and Betelgeuse sat
nervously.  Even inside the van, they formed a protective ring around
Neo-Queen Serenity, who looked more annoyed than frightened, if at that. 
The only way one could tell this had affected her at all was that her
habitual smile had been replaced with a poker-face of a straight mouth.  The
rear compartment was separated from the front by a few centimeters of alloy;
in the front two other senshi took care of the driving.
 
	"Your Majesty," said Sailor Jupiter at length, "I've been talking to
some of our Special Ops people.  They say that this is probably an isolated
incident."
 
	"Really?" 
 
	"Yes.  Just two dozen people to start with, and the senshi on the
scene have cut that in half.  They're still a little worried about how they
managed to rig the statue, but they're working on it."
 
	"Any claims of responsibility?" 
 
	Jupiter blinked; she hadn't expected such a sophisticated and savvy
question from her monarch.  'Dammit,' she thought, 'every time I think I've
got her pegged, she pulls something else from her sleeve.' "No.  Although
we're going through communications records to see if there might have been a
threat, even if it was encrypted."
 
	"I see.  Any other news pertaining to this?" 
 
	"No." 
 
	She turned to Sailor Venus.  "No casualty reports?" 
 
	Venus gulped.  She'd been the last to get inside the van, and had
seen the bodies strewn all over the place.
 
	"Bad.  No precise count, but we're almost certain from what
information we have that some kind of shrapnel was placed inside the statue. 
Otherwise there couldn't have been so many injuries.  Pardon me," she
concluded, and picked up a ringing phone.  She began whispering into it
hurriedly.
 
	The van turned the corner onto the Boulevard.  It had no name
anymore; it had once been Tranquillity Plaza until the rather controversial
decision to open it to traffic.  Before, it had been advertised as the
greatest open-space shopping center in the world, with shops lining a street
filled with pedestrians and kiosks selling almost anything imaginable, and a
few things that weren't.  It had been a saying: "Americans invented the
shopping mall.  Tranquillity Plaza perfected it."
 
	But for some obscure reason, the kiosks and pedestrians were moved
to the fringes, and the Plaza became the Boulevard.  True, financial
compensation had been paid to all those forced to move, but there were still
some bitter people, and Serenity still got a lot of flak from the Crystal
Tokyo Street Vendors' Guild, at least when they thought she wasn't
listening.
 
	Now, the Boulevard was the widest street in the Eastern Hemisphere,
perfect for all the rush hour traffic to and from the Palace.  There were,
in fact, some who said that that was the whole purpose of the Boulevard: to
provide a quick escape route from the Palace in case of emergency.  Few
bought that; the change had predated both the Black Moon and the Sailor
Wars.  But it couldn't be denied that it was a heck of a way to get people
into or out of the Palace in a hurry.
 
	And Serenity was going to the Palace in a hell of a hurry. 
 
*** 
 
	Jen paced nervously.  The feed from the park had long since
disappeared, and news anchors were busily consulting "specialists" and
speculating on what had happened.  For the thousandth time, she pulled her
henshin stick from nowhere, looked at it, and then returned it from whence
it came.
 
	Staggeringly, there had been no alert issued.  For crying out loud, if 
the Queen so much as sneezed, half the Palace was put on guard. Now this, and 
the Powers that Be didn't even blink an eye?  

	Finally, she'd had enough.  She was a full captain in the Royal Star
Navy, she was the leader of the Pleiades Campaign, she'd proven her worth
during the short-lived Third Sailor Wars.  Dammit, she was going down to the
park and seeing what the hell was going on.
 
	"Orion Star Power, Make-Up!" 
 
	Transformed, she raced out the door.  Or rather, she would have if
it had opened for her.
 
*** 
 
	Sailor America was beginning to feel better.  The four senshi had
only a couple more fanatics with which to deal, and they should fall
shortly.  Things looked to be well in hand.
 
	Silently, she watched as another senshi attack took out one of what
she had decided would be called "isolated malcontent group members." After
all, keeping the Crystal Tokyo administration shining in the press was her
job, and "isolated malcontent group members" sounded a lot better than
"vicious fanatical terrorists," which was far closer to the truth.
 
	Finally, the last rebel was killed.  Cautiously, two senshi went
forward to survey the black suits, while the other two covered them.  Sailor
America gulped and decided to check things out for herself, plausible
deniability be hanged.
 
	From a couple meters away, she found them to be frighteningly
familiar.  Not that she'd known them; later investigation would show that
she'd never met any of them before in her life.  Rather, they were familiar
because they didn't *look* like psychopaths bent on death and destruction. 
Aside from their injuries, garb, and weapons, they looked eerily like any
average citizens she'd see on the streets.  A few were overweight, a few
underweight.  Some looked to be in their teens, some looked old enough to be
in one of the homes that specialized in caring for the elderly.  They were
for the most part Japanese, though she could pick out more than a few
foreigners.
 
	"So, this is our new enemy," she muttered  Not aliens, not demons,
but humans, flesh and blood who she rubbed shoulders with every day.  Not a
pleasant thing to think about, but absolutely true.  The problem with this
kind of malcontent was that there quite simply was no way to weed them out. 
The Exam, it was true, could separate the wheat from the chaff, but that was
a matter of picking the very finest out of everyone, and then only for
females.  Quite simply, no-one had devised a similar exam to determine the
relative evil of a person.  And it was just that idea that many of these
terrorists were against.
 
	Yes, she'd heard all the arguments before, on the razor-thin edge
Crystal Tokyo rode between liberal, near-anarchic society and totalitarian
dictatorship.  She was a student of history; she'd seen how the throne
oscillated from one extreme to the other, back and forth, over the course of
a thousand years.  Undoubtedly the pendulum would swing again; in fact, a
couple noted professors of history held that the Crystal Millennium was in
the middle of one of those swings.  One of them was Jen's sponsor for her
doctoral thesis.  Jen . . . but she couldn't afford to dwell on that, not
now.
 
	As if to clear her head, she looked at the pedestal where the statue
had stood.  Now it was blackened with soot, bits and pieces of ferroconcrete
strewn atop it.  Obviously, no-one would be visiting it anytime soon.
 
	Sailor America sighed and looked to the south.  She saw just what
she was expecting: the Crystal Palace.  Most people laughed when she said
that its size wasn't due to practical considerations but to Serenity's ego
stroking, but America insisted that it was true: Serenity had intentionally
built it big enough to be seen from anywhere in Crystal Tokyo.
 
	That you could see it from anywhere was true; even the alleys
afforded a sight of it, provided you could settle for a reflection rather
than the real thing.  About the only way you couldn't see it was by hiding
indoors or under a tree.  Few went to all this trouble; it wasn't entirely
unpleasant to the eye.  Architecturally, it was often cited as one of the
wonders of the Third Millennium.  Then again, it had stood for a thousand
years.  Well, not quite a thousand years but what's a couple hundred years
between friends?
 
	In any case (America cursed herself for rambling), she couldn't 
say that-- 
 
	"Sailor America!" 
 
	"Hm?"  Her head jerked up, startled.  Awakened from her reverie,
she looked into the eyes of the person who had brought her out of it.  A
sailor, with a purple skirt and teal bow trimmings on her fuku.  America
winced.  As a Sailor Senshi, she was expected to know, at a glance, every
single sailor.  Apparently no-one had given much thought to the fact that at
this point, there were around two hundred of them.
 
	But America knew them all.  It just took a little time for her to  
remember.  "Yes, Sailor Phoenix?" she asked. 
 
	"Sailor America, I think you should take a look at this." 
 
	"Me?"  America goggled at the blonde senshi to whom she was
speaking.  "What for?" What could make Phoenix ask Sailor America, of all
people, to see something?  After all, she was the most junior senshi in
Crystal Tokyo.  That year, the School had graduated one and only one senshi,
and she had quickly been whisked off for duty on some colony or another.
 
	"Quickly, please."
 
	"Very well."  They made their way to a network production van.  At
least, that was what it was called.  It bore about as much resemblance to a
twentieth century television production van as an F-14 bore to the Wright
Brothers' plane.  However, it still performed the same function.
 
	Inside, they could see producers, technicians, and a couple senshi
looking anxiously at the monitors.  Peering closer, she saw that it was a
rather shaky picture of the Crystal Palace.  But if it was the Palace, it
had developed a scar, and it appeared to be . . . oh no.
 
	The Palace was the last thing she expected to catch on fire. 
 
	"No," said Phoenix in response to America's unasked question.  "It's
not fire." Phoenix shook her head slowly, fully aware of how ludicrous what
she was about to say would sound.
 
	"It's a hostage crisis." 
 
*** 
 
	Sailor Orion eyed the door suspiciously.  It was of the automatic
variety, but breakdowns were not unknown, and in the event that it
malfunctioned a manual switch was next to the door, tastefully hidden behind
a wood panel. She lifted the cover and pulled the handle.
 
	With a swish, the door opened.  She looked around, but nothing
seemed amiss.  Sighing, she made a mental note to tell maintenance about the
situation and went down the hall to the elevator.  "I'm a senshi," she said
aloud, "they have to let me into Earth Naval Headquarters."
 
	At the elevator, she was surprised again by the door's failure to
open.  This was unprecedented.  Elevators *always* worked.  They had to,
when you were in a near-one hundred story building.  She briefly considered
the stairs, then decided against it.  Instead, she went over to a wall phone
and punched the dial button.
 
	"Maintenance, please."  There was no answer.  She repeated her
request, but the results were the same.
 
	She frowned.  Something was quite definitely fishy about matters:
first the doors weren't working, then the elevators, and now the phones. 
Almost furtively, she looked at the ceiling, but it was still white with
yellow highlights.  The Palace was on normal security status.
 
	Sailor Orion pulled out her communicator.  It was a rather nice
piece of work, actually, but she'd never really had occasion to use it until
now.  She nearly punched a button to call Maintenance, but hesitated. 
Following a gut instinct, she punched another one, which would tell her what
other communicators were in use.
 
	The results were surprising.  Quite a few were active, most in or
around the Palace.  Ominously, all of the planet senshi save one were
online.  This was not, needless to say, good.
 
	She made up her mind.  She went for the stairs. 
 
*** 
 
	Sailor America was sitting down, but she was far from relaxed. Part
of it was from the driving of the car.  The driver was pushing the car to
the limits, since she had to be at the Palace in a hurry.
 
	The other part was from the reason why she had to be there in a
hurry.  Word was spreading about the crisis at the Palace.  Apparently, the
smoke was from a firefight that had occured on those particular floors,
although details were still sketchy.  Even so she was racing to the scene,
where the press had already been alerted that a conference would be held. 
She had some heavy-duty damage control to which to attend.
 
	She'd already decided on a strategy, and she wasn't bothering to
clear it with her superiors.  She knew it would be rejected outright.  Her
plan was to be up front, telling the press everything they knew.  That way,
if the press came out claiming something that wasn't true, she'd be able to
deal with it properly.
 
	The problem with that plan was that there was so much they still
didn't know.  She would normally have her secretary handle the drudge work
of compiling different city departments, but unless she'd taken an extremely
long lunch break, her secretary was still in the Palace to which no-one had
been able to communicate.
 
	Therefore she had a headset on, listening to two different emergency
bands while reading another one on a data screen.  She was getting quite
frustrated about this as well; not even the authorities seemed to know what
was going on.  She was listening to two contradictory reports, both from the
police department itself.
 
	She cursed and turned the channel, switching to the bands reserved
for senshi use.  As she neared the Palace, the number of voices dropped, and
soon it was down to a dozen or so who weren't taking it so well at all.
 
	Biting the bullet, she changed the channel again, this time to her
highest available clearance.  As head of PR, she was privy to a few channels
that were generally open only to the planet senshi.  She only used them to
listen in; there was a tacit agreement that she not interject.
 
	The first thing she heard was Sailor Jupiter, trying to get in
contact with Sailor Saturn.  America breathed a sigh of relief.  That was
exactly what Jupiter should be doing right now as DepCinc: making sure that
her second in command was keeping an eye out on the rest of the Crystal
Millennium in case this was the prelude to a major attack.
 
	The next voice she heard was Sailor Uranus, apparently trying to
converse with Jupiter at the same time.  She listened idly; nothing
newsworthy, just discussing steps to be taken in case this was just the
beginning of a wave of terrorist attacks.  As she listened, she heard
something that disturbed her.  Or rather, she didn't hear something, and it
was the fact that she didn't hear it that was disturbing.
 
	Sailor Mars had just finished her term as DepCinc.  With all that
experience on changes that may have occurred since Jupiter's last term, Mars
should be practically over Jupiter's shoulder, dispensing advice. But there
wasn't a word from the senshi of fire.
 
	Where was Sailor Mars?  And, more ominously, where was Sailor Orion
at a time when all the senshi were being put on full alert?
 
*** 
 
	Sailor Mars was scared stiff, although she would never admit that to
another soul for as long as she lived.
 
	The first warning she'd had was when her section of the Palace, the
suite of offices and other rooms that she got as a planet senshi, had sealed
itself off from the outside world.  She'd remodeled it a few years ago using
the latest in magic.  Using a modification of the principles behind her
ofuda, the system was designed to close off her suite if anything evil were
to attempt entrance.  Apparently the ofudascope, a name Venus had come up
with, and that all the other planet senshi insisted on badgering her with,
had thought that terrorists bent on taking over the building qualified as
evil.
 
	This lead to an entirely unexpected phenomenon.  She was now
perfectly safe, locked into her own little corner of the Palace. 
Unfortunately, this also meant that she was in no position to do anything. 
In a rather foolish move, but one she had to admit had seemed perfectly
reasonable at the time, it could not be opened until the emergency was over. 
Basically, she was trapped until somebody did something to make the Palace
"safe."
 
	She couldn't teleport; she really didn't have the power available to
do so.  Ordinarily she would, but she'd participated in field exercises, or
at least that was what she called them; they were closer to playing around
with her powers, a day or so ago, and her energy reserves were rather low.
 
	She cursed herself for being so ill-prepared.  But . . . with all
the security precautions in place around and in the Palace, how could
something like that happen?  Mars shuddered, knowing that it was she who was
responsible for answering that question.
 
*** 
 
	Sailor Orion inched along the wall, looking frequently to her left
and right.  She was now on one of the upper floors of the Palace, and she
knew things would only get tougher from here.  Whoever was behind this thing
couldn't possibly cover the entire Palace, so they were probably
concentrating their strength in the areas which would put up the most
resistance: the floors that were home to the planet senshi.
 
	She didn't know exactly how many of them were in the Palace at the
moment, but she knew for certain that Sailor Mars was there.  It was her
office that she was heading for, although she wasn't sure what she would do
when she got there.  More than likely the terrorists had already tried to go
in, or if they were wise, tried to *keep* Mars there, where she couldn't
cause any trouble.
 
	She came to a corner, and peeped out.  The hallway was clear.  She
frowned.
 
	"Okay," she said aloud, "I've come up several floors and down
several hallways and haven't met a single person.  This is more than just
suspicious; this is downright freaky!"
 
	She shrugged and went on, ready to do . . . well, *something* to any
possible attacker.  "Never mind," she muttered, "that my only power would
end up leveling the place."
 
	She came to a wood-paneled door bearing a simple nameplate. 
 
	"Sailor Mars."  She was always one for the simple things.  Orion
looked around and again saw no-one.  She decided to just let things happen,
and knocked on the door.
 
	"OUCH!" she screamed, jumping up and down and clutching her hand. 
She howled incomprehensibly for a few moments, and then settled down to look
angrily at the door.  "Dammit Mars, why the hell did you have to have a
bloody warding spell up?"
 
*** 
 
	Inside, Mars looked up.  Was there someone outside? 
 
*** 
 
	Orion considered other possible oaths and decided against them.  She
stepped back and thought about the possibilities.  Finally, she hit upon
one.
 
	"Sailor Mars?" 
 
	No response. 
 
	"Sailor Mars?" 
 
	No response. 
 
	"Why you good for nothing bi-" 
 
	"Sailor Orion?" 
 
	Orion winced and blushed.  After a moment to compose herself: "Yes?" 
 
	"Um . . . ."  How to phrase this best?  "Sailor Orion, I seem to be
in a bit of a pinch.  You see, I can't get out without someone overriding
the security system, and I can't do that from inside."
 
	"Why not?" 
 
	"Fail-safes." 
 
	"What kind of fail-safes?" 
 
	"Fail-safes." 
 
	Orion knew from experience that there was nothing that could be done
when dealing with a tight-lipped planet senshi.  She sighed.  "Very well,
Sailor Mars.  What do I have to do?"
 
	"Are you alone?" 
 
	"I should hope so." 
 
	"Good.  Now, here's what you've got to do.  This involves a bit of
magic, so you've been warned."
 
	"Magic?" asked Orion warily. 
 
	"Look, are you just going to parrot me, or are you going to help?" 
 
	"Fine, I'll help."  Sailor Orion sighed and reminded herself that
Mars was her boss, after all.  Several times removed, she told herself, and
turned to the door.
 
	"Very good.  Now, just how much magic do you recall from the School?" 
 
	"Um . . . just basic magical theory, and I wasn't very good at that
anyway."
 
	Sailor Mars said a very bad word. 
 
	"What was that?" 
 
	"Nothing."  It'll be a bloody miracle if she doesn't blow up the
place, she thought.  "Listen carefully."
 

===============================================================
Unnumbered Episode #209: Because of My Naivete, What Will I Do?
===============================================================


	Sailor America swore for the fifth time; it was all she could do to
stop from throttling the communicator.  "Dammit Jupiter, *I'm* your PR guy,
*I'm* the one who deals with the press every bloody day, and I'd think that 
*I* would know best how to handle the media!"

	America was screaming for information.  She was usually privy to
quite a bit of secret information, but this time even she was being left out
of the loop.  This was her fifth request for more information about the
terrorists, and Jupiter was reacting predictably.

	"Look," said Jupiter, barely concealing her impatience, "I have more
than a few things to attend to at the moment, so just talk things out with
Sailor Saturn here, okay?"

	America got angrier, something she hadn't thought was possible. 
"Saturn?  Your little disciple of war, there?" Sailor Saturn was Jupiter's
second in charge, and was slated to take over the post of deputy commander
in chief once Jupiter's stint was up.

	"I don't have time right now, America.  Good-bye."  Jupiter gave the
communicator a savage poke and turned to the rest of the planet senshi in
the room.  Venus, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto; hardly a full house.  Mercury was
on the moon on business, Mars was as yet unaccounted for, and Saturn was
running at least four different errands.  And of course, there was Serenity.

	"Your Majesty, this is what we know so far.  At 11:46, several
alarms went off at the Palace, including the alarms for unauthorized use of
weapons." She paused a bit to let that bit of information sink in.  "Shortly
thereafter, all emergency doors leading to floors fifty and up closed, under
level one authorization.  I don't need to tell you what that implies." Level
one was available only to planet senshi and the Royal family.  "We've talked
to some people who managed to escape the affected floors before hand.  They
reported that the floors were being occupied by," and here she slowed down
and spoke deliberately, "an undetermined number of persons carrying firearms
and dressed in loose-fitting black garments."

	"Like the people who ambushed the dedication this morning?" asked 
Neptune.

	"Yes.  And just like this morning, they weren't too upset about
being killed, or killing others.  We have one report that one of the
blacksuits took down three security guards with her bare hands: *after*
being shot twice in the chest with a laser pistol.  Based on these
observations, I don't believe it would be wise to underestimate our
opponents."

	"But just who *are* our opponents?" asked Venus, exasperated.

	"I'm getting to that.  First, I'm happy to confirm that Endymion and
Small Lady are not in the Palace.  They're still safe on Shikoku." She
turned to look Serenity in the eyes.  "I've ordered a contingent of senshi
to get to them as fast as possible, and have them returned to Crystal Tokyo.

	"Unfortunately, we still have over one hundred Palace personnel
still unaccounted for, including Sailors Mars and Orion.  Neither has
attempted contact." She took a deep breath.  "We see two possibilities. 
One, they've been negated and cannot respond, either because of capture or
death."

	"I don't think Sailor Mars would be very amenable to capture," said 
Uranus with a slight chuckle.

	"And I would know if she were dead," said Serenity quietly.  It was 
the first she had said since they'd entered the conference room.

	"Exactly.  Which leaves the second possibility: they can contact us, 
but are unwilling.  If so, why?"

	"Simple," said Uranus.  "They're trying to carry out operations
against the terrorists.  Communications may be detected, and so they're
keeping quiet."

	"Are you certain?" asked Venus.  "Could they detect our
communicators?"

	"Unlikely," said Jupiter.  "We've been on the line with Miyazaki
since the thing started.  We're pretty certain that *we* could crack any
communication.  But whether or not *they* can . . . that's what the AIs are
working on."

	"Is Sailor Mercury on her way?"

	"I haven't requested her to be here, and she hasn't informed me of
any such intention.  I think we have all the necessary resources right here. 
However, as a precautionary measure . . . Your Majesty, with your permission
I'd like to recall all senshi who may be in system.  I think we could have
some serious crowd-control problems soon."

	"Crowd control?" asked Serenity.

	"At this point, we can say with certainty that the terrorists are
either part of a foreign invasion force, in which case there has been a
security failure of the worst possible order, or a group of Crystal Tokyo
malcontents bent on overthrowing the monarchy."

	She was answered by a collection of gasps.  "We've known for some
time that there are anti-Serenity factions in the city.  They've been silent
since 3028, however, and I think we now know why."

	"They had to have help, didn't they?"

	"Not necessarily, Sailor Neptune.  There's a lot of information out
there, and a lot of people with free time since the dole was passed in 2801. 
We can't keep tabs on everyone, not without sacrificing a lot of privacy."
Jupiter looked down the table at Venus.  "And we decided a long time ago
that we weren't going to run a police state."

	"Very well, Jupiter, you may make preliminary preparations for
recall.  Any other recommendations?" asked the Neo-Queen, rubbing at her
forehead tiredly.

	A knock came at the door.  "Enter!"

	A young woman who could not have been more than twenty walked in,
wearing an RSN uniform.  Too weary to bow before the Queen, she simply
spoke.  "Message from Sailor America, priority two."

	"Well?"

	The aide raised her handlink and began reading.  "'Your Majesties,
Sailor Senshi.  Am in serious trouble here.  Press is demanding information. 
Is my strong recommendation that a continuation of the present news blackout
will have extremely undesirable effects.  Recent analyses indicate the city
to be in a fever pitch.  Is my respectful wish for you to know that riots
and revolutions are begun in such circumstances.  Urge you most vigorously
to give me as much information as you are in possession of regarding present
situation at Crystal Palace.  Yours, Sailor America, dated 14:20:45 JST, 5
June 3033.' Your answer?"

	"Wait outside, please," said Serenity.

	"Yes, Your Majesty."  Remembering to bow, she retreated.

	"Jupiter?"

	Jupiter tried to hide her annoyance at America's second attempt to
get her attention.  "Serenity-sama, I stand by my position.  If we let the
media know everything we know, it'll amount to free publicity for the
terrorists, which I'm willing to wager is exactly what they want."

	"But we don't know what they want," protested Neptune.  "They've
made no demands, issued no statements, and no-one's stepped up to claim
responsibility."

	"I think it would be safe to assume that they are who I think there
are, and that they want what I think they want.  They're anarchists, and
they want Serenity out of the picture."

	"Enough," said Serenity.  "Get me Sailor America."

	Jupiter blinked.  "Your Majesty, do-"

	"Sailor America is my secretary of public relations.  This is a
matter of public relations.  Therefore, I am going to ask for her advice. 
Do you see a flaw with my reasoning?" asked Serenity, the very smallest hint
of a smile on her face.

	"No, your Majesty."

	"Good.  Send in the messenger."

***

	Sailor Orion blew frantically on her gloved fingers.  They were
smoking slightly.

	"There, now that wasn't so bad, was it?"

	Orion glared at Sailor Mars through the now-open door.  "You didn't
tell me it was going to get so hot."

	"I thought that when it started glowing red you'd figure it out 
yourself."

	"Not everyone likes fire, you know."

	"Enough witty banter.  We've got a palace to save.  C'mon, follow
me." The two went into one of the rooms in Mars's suite.  Behind some silk
screens was a closet.  Mars flung the door open, reached in, and produced an
oblong object.

	"Laser pistol?"

	"Actually, the mechanism is slightly different from a traditional
laser.  Makes the whole thing a lot less bulky, and it doesn't burn your
hands off when you use it.  But yes, I guess you could call it a laser."

	"How come I never saw these things before?"

	"You didn't have to."

	"Do you practice being so secretive?"

	Mars examined her pistol and punched a couple of buttons that were
on the grip.  "Actually, it's a little something I picked up from Sailor
Pluto.  Hang around her for long and you can't help but get a bit
enigmatic."

	"Wonderful.  And I suppose this is for me?"

	Mars sighed.  "Look, I'm not in charge of giving out powers.  But
your attack would level a couple of floors at its most controlled level. 
Without that pistol you're next to useless."

	Orion frowned at this reminder of just how little control she had
when it came down to it.  "Thanks for the vote of confidence." She turned
the pistol around in her hands a couple of times, inspecting it closely. 
"So, what do we do now?"

	"The first thing we've got to do is find out what's going on.  The
computers are down; I've been trying for hours.  The phones aren't working
either.  In fact, every electronic device in the Palace seems to be
malfunctioning."

	Orion poked around in her pocketspace.  "What about our
communicators?  They were working awhile ag--OW!" The redheaded senshi
looked down at Mars.  "Why'd you slap me?"

	Mars walked over several meters to where Orion's communicator had
landed after it had been slapped from Orion's hand.  "Because I didn't want
you to use the damned thing!  Look, Orion, we don't know who's responsible
for this, we don't know what their abilities are, and we don't know what
they want.  Until we find out, we're going to keep a damned low profile.

	"Now, if they know there are senshi still in the Palace, they're
going to come looking for us.  And if they *don't* know, then your using
that communicator could be just what they need to find out about us!"

	Orion took a deep breath, and then another one.  "Right.  I
understand.  But you could have been a bit less violent about it."

	"I could have.  Now, did anyone see you come here?"

	"No-one that I could see."

	"Good.  Now, next is to find out where everyone is.  If Serenity or
Endymion are still in the Palace, we've got to find them.  They could be
incapacitated . . . or worse."

	Orion didn't even like to think about that.  But there was another
possibility.  "Could there be other people still here?"

	"Entirely possible.  But Her Majesty is our prime objective."

	"But shouldn't we try to contact the outside?"

	"Later."

***

	"Your Majesty, sailor senshi."  Sailor America bowed.  "You wished
to see me?"

	"Yes.  Sit down, please."  Serenity's voice was warm despite the
crisis.  America sat at the end of the table, at the far end from Serenity.

	"Sailor America," said Neptune, "we need your honest assessment. 
What would happen if we went public with everything?"

	A look of surprise washed over her face.  "Everything?" she
squeaked.

	"Everything we know, and quite a few things that you do not know
yet."

	She looked around the table.  Jupiter looked very upset, as did
Uranus to a certain degree.  Neptune and Venus had on neutral expressions
that bordered on disapproval.  And Serenity looked . . . well, it had been
said before that she was serene, and that certainly held true now.  America
couldn't tell if the Neo-Queen was at a council of war or a cricket match.

	"Well, it's hard to say.  It depends on what's actually going on."

	"You haven't been told?"

	"Nothing more than what was absolutely necessary, and little of that
has been released to the media."

	"So they are proceeding on rumors and hearsay?"

	"Yes, Serenity."

	"And you don't see this as a bad thing?"

	"Your Majesty, I don't really know what's going on in the Palace.  I
mean, if you're not even telling me, it must be something pretty big."

	"Not necessarily," said Uranus.  "Endymion and Small Lady are safe
and sound."

	"And Sailor Mars?"

	Jupiter exchanged a glance with Venus and Serenity.  "At this point,
we are assuming that Mars is inside the Palace."

	'Now that's surprising,' thought America.  "Anyone else?" she
managed to ask.

	"We think around a hundred or so.  The problem is that we've been
unable to make contact with her."

	"Um-hm."

	"Let me break it down for you," said Jupiter.  "Most of the top
floors have been taken by an unknown group of terrorists who we believe were
also responsible for this morning's attack.  The only in-system senshi we
haven't been able to contact are Mars and Orion, and so we're next to-"

	"WHAT?"

	"Is there something wrong, Sailor America?" asked Uranus.  Neptune
elbowed the blonde in the side and whispered a few things in her ear. 
Uranus had the grace to look embarrassed, but America was beyond noticing.

	"No . . . nothing at all," said the brunette, but inside her head
was spinning.  Jen was inside the Palace?  There, in danger?

	"Sailor America, we are aware of your relationship with Sailor
Orion.  We hope that it will not affect your performance in the present
situation." Serenity said the words kindly, but the underlying meaning was
clear.  Whatever personal problems she had with Jen would damn well wait
until the crisis was over.  Very well.  But she wouldn't let them allow her
love to come to any more danger.  Not now, not ever.

	"Not at all, your Majesty.  Um . . . getting back to the point, I'd
have to say that full disclosure would be a mixed blessing at best.  The
press will panic, I can assure you that."

	"They aren't panicking now?"

	"No.  If they were panicking, I'd be working a lot harder right now. 
For the moment they're just making best guesses.  I guess you've been able
to prevent any news leaks?" Venus nodded.  "Well then, when I go on the air
with this," she had made up her mind before even arriving that she would not
be making the announcement personally, "it's going to be the first bit of
hard information they've had to go on since the story broke.  Now, how much
later information do you plan to release?"

	"None."

	America gave Jupiter an odd glance.  "Okay, lemme tell you why
that's a bad idea . . . ."

***

	The pair crept around the corner.  Orion and Mars had progressed two
floors without meeting anyone, which had the black-haired senshi immediately
suspicious.

	"Two possibilities," whispered Mars.  "Either they don't have enough
people to keep tabs on all the floors, and are slowly retreating and
consolidating their forces, or we're walking into a trap."

	Orion didn't particularly like that assessment.  "Couldn't it just
be that we've caught them between patrols?"

	Mars frowned.  "That's the optimistic point of view.  Optimists
don't survive very long in warfare."

	"Warfare?"

	What else do you think this is, a bloody flying circus?  Sailor Mars
didn't ask that.  Instead, she said, "Yes, warfare.  I don't know about you,
but I'm not going to sit around and let kami knows who take over the
Palace!"

	Orion managed a thin smile.  "I figured that much out."

	"Good."  They had gotten to the end of the hallway, and were now at
a T-junction.  To the left, another long hallway.  To the right, a short
hallway that lead to an elevator and some stairs.  "Interesting.  Very
interesting."

	Orion looked to the right and tried to figure out why Mars was so 
interested.  Then it hit her.  "No guards!  But wouldn't-"

	"-the stairs be the first place they would place guards, yes.  But
they've probably got the ability to shut down the shafts."

	"More fail-safes?"

	"We've never been overly concerned with someone taking over the
Palace." She sighed.  "Anyway, I don't think we can rely on the stairs or
the elevators.  If the shafts haven't been sealed, I'd be surprised if they
haven't been booby-trapped in some way."

	"Ventilation shafts?"

	"You watch too many movies.  Those are sealed too.  Each floor can
survive on its own ventilation system if necessary."

	"Well, you've got your firepower handy, if I may say so . . . ."

	"That would be unwise.  You learned that back at the School."

	Orion blew a sigh through her bangs.  "Well then, what do you think 
we should do?"

	"We use the service passageways."

	"Service passageways?"

	"You know, Her Majesty never asked as many questions as you've asked
in the past couple hours!" Mars shook her head, then started walking down
the left-hand hallway.  "Yes, the service passageways.  They'll be sealed
too, but unlike the other routes, the service passageways can be
overridden."

	Orion munched on that for a moment, following closely behind Mars. 
Her blue eyes kept a close watch on their surroundings, but for now things
were as quiet as ever.  "And you're letting me know this?"

	"It's on a need to know basis."  Sailor Mars didn't bother
mentioning just how many things around the Palace were need to know. 
"Remember that all bets are off if Serenity is still in the Palace."

	Orion thought a moment about the Queen, and then a second unbidden
image came to her mind, an image of an irrepressible brunette from across
the Pacific.

	"Then again," said Mars, half to herself, "if Her Majesty was still
here, I imagine the rest of the senshi would have gotten their rears up here
in a hurry . . . ."

	"Why don't we just ask?"

	"Orion, I've told you about-"

	"Hear me out.  Why don't we just get to a window?  Then we can use
lights or something-"

	"Like Morse code?"

	The redhead rifled through her memories for a bit, and then
remembered.  "Oh yeah, Morse code.  Used by telegraph operators or
something?  No, I think we could use something a bit more modern.  
Um . . . damn."

	Mars laughed hollowly.  "Right.  No AI."  Her face turned serious. 
"I wonder what happened to it?"

	Sailor Orion already had her handlink out.  She wasn't worried too
much about signal leakage; unlike their communicators, the things were
supposed to be completely undetectable by all means except line-of-sight. 
She'd never had an opportunity to test that theory.  The handlink's
computing power wasn't much when it wasn't linked to the local AI, hence the
name handlink, but it was enough to solve a couple of elementary problems
such as encrypted secure signal transmission across a monochromatic
electromagnetic communications beam.  Well, that was the technical term.

	"I think it can be done.  We just need a window."

	They stopped.  The end of the hallway was visible, about twenty
meters distant.  To either side were several nondescript doors.  Orion
inspected the nameplates more carefully; these were more quarters for the
sailor senshi, specifically those who spent most of their time away from
Earth.

	Mars reached down close to the floor, ran her hand over a section of
wall, and stopped at a particular point that had nothing to suggest itself
to Orion.  Mars pushed, and out of nowhere a small panel with a few buttons
replaced the spot she had pressed.  She smiled.  "Some things work even
without power." She punched in a sequence too fast for Orion to remember,
and the door swung open.

	"Pardon us for intruding," said Mars ritually as they entered the
apartment of Sailor Aurora, who was presently several thousand light years
away.  She had not been on Earth for two years.  Casting a blind eye to the
senshi's personal effects, the two made their way to the window, which
looked out over the city.  Of more interest to them, however, was the park
that surrounded the Palace and was directly below them.

	"Will they be able to see us?"

	"Dunno," said Orion, desperately trying to recall lessons in physics
and geometry and failing miserably.  "I guess it depends on the critical
angle, or something." She punched a few buttons randomly, not really knowing
what she was doing and hoping that something good would happen quite by
accident.

	Sailor Mars stepped to the window.  It was crystal, of course, but
had a transparency the finest glassblowers would be hard pressed to match. 
Being crystal, and more importantly being built through the magic of
Neo-Queen Serenity, it never needed cleaning.  To Mars's eyes, it looked as
if the next step she took would take her outside the building.

	"I hope it does."

***

	"So, that's my view.  Take it or leave it."

	Everyone around the table sighed.  It had been a marathon session. 
Sailor America knew her craft, and she had used it to her full advantage. 
She hadn't dared to reveal the true reason for her fervor: her burning
desire to see Jen out of the crisis safe and sound.

	"Well, Sai-"

	"Sirs!"  An aide in fleet uniform burst into the room, with only the
most perfunctory of salutes.  "We've got someone on the line who claims to
be speaking for the terrorists!"

	Three of the senshi began speaking at once, but Jupiter overrode
them all.  "Have you been able to confirm that they're who they say they
are?"

	"The call's coming from one of the occupied floors of the Palace. 
It's either genuine or a very good forgery."

	"Are you recording?"

	"Everything, sir."

	"Good.  Patch it in through here."  America marveled at Sailor
Jupiter's calm.  The senshi of lightning looked up at the faces in the room. 
"When he or she comes on, I'm the only person who speaks.  No-one else says
anything unless I give the order, okay?"

	"Right!"

	Jupiter took the time to smile quickly at America.  "You wanted all
the data, did you?  Well you've got it now."

	There was an audible click.  "You're on, sir."

	"Yes?"

	"Ah, Sailor Jupiter.  Konnichiwa."  It was a light voice, a voice
that seemed slightly familiar to Venus's ears.

	"Who is this?" asked Jupiter harshly.

	"I represent an organization of concerned citizens who-"

	"You mean an gang of killers!"

	"I would advise you to hold your tongue."

	"How *dare* you speak to a sailor senshi like that!" growled
Jupiter, and America could see that the sentiment was mirrored in other
faces around the table.

	"Now, is it nice to talk in front of your sovereign like that?"

	"What I say before Serenity-sama is my business and . . . ."  she
trailed off as she realized what she had just said.

	"Thank you for confirming my suspicions.  Now, I suppose you want to
know why we've done all this?"

	"We know.  You want Serenity to abdicate."

	The voice sounded amused.  "Rather bright, aren't we?"

	"You realize that there's no way that we'll grant your demands,
don't you?"

	"I rather think you don't have a choice.  We have the Palace, you
see."

	It was now Jupiter's turn to smile.  "You have the top floors of a
building.  Her Majesty isn't inside.  Neither is Small Lady or Endymion. 
Face it, there's no-one of any great importance inside there.  Now if you'll
come out peacefully-"

	"-with our hands up, no-one will get hurt.  How cute."

	"Don't turn this into a firefight.  We both know who will win."

	"Do we?"  The line clicked.

	"DAMMIT!"  She had been hoping to find out more about who they were
up against, but had come up blank.

	Sailor Venus punched a button on the table.  "Yes, run full security
checks on all Palace employees, from Her Majesty's secretary down to the
garbage collectors.  *Everyone*, do you hear me?"

	"Yes, sir!" came the voice out of thin air.  Jupiter merely raised
an eyebrow.

	"That voice," said Venus.  "That had to be the voice of one of my 
old assistants.

	"The bastard worked for me."

***

	Sailor Orion had been fiddling with the controls for two minutes
when Mars sprang back from her lookout position at the door.  "Two men are
coming, and they don't look friendly!  Can you hurry up a bit?"

	"No!" squeaked Orion.  Mars groaned softly and went back to the
door, peeping just a bit around the corner.  Yes, two of the mysterious
black- suited characters.

	"Okay," whispered Orion, "just a bit more and-"  The sound of a
pistol being drawn interrupted her.  A second later, Mars let out a shout
and sprang back from the door.

	"They're coming.  Get ready."

	The redhead had no time to protest.  She simply dropped the handlink
and spun around, simultaneously pulling her laser pistol out of her pocket. 
Just then, the two men popped around the corner.

	Sailor Orion fired.

***

	Many levels below, at Earth Headquarters, which was now under
ruthless security, a particular light began to glow on a particular console,
cast off in a corner of the cavernous room.  The tech responsible for that
panel took a few seconds to notice this, but once she did it was all she
could do not to scream into her headset.

	"Warning red, warning red," she said, her voice echoing throughout
the hall.  "Sailor Mars's laser has been fired on level seventy-nine, India
section.  One . . . no, three shots now, medium yield."

	Above, in the section of main control panels that hung out over the
room and was cheerfully called the crow's nest, Commander Tashimoto Kinosari
listened to the report and lifted a red phone.  "Sailor Jupiter?  Yes, this
is Earth HQ.  Sailor Mars is alive."

***

	"What?"  Jupiter's cool, calm reserve went out the window.  "Have
you confirmed this?" The other senshi looked around at that.  "Very well,
I'm on my way." She put down the phone and looked up at the others.  "Sailor
Mars has to be alive.  Her laser's been fired, and only she can take the
safety off it.  I'm going to forward HQ on the lawn and taking control of
things."

	Neo-Queen Serenity swallowed.  "I will go with you."  She met a
chorus of vigorous no's.

	"Your Majesty, we can't allow it!"

	"To go that close to the Palace with those scoundrels controlling
part of it?"

	"Unthinkable!"

	"My decision has been made," said Serenity, not showing a hint of
anger or annoyance.  "Forward headquarters has not been evacuated, has it?"

	Jupiter stood her ground.  "No, your Majesty, but-"

	"So apparently those there are perfectly safe?"

	"Safe to the degree that-"

	"Well then, I suppose you have made my decision for me.  I will go
there with you immediately." She stood.

	Jupiter bowed automatically, and pulled out a handlink to make
preparations.  As she did, she couldn't help but mutter to herself that
monarchs nowadays simply didn't pay heed to their protectors.

***

	"This sucks!" shouted Sailor Orion to Sailor Mars.  The two were
slowly retreating down a hallway, under heavy fire from over a dozen of the
terrorists.  The terrorists were blasting away with lasers now instead of
projectile weapons, and the only reason they hadn't fried the two senshi was
because Mars's fire was providing ample cover.

	Finally, they managed to get around a corner, where Mars punctuated
her attack with a large fireball that sent the terrorists reeling.

	Orion slumped against the wall, exhausted and sweaty.  She peeped
around the corner and just as quickly jumped back.  "Nice trick with the
fire there, how it doesn't consume the walls or anything."

	"Thanks," said Mars, who didn't seem winded at all.  "Took me a few
hundred years to perfect it."

	"Hm."  She slouched down, side by side with Mars.  "Well, I-"

	She stopped as a shadow fell on her.  Three terrorists were looming
above them.  Wordlessly, they raised their weapons and fired.  As they
raised them, Orion had a single thought in mind: 'I'm about to die.'

	Sailor Orion leapt in front of Sailor Mars, took the brunt of the
laser attack on her back, and crashed to the ground without a sound.


===================================================
Unnumbered Episode #210: My Heart is a Kaleidoscope
===================================================


	The bright light faded away.  Jennifer Sakachi sat up in her bed,
still a bit shocked by what had just occurred.  Behind her, Eileen lost
interest and went back to sleep.

	Jen's round blue eyes widened as the room lights went back down, an
automatic reflex to admit more light to the retina.  It was early in the
morning, too early for even Jen to get ready for classes at the School.

	Her father's phone call still rang in her mind.  He hadn't seemed
terribly upset, just surprised.  Sometimes she thought the only thing that
could upset her father was if someone called him a lazy worker . . . but the
sight of his daughter naked in bed with another woman hadn't seemed to
disgust him at all.

	She rested her chin on her left fist and peered into the darkness,
not sure what she was looking for.

	'Well,' she thought to herself, 'you've just had sex for the first 
time.  How do you feel?

	'Weird.  Like that one time I went on the roller coaster, and 
afterwards I felt all tingly, but also sort of drained at the same time.'

	She wondered if it would feel this way every time.  Then she 
wondered if there would even be a next time.

	"What have I done?" she whispered softly.  "I just met her a couple
of weeks ago, and already I'm doing something like *this*?" Eileen shifted
beneath the covers, and Jen stopped talking, fearful of waking her up.  She
wanted to be able to say the perfect thing when her new lover awoke, and she
didn't have it yet.

	Eileen's new position left most of her back uncovered, and to Jen,
in the pale light of the half moon that shone through the window, it was one
of the most beautiful sights she had ever seen.  For a moment she simply
took in the way it sloped down towards the small of the back, her spine a
small protrusion running down the center, a couple freckles here and there. 
To anyone else it wouldn't have suggested much to itself, but anyone else
wouldn't have spent the night with the brunette.

	The night.

	Sex was, she realized, a totally natural part of life.  She had
heard all the stories before, but for most of her high school career, she
simply hadn't given it any consideration.  After all, no-one had ever shown
any real interest in dating her, and rarely even talking to her.  If not for
the yearbook staff and Kanomi, she would have been a complete outcast.  Even
then, she hadn't thought before that having sex was anything of which one
should be ashamed.  Until now.

	She sighed and looked back at her roommate.  Eileen was still
sleeping peacefully, seemingly without the slightest bit of worries
concerning the previous night.  Jen wanted so much to just go back under the
covers with her and just stay there forever, without ever having to get up
and face the real world.  But she knew that couldn't do that, not any more
than she could turn around to go back home and forget all about the School.

	Okay, I can't just put this off, she thought.  I've got to say
something, while I've still got the nerve to do it.  She reached over and
shook Eileen awake.

	"Yeah?" came the muffled reply.  "Whaddya want?"

	"Um, I've got something I need to say to you."

	"Yes?"

	Jen's carefully crafted speech promptly drained from her mind.

+++***

	Sailor Mars acted more quickly than she had acted in a long time. 
She snapped around, and without even saying the words unleashed a chain of
fire at their attackers.  Ignoring their screams of agony as they were
burned alive, she picked up Sailor Orion with hardly a thought as to the
larger senshi's size.  Mars spared a quick glance back to make sure they
weren't being followed, and quickly ran down the hall to a small, almost
wizened-looking door.  She kicked it in, swung around, slammed it, and
gently laid the redhead upon the gray floor of what turned out to be some
sort of storage room.

	The entire process, from Orion's being shot to Mars putting her down
on the floor, had taken fifteen seconds.

	Sailor Mars bent down to the immobile Orion.  Orion's eyes were
closed, but a quick check showed that she was still breathing.  Frowning,
the black-haired senshi turned Sailor Orion over to check where she'd been
hit.  As soon as she saw it, she breathed in sharply.

	She knew that senshi uniforms were anything but ornamental.  They
could take a hell of a lot of punishment, and the techs in R and D said that
they could even take a hand-carried laser blast, provided it was of
low-enough power.  This seemed to give lie to that, however.  A section of
Orion's back collar measuring about six centimeters in diameter had been
blackened, and the center of it was even worse.  She didn't look at it long.

	The shock of the blast must also have done something to her central
nervous system.  The redhead hadn't moved on her own or said anything for
some time.  On a hunch, the senshi of fire crouched down beside her and did
an impromptu reading on her soul.

	She frowned.

	Sailor Mars had a very clear sense of duty, and ranked her duties in
strict priority.  First and foremost was Neo-Queen Serenity, and with her
the royal family.  Next were the two hundred senshi she fought alongside, in
spirit if not in body.  She knew that any one of them would die for her, and
she felt that she owed at least that much to them.

	So when she realized just how serious Orion's injury was to her
soul, she did the only thing she could conscionably do.  She took out a
communicator, a very old one that had been given to her by a black cat some
thousand-odd years ago.  It only linked her with the other planet senshi,
but in this case it was good enough.  Orion was injured, and for that, the
terrorists would have to pay a price.

	In place of Mars, she would punish them.

***

	Jupiter looked up from her preparations.  *The* communicator was
ringing.  She hesitated only a moment before taking it out.

	"Mars?"

	"Good guess," came the scratchy reply.  "You can guess that I'm in
the Palace-"

	"What's going on in-"

	"PLEASE don't interrupt, Sailor Jupiter.  This is important.  Now,
I've got Sailor Orion with me.  She's hurt, and she needs medical attention,
fast.  We're in room . . . 74055.  I know this communication's going to be
tracked down, so listen carefully.  I can defend this room indefinitely, of
that I'm quite sure.  So I *really* think that you should send a full force
into the Palace and clean the place up, regardless of the cost."

	"WHAT?"

	"You're DepCinc, so I can't force you to do it.  But I can strongly
recommend.  Now, just tell your people to avoid that room, and you can-"

	"Is there anyone else in there?  Any hostages?"

	"I doubt it.  As far as I can tell, they're all either dead, or
terrorists themselves." Sailor Mars sighed.  "This whole thing was a setup,
right from the beginning.  I don't know *how* long they had this planned,
but once I find out I think I'm going to feel pretty stupid."

	"It's okay," reassured Jupiter.  'You won't be the only one,' she
thought.  "But you're certain that you'll be all right if I send in the
guards?  You *know* that the fighting is going to be vicious once it
starts."

	"I don't care at this point.  They've injured a senshi.  They can 
all die for all I care."

	Jupiter knew better than to argue with Sailor Mars once she started
using that tone of voice.  She nodded twice.  "I understand.  I can probably
begin the operation in thirty minutes, perhaps more if I have trouble
getting permission from Her Majesty.  But they'll be there, don't worry
about that."

	"Good.  Oh, and Jupiter?"

	"Yes?"

	"Do *not* underestimate them.  They may just have laser pistols, but
they're crack shots, and they've already incapacitated one senshi.  I'd
rather they didn't get another one."

	"I see.  Anything else?"

	"Medical attention, fast.  Perhaps Sailor Mercury, but that's at
your discretion.  I think Sailor Orion may have some damage to her spinal
cord, and she's definitely having trouble with her soul." Mars groped for
the right words to say; it was not a situation that lent itself to medical
terminology.  "It's . . . there's something big bothering her, and until
she's settled it with herself, all the doctors in the world aren't going to
be able to help her."

	"Okay.  Well . . . see you soon."

	"Right.  Bye."  The connection clicked off.

	Jupiter slumped back in her padded seat and sighed.  So, for the
first time in her term as Deputy Commander-in-Chief, she was going to order
her troops into combat.  She'd already been through the simulations, so she
knew who would be going.  Three dozen senshi, as many Royal Marine regulars,
and a dozen each of army infantry and Palace guards, all armed to the teeth. 
She was taking no chances.

	She knew it would be enough.  But could they win convincingly?

***

	"Your Majesty," began Sailor Jupiter, "I've got news."  She and her 
monarch were in the private quarters that had been hastily arranged for 
her.  Thankfully, Jupiter had managed to persuade her against coming any 
closer to the action.  "We've confirmed that Sailor Mars is inside the 
Palace with Sailor Orion.  Orion is injured, and Mars feels that the best 
course of action is to launch a full assault on the occupied floors.  
She's guaranteed the safety of herself and Orion, but urges that we act 
with the utmost speed."

	Serenity didn't change her expression; she continued to stare off
into space, seemingly in the same silent contemplation she had been in when
Jupiter had entered.  "And you wish for me to give you permission for this
action?"

	"Yes, Your Majesty."

	"Even given the disdain you know I feel for any sort of military 
force?"

	"Your Majesty, we cannot allow the actions of Crystal Tokyo to be
dictated by any madmen with inside connections and weapons.  We've got to
send a strong message, and *now*.  Otherwise, we invite anyone and everyone
to besiege the Palace every time you make an unpopular decision."

	Serenity sighed.  "I am not sure I agree with your reasoning.  But
there is another reason, is there not?"

	"Sailor Orion.  We owe her.  She's had a rather remarkable record
over the past few years.  One almost as good as ours was."

	"Almost," said Serenity with the slightest twinkle in her eyes. 
"My, we did have some fun times back then, did we not?"

	"If I remember correctly," said Jupiter, "we also had some bad 
times."

	"But the good always outnumbers the bad.  Remember that, please."
She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them the crescent moon
on her forehead glowed just a bit brighter.  "Go ahead.  But I would like
for Sailor Mercury to see to Sailor Orion's needs personally."

	"Of course.  With your leave," she concluded, bowing and starting to
leave the chamber.

	"Oh, and Sailor Jupiter?"  The brunette stood stock-still.  "I shall
be accompanying you."

	Jupiter blinked, unsure that she'd heard what she thought she heard.  
"What?" she asked, turning around.

	There was a flash of feathers, and suddenly Eternal Sailor Moon
stood before her.  "I'm going with you.  I'm a sailor senshi, aren't I?"

	"Your . . . Sailor Moon, you . . . I will *not* allow you to do
this!"

	"*Will* not?" asked Moon, arching a blonde eyebrow.  "Just who do
you think is the commander in chief?"

	Jupiter bowed her head, but stood her ground.  "You are, Sailor
Moon, but . . . if anything happened to you . . . what would I . . . what
would *all* of us do?" She looked up, eyes shining.

	Eternal Sailor Moon's shoulders slumped.  "So it's this argument 
again."

	"Yes," said Jupiter, feeling sick at even the thought of anything
happening to her Queen.  "Sailor Moon, it's entirely possible they could
have some sort of bomb planted in the Palace, just waiting for us senshi to
walk it.  For all we know, it could even be nuclear." A slight exaggeration,
but there was the possibility that the radiation counters could be in error. 
"I really want you as far away from the Palace as you can get, but if you
were to stay here, that would be just as well."

	Eternal Sailor Moon looked into Jupiter's green eyes for a long
moment, and then nodded.  "I understand.  But you must . . . ." She trailed
off and turned around, resting her hands upon the desk for a moment.  She
chuckled.  "It's been a long time since I've gotten to fight, and every once
in awhile . . . ."

	Jupiter nodded, smiling.  She was simply glad that Moon had gotten
that crazy idea out of her head.  "I see.  If you ever want a sparring
partner . . . you know how to reach me."

	"Um-hm."  There was a soft glow that quickly enveloped everything,
and then Neo-Queen Serenity stood before her.  "Go now, and bring everyone
back safely."

	"I will, Your Majesty.  I'll do my best."

	Serenity smiled in reply, and watched Jupiter as she briskly walked
out the door.  She then sighed, and went back to trying to figure out just
how her tour in America should go.

***

	Sailor Jupiter returned to the conference room.  She took one look
at the faces of the planet senshi that surrounded it and wondered if she
looked as tired as they did.  "People, we're moving.  You've probably heard
the news by now.  But I want Sailor Mercury down here to aid Sailor Orion."
The senshi nodded.  "Uranus, you're taking Mercury's place.  Get on the
fastest shuttle you can and relieve her, okay?"

	America had walked in on the last bit of this conversation.  She had
been busy preparing for the press conference she had scheduled for an hour
later, and had popped in to grab any last minute information.  "What about
Sailor Orion?" she asked, as Uranus made her way out the door.

	"She's been injured," said Jupiter shortly.  "I'm ordering Sailor
Mercury down to-oomph!"

	America was clutching the collar of Jupiter's fuku.  "Let me go in
the assault group!"

	Jupiter's voice was steely as she responded.  "I can't."

	"Dammit, Jen's in there in-"

	"Sailor America, get hold of yourself or I'll find someone who will! 
Kami-sama, don't you think I'm trying to save her?  Haven't you noticed that
I'm sending dozens of men and women in there at this very moment?  Some of
them may very well *die*!  Die for *your* Jen!  So do *not* come in here
with your bullshit about how I don't give a damn about her, because heaven
knows I'm doing the same for her I'd do for *any* senshi, EVEN YOU!"

	She let go, and a deep blush spread over her face.  "Sailor Jupiter,
I-"

	"No.  You're not going.  You don't have nearly enough experience;
you'd simply get in the way.  Now, as soon as it's all over, and it *will*
be over quite shortly, you'll report to the public on what's happened, and
*not before*, understand?  You leak a byte of information and you'll be 
out on the hinterlands of the galaxy so fast your tiara will be spinning, 
okay?  Bye!"

	The senshi of lightning stalked out of the room, leaving the other
senshi to begin making preparations.  America simply stood with a forlorn
expression, wanting to hit something, anything, just to take out her
frustrations.  She nearly jumped through the ceiling when she felt a strong
hand on her shoulder.

	"Sailor America."  It was Sailor Venus.  "You want to see Sailor 
Orion?"

	America nodded silently.

	"I may be able to help."  She flashed a V-sign.

***

	"Forward Post One here."

	"This is Sailor Jupiter.  Sailor Mars and Sailor Orion are in room
74055.  The battle plan is Tango Alpha India Three Four.  Move!"

***

	Sailor Mercury fairly ran off the shuttle while it was still rolling
to a stop outside Crystal Tokyo.  She leapt from there into a waiting
transport, which immediately raced off to the Palace as night fell over the
city.

	She turned around to the back seat, where the five assistants that
would accompany her to Sailor Orion's location were sitting.  The first one,
in a lab coat and with blonde hair that almost looked to be a wig, bowed
slightly from her sitting position.  "Elena Perth, M.D." she said, smiling.

***

	Three floors below Sailor Mars and Orion, the assault team was
assembling.  They had been given their orders: first, to secure the area
around Mars and Orion.  Second, to eliminate all terrorist opposition. 
Damage to the Palace was to be kept to a minimum, and any last ditch suicide
attacks by the terrorists were to be prevented at all costs.

	At a signal, they attacked.  The fighting was furious at times, but
at others was baffling.  The terrorists were in many cases disheartened, and
threw down their weapons at the sight of the attack group.  Others fought on
until they saw the sailor senshi.  And a few even fought on then, killing
themselves rather than allowing themselves to be captured.

	As it turned out, almost all of those who committed suicide were the
leaders.  It would be a long time before anyone knew who was truly behind it
all, and by the time Crystal Tokyo knew of it, it would be too late.

***+++

	"Um . . . I need to talk to you.  Um, about last night, you 
see . . . ."

	Eileen lay a reassuring hand upon her shoulder.  "No need to
explain, Jennifer.  It was your first time, it was my first time too. 
You're not having second thoughts about it, are you?"

	Jen swallowed.  "Well, yes.  Eileen, I always thought that I was 
going to wait until I got married to try anything like this-"

	"So you want us to get married?" asked Eileen, smiling slightly.

	"Eileen, I'm serious about this!"

	"So am I.  So, you wanna get married?"

	"No!  I just . . . just . . . I don't want this to be about sex.  I
want it to . . . to be about . . . I don't know how . . . ."

	Eileen sat silently, giving Jen some time to think things out.

	"I want it to be about . . . about . . . love.  Because I love you."
There.  She'd said it.  It wasn't about the tremendous high that came from
physical contact with Eileen, it wasn't about how great Eileen looked, it
was because Eileen evoked in Jen a dozen different emotions, half of which
she couldn't even name, all of which she lumped into that woefully overused
and misunderstood word called love.

	Eileen blinked.  "You . . . you love me?"

	Now that she'd said it, it was so much easier for her to say it
again.  "Yes.  Yes yes yesyesyesyes.  Forever."

	Eileen smiled in spite of herself, in spite of the tears of joy that
fell down her face.  "Forever is a long time, Jennifer Sakachi."

	"Yes it is, Eileen Pearcy.  But I figure that I might as well spend
it with the woman I love." Jen acted spontaneously, leaping and giving
Eileen the biggest hug she could, unwilling to ever let her go again. 
"Dammit, I thought that I'd lost you there," said Jen, nearly crying.

	"Lose me?  But you just got me," said Eileen, smiling.

	The universe blinked, and she was on a balcony of the Palace
overlooking Tokyo Bay, the sun rising from the Pacific Ocean.  For whatever
reason, she was in her sailor fuku.  In fact, she realized, it was slightly
different.  The pendant of her bow was now heart shaped, and a star had
replaced the owl on her choker.  Translucent pads were now at her shoulders,
and her back bow was quite a bit longer.  She was, she realized, Super
Sailor Orion.

	The impossibility of that fact fell away when she saw Sailor America
standing a few meters away.

	"You don't have me, Sailor Orion."

	Orion blinked rapidly.  "What do you mean?"

	"You do not have me," said the cold voice in reply.

	Orion gasped.

+++***

	Sailor Mercury and her medics rushed into the room to see Mars in a
fighting position.  As Mars saw who it was, she immediately relaxed and
moved out of the way.  Mercury was the first at Orion's side, followed
closely by "Doctor Perth."

	"Any change in condition?" asked Mercury automatically, already
checking the fallen senshi with her visor.

	"Physically, no.  But mentally . . . I don't know.  If she wants to
come out of this, she's going to have to do it by herself."

	Mercury nodded, yielding to Mars in such a spiritual matter.  Then
the practical side of her took over.  "Well, let's make sure she has a
physical body to come back to, then." She never noticed Doctor Perth
standing over her, fighting back tears.

	"Don't die . . . ."

***+++

	"But . . . we've been through so much together . . . it's like
we're-"

	"DON'T SAY IT!"  The fury of Sailor America's voice seemed to make
the sun rethink its plans for rising that morning.  It almost appeared to
sink a bit into the sea.  "We aren't destined.  We never were.  There's one
couple in history that was *meant* to be, and no more.  This isn't some
Serenity and Endymion fairy tale."

	"I know that, don't you think I know that?"

	"Then why are you trying to keep us together?  All things come to an
end, Sailor Orion, and this is one of them."

	'Not yet it doesn't,' said a small part of Orion's mind.  Aloud she
said, "I don't understand.  That first morning together, you said I had you. 
I said I loved you . . . and I still do . . . but now . . . why *now*, of
all times?"

	America shrugged.  "Why not?  We're obviously not compatible."

	"But . . . ."

	"We've fought, Sailor Orion.  Do I have to make it any clear? 
Couples do not fight."

	"Yes, they do!  But they make up afterwards, don't you see?  We can
still be together again, if only-"

	"No," said America, turning her back on the sunrise.  Her face was
hidden in the shadow now, and seemed colder than ever.

	Sailor Orion very nearly gave up.  But she recalled something . . . 
something at the edge of her memory . . . something else that had been said
on this balcony . . . .

+++

	"Eileen A Pearcy, you are the most beautiful, most lovable, most
important person in the world to me, and nothing that anyone could ever
write will change that.  Understand?

	"Has anyone else have the greatest kind of love in the world? 

	"They don't, Eileen, and you do.  That has more impact than a
million yearbooks, than a million insults.  Because you've got me, and I've
got you."

+++***

	"It's getting worse," said Mars quietly.  She looked up at Mercury
grimly.  The soldier of ice had apparently reached the same conclusion. 
"We're going to lose her." There was no talk of bringing her to Serenity. 
The Neo-Queen would obviously give her own life to save Orion's, and as
Serenity's guardians that was something that they simply could not allow.

	Mercury nodded, and looked up at one of the medics.  "I'm sorry,
Eileen.  We've done everything we can, but . . . ."

	Eileen showed no surprise at being found out, but Mars did.  "What?"

	The brunette ignored her.  "There's nothing else you can do, then?"

	"No," said Mercury, with the bitterness that only losing a patient
can bring on.  It had happened countless times before, but it never stung
any less than it had the first time.  "If you'd like some time alone-"

	"No.  That . . . that won't be necessary.  Thank you."  She bent
over next to Orion and stroked her cheeks softly.  Taking the redhead's
gloved hand in her own, she wept silently.  "I'm . . . I'm so sorry,
Jennifer.  I never . . . I never got the chance to say it one more time.  I
. . . I love you."

***+++

	Orion shook with the memory, at the words she had said when she was
most vulnerable, when she was trying to bring Eileen back from the brink.

	"Eileen.  Please."

	"No."

	"I love you."

	Time seemed to stop for a moment.  For several long seconds, nothing
moved: no birds flew in the sky, no sea breeze caressed their bodies.  Even
the sun seemed to pause, its limb clinging to the edge of the sea, almost
unwilling to let go.

	"That's it?  No flowery words of praise?  No eloquence to rival
Shakespeare and Sappho and Takeuchi?  Just three little sincere words?"

	Orion stood her ground.  "They say everything."

	A single peregrine flew high, high above, towards the sun.  A gust
of wind picked up, and began to blow across the balcony, waving bows and
hair and skirt alike.  There was a sigh, and Super Sailor America turned
around, with the biggest grin on her face that Orion had ever seen.

	"It says everything I need to hear," she said.  And then they ran 
towards each other, and as they met . . . .

+++***

	Sailor Mars's eyes widened in shock at what she saw next.  Sailor
Orion's eyelids began to flutter.  "Mercury . . . ."

	The blue haired senshi had seen the same thing.  "I'm on it," she 
said, sending her aides into motion around the woman.

	Slowly, Orion opened her eyes.  Several people were around her,
poking and prodding with medical instruments.  She saw two brown eyes
looking back at her.  Fighting a scratchy throat and a hell of a pain in her
back, she coughed once, twice, and then spoke.

	"Eileen?"

	"Jennifer!"

	Orion started to get up gingerly, but was forced back down by
America's bear hug as she fell on top of her.  And then they were hugging,
laughing, smiling, and reveling in being with each other once again.  It
didn't matter what had happened in the past; that would be sorted out later,
and Orion would have plenty of time to recover.  And it didn't matter what
happened in the future; that was for another time.  All that mattered was
the present.

***

	In a dozen rooms around the world, a dozen men and women looked at
monitors, and growled.  It was time for other plans to be put into motion.

***

	"Final report?"

	"Your Majesty, all the terrorists were apparently members of the
Palace staff.  We're going through records now; we suspect they may have
been forged in ways we previously thought impossible.  Best we can determine
is that they were plants from the day they began working here." She sighed;
finding out the the leader of the whole thing had apparently been Sailor
Venus's personal secretary had been a terrible shock.  What kinds of
information might he have gotten?  "I think it's obvious that we'll have to
overhaul our pre-employment background checks.

	"We've run into a brick wall with tracing their weapons.  They can't
have made them by themselves, but missing equipment reports from the armory
aren't enough to account for them all.  We know that they had to have had
help from other confederations, but we cannot confirm this, and all the
diplomats we've spoken to vigorously deny everything.  We can't press them
too much, not with another round of environmental negotiations due.

	"They didn't take your chambers, but the two sentries who were
guarding them died in the defense of it.  They closed the doors, and when
they did they had no way out.  They'll be getting the Crystal Crescent for
their efforts, though.

	"Final casualties: thirty-two terrorists dead, two hostages, three
of our assault team.  The hostages were apparently random people picked from
those who weren't in on the conspiracy."

	"Can this happen again?"

	"Your Majesty, we're going through all employee records with a fine
tooth comb, right down to our personal secretaries.  If it happens again,
you can bet it was because of magical interference."

	"Very well.  I look forward to your full report.  You may go."

	"Yes, Your Majesty."

	The door closed.


===========================
LeVar Bouyer
Edited: 21 January 2001