Scribbler's Note:

I'm going to try to reverse the trend of spending more and more time trying to be meticulous about every detail. At the rate I was going, we'd be IN the Silver Millennium before I finished the story! So please bear with me as I try to cut a few corners and get the words out on paper while some of us are still young. And please do not hesitate to give me feedback for whatever reason, good or bad.







Serena stopped and turned just outside the school. She was in full sunlight, the light bright on her golden hair. "You coming?" she asked with a smile.

Lita felt herself hanging back. "No," she said. "I have things to do."

"Later, maybe?" Serena asked. She was so light-hearted today, so happy, it was almost painful to watch. Summer was here, vacation in only two more weeks, and it seemed as if everything was in bloom under a cloudless blue sky. The colors of Serena's school uniform were as precise as a cartoon in the bright summer light, from the process blue of her pleated skirt to the pure white of her blouse.

"I have things to do," Lita said again, but to herself this time. She watched the blond girl as she was joined by a cluster of friends, and as they reached the iron gate of the school and headed south towards the Crowd Arcade. "And things to think about," Lita added softly. She turned towards a smaller gate in the shadow of the building and headed that way.







It rises benignly over the center of Tokyo, a grace note to the skyline of Minato-ku; taller than its French inspiration but hardly half the weight, a gossamer of steel webbing. In the night it glows delicately in the light of a hundred floodlights, orange in the winter, and as punctual as a schoolgirl changing uniform to a crystal white for the warmer months.

It is only when you get closer, get right up to the arches of the legs and the five-story building nestled between its feet that you begin to feel its size and weight. It stretches up above your head like the curving face of a dam, a quarter mile tall, a complex mass of iron girders and cables and attachments. The eye is lost in all that detail, of criss-cross webbings themselves cross-braced and intersected with a thousand more rectangles of orange-painted steel.

It has become part of the background to the locals. A signature of the skyline, like Tower Bridge or the Statue of Liberty. Nobody but tourists go there. It had been built in 1958 as a symbol that Japan had recovered from the war and was on her way to becoming an economic superpower. In three days, however, it will become a different kind of symbol -- a symbol of something new and strange and terrible.






SEARCH FOR THE MOON PRINCESS

Episode Eighteen : 333 Meters Over Tokyo



"Hiya Darien," Andrew waved as he entered the Crown Arcade. "Serena's already here."

Just like that. In some mysterious female way Serena had become "his girl." Or he had become "her guy." Darien wasn't sure. Since that strange day in the English Garden things had changed completely between them.

Sure enough, the little blond girl was running up to him, those extraordinary pigtails bouncing with every step. "Darien!" she cried in delight.

"Hi there, meatball head," he retorted. He was a little disconcerted when she giggled in pleasure. Apparently his one-time insult had turned into an endearment.

"Hello, Andrew," she said as she noticed him in turn.

"Hello Serena," Andrew said, just as polite. There was a different vibe there and Darien had trouble picking it up. Of course, he realized after a moment. She's "with me," and thus it's hand's off. No more of the flirting she usually does around Andrew. And the same rule for him in turn.

Darien felt his head hurting. This was all so crazy! In Serena's mind, he and Andrew were both in competition for her -- with Darien the present lead. What was even stranger, though, was that he kind of liked it.

Serena led him to a table by the window. As scrupulously as Andrew, her friends giggled and went elsewhere, although he could feel all those feminine eyes on him and every move he made. He ordered, somehow, something. In a little a couple of sundaes arrived. He only picked at his, too distracted, or bemused, by Serena's ability to cut through some giant mass of ice-cream and chocolate, making it vanish like a conjurer's rabbit.

He realized after a while that he had relaxed. He liked watching Serena. He liked being let in, allowed to see some of her life and share some of her secrets. In part that was because, as an orphan, he had had so little of a family or and ordinary home to call his own. In a way, being with Serena was a way of sharing a little of that normal life he was so often an outsider to.

But in greater part was because he liked her. That strange and terrible passion that had filled him the first few times he had been close to her was still there in the shadows somewhere, but its hold and its terror had ebbed quite a bit. He could hold those stronger feelings away now, putting them aside until times were different. For now he was able to watch Serena, and be near her, and contain a simpler joy in her presence.

And she was, as Andrew had said, "good people." There was no denying that she was a terrible clutz and an indifferent student. But as he learned to open his eyes and actually look at her, he could also see the strengths of her passion and conviction, her strong sense of loyalty and a determination to do what had to be done. He could not forget how she had stood up to Nephrite's creature when they were trapped in that pocket universe. Or how she had protected her friend Molly when Gem Cutter attacked at Osa-P.

He sighed. And that led him to an essential problem. She did not know he was Tuxedo Mask. There was good reason why he kept his alter-ego a secret from even his closest friend, Andrew. He didn't know what that masked man was, or where he had come from. He didn't know what Tux's purpose or intentions were. And most importantly, he did not know where he would be standing when the mists of amnesia finally cleared. Would he find himself a champion, still? Or would his memory show him that he was as much as monster as these things he had faced?

The crystals. The crystals were the key. He had but two, now. Zoicite must have the others. If he could somehow get his hands on all of them, perhaps then he would find the path to the Princess and his missing memories. Perhaps then he would know who he really was.

"Darien? You day-dreaming?" Serena asked. She spoke lightly, but he could see a serious light of concern touching her eyes.

"Just a little," he said lightly as he could. "Maybe I need to get more sleep."






"So THEN what did he say?" Molly plucked at her sleeve, the giggles bubbling over again.

"Oh, he didn't say anything," Serena said, "just looked at me with those dark eyes. For a moment he was so serious, and I felt like he could look right into me. And then, and then....!"

"And then...?"

"He sighed!"

Both girls threw themselves back into Serena's bed, the giggles overtaking them. Serena bounced right back up, grabbed a pillow, and squeezed it to her chest.

Molly bounced onto her front, chin cupped in her hands. "That sounds SO romantic," she sighed.

"Yeah!" Serena returned the sigh and raised it a nickel. It had been so nice, so romantic, so....scary. She had approached this first date tremulous and eager and excited and scared. Scared she might frighten him away with too much intensity, frighten him back into that shell, behind that uncaring mask he wore for others to see. And scared, too, of the possibilities before her; of romance, of passions more adult than she was ready for, of commitment to come. Being back here, in her warm room, with her long-time friend, was like making it back to land after a solo flight, and she was for now glad to be back on solid ground.

"When are you going to see him again?" Molly asked after a bit.

"This weekend," Serena said dreamily. "I told him we were going to the movies. What do you think we should see?"

"Something romantic," Molly said, putting so much stress on the last word it sounded almost dark.

"But I wanted to see 'Babe' again!" Serena mock-wailed.

Molly popped upright, suddenly dead serious. "Take him to Casablanca," she said. "There's a showing at that art house across from Zoijorushi."

"I don't know," Serena said slowly. "That's not the best part of town. Of course, I'd feel safe there if I'm with DARIEN, but..."

Molly saw through her objections. "You have to decide, Serena. You have to decide how much he means to you. You need to make up your mind if you really want to win him."

And then she was quiet, very quiet. It took a few minutes for Serena to notice. She didn't say anything when she did. She knew Molly had something on her mind. It hurt that Molly hadn't shared it with her, but she'd trusted her friend this far. Molly would tell her, in time. And maybe sooner than later. By the sound of this silence, she seemed to have just made up her mind about something.






First Joe. Then Tadahiko. Then Amy's friend Greg.

Lita was walking, hands deep in the pockets of her jeans, black leather jacket zipped up. There were few street lights in this part of town, and the smell of Tokyo Bay was more rank and wild than it ever dared to be nearer the Ginza.

There had been others earlier, of course. But for Lita it had begun with Joe. One encounter, in a night like this one, in a poor and dirty industrial neighborhood not far from where she was now, and her life had changed. Lita had no illusion that her life had been easy before. Orphaned as a young girl, living alone in a house that used to hold family. Already outcast and picked upon because of her size, isolated even more when she gained the skill and confidence to fight back.

She'd had a goal. To become a great cook, and to open her own restaurant in Tokyo. The goal seemed a little nebulous, now. The world and its ways seemed so solid now, it was hard to realize the essential fragility. But the Negaverse was coming. Right now it was a private war, something that could be kept so secret that the ordinary business of shopkeepers and housewives, bankers and mechanics could go on. But unless she found some way of shifting the odds it wasn't going to stay that way. And whatever else happened, she could not be free until this thing was settled.

She was "makoto." She had the purity of motive that allowed Yoshitsune to fight on through betrayal and abandonment. That allowed the samurai who fought against the Meiji Restoration and the industrialization of Japan to stake their lives against impossible odds. But that did not prevent her from knowing full well how desperate this fight was....how little hope they had of winning.

"Lita."

"You!" Lita knew it would be Kosuke. She turned on him, angrily. "Do you have me bugged or something? How do you always know where I am?"

"Look around," Kosuke said instead. Lita looked. She was at the edge of where the fish market would be in the morning. Many shops were still open, amber light spilling from under the low noren curtains. People were around, working-class people slowly relaxing from the hard labor of their day. "This is where the gumi works," Kosuke said. "We aren't about uptown and office buildings. We are about vegetable markets and radiator repair. These are our people."

Lita looked again. She saw, now, the gambler slipping through a curtained door into a dark and smoky interior. The tattoo on the shoulder of a burly worker adjusting his woolen belly-band after standing up. The slight nod one noodle stand owner gave Kosuke as they passed.

"You get noticed, Lita." Kosuke shrugged. "People know about you. People mention when they've seen you about. It isn't hard for the gumi to know where you are."

Lita fumed. She thought about it, got a little more angry, then stopped dead in her tracks. "I don't like it!" she said. She thought a little more, and got even more angry. "I am getting really tired," she said, "of everyone knowing more about what I'm doing than I do!"

The gumi, that Detective fellow, even Amy, bless her. They all seemed to find Lita so wonderfully predictable. And Lita was sick and tired of it.

"Okay, chew on this, Mr. young yakuza," she said at last. "The next scrape I'm getting into, you are NOT invited. I'll handle my own problems thank you very much!"

"I'm sorry, Lita," Kosuke said quickly. "I'm sorry."

Lita was quiet for a while. "So am I. But I still mean it." She let the silence last longer, until it was a different sort of silence; not an angry silence any more but slowly coming back to the companionable silence between friends. She started walking again, fitting her pace her his. "So," she said. "Where's your friend Sampai? I thought as his bodyguard you'd want him near."

Kosuke didn't say anything for a while. He seemed to be searching for words. "He is safer where he is," Kosuke said at last. It wasn't enough, and he had to say the rest of it. "It isn't always safe around you, Lita."

She nodded. It hurt, but she nodded. Damn Amy, and damn Kosuke too. They'd taught her to think. To worry about consequences. To fear for the future.

Kosuke caught her change of mood instantly. He moved her in a different direction without really seeming to guide her at all. When Lita saw the tiny Korean place right by a scrawny estuary she knew immediately this was Kosuke's goal. Even from a hundred meters away there was something warm and welcoming about it, the look of a bus shelter during a cold February rain.

They sat outside. Lita let Kosuke order. She was a little chagrined to find much of it was unfamiliar to her. All this time studying French cuisine and there's so much I don't know much closer to home, she thought. She noticed how much the wiry little gang-member fit in around this area. And how much she, in her new jacket and nice shoes, not to mention her height, did not. No wonder she'd been mentioned to the gumi!

It was something else Lita didn't think about often. Having money, that is. She was more aware than most of her schoolmates were. Handling the household expenses herself did that. Juuban Junior High was a GOOD school. The students there were well off enough not to know they were well off. In an area like this, she became aware of a different Japan. Not just a different scale of expenses, but a different way of life; where the safety net was very thin and financial emergencies could be a life-and-death manner. It humbled her, realizing that. There were worse things than growing up without parents.

And where were Kosuke's folks? There was something about him, like a radar shared between like souls, that told her he did not have parents here. There was in his voice and attitude when he spoke of the gumi that told her of a combination of professional loyalty and a kind of longing that made a substitute family out of them. She watched him, quietly, as they ate. He was private about his background, quiet enough that she was willing to let him share in his own time and place.

It was an odd time of peace. A peace, perhaps, like that which Amy had found in the English Garden in the blooming of the roses. Their little shop was an oasis of light and warmth, of cleanliness and the smells of good food. Time passed in this oasis without being remarked. Time passed, and slowly, the task they faced began to be seen in a different light.

"They attack, we try to stop them," Lita said. Kosuke merely nodded. They understood each other well; Lita was merely speaking aloud to reason something out. "We try, sometimes we win, sometimes not, but people still get hurt. They get hurt in ways we can't heal." Like Greg, changed into a creature of nightmare.

"We are fighting a defensive battle," Kosuke mumbled around a mouthful of shrimp.

"So we change the paradigm."

Kosuke raised his eyebrows. For him, this was like jumping to his feet and bellowing with laughter.

Lita scowled. "I've been hanging around Amy a lot, okay?" she said. "Anyhow, we change it. Let's not react to them, let's act." At that moment she reached into her pocket. "Here," she said. The thing sparkled in the light, too red for the light, too different to not be out of place here, or anywhere on Earth. "The Rainbow Crystal Joe carried. Maybe it can be a bargaining chip."

She stood, then. Asked to use the phone. Spoke for a couple of minutes; the hour was not as late as it could be and someone was still in the offices.

"And?" Kosuke did not have to say more.

"Placed an add in the Asahi Shimbun. I'm calling Zoicite out."

"You challenged her."

"Un huh. Her and me. The crystals as prize."

Kosuke nodded once, sharply. It was his way of saying, that he admired her makoto, even as he knew she was tempting death to take this course.

They returned to eating, perhaps savoring the food a little more in knowledge that the die was cast. They could hear a radio, now. A request show, it seemed. Some of the music was romantic but much was upbeat.

Lita emptied her tea, stood again. The owner and sole cook handed her the phone a second time. This time everyone could hear the result.

"This is Lita Kino. I'd like to dedicate a song to General Zoicite of the Negaverse."

"General Who of the Which?"

"You got it. To General Zoicite of the Negaverse, I'd like to dedicate 'The Freaks Come Out at Night,' by Whodini."

"That," Kosuke said, almost to himself, "Is gonna make Zoicite real mad."

"Wait," Lita said. "I changed my mind. How about the 'Another One Bites the Dust'...by Queen!"






"This isn't very smart," Luna said to herself. She frowned. She wondered if it was a bad sign for a Guardian of the Moon Kingdom to talk to herself. Well, it wasn't as if her young charge actually listened. Luna had heard far too much about Serena's recent date. She was more than a little ambivalent about the whole thing. Back in the Moon Kingdom no-one would have raised an eye, but here on Earth they tended to wait a few more years before getting this serious.

She had thought about having a few more words with the girl. But then she had been distracted by one of those, what did they call them? Video games, that was it. There had been the usual intensely annoying, tweedly little tune issuing from it as Serena shot at monsters with some kind of ray gun. Luna suffered not only the grace of a cat's excellent hearing, but she also had perfect pitch and a good musical education. More than once she had been tempted to imitate the "beckoning cat" and cover ear with paw.

Except. Except this particular tune, on this particular game, most particularly did not belong. It had taken her the trip back to the Tsukino home and several hours more before the shoe dropped. It was the "Moonlight Dance." A court favorite, during the time of Queen Serenity, back at the Moon Kingdom!

So now Luna was prowling back to the Crown Arcade. It was very late at night. All reasonable beings were probably asleep. As Luna prowled along she noticed another flyer up. This one looked like the "Lost Cat" notices but instead said "Lost Courage" and had a picture of Zoicite.

Lita's work again. She hadn't let up. The Negaverse General must be writhing by now. Lita had kept up a barrage of advertisements, circulars, radio call-ins -- every way she could to insult Zoicite, call her a coward, dare her to come out and fight. It was an, um, novel approach. Luna thought it was rather more likely to get the girl killed. Pissing off someone powerful enough to take on some of the best warriors in the Moon Kingdom was not listed in the Guardian's instruction manual as A Smart Thing.

Nor was sneaking into buildings late at night. Luna had found a window that was enough ajar to do the trick. On the other side was the game room itself. The machines were humming quietly to themselves, those that had been left on. Some flickered slowly with lists of high scores like old warriors dreaming of past conquests. The Sailor V game was one of those still on.

Luna leapt to another console and watched. The Sailor V game cycled through it's set displays. When it reached the splash screen a fragment of "Moonlight Dance" played again. Listening to it, even in this feeble, tweedly, form, was enough to bring her back for a moment to the Moon Kingdom. In emotion only, however. Hard facts about that life were maddenly hard to pin down.

In sudden impulse Luna jumped down, ran across and leapt up to the Sailor V machine. And, while the music was still playing, she placed her paw on the screen.






"I'm gonna kill that girl!"

"Tsukino?" Ishiguro asked politely. Haruna had mentioned her problem student before. Many times.

The pretty, but often scowling, teacher finished a last piece of paperwork and slammed her desk closed. Like all teachers everywhere, she had to work into the night to finish all the things she couldn't do while school was in session. And in Japan, that meant no overtime.

"And what did she do this time?" Ishiguro was just making conversation.

"It's that monster talk again," Haruna said. "There's more of them at it this time. I think they have half the school doing it."

Ishiguro nodded. He taught lab and ran the computer center, but he'd certainly noticed the buzz around school.

"It's gotten so bad there are starting to be inquiries." She made the word sound capitalized. "I've had to speak with the Principal twice already!"

"Look at it this way. The exams are almost in, and then there's nothing left but the end-of-term bash."

Haruna wasn't paying attention. She was looking out the window. "There's a giant woman in the sky," she said in a strange voice. "She's saying something."

"Surrender, Dorothy?" It was all Ishiguro could think of.

"What!" the other teacher snapped. "No!" She turned again and propped the window open. Now they could both hear the mysterious voice.

"You want to die? I'll be happy to help. Bring your Rainbow Crystal to the Tower, at midnight."

She laughed, then; a brittle crystalline laugh that went on and on.

Haruna slammed the window. "I'll bet that's Serena's fault, too!" she said.






The thing was TALL. Lita watched the tower grow slowly as she approached it. The night was cloudy, the wind gusting wetly in something that was not quite mist nor drizzle. The pavement glistened, oils driven up by the water, and lights shimmered and flickered against the shifting winds. She could almost smell it, this great mass of steel and rivets, clad only by orange and white paint. The powerful floodlights punched through the haze but they began their march up the tower from a point far, far above where she stood. The great girders here at the base, that filled half her visual horizon, were black as night.

Lita was ready for this. As ready as she had ever been in her life. It was as if she'd been training her whole life for this fight. It was gonna be the toughest challenge she'd ever taken on. And at stake, a chance to reverse the string of Negaverse victories and start taking her world back from them.

She shrugged her shoulders back, settled the leather jacket more comfortably. She hadn't made any kind of preparation. She was certainly not going to tie on a hachimaki or something. Maybe, though, it was because she needed that blind luck that had seen her through previously. Getting garbed like a warrior was somehow making too big a deal of this fight, and making a big deal of it might make her luck fail.

The thing was very big. And very high. And she was going to have to go up there, into the night sky, to find a woman that wanted to kill her. Lita shivered, suddenly. It wasn't working. Her confidence wasn't enough any more. She was alone, far too alone, and she was going to fight alone, with no-one to know how well she fought or how....

"How I died." She said it. She had to say it. She wasn't afraid of death, not really. But she did not want to be alone. The ache was in her, greater than it had ever been. That taste of friendship, of Amy and Serena and the others, only made it more obvious how alone she was now.

The came out of the shadows then, at this perfect moment.

"I don't want your help!" Lita barked out.

"You don't have a choice," Amy said. She was walking, but she pushed her wheelchair before her. Serena was beside her. She waited until she was within arm's reach of Lita before she spoke again. "I made that mistake," Amy said then. "I went out alone. I won't let you make the same mistake."

"Amy..." Lita said. "Amy...!" she said. "Oh...all right then! I could use the company." Then she said softly, "I'm glad you guys came."

"This is what we are here for," Amy said, her voice low and intense. "This is our job, all of us. We stick together or we have no chance at all."

"And Serena?" Lita asked.

"Me too," the girl said. "This is IMPORTANT, Lita. I have to help you guys. I have to do the right thing."

"Then I guess we are all in it together," Lita said. "All for one and all that. The three students, the three...what are we, anyway?"

"What were they called, the girls who protected the Princess?" Serena asked.

"The Sailor Scouts," Amy said. "At least that's what Luna said."

"The Sailor Scouts, then. Until the real thing comes along." Lita put out her hand. Amy took it. Serena put hers on top.

"The Sailor Scouts!" they said together.






EVERYTHING took so long. Picking out the clothes was worst of all. Molly had never really tried to dress up; what she had, besides school clothes, were mostly things her mother had helped her pick out. Basic jumpers and dresses, culottes, warm sweaters and sensible shoes. She thought hard about putting on something nice tonight. She thought about finding something a little more daring...maybe doing that old school uniform trick of tucking the top of the skirt under a belt to shorten the hemline. But that wouldn't be appropriate for her mission. She wasn't trying to seduce him or something. She just wanted to tell him, finally, just how she felt.

Then she worried about the weather, and went through all her wardrobe choices yet again. After that it was bus tickets (the school pass wouldn't help; Max's was out of zone). And money. And of course an umbrella. The hint of rain turned out to be a blessing in disguise. She ended up in white slacks, a sweater with a little nice lace-work at the collar, and a long raincoat. She thought she looked very mature, like a young lady lawyer or something.

Sneaking out had become such routine she didn't even think about it. Her thoughts so filled her that she didn't realize she had gotten on the bus until she had gotten out at her stop.

The Tiki Lounge looked closed but lights were on. Molly headed for the door.






"Don't tell me you are actually serious about this!" Nephrite laughed at Zoicite. Which was maybe not the smartest thing to do right now, but she had been getting under his skin lately.

"I didn't say I was going to fight her. I said she was going to fight me, and I was going to kill her." Zoicite had recovered most of her good humor. There was still a roughness in her laugh, though, that showed just how angry the humans had made her with their pushing and insults. She couldn't deal with the idea that an "inferior" species was quite capable of calling her out. And was capable, even, of hurting her if she gave them the chance.

Nephrite was not in a mood to take humans lightly. He had learned, over the time of his deception, this "Maxfield Stanton" play-acting, just how interesting a place this Earth could be. Against their colorful fashions, their delicious foods, that fine jazz music, the Negaverse was a gray place indeed. This was a dangerous way to be thinking, however. Lesser crimes than the open admiration of a slave species had sent other generals to the Everlasting Sleep.

"The real point is to get the Rainbow Crystals," Zoicite continued. "The Queen wants them very badly. They must be powerful indeed."

They were, Nephrite thought, but not half as powerful as what they led to: the Silver Imperium Crystal itself. It was a good thing Zoicite did not know that. She was far too open already in her disdain for the Queen -- only a fool could fail to see she meant to hold the crystals and their power for herself. And Queen Beryl, Nephrite thought, was no fool.

"I bet you'll be glad to leave this dump and get set up in a proper castle," Zoicite said then. "I mean...a Tiki Lounge? Couldn't you find a ruined church or something to stay in?" Her tinkling laughter pealed out again.

Echoed by the jingle of the front door. The little fool! Nephrite thought. It was that girl, the one called Molly. The one with that charming childish crush on him. He lifted one white-gloved hand. In a motion he could hide his Negaverse military garb and be once more disguised as Maxfield Stanton. Zoicite was here, though, and plain as day in her red-trimmed gray. And Zoicite was making no move to hide.

"Well, well, well," Zoicite said archly. "What have we here? A little lost lamb?" She raised a hand herself, and her fingers began to close in a familiar gesture.

"Don't," Nephrite said impulsively. "She's not worth it," he added hastily. Too late, too late, he thought. That moment of reckless compassion will be my undoing. Why did she have to pick this moment out of all possible moments to come forward with her feelings? He could see in the girl's face the nature of her errand.

Zoicite could see it too. She uncurled slowly, savoring the moment. "You really have gone native, haven't you?" she told Nephrite. She leered, implying far more than Nephrite had ever even imagined.

It wasn't any use trying to defend himself. She'd caught him trying to protect the child. It didn't matter how little real meaning she had to him. Zoicite would carry this news to the Queen. That's how things were done in the Negaverse. Any excuse to cut down a competitor. Any hint of failure that could bring down the royal wrath.

"Oh, I've got to go," Zoicite smiled. "I so wish I could stay and chat. Enjoy yourself, lovebirds! You have all the time in the world!" And in another round of her brittle laughter she was gone.






The door was open. Of course the door was open. Everything was dark downstairs but the elevators still ran. They tromped into the steel cage and it began to lift. Amy kept up a running commentary. "The Tokyo Tower is the world's highest self-supporting iron tower," she said. "It was raised in large part to prevent Tokyo from being covered in aerials; the signals of five FM stations and nine different TV stations are broadcast from the tower; including NHK, NTV, TV Asahi and Tokyo Metropolitan TV. There are also weblink antenna, shortwave, and FM interwave antenna."

The elevator lifted, far too swiftly for any one's ease of mind. The travel way was an open girderwork and they could see night-time Tokyo through the gaps as they rose. Already, they were above the height of any of the nearer buildings. "They used only 4,000 tons of steel," Amy said. "Technology has improved since the Eiffel Tower was built. The Tokyo Tower was essentially pre-fab, large pieces brought to the site and bolted together in what was record time."

"Where does she get all this stuff?" Serena rolled her eyes.

Amy grinned. "Picked up a brochure downstairs," she said. She winked. "Got to keep up appearances!"

The elevator lifted higher and higher. Already only a couple of the tallest buildings were level with them. The rest of Tokyo was spread out below. Lita imagined she could hear the wind through the girders. No, no imagination; a gust had just rattled the car.

When the car came to a stop it startled everyone. "You sure about this?" Amy said, gesturing at Lita's empty hands.

"It's a good gamble," Lita said. "That was a good idea of yours. I like having an edge in reserve."

And the door was open.

The Main Observatory seemed very open and very bare without people. The shops were closed up, the racks of souvenirs put away to leave most of the floor clear. The slanting windows, almost floor to ceiling, dominated the octagonal room. The central core of elevators, the stairs to the restaurant, the gift shops left what was essentially a wide corridor almost ten meters across and running the circumference of the Observatory.

Zoicite laughed. She gave them time to get scared, letting her laugh show while she was still hidden. Lita stuck out her chin and did her best not to oblige.

Then the Negaverse General chose to show herself.

"How charming!" she said. "Are these cute things your seconds? Or did you bring them for back-up?"

"And how are you, Zoicite?" Lita said. "Who did you bring for back-up; Bud Light?"

Zoicite scowled. "Lets get this over with," she said. "Put that crystal of yours in the center of the floor."

"Nothing doing," Lita said. "When I beat you, I'll take my crystals off your body."

"And I'll do the same," Zoicite snarled. "It will be a pleasure!"

"Right, then," Lita said. "Let's have at it."

"Bare knuckles, human girl? You really do have more confidence than brains. I would have expected you to bring that gun of yours."

At this Amy stirred uneasily in her wheelchair. Lita just grinned. "Why?" she said. "D'ya think I'll need it?"

"Only if you wanted to be buried with it," Zoicite laughed. She made a big show out of rolling up her uniform sleeves. She blew on her knuckles.

Lita approached in a boxer's shuffle. She was wary, all senses alert. She hoped she could get near enough to land the first blow. But she couldn't help but remember Kosuke's last lesson.

"Remember the hiring scene in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai?" the wiry bodyguard had said. "Remember how the boss put a guy inside the door as a test for the prospective samurai? You don't want to be like Mifune's character -- he got hit with the club. You want to be like the guy that sensed the trap and didn't go in the room at all."

And in that one moment out of all moments Lita became that guy. She sensed something behind her and threw herself flat. Whatever it was hurtled over her head. "Amy!" she yelled. Amy triggered a control and the God Gun shot out of the back of her wheelchair on a powerful spring. The creature landed on the floor and skittered around to come back at Lita. She had only a moment to admire its unsavory combination of insect spines and yellow rat teeth before the God Gun reached her. She snagged the weapon out of the air, hit the ground in a shoulder roll, and shot the creature into small stinky pieces.

Zoicite was NOT happy. There was a long silence from her, then she started to clap slowly. "Cute trick," she told Lita. "You did a lot better than the last fellow."

Lita was back on her feet. "The last fellow," she echoed. She felt what seemed like a dash of cold water down her marrow. She had a really, really bad feeling about this.

"Why, the last fellow with some crystals to trade," Zoicite gloated. "Oh, and here he is!" She reached behind herself and shoved a folding door along its track.

Tuxedo Mask was propped up against a cabinet inside. His breathing was slow and agonized and he was covered with blood.






The wind was gusting against the windows of the Main Observatory, spattering a few drops of rain against them. The city was all but invisible, but nothing could hide their great height above ground; the building moved like a live thing, shifting and swaying slightly against the wind.

"The situation just went to hell," Lita muttered to Amy. "Get Tux clear; I'll distract Zoicite." In that moment she grew up a whole lot. She could hear it in her voice as she spoke to Amy; a tone of realization and regret as she realized just what a mess she'd made here. She'd put Amy and Serena at risk. And she might have to sacrifice herself to get them out.

Then she was running at Zoicite. She had crossed three quarters of the distance before the woman reacted. But she reacted with massive firepower. Energy streamed from the fingertips of the Negaverse General. "Zoi!" she shouted. A flicker of it caught Lita and hurled her back across the floor.

She rolled, trying to hold on to the gun. Fire slashed through where she had been. The top of the elevator shaft exploded. The whip of energy continued, slashing metal across then exploding a bank of windows outwards. The whole tower shook. Lita heard Serena screaming, saw her stumble and slide across the floor.

We gotta take this outside, she thought. Away from the bystanders. She ran for the broken-out windows. Wet wind whipped through and it was damned dark and cold outside. She jumped anyhow, reaching up for a torn cable and hoping it would take her weight. Before she her mind caught up to what her body was doing she was outside, wriggling and scrambling towards the roof of the Main Observatory.

She made it. The steel was slick under her feet, and covered with cables and brackets and gutters and who knew what else. Lita backed away from the edge, feeling her way. She was higher up than the length of the track back at Juuban Junior High. She was looking down on fifty-story buildings. She was on a tiny island of steel, floating in the sky.

Something was glowing just below the edge of the roof. Lita heard that brittle laugh, like the breaking of champagne glasses, again. General Zoicite came into view, arms crossed, hovering in the night sky and ever so deliberately coming up to meet Lita.

Lita turned and ran towards the central core of the tower. She hit an open stair and started up the metal treads, heading upwards.






"Help me, Serena!" Amy made the briefest of inspections then grabbed the fallen hero under his arms. Every medical instinct she had cried out against moving an injured man. But if they wanted to live, they couldn't be here when Zoicite returned.

"The elevators!" Serena cried. "They're gone!"

Amy thought fast. She didn't like the answer she came up with. "Up the escalator," she said. "We'll take the elevator above. It's our only option right now."

"I got his feet," Serena said. She was being remarkably calm, Amy thought. Tears stained Serena's face, but she was steady, able to help, able to work towards their survival.

They dragged the poor bleeding boy up to the escalator. The trip up was brutal on all of them. Then they bundled him and themselves into the small cage that traveled between Main Observatory and Special Observatory. It was too cramped to do much but hang on, and watch as the city dropped further and further beneath them.

At last they spilled out into the bare room lined with coin-operated telescopes. It was circular and barely eight meters across. And they were now two hundred and fifty meters above the ground. At midnight, in a damaged steel building over thirty years old, with a terribly injured young man -- while a deadly powerful alien prowled outside.






"Gotta, take a chance," Lita gasped. "Slow her down." She plunged up to a landing on the steel stairs. Swung around quickly and brought the gun up to her shoulder. The ruby needle darted out into the night sky.

Zoicite blocked it, negligently, while still floating upwards like an evil balloon. The General blocked the beam with a little wave and a burst of energy. Then, as she rose level with the climbing girl, she gathered bright energy between her hands and sent it out in a crackling ball. Okay, make that like an attack helicopter, Lita thought.

The landing twisted sideways, supporting members buckling around it with nail-dragging screeches of tortured metal. Lita fell back, smashed into the railing, then slipped through the gap between the rails. She hit, hard, on a structural member just below. Light was still flaring above her in remnant of Zoicite's attack.

"That, didn't, work," Lita gasped out. She was all tangled up in the steel webbing here. She wriggled and pushed and suddenly her legs were swinging out in space. She took a chance and let herself slip until she was holding on by one hand. One toe found something. She dropped towards it. It turned out to be a narrow pipe...her foot turned a moment later and she overbalanced. Fortunately the stair was right there. She pulled herself to it, dragged her feet up, scrambled over the rail and in another moment was back on the stair just below where she had fallen off.

Zoicite was getting real close. Lita could see a maintenance walkway just across from her and she ran as quickly as she could on the mist-slick steel to get to it. In all the darkness and confusion of complicated bits of steel she didn't see the ladder until she was right on top of it. She zipped up her jacket, stuffed the God Gun in there, and started to climb. "Next time, I bring a sling," Lita said. It wasn't very comfortable carrying the weapon like this. But it beat the heck out of trying to climb a metal ladder one-handed in the dark.

She'd messed up bad. She knew that now. Zoicite was way too powerful for her. Her confidence was gone. She knew, now, what Amy had felt on her lonely rooftop -- a crushing sense of hopelessness and failure. Zoicite was going to kill her. With her bare hands, if she could; the insults Lita had handed to her still seethed in the woman. And before Zoicite left she would kill Lita's friends as well.

And take the crystal. It was right there, in a pocket of her jacket. The crystal would give Zoicite and the Negaverse even more power. And worse. This crystal, and the rest of the seven, were their only link to the Moon Princess -- the one thin hope they had left to stop the Negaverse.






"Serena," he said weakly.

Tuxedo Mask was conscious. Amy had dressed his wounds as best as she could with improvised bandages. She continued to tend him now, wiping gently at the blood that covered him. Serena was kneeling, cradling his head on her knees. Her jacket did little to cover his broad shoulders, or the terrible wound in his chest that continued to soak the bandages in blood. It was just the three of them, in this dimly-lit shelter, this little aerie high in the cold night sky. The wind gusted against the windows, made the floor tremble, and the sky through the tall windows was black.

"I'm here," Serena said gently.

"Again," he whispered. And smiled, somehow. It lasted for only a moment before his lips clenched in pain again.

"Again?" Serena questioned. Amy looked up, briefly, then went back to her tending.

"The rose," he said. He closed his eyes. It did not seem that he would continue, but then his eyes opened again. His voice was only a whisper. "You gave me a rose."

"I'll give you all the roses you want, Tuxedo Mask." Serena's voice was shaky. "Just please get better."

"No," he said. He gave a barely perceptible shake of the head. "The mask," he said. "Take it off."

"Now?" He could just barely nod. She reached with trembling hands. The white domino mask was sticky with blood. "Darien?" she said. "Darien?"

He smiled, again. His eyes were warm. "I..." he said weakly. "I was a fool."

"No," Serena objected.

"I REMEMBER it now. The hospital. After the accident. I had just lost everyone close to me. You were there, with your mother, and a new brother. You came to me, Serena. You reached out your hand in friendship."

Serena hitched around to look him full in the face. "That long ago," she whispered.

"You gave me your love then. It has taken so very long for me to admit I loved you in return." His hand came up. Serena took it in both of hers. He gripped back with surprising strength. "I love you, Serena. Now and forever."

It was as if her heart held a flower, that lay dormant through the winter, waiting for the spring rains and the new sun. Now it burst through the earth in a sudden wave of growth, flowering into glory under the sun. Warmth suffused her, a warm trembling that was almost painful in it's glory. "I love you too," she said, and knew it to be true. "Now and forever."

It was a moment frozen in time. Their hands clasped. Eyes filled with eyes until the rest of the universe went away. There was no doubting this love, no wondering if it was only a passing infatuation or the natural sympathies of their present situation. It was real, and true. Infinite in extent. As sure as sunrise and as solid as bedrock.

At last the moment ended, and it was Darien that broke it. "I was such a fool," he said wistfully. His strength was slipping fast. He didn't have long.

"No," Serena said quickly. "Never a fool."

"We could have had our time under the sun. Instead I chased a memory. I came here, Serena. I came to fight Zoicite for the crystals."

"It was Lita's challenge," Amy spoke for the first time. "You came earlier."

"I was too driven to care about the danger," Darien said. "She attacked from behind. That creature of hers. Now she has the crystals. She has the Rainbow Crystals."

"All but one," Amy said.






The crystal was in her clenched hand. She was done. Finished. Her bull-headed confidence had led her here. Amy had tried to teach her, Serena had tried to teach her: the value of caution and planning, the value of passion and friendship. Too late. She had gone after Zoicite the way she'd go after a school bully, and it had brought her here.

To the edge of a girder that stretched out away from the face of the tower. At the end the silver cone of a microwave dish pointed towards Shinjuku. Racetracks of cables ran down the length of it. A single steel cable was all it had for a human to hold on to. She was a mere two hundred meters up; only twice as high as the highest building she could see. The streets below her were silver threads. Plenty of height, though, to shatter her body. And shatter as well the last of the Rainbow Crystals.

"Give it to me," Zoicite hissed. "Give it to me and I'll let you go."

"No," Lita said sadly. This was the only way it could end. They couldn't let the Negaverse have the Rainbow Crystals. They couldn't let the Negaverse find the Silver Imperium Crystal.

But...could anyone find it, if the crystal were destroyed? "Stay back!" Lita cautioned Zoicite as the Negaverse General tried to move closer. "Another step and I'll jump!" Wasn't the Silver Imperium Crystal, and the Moon Princess, the only thing left standing in the way of the Negaverse? Was she destroying their only hope as well?

She had fought as best as she could. Climbed until she was exhausted. Ducking and hiding in this maze of steel, ever climbing, while the Negaverse General slowly paced her. She hadn't attempted the God Gun again. Zoicite had proven too well she was able to block it. And the return fire of the dark energies she commanded was shaking the structure of the tower itself.

She had bought time. Maybe enough time for Amy and Serena to escape. She had no more strength and no more will to keep fighting. It was over. "Heck," she said softly. "It was a fun life. I liked the food."

Zoicite had gotten thoughtful. She smiled wickedly as an idea came to her, and her gloved fingers began working in some mystical gesture.

Lita let go of the cable. Clenched her hand with the last Rainbow Crystal in it tight to her chest and came up on her toes...






"No, please hang on, no!" Serena pleaded. "Please!" She gripped his hand tightly.

He found her eyes, looked puzzled for a moment. Then he smiled one last time. His eyes closed and the labored breathing stopped.

Tuxedo Mask was dead.






NEXT -- What can I say? You know there's going to be surprises, shocks, and revelations, but I'm not going to spoil it for you! The only fair thing to say is...

The stunning end to this special two-parter! Be there -- and I'll show you!

(And I promise to have it done soon!) ^_^;;




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