===================================================== 
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."