The fortress was a spire of black rock, looming over the stark landscape and casting long shadows when the blue and red spitfires fitfully lit the gloomy sky. The throne room was a huge cavern, vaulted roof lost in the darkness; most of the light came from the darkly glowing pool at the center.

Before the pool, on a throne of dark stone, was the coldly beautiful Queen.

"Warrior Jadeite!" Her voice was harshened by power, and by the weight of thousands of years of conquest and war. "I am angered by your repeated failures. Your weak servants prove too easily distracted, and much of the energy you promised the Negaverse has been lost!"

"My Queen!" The man bowed quickly, bending to one knee. He had a narrow, clever face and wore a military-style uniform; tunic and trousers trimmed with red, and calf-length boots.

"I should punish you now," the Queen told him, in a more thoughtful tone of voice. "But it seems we have an enemy on Earth. You may redeem yourself by destroying her."

"Of course, My Queen." Jadeite looked up, his expression guileless. If he had noticed the Queen's choice of pronoun he did not mention it. "That task is almost complete," he said instead. "I have set a trap, My Queen. And as a side benefit, the trap gathers lots of energy. Energy, you could say, by the busload."

"See to it this plan of yours works," the Queen said coldly. "I will not tolerate another failure."

"Enough of this!" said a woman with a blond ponytail and the same red-on-gray uniform. "Send me to Earth, Queen Beryl! You won't see any more of this namby-pamby pussyfooting around!"

"Send me," argued a smooth male voice. "I'll have those humans eating out of my hand."

"Enough, my Generals!" Thunder rolled from the black pool behind the Queen, but her tone was lighter than it had been, and a trace of a smile was on her lips. "Your turn will come," she said more quietly.

Her hands moved across the crystal ball before her. "The day draws closer," she said almost to herself. "The barriers weaken more with every second. Soon, the prize we have been denied for so long will be within our grasp..."

SEARCH FOR THE MOON PRINCESS

Episode Five: Highway to Hell

"INVASION?" Serena leapt to her feet. "Where! Who? What! Where?" She looked wildly about.

Amy ducked a flying pigtail. "Serena!"

"Calm down, please!" Luna said crossly. "Stop all this shouting! The Negaverse can't invade yet. Not, at least, until they have gathered enough energy to break down the inter-dimensional barriers."

Energy, Amy thought. The energy of young people. Was that what was happening at Crystal Academy? But what was their plan at Osa-P?

"Those monsters are from another dimension!?" Serena looked around as if expecting one to materialize from one of the nearby walls.

"Yes, Serena!" Luna said, exasperated. "Now please sit down!"

"O-okay," Serena said. She sat down lightly, quite ready to fly up again. Or to duck for cover under the low kotatsu table. "So they have talking cats in this Negaverse place, eh?"

Luna sighed. "I am a Guardian of the Moon Kingdom. I was born in the Silver Millennium, a time of peace and harmony. It was then that the Negaverse was first discovered. It was then that Queen Beryl's troops first attacked."

"So the Negaverse lost that time, huh?"

Serena seemed to be carrying the conversation. Amy let her; for once she was asking all the right questions.

Luna's head sagged in sorrow. "No," she said sadly. "Not in so many words."

"Huh?"

Amy echoed her friend. "Huh?" she said.

"The Negaverse was sealed away again, but at terrible cost. The Moon Kingdom was destroyed. The Silver Millennium ended. And the Royal Family..."

"HEY!" Raye shouted. She jumped to her feet. In a moment she had slipped into her sandals and was out the door.

Amy twisted to see. Through the open door she saw Raye's grandfather in conversation with a somehow official-looking man.

"Maybe we should..." Serena said, popping up from the tatami. She almost bumped heads with Amy as they both reached for their school shoes, then they were running out to the main yard of the shrine to join their friend.

"Why do you keep calling it the 'Shrine Bus?'" Raye was saying angrily. "It just stops here. It stops lots of other places, too. This doesn't have anything to do with us!"

"What happened?" Amy asked.

The middle-aged man who Raye had been yelling at put a hand to his head in embarrassment. He had close-cropped hair already going to gray and his jacket and sensible shoes looked just a little too much like a uniform.

"Kenjiro Yamamura, Detective-Inspector, Prefectural Police," he introduced himself. "You are friends of Miss Hino?" They nodded. "As Miss Hino pointed out," he offered, "this probably has nothing to do with the shrine. I was just making inquiries."

Amy knew all about polite lies and she was having none of it. "What happened?" she asked again, firmly.

Kenjiro's hand went to his head again. "The bus vanished. About an hour ago; just after the Sendai Hill stop."

Raye seemed about to flare up again. "A bus?" Amy pressed quickly.

"A bus...ah...full of passengers. Mostly visitors to the shrine."

The shock hit them all at about the same moment. "Amy, we had schoolmates on that bus!" Serena said.

Amy whirled. "Luna, what do you..." Just in time she stopped herself. Or maybe not in time. The detective was looking at her. Although he said nothing Amy sensed the mind behind the affable face was making some interesting observations.

"You go to Juuban Junior High, don't you," he said thoughtfully.

"I don't," Raye said.

"I just transferred in," Amy said quickly. She wasn't ready to share her findings with outsiders. Not again, at any rate. She could just hear the conversation; "My cram school teacher is an alien trying to take over the world. Of course I'm sure; just ask my friend's cat!"

More importantly, she didn't want to get Raye in trouble. Her mind flashed to the fabled sixth road of Sendai Hill. She wasn't sure there was a connection to this missing bus, though. And the last thing Raye needed was to have a few dozen cops descend on the shrine, tearing it up in a search for clues.

Detective Yamamura still looked thoughtful. He didn't ask any more questions, though. "I'm sure it will all turn out well," he said at last. "Your friends will be back in school tomorrow as if nothing had happened."

Amy could tell his assurances sounded false even to him.

"They say if you ride the Sendai Hill bus at exactly 6:00 you'll never return!" said the geeky guy with the thick coke-bottle glasses. "They call it a Hell Heist!"

"Oh, Melvin!" one of the girls said.

"It's true, though. I heard it myself!" another girl said excitedly.

Amy pushed passed the group, almost not noticing them in her own pre-occupation. Juuban's rumor mill was working overtime. The police had made no progress in finding the missing bus, or the missing students.

And Amy had run out of ideas. She needed to talk to Luna again and see if there might be some weakness this Negaverse had, some way they could be stopped. As it was, she didn't even know enough to make it worth taking it to the police, even that detective that had been poking around the Hikawa shrine.

Time was running out.

As soon as classes were over she joined Serena. Molly was at the hospital every day, looking after her mom, and Serena thought she could use some friends about now.

"We're here to see Molly?" Serena said to the receptionist in the crisply starched uniform.

"Miss Osaka is currently in intensive care."

"Wha...?" Serena gasped. Amy joined her at the desk.

The receptionist took in their look of shock. "You didn't know, then? Are you friends of hers from school?" They both nodded. "Tell you what. You can visit, but just for a moment. Don't touch anything. If you have some flowers you can leave them with me at the desk."

Molly was very pale and quiet and wasn't moving at all; her eyes were closed above the oxygen mask. "She collapsed on the street." The nurse put aside "Studies in Gastro-enterology" and stood to greet them.

"Is she..."

"She is very weak." The nurse hesitated a long moment, then decided to be completely frank. "We don't know what it is.

"Is she...is she gonna make it?" Serena's voice was a strangled whisper.

"She's a very strong young woman," the nurse said calmly. "Her chances are excellent."

"Amy?"

Distantly, Amy was aware of Serena tugging at her sleeve. She even found a space to be surprised at Serena's self-control. Perhaps Serena only did the cry-baby act over little things. When it was important enough, she didn't waste time in hysterics.

"Amy?" Serena said again, worried.

"It stops now," Amy said simply. And she walked from the room.

Serena had never seen her friend like this. Someone who didn't know Amy well might think she was just sort of thinking. But she was angry, really angry. There was ice in her eyes.

Serena turned around. "Oh, Molly," She told their friend. "Please, please get better." Then she twisted about again. The door was already closing behind Amy. She was so frightened for her friend. Amy was so angry, Serena didn't know what she might do. "Hey!" Serena said. "Hey, wait for me!"

"We have always been supporters of this shrine," the middle-aged woman was saying.

Raye merely nodded, politely but definitely, wishing the woman would get to the point.

The woman finally made up her mind to speak. "We want you to find our Mimi," she said in a rush.

"Huh?" Raye blinked. "You mean she ran...she wasn't on that bus, was she?"

"We want you to find her," the woman said again, underlining it. When Raye still didn't respond she spelled it out. "With your visions."

"My visions?" Raye had found things before for members of the shrine. Lost keys, lost plane tickets, once even a long-lost brother. But it wasn't... "It isn't like that," she said. "My visions don't just come like turning on a tap. You'd be better off going to the police."

"Our family has been coming to this shrine for generations," the woman said. It came across as oddly threatening, and Raye bristled.

"Go to the police," Raye said again. "I can't help you."

"Our son has always carried the mikoshi, and just last winter I brought a full cord of wood for your fires!" The woman was warming up. "You could help, but you won't!" Her voice rose higher. "I wouldn't be surprised if your family had something to do with it themselves!"

"Get out!" Raye screamed. "Go away and leave us alone!"

She turned, red-faced and trembling with anger, and ran with unsteady feet out of the courtyard. Into the main building she plunged, heading blindly for the center of the shrine, and she flung herself down before the flame.

No comfort was for her there. Into her sight came images of the laughing little girl that visited each Tuesday. She'd always have a handful of jellybeans she'd bought just down the road, and she'd offer one to Raye and then to her two ravens. Raye could even see the expression in Deimos' eyes as the bird gravely took a jellybean from the girl's very hand before flapping away to eat in dignified peace.

Ravens were not the only creatures Mimi charmed. Raye had always saved a smile for the girl, on even the most harried and hectic festival day. It wasn't right that something terrible could happen to a child with such a lovely soul.

Raye stared blankly into the flame, thinking of her new friends and the strange talking cat they brought with them. This Negaverse, whatever it was, was an evil more pure and terrible than anything she could have imagined.

Within the flames, Amy smiled at her then turned to the bus that had just arrived. A distant clock struck six times. The doors of the bus opened to darkness and a pair of malevolent yellow eyes.

"No!" Raye leapt up from the fire. "My friends are in trouble!" The vision had been startlingly clear.

In that moment the path before her became clear. Was she just a schoolgirl, a girl who happened to live at a shrine with her grandfather? Then she should turn away and go back to sweeping up and doing homework.

But if she was truly a Miko, a Shinto Priestess, then these visions were her heritage and her charge. She needed to accept these visions, as frightening as they might be. And she needed to accept their guidance and act upon them.

Raye hurried from the room. It was almost six and she had a bus to catch.

Serena had trouble keeping up with Amy. She was afraid for her friend; afraid Amy would let her anger blind her, and get in serious trouble. They rode the bus in silence out to Sendai Hill and got out where the five roads met.

Serena was up halfway to the stairs when she realized Amy wasn't with her. "Huh?" She turned herself around. Another bus was just pulling in, and Amy had her transit pass out.

"But we just got here..." Serena was explaining as she trotted back to Amy. She darted a look at her watch. "It's only six and we don't have to be home until..."

It took a while for the connection to circle through her head. "A Hell Heist!" she yelled as she got it. "Amy!"

Her friend was gone. Amy had already gotten on the bus.

"I, uh..." Serena said. Someone brushed past her and spun her around again. "Raye?"

"Oh, concentrate, you dweeb! Did Amy get on that bus or not?"

"Yeah, but..!"

Raye was through the doors without a look back.

"Oh!" Serena gnawed on a knuckle. "They both got on!" she said. She took a few steps closer. The paper-faced driver turned slowly and favored her with a mean-looking smile. "Urgh!" Serena said.

She craned her neck, trying to see into the bus and find the two friends she had in there. Enough, she thought. Less thinking and more action! Her feet were already moving. Well before she had a chance to think better of it her feet had carried her into the ordinary-looking yellow bus.

She was in danger!

Tuxedo Mask broke into a run. He crossed the main yard of the Hikawa shrine in a moment. He took the flight of stone stairs in a single long leap, cape fluttering behind him.

A yellow bus had left the stop and was just down the street, moving fast. The air was flickering with green and violet energies ahead of it. Tuxedo Mask ran faster.

A black disk formed in the flickering and crackling. As he watched in horror the moving bus touched the disk. The parts that touched vanished as if passing into infinitely dark shadow.

The entire bus was being sucked out of this dimension, sent hurtling off to somewhere else!



Serena screamed. Raye grabbed her hand and she squeezed back hard. The bus driver turned towards the frightened girls, eyes red and gleaming in her pale face. "Passengers will please be seated. Thank you for riding with Negaverse Transit. Next stop...HELL!"

The Stunning Conclusion to This Two-Parter
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