(rating: PG) 
 
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Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Orion 
A passably original fanfic by LeVar Bouyer 
Episode 410: Three Conferences in November 
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	"It's too dangerous!" pleaded Eileen.  "You shouldn't go!" 
 
	"It's my duty," Jen said resolutely.  "I don't have any choice." 
 
	"But you know what they'll do to you!" 
 
	"I know all too well," she replied.  Jen took one look at Eileen's
desperate face, with the usual brown hair pulled back in a ponytail down her
back, dressed in a conservative gray business outfit, and dropped her
briefcase on the foyer floor.  Gazing into her eyes, Jen reached forward to
embrace her love.  "I'll be back before you know it," she reassured Eileen,
giving her a peck on the lips.  "Don't need to worry."
 
	"But . . . it's . . . parent-teacher conferences!" 
 
	"I think you're blowing this out of proportion," Jen said with a 
smile.  "Bet you just wanted an excuse to get a kiss out of me." 
 
	"I *never* need an excuse for those," replied the brunette
defiantly, proving her point by smacking Jen with a long passionate kiss of
her own.  After several long moments, Eileen released her lover.  "See?" 
 
	"I'd like to see again," replied Jen breathlessly.  Blinking and
trying to calm herself, she straightened her jacket and bow.  The jacket was
a deep navy blue today, with brass buttons showing the importance of the
conferences.
 
	"I can do that," said Eileen, reaching up and starting to undo Jen's
bow.
 
	With a sigh, Jen pushed Eileen's hands away.  "I'd love to, but
it'll have to be later.  Right now, we both need to be getting to work."
 
	"All right, but I'm going to hold you to that."  Eileen stepped back
and rearranged her hair, afterwards bending down to pick up two umbrellas
from a stand and hand one to Jen.  "Here you go."
 
	Jen took the umbrella and grabbed her raincoat from the rack. 
"Okay, but I hope you'll be holding more than just that."
 
	"Oh, I will." 
 
	Jen smiled.  If there was one good thing about their coming to
Hinansho--and there were several--, it was that their sex life had improved
considerably.  Something about being under the same roof as the Neo-Queen
had hovered over their bedroom for years, and now they were free of that. 
"Let's go, then." The two raincoat-clad women walked out into the cold
November morning.
 
*** [title sequence] *** 
 
	Parent-teacher conferences were quite a big deal for schools in the
Moon Kingdom.  For Her Majesty's subjects to keep pace at a time where great
change was sweeping across humanity after centuries of relative stagnation,
a proper education was absolutely essential.
 
	The usual books claimed a key part to this was parental involvement. 
To this end, each November and April parents of students were to meet with
their teachers in order to discuss how things were or weren't going.  These
meetings were mandatory, and could easily run over an hour.  Naturally, this
took quite awhile.  As part of the year-round system on Hinansho, the
November break consisted of nothing but conferences and meetings.  Students
would return in December, have a brief break for Christmas and New Years,
and then carry straight on until early February.
 
	The upshot of all this was that Jen was in the middle of the usual 
conferences.  Today she only had three scheduled.  The first one she 
didn't expect to have any difficulty; she was a good student.  The other 
two would be a different story. 
 
	Arriving in the assigned classroom, she sat at her desk and waited
for the parents of the first child.  Jen decided to leaf through the files. 
"Eiko Zenki, female, seventeen years old, born 25 February 3024.  Interests
include soccer, tennis, blah blah . . . ." She skipped to the important
stuff: personal opinions from other teachers.  "According to her soccer
coach, she's not aggressive at all.  Great on defense, refuses to take
chances." Jen adjusted her glasses and flipped on to her grades.  "In my
class, mixed results.  Hard worker, not very imaginative but generally
coming up with the right answers.  Probably lacks interest in learning for
its own sake, but keeps up to stay successful."
 
	"We couldn't agree more." 
 
	Jen looked up quickly to see a husband and wife standing in the
doorway.  "I'm Hirobumi Zenki, and this is my wife Mitsuko."
 
	The teacher quickly stood and bowed.  The Zenki bowed in return. 
"I'm Jennifer Sakachi, Eiko-chan's teacher.  Glad you could make it." She
blushed slightly.  "Just how much did you overhear?"
 
	"Only good things, Sakachi-sensei." 
 
	"Have a seat," offered Jen, and they sat.  "I'd like to start with
her grades, of course, as they're the most quantitative way to determine
your child's progress.  However," she warned, giving the usual spiel,
"grades aren't everything.  A student with straight A's could easily be
understanding nothing in class, and a failing student could be very bright."
The parents nodded.  "That said, Eiko-chan's homework and in-class
assignment grades are superb.  She's always on time, never leaving anything
half done.  Very hard worker.  However, her test scores are another matter. 
They're consistently in the lower third of the class, which is very
surprising.  Her homework shows that she understands the material, but the
tests say otherwise.  Has she always had this problem?"
 
	The parents looked at each other.  "I don't think so," said
Hirobumi.  "No other teachers had said anything about it before, and I don't
remember her bringing home bad reports before."
 
	"Well, we've had two exams so far this semester, both failing
grades.  Quiz grades are low too."
 
	"If-" 
 
	"Just a minute," said Mitsuko, cutting off her husband.  "You say 
her grades are in the lower third.  Where are the rest of them?" 
 
	"Sorry," said Jen, a look of puzzlement coming over her face, "I 
don't quite understand." 
 
	"What are the grades for the other students?" 
 
	Jen looked through her files; there were no rules against asking
about the progress of other students, within limits.  "They range from a B+
to several F's."
 
	"What's the average?" 
 
	"C-." 
 
	"Is that *normal* for an advanced level class?" 
 
	Jen picked up a pen and began to toy with it nervously.  "Well, you
have to understand that the additional challenge of-"
 
	"So you're saying you routinely flunk a good chunk of your high 
school classes?" 
 
	"Not intentionally-"   It was, of course, the wrong thing to say at
that point.
 
	"Not intentionally?  You fail my child, and you say it isn't
intentional?  Did you ever stop to think that maybe if you weren't one of
those sailor senshi, you might have the time to do your damn job properly?"
 
	"Mitsuko!" shouted Hirobumi in shock. 
 
	"I'm talking here," growled Mitsuko.  The short woman whirled back
on Jen, who was leaning back in her chair, slowly shaking her head in
disbelief.  "Now, how can you teach and be a senshi at the same time?  How
can you give my Eiko the attention she needs, or anyone for that matter? 
Answer me, dammit!"
 
	"Zenki-san," said Jen cautiously, "I assure you that my duties as a
senshi interfere as little as possible with my duties as a teacher.  Quite
honestly, I'm surprised that you'd think me inadequate for the job, and-"
 
	"-and so you'll go on blaming poor Eiko because *you're* too busy 
playing soldier!  You're a teacher, damn you, teach!" 
 
	Jen dropped her pen. 
 
*** 
 
	"Hey Eileen!" 
 
	Eileen smiled at the man at the front desk as she walked into the
NBO lobby.  "Hi there Kaji-san," she replied.  As usual, she stopped and
hopped up on the desk to talk to the security guard for a bit before heading
upstairs.  "How are things going?"
 
	"Boring as always," complained Kaji, sipping at his coffee.  The
balding man dramatically pressed his hand to his forehead, putting on a show
for anyone who cared to watch.  "Woe, woe, woe is me, forsaken to guard duty
at the dullest broadcast company in light years!"
 
	Eileen struggled to stop laughing.  "Might be dull, but it's a
paycheck."
 
	"Right," replied the man.  He finished off his cup of coffee and
looked mournfully at the empty cup.  "I heard you're going to be giving a
pep talk this afternoon?"
 
	"Not quite a pep talk, no, but we hope it'll be informative."  The
former secretary of public relations for Her Majesty stretched and yawned. 
"I'll see ya around lunch time."
 
	"Sure thing, Pearcy-san."  Kaji waved as she hopped down and went to
the stairs, eschewing the elevator.  She only had to go up three floors,
after all, and in her estimation a bit of exercise never hurt.
 
	Eileen thus strode into the third floor office of the NBO Evening
News, a large, bustling newsroom that was almost always busy.  Eileen
considered it her home away from home.  Just as Jen taught for the sake of
teaching, neither expecting nor accepting a paycheck, so Eileen did her job
of anchorwoman for the evening news for free, simply because she liked doing
it.  There were some who pressured both of them to be full time senshi,
especially considering the present situation, but in her opinion maintaining
a sense of normalcy was more important.  History recorded that the original
five senshi had been students as well, and to the best of anyone's knowledge
had never missed a day due to battling the various forces of darkness. 
Eileen figured that she, twice their age, could manage to hold down a
full-time job and be a senshi too.
 
	The entire staff welcomed her in their various ways.  Some simply
looked up and nodded, others waved, a few shouted out their hellos.  Eileen
returned them all with a smile.  Where Jen was serious and preferred the
silence and solitude of a library or office, Eileen thrived on the busy,
active atmosphere of the news room.  At any given time there were a half
dozen interns rushing off on some errand or another, secretaries on phones,
reporters working on stories, directors in production meetings, and so on.
 
	Eileen loved it.  She knew everyone by name, and always managed to
get in touch with each one in some way or another.  It usually took her a
full ten minutes to get from the glass door to the door of her office, such
as it was.  Although she rated her own office, she had taken a common
cubicle along with most of the staff.
 
	She followed her usual pattern.  Raincoat on the small coat rack
next to the door.  Walk to her cubicle at the intersection of two walkways,
put down her purse and umbrella, sit down and switch on her computer.  Get
back up, walk over to the small kitchen, and fix a cup of coffee.  Back to
the desk, sit down, and drink the first cup while reading the news.  Then it
was usually time to get to work on the night's program.
 
	Today was different, since that night she was to give an interview
on the present situation.  Observations showed that their enemies were still
in orbit, even though they hadn't made any hostile moves, or indeed any
moves at all.  The uncertainty of not knowing when or here the next attack
would come had many on edge, and it had been decided by Eileen alone, based
on previous experience in PR, that a word from one of the higher ups would
help to soothe the public.  Eileen was the natural choice.  Upon arriving on
Hinansho, she decided not to become the military's press liaison officer. 
She'd done her time dealing with the press, now it was time to cross over
the line.  That had led to a couple awkward moments; some of her coworkers
were the same reporters she had given the run-around to in Crystal Tokyo.
 
	One of them happened to pop his head into her cubicle. 
 
	"Hey Eileen." 
 
	The brunette looked up from her second cup of coffee.  "Oh,
Shinnosuke.  How are you?"
 
	The man smiled thinly.  Nearing his forties, he had once been one of
Eileen's enemies in the press conference room of the Palace.  After the two
had moved to Hinansho, it had been he who first offered the job at the
Nagano-2 Broadcast Organization.  He never admitted, even to himself, that
he missed their friendly banter.  "I'm okay," he said softly, scratching at
his black hair.  "You, on the other hand, look exactly the way you did the
day you announced the sinking of that one ship, you know, the one that
started the '35 war."
 
	Eileen thought for a bit.  For the life of her, she couldn't
remember what the name of that ship had been.  "Remind me.  Just how was I?"
 
	"I just told you; you looked just like you do now.  Cool, calm,
collected, and ready to tear the throat out of someone."
 
	Eileen raised an eyebrow. 
 
	"Kidding about the last part, Pearcy." 
 
	Eileen raised the other eyebrow. 
 
	"Eileen, everyone knows that when you're that calm, there's
something up."
 
	"Just a normal interview," replied Eileen.  She leaned back so she
could just see a strip of gray sky through the window and over the wall of
the cubicle.
 
	"An interview with me." 
 
	"Like I said, normal." 
 
	Shinnosuke sighed and leaned a shoulder against the partition.  "The
last time you gave an interview like this, we were at war."
 
	"I won't mince words with you, Shinnosuke.  We are." 
 
	He declined to press the issue.  "So, you're the boss.  What am I
allowed and not allowed to ask?"
 
	"No holds barred." 
 
	He glared.  "You've said that before, and then you pull that
national security crap on me.  I just bet you'll do it again!"
 
	Eileen put down her now empty coffee cup.  Shinnosuke noted that the
side had super deformed drawings of Sailors America and Orion on the white
background.  He stared at it a moment too long, and when he finally broke
away he met Eileen's cool gaze.  "Ask me anything, right here, right now."
She sat up straighter and grabbed a ballpoint, playing with it.  "Come on,
just to prove that this is on the up and up."
 
	Shinnosuke wasn't stupid.  "Is this on the record?" 
 
	"Do you want it to be?"  Her phone rang.  "Antares?" 
 
	"It's Momoko from accounting," replied the AI. 
 
	"Tell her I'm busy." 
 
	"Righto." 
 
	"Eileen, are you sure-" 
 
	"You want me to tell you everything, I'll tell it.  And we both need
to preview the questions, don't we?  So, start asking them!"
 
	"Erm . . . ."  Shinnosuke hadn't been expecting this.  Truth be
told, he had some other things to do that morning and really couldn't afford
to stop and do an impromptu question and answer session.  On the other hand,
he was a reporter, and no reporter worth his salt could refuse an
opportunity like this.  Perhaps he should start easy.
 
	"Well, how do you feel about the entire situation?" 
 
	"I feel great.  Next?" she asked quickly. 
 
	"Who's sending these things?" 
 
	"We don't know, and we have no guesses." 
 
	Shinnosuke pushed the point. "None at all?  You've certainly had
enough time to find *something* out!"
 
	"Lemme tell you something, Shinnosuke.  The military is down.  We
had two dozen fighter craft before this started, and that's down to three
that we're holding in reserve.  The army has never been anything more than a
way to defend Nagano-2 against conventional forces, and it's pretty much
useless.  We don't even *have* a navy.  When it comes to this planet's
defense, there's Sailor Orion, and there's me.  The three commanders in
Valhalla come up with ideas, while Antares runs the probability checks. 
Every other night we run drills, and those drills are eighty to ninety
percent successful.  That's it."
 
	Shinnosuke took a deep breath.  "Isn't that going to disturb the
populace?"
 
	"Probably," replied Eileen casually.  "But I think it's more likely
that they'll be reassured.  We're telling them the whole truth."
 
	"That's not what your head of PR says." 
 
	"I *taught* her, Shinnosuke, she apparently didn't learn properly."
Eileen glowered for a moment, then regained her composure.  "'Always give
the public credit, they're always smarter than you think.' Anyway, next
question?"
 
	"You mentioned Valhalla earlier . . . ." 
 
	"Yes, that's the nickname for planetary defense headquarters.  It's
a couple hundred feet below us."
 
	"Why is it called Valhalla?" 
 
	Eileen blinked.  "Um, I don't know, actually.  The three commanders,
Commanders Leeds, Porter, and Young, are sometimes called the Valkryies,
though considering the traditional role of the valkryies most of the
enlisted folk try to avoid that.  I don't study mythology so I wouldn't know
anything else . . . call it whim, I guess."
 
	"How likely do you think it is that we'll win." 
 
	"We will win, I guarantee it." 
 
	"You sound pretty confident," said Shinnosuke slowly. 
 
	"I'm giving a pep talk, I damn well should."  She grinned.  "Any
other questions?"
 
	"Um, no, I don't think so . . .  but that's an idea of, er, what to
look forward to tonight."
 
	"Great!" replied Eileen brightly.  "I'll see you then!"  She turned
to her computer screen and immediately started typing up a memo, ignoring
Shinnosuke.  It was a dismissal, and so he walked out of the cubicle, head
spinning.  A typical morning for Eileen.
 
*** 
 
	A couple tens of thousands of kilometers above all this, a man in a
ship observed the weather patterns over Nagano-2 and scowled.  "Changes your
plans, doesn't it Bautsch?" asked a feminine voice from behind.
 
	"Not drastically, my dear Holbrow."  Bautsch straightened from
leaning over the instruments.  On the lone computer screen of the panel, a
satellite picture of the Nagano-2 area showed a large gray mass of clouds
hovering over the city.  It moved very slowly, and didn't look likely to
disappear for a couple of days.
 
	He turned to regard his equal.  Holbrow technically was his second
in command, though during this mission they had become closer to partners,
and he outranked her in name only.  She was the same height, with the same
green hair, except for it being grown longer.  Her gray eyes glinted with a
hint of amusement, which Bautsch ached to slap out of her.  "No, Holbrow,
this doesn't change anything at all.  I'll just have to wait two more weeks
until sending the fifth and sixth."
 
	Holbrow raised an eyebrow, which was dimly visible in the darkened
room.  It was ship's nighttime, and its small crew was mostly asleep.  "I
thought your plan called for three?  After all, you couldn't get the job
done with one or two."
 
	Bautsch grumbled.  His plan to send the fourth immediately after the
third had merit; wasn't his fault the senshi hadn't been sufficiently
exhausted.  "The seventh will be sent tomorrow.  Cloud cover is irrelevant
for it; we just need to insert him at an early hour and wait for our plans
to come to fruition.  Phi will pilot it in."
 
	Holbrow raised her other eyebrow.  "Phi?  How'd you manage that?" 
 
	"He'll command a cruiser when this is over." 
 
	His counterpart laughed.  "*Another* one?  How many do you plan to
give away?  We only have three!"
 
	"This is the last one." 
 
	Holbrow leaned into Bautsch's face.  "You've said that too many
times, especially when we're making love."
 
	Bautsch wrinkled his nose.  "Don't remind me of that."  Not here,
not now.  "I promise you-"
 
	"Oh, I've heard *that* too!" 
 
	"Dammit Holbrow, this WILL destroy the sailor senshi of this planet,
that I swear.  Then we can suck this planet dry and move on to our next
target."
 
	Holbrow backed off, going off to look out a porthole at the blue
planet below.  "I still say we should forget about this miserable ball.  Go
straight to Earth, take out that brat Serenity."
 
	"Serenity II," corrected Bautsch.  "If the information we've gotten
from the people on this planet is correct, there have been some changes on
Terra, and her daughter is in charge."
 
	"Daughter," whispered Holbrow with barely concealed fury.  "That
bitch has a *daughter*.  After what she did to our ancestors-"
 
	"Patience, my sweet," interrupted the man, "patience.  Our race
shall have its revenge." He turned to the screen again, to the clouds that
still hid the capital city of the Hinansho colony from sight.  "Very soon,
my love, very soon . . . ."