"I saw it vanish!" the plain-clothes man said, his voice high. "Right in front of me! I was going to ride it, like you said, keep an eye out for anything unusual. Noguchi had just dropped me off when I saw this strange light down the street. I watched it, sir! I watched it get sucked off into space!"
This whole thing was getting out of control. "Silence!" Kenjiro Yamamura shouted.
The police station took on a shocked hush.
"Department 6." Yamamura took out his card, the card he was told to use only in an emergency. "I want an APB put out immediately. I want every car, every foot patrolman you have available blocking off this area, on all five roads down from Sendai Hill. And I need that office, there, to make some secure phone calls."
He was very surprised to find they did exactly as he said.
SEARCH FOR THE MOON PRINCESS
Episode Six: Jadeite is Quenched
The sky was a dark, troubled blue. It was the sky as seen from a spy plane five miles up. The air was thin and cold and it blew pitilessly across the barren ground.
The horizon itself was far too near, adding to the sense of a place very barren, very empty, and very isolated. The landscape was an alien mix of odd-shaped rocks, deep craters, and a powdery reddish ground.
A wide shallow crater had a broken ring-wall like a ring of rotten teeth. The crater floor was rough, blasted by the elements and by more of the impacts that had formed the crater. Jammed sideways, at the ends of long skid-marks like fresh wounds in the reddish dust, were two chubby yellow buses.
The bus had hit hard. Serena opened her eyes to darkness. She was on the floor, the floor was tilted sideways, and her nose hurt. After rubbing it for a while she decided it wasn't broken. She'd landed face-first on something that felt like gravel. She felt around in the darkness. It was a pizza. Someone's dinner, probably, frozen solid and hard as a rock.
She groaned softly and staggered upright. Then almost fell against one of the windows -- the bus was sitting a little sideways. Outside it was really weird. All dark and blue-lit and full of nothing but rocks and craters like Mars or something. The sky was dark like it was evening outside but there was no moon. There were no stars, either, but for some reason it really bothered her that there was no moon.
Serena backed away from the window. Her hand landed on something soft. A girl, wearing the same uniform she was. "Michelle?" Serena whispered. The girl was slumped bonelessly in the seat. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim blue lighting she could see the bus was full of passengers, mostly young, all collapsed where they had been sitting and all quite motionless.
"Are they...are they all dead?" Serena tried to cram her knuckles in her mouth.
"Serena!" It was Raye that whispered, intensely. "They're just sleeping! Something drained all of their energy." The other girl crept silently from the front of the bus and back to her.
"Oh, Raye!" Serena grabbed her and held on tight. "Is Amy all right, too?"
"She took Luna and went outside to try to figure out where we are." There was a tremor in Raye's voice; she wasn't taking it much better than Serena was. "You were out for a while, Serena."
"Oh, Raye! I'm glad you're here! No, I don't mean I'm glad you're in trouble too! I just meant I'm glad we have you along."
"What are you talking about, Serena?"
Raye was trying to sound snide, but it hadn't worked. There really was a question in her voice. What they had been through had at least temporarily lowered the girl's barriers. Serena was surprised to see that under the poise and the fiery temper was someone a bit scared, a bit uncertain, and not a little bit lonely.
"Hey, uh, Raye?" Serena said. "You want to be friends?"
"With me?" There was more than a bit of bitterness in her reply.
"Huh?" Serena hunched over until she could see the other girl's face. "What do you mean?"
"I'm the Hino girl," Raye said. "Living up in that creepy shrine with her strange grandfather. Doing all sorts of funny rituals and stuff."
"I think you're great," Serena said stoutly. "You're a for-real shrine priestess -- I'll bet you know all kinds of stuff! And the way your grandfather is, I bet you run the place yourself! And then, you are so beautiful. The way you look, the way you move, you're like a princess!"
"Serena!" Raye protested. Her cheeks went pink.
"Friends?" Serena stuck out her hand.
Raye hesitated. Then she took it firmly. "Friends," she said. In her eyes was still wonderment; that someone believed in her. And that she need never again be lonely.
"Amy!" Luna chided, bouncing over rocks and trying to keep up with the girl. "Please be careful!"
They made an odd picture; a girl in sailor-suit school costume and a small black cat hiking across a foreboding extra-terrestrial landscape. "I'm pretty sure I know where we are," Amy told the cat. "And it isn't good."
"Of course it isn't good! The Negaverse sent us here, and the Negaverse is pure evil. We're too exposed out here, Amy! Ooh! Talking to you is just like talking to Serena!"
"Just a little further. I have a little theory I'd like to test."
"We should go back to the buses. Oh. There they are. How did they get in front of us?"
"We just walked around the world," Amy said grimly. "This place is even smaller than it looks."
"Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide!" Hovering in mid-air not ten feet away was a young man with very old eyes. He had a narrow, clever face below blond hair and his uniform tunic was trimmed in red. He laughed. "Figured out what this is, yet, human girl?"
"A pocket universe," Amy said slowly. "You space-warped those two buses into a pocket universe."
The Negaverse general touched down lightly, on a large boulder that allowed him to loom over Amy. "You are all alone here, human girl. No where to run to. No one to aid you."
His every word sent a chill through Amy. But that didn't stop her mind from working. He's trying to frighten me, she thought. Why? He already has me in his power. Is it just he is a natural bully? Her eyes narrowed. Or perhaps there is something else...
"I stopped that monster of yours, at Crystal Academy," she told the alien.
She was pleased by the reaction she got. He didn't move from his perch, but there was a tensing of his muscles as if he would draw back. "I am General Jadeite, in the service of Beryl, Queen of the Negaverse," he said. "And you are?"
"On Earth, they know me as Amy Mizuno." Amy took the bluff and ran with it. With any luck she'd learn something about them by probing their fears. With even more luck she'd live to tell someone else.
"Amy?" Luna was staring at her. Apparently Moon Kingdom Guardians were bred for literal-mindedness.
Jadeite stared at her for a long moment, open fear in his eyes. Then he started to laugh. He laughed long and hard while Amy stood there, cheeks red, clenching her fists helplessly.
"Very good," Jadeite said at last. "Very, very good." His smile dropped. "But not very convincing. Let me explain to you the seriousness of your situation."
Lightning gathered from his hands then shot out in a jagged bolt. The impact slammed her off her feet, smashing her backwards against a boulder as sparks cascaded around her.
"Where's our friend!" Raye demanded of the pale-faced bus driver.
"Watch out, Raye; she looks mean!"
In answer the black-haired Shinto priestess brought her hands in front in a karate stance. "I'm ready for her! Now tell us what happened to Amy if you know what's good for you!"
The bus driver chuckled evilly. "Better worry about yourselves, children." And she started to grow.
"I have a baaad feeling about this," Serena muttered. She backed up towards the bus they had just exited.
Raye took a cautious step back as well. The bus driver was taller now, gaunt enough to be skeletal, with red eyes gleaming in a paper-white face. On her head sat a little blue pillbox hat, and in her hand was an old-style ticket punch. A ticket punch about eight feet in length!
"Last stop, girls!" the thing said. Paradoxically, it spoke in the high girlish "Nightingale" tones of pre-recorded announcements and public service messages. "I'm going to punch your tickets!"
"Eeee!" Serena said. She stumbled sideways just as the ticket punch slammed into the ground where she'd been. It left two neat circular holes in a big rock.
Raye kicked the monster in the back. It turned from Serena and whirled on the black-haired girl instead. Raye managed to block, but the force of the thing's blow threw her across the rough ground. She groaned, pulled herself up to face the next attack.
"Oh, no!" Serena cried. She picked up a rock and threw it. "Stop picking on Raye, you meany!" The rock missed. But the monster turned its weapon in mid-air -- just before it would have canceled Raye.
"Good!" Serena said. The monster continued its turn and headed towards her, ticket punch raised high. "I think that's good." At that moment she realized there was something in her other hand, something she must have dragged off the bus with her...
"I'd love to take longer at this," Jadeite said. "But you humans are just too fragile. You just don't last." He frowned distantly in effort as he sent another lightning bolt crashing around the fallen girl. Amy cried out as the energy cascaded about her. Her back arched in pain.
Luna crouched, looking for an opening. Defeat was in every line of her body. She had failed utterly. The Negaverse was winning free. The Princess was nowhere to be found. And the human children she had gotten involved were being killed before her very eyes.
From the direction of the buses came a long wail of a scream. Serena.
And Amy's eyes opened again. Her fingers clenched, and she pressed against the ground, pushing herself up to face the Negaverse General squarely. A new determination shone from her eyes. And light shone, too, from a curious symbol. A symbol that had formed on the girl's forehead, right above her determined eyes.
"It..it can't be! After all this time!" Luna was staring at the glowing symbol. Maybe, maybe they had a chance after all! If she acted now, and her if her timing was perfect...
The cat leapt into the air. "KITTY MAGIC!" she cried, turning a neat backflip. The air sparkled with power and a small golden pen formed in mid-air then fell to the ground.
"Huh?" Jadeite half-turned towards the light. "What was that?" His attention was off Amy for a moment.
She pushed up and her legs whipped around. With every ounce of strength in her body she kicked out -- and caught the Negaverse General behind the knees. He staggered, almost falling.
"Ahh!" He snarled. "You'll pay for that!"
At that moment Luna hit him. "Use the pen, Amy!" She clawed at Jadeite's face like a small four-footed cyclone. "Use it now!"
The Negaverse General got a good grip at last and hurled Luna off. The cat struck a rock a good thirty feet away and slid, limply, to the ground.
But Amy now had the golden pen in her hands.
Serena was backed up against the bus. "I don't like this ride!" She trembled.
"I'm sorry, your transfer is no longer valid. Please do not insert items other than tokens in the turnstiles." The thing that had been the bus driver mocked her in its treacle-ly sweet voice. It raised the huge ticket punch high. Began the sweeping downward arc that would end when there were two Serenas.
And lost its weapon to a bright red rose. "I say these girls ride free!" Tuxedo Mask cried from where he stood on top of the bus.
"Ooh!" Serena cried in adoration.
He leapt down from his perch, cape fluttering behind him. He looked awful. He looked like he had caught hold of a bumper and been dragged two hundred yards across rocky ground, been thrown into a boulder and only recently regained consciousness. He felt like it, too.
"Stand clear of the doors!" the monster said sweetly. Whatever it did, it was too fast for the young man to see, or to block. He hit hard and skidded across the hard ground, landing not far from Raye. "And as for you..." the monster said, turning back towards Serena.
It didn't quite complete the turn.
Serena had screamed when Tuxedo Mask was hit. He was going to get killed, trying to save her, she realized. So were Raye, and Amy. Then these monsters would be on Earth. To threaten Andrew, and Melvin, and Miss Haruna, and even Sammy. To hurt them like they hurt Molly.
Something changed in the girl's eyes. Her hand clenched. The hand that held the large frozen pizza she had for some reason carried off the bus. Serena slowly raised the disk of rock-hard dough. And then she threw!
The pizza actually whirred as it sped through the air. The monster turned just in time, and just far enough, to take it square in the face. The impact knocked off the little blue cap and sent the monster reeling backwards.
Tuxedo Mask came up on one arm and a rose flashed in his hand. He had time, now, to aim. The rose sped straight and true -- into the thing's heart.
"We won?" Serena gasped. "I don't believe it!" Then she was scampering towards Raye. "We did it, we did it, we won, we won!" she cried.
"You idiot!" Raye yelled at her. She rolled over, groaned, struggled back to her feet. "What about Amy!"
Amy stared at the golden pen in her hands. Luna was lying still, unconscious or badly injured. "Mercury!" She identified the symbol that topped it. "But the element, or the planet? And Luna gave it to me; why? So I would have the power to defeat Jadeite?" She bit her lip, trying to reason it out. "Power. Mercury. Power..."
There was a tingle from the golden pen. "Mercury Power?" Amy ventured. The tingling returned, stronger. She glanced up; Jadeite was heading her way. She had no more time, and logic wasn't working. She had only time to try instinct.
Amy raised the pen high. Doing so felt completely natural, as if she had been doing it all her life. And that scared her, scared her almost as much as the power she could feel waiting to be unleashed.
He was almost upon her. Amy gripped the pen tighter and cried out the command. "MERCURY...POWER!"
The symbol flared with light and began to spin. The pen seemed to shiver with energy in her hand. Then power swept out of it in a wave of azure. Liquid light washed across her body, washing her down to the skin. Amy turned slowly, floating in the rippling blue, as the light streamed into her very soul, washing her, purifying her.
Then the power was streaming into her body. Power, and memory, and the realization that all she had ever known was only a part of what she truly was.
Ribbons of blue water bordered with liquid light wrapped about her torso, her arms, her legs. Like crystals forming in solution a uniform of pure white and brilliant azure and bright baby blue was being formed about her. Then a ripple came like a droplet shaking space-time itself, causing the uniform to suddenly sharpen into reality.
Amy's eyes opened. She could not help the quiet smile that formed as her body awakened in new strength. And the liquid power was still flowing through her, no, was within her; a part of her to focus and use.
She stood, transformed, and faced Jadeite in calm challenge.
"A Sailor Scout!" He stopped dead. "You're all supposed to be dead!" Then he shook his head, getting control of himself, and glared at Amy. "Well, time to die again, little Princess...!"
"Not this time, you big bully!" Amy turned in place, gracefully but purposefully, gathering up the power that was hers within her arms. She raised both hands, now covered in elbow-length gloves, to her face.
"MERCURY...BUBBLES...BLAST!" she cried, shooting her hands down and back and sending the liquid energy towards the Negaverse General.
Water streamed out and instantly became cloud, became fog. Heavy fog wafted wetly into Jadeite's face with enough force to stagger him. Then the fog was all about him, clouding his sight, muffling sounds, even washing scent out of the air.
"Did I do that?" Amy said wonderingly. She could hear the Negaverse General blundering about in the fog.
"Amy!" Serena was calling for her, running in her direction. "Are you all right?" Tuxedo Mask was limping right behind her.
There was a scuffle, then a sharp cry, within the fog. "Dammit!" They heard Raye's voice. "You made me break a promise to Grandfather."
The fog slowly cleared around two figures. The black-haired Shinto Priestess was standing behind the Negaverse General. Her fingers were clenched in a strange spear-like grip.
Jadeite clutched at his chest. His eyes went wide in shock. "What...what did you do to me!"
"I stopped your veins." Raye said smugly. "In two minutes your blood will begin running backwards and then you'll be dead."
"A fitting end for a villainous coward," Tuxedo Mask said softly.
"Eww!" Serena commented.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Raye," Amy commiserated. "I know you promised your Grandfather you'd never use the Hino Death-touch on a living being."
Raye's eyebrow went up and she mouthed the words "Hino Death-touch?" back at Amy. Amy shrugged her shoulders in return.
Jadeite hadn't noticed. "I can't...can't die here!" He gasped. "I've learned too much! I know why our Queen has been acting so mysteriously. Zoicite, come work with me!" he called out. "The power of the Imperium Silver Crystal can be ours!"
Light and shadow formed about his body. He gasped, holding his chest with one hand while the other made the mystic gestures needed. An oval of black spread and grew until it swallowed him.
"Serena, guys!" Amy cried. "That's our way home! Come on!"
"What about all those people on the buses?" Serena cried. "How will we get them out of here?"
"Let me." Tuxedo Mask was already in motion. "I drove a bus in my summer job."
"Tuxedo Mask had a summer job?" Amy wondered to herself. Then she got it. "This isn't all he is. He has another life. He might even be someone we know!"
"Hino Death-touch!" Raye muttered as they ran for the busses.
"Yeah, Raye, I didn't know you could do that!" Serena said. "Do you think he's dead yet?"
"No..." And Raye smiled. "I used accupressure on him. Hit him right where it would give him a nasty case of heartburn..."
Detective Yamamura was standing at the police barricade. The parked patrol cars idled softly, flashers sending flickering red light into the quiet dark of the street.
Then an ozone-flavored wind picked up loose papers and whipped his trousers about his legs. In the sky a deeper patch of blackness formed, shot through with violet lightning.
Suddenly two yellow buses were there in the street, the first one towing the other. A girl in a costume that matched her hair stood on top of the first bus, skirt and sailor collar fluttering in the ionized wind. The driver, Yamamura saw, wore a white mask and a tall silk hat.
Yamamura quickly waved the other cops back, and stepped forward alone to meet the buses. He pulled his handkerchief, wiped his brow, quickly stuffed the handkerchief back in a pocket.
He was really, really starting to miss foot patrol.
All together now..."MOON...PIZZA....POWER!"
Next:
The Negaverse retreats to regroup, but Serena and her friends have bigger problems to worry about. Problems like bad nicknames, shrine guests who won't leave, and guys that look just like old boyfriends. Be there for...Boy Trouble!