(For reasons that will become obvious I needed to use the Japanese forms. Anything beyond the names, though, I can guarantee I got wrong. Sorry!)

(Characters and situations depicted are the intellectual property of Takeuchi Naoko and Kenichi Sonoda and there is no intention to enfringe upon the copyrights involved. Any characters or situations I may have created myself I hereby release any and all interest in.)

One

Shin was cute. Real cute. He reminded Makoto of her first boyfriend. Actually, when she thought of it, he looked a little like that Chinese pop star Andy Lau.

She breathed in deep the smell of high-octane fuel and burnt rubber. She listened to the angry throbbing growl of engines. The track was small, dirty, in a district of Greater Tokyo a decent girl wouldn't be caught dead in, and Makoto loved it.

Shin grinned at her, his arm tightening about her shoulders. Makoto smiled back. It felt a little strange going somewhere without the Sailor Senshi. In the short weeks since they had recovered their memories and gotten back together they had almost seemed a single family. They had spent so much time in each other's company, and they had done so much together in the past, it was almost too much for her.

Makoto lived alone and had for years. This friendship with Ami, Mina, Rei and Usagi was so new to her, and so great and strange. Makoto had glimpsed through the mists of memory images of a history even longer; of a time long ago, of the Silver Imperium and the wonderful times they had spent together. She had even caught glimpses of the terrible defence of that kindgom against Beryl and Metallia.

Makoto remembered far too vividly the recent, savage, end of the millenium-long fight against Metallia. She had felt the deaths of each of her dear friends, fallen one by one in their defence of the reborn Moon Princess.

Now the Ginzuishou's magic had caused her rebirth. Now the Sailor Senshi were together once again to defend their world against a mysterious enemy. And right now, mixed feelings or no, Makoto was enjoying a chance to be away from the other senshi for a day.

There wasn't much happening at the track this day. Laps to burn-in rebuilt engines and test out new shocks. A few laps for time; these were exciting, with screeching smoking slicks as the cars struggled against inertia. One race-for-beer between a pair of beat-up looking British Sprites; a race not taken seriously by anyone including the one buying.

"I gotta drop in at the shop for a moment," Shin said after that race. The sun had dropped, leaving nothing but deep blues in the sky. The track was stark under sodium-vapor lights.

"Sure," Makoto answered the unsaid question, grinning. Shin knew quite well she'd love a look at the place. He'd been telling her all about the hot new cars they imported and the high-octane tune-ups they were doing on these expensive flashy machines.

Maybe hot was a good word, Makoto reflected in a brief sober moment. Shin was kind of a dangerous type. A type that attracted her far too easily. He'd been hinting that he ran with a Speed Tribe; those guys had as much a reputation for stealing vehicles as they did for hot-dog motorbike riding.

The shop was every bit as fancy as Shin had hinted. Chrome glinted under the bright fluorescent lighting. A shiny red GTO in the center of the floor was in the middle of detailing. A full dozen bikes stood by the roll-up door, facing out, looking almost too fat and mean to be street-legal.

And there was a young woman there under the lights; a gaijin, small, dark and pretty; and she was struggling in the grip of two of the tough-looking guys that surrounded her. About that moment Makoto heard the growing sound of police sirens.

"Shin!" their leader yelled. "There's cops all over the place! We've been set up! This here b...!" He saw Makoto.

Makoto stepped forward. "You'll let her go if you know what's good for you," she said pleasantly.

"Huh?" The gang leader did a glowering double take. "Was that supposed to be some kind of a threat?"

Makoto smiled. "Yep."

At that moment the gaijin moved. Her foot came up level with a man's head. The head came out second. When her leg came flashing down it took another man's footing away from him. That might not have been enough, but she was within arm's reach of a big red tool cart. A heavy wrench created a nice salary bonus for some dentist and a long thin screwdriver cut air like a switchblade knife.

Makoto charged. She had just a moment to realise just how happy the prospect of a good fight made her before she hit a man in the stomach with both hands and all her weight.

Someone clipped her a good one on the shoulder. Makoto returned it with interest but wasn't too surprised when this guy didn't fall down. They looked like pretty tough guys to her. So Shin hung with a Speed Tribe after all. Some of the toughs, in fact, looked old and mean enough to be full-fledged yakuza.

A blow she hadn't seen left her ears ringing. Makoto shook her head and almost regreted charging in without performing her henshin first. One of the toughs grabbed her from behind in a bear hug. She used her elbows to get free, and she ducked towards where she had last seen the young woman.

The gaijin had lost her screwdriver and picked up a bad run in her hose. As Makoto reached her side the young woman wrenched with all her weight and the heavy tool cart spun between them and the gang.

It slowed them for a moment. "..." the gaijin yelled. Makoto couldn't understand the English but she figured that one out. As one they turned and ran towards the back of the shop.

Again the gaijin reached for something Makoto hadn't noticed and a big van and the lift under it dropped quickly, blocking pursuit again. Makoto was impressed. All the time they were holding her, Makoto thought, she was planning how to escape.

They hit the door and the gaijin didn't slow down. "..." she said again. More English. "Vroom, vroom!" she said. Makoto got that.

She took a quick look around. No-one would call her the tactical genius of the Sailor Senshi but even Usagi could figure this one out. They were on rutted dirt criss-crossed by hundreds of tire tracks. All about them were tall gloomy buildings with far too few doors and no windows. Behind them a door was rattling up to release motorcycles and those motocycles would have no difficulty at all in running them down.

She had a moment of fleeting regret. It had been a good fight and she hated to drag Sailor powers into it. Her hand went into a pocket for the one thing she always carried.

She raised the transformation pen high. "Jupiter, Power, Make-up!" she cried. The Jovian lightning crashed about her. Power, and her heritage, surged into her. Her uniform formed out of electric fire and she emerged from the storm clouds revitalized, reborn.

The motorbikes were charging. Sailor Jupiter clasped her hands, pointed her fingers and called apon the elemental power that was hers. "Supreme Thunder!" The bolt from Sailor Jupiter's hands threw a bike so high it could have jumped fifteen mini-vans. The two outriders swerved, spilled, crashed. Jupiter dropped her pointed fingers and bolted for the nearest corner.

The gaijin stood and stared.

They doubled back and headed towards the track. Sailor Jupiter was still in her Senshi outfit; the gaijin kept looking at it and shaking her head. Jupiter wasn't eager to meet the police. For some reason the gaijin seemed to feel the same: they kept to the shadows.

They almost made it. But almost within sight of the circle of flashing lights that marked a couple platoons of police cars they came upon a charming vignette. A little blond girl was backed up against the low wall of the track by at least a dozen gang members.

"Not again!" Jupiter sighed, and came up from her crouch with her hands already clenched in readiness.

The gaijin pulled her back down. "Huh?" Jupiter darted her a look. The gaijin put a finger to her lips, and grinned.

The gang were almost within grabbing range of the girl when she reached up -- and unzipped her coat. There were things on loops inside. They seemed to be -- the girl pulled a pin and tossed -- grenades!

The girl vanished in a thick roil of white smoke. Gang members cursed for a moment, then plunged into the smoke with arms outstretched. In a moment they stumbled back out rubbing streaming eyes. There was tear gas in the smoke, and lots of it.

Shouts and police whistles convinced them to leave well enough alone. The gaijin pointed towards the way out, tapped her watch and said something satisfied. Jupiter guessed it was something like "We'll meet later, back at the hotel." She got up and moved into the darkness with a catlike skill.

Sailor Jupiter looked back towards where the blond bomber had made her escape. Then she followed the other gaijin into the darkness. Just who were these women?

I'm going to kill that girl, Rally Vincent thought. Mostly, though, she was pissed at herself. Take a vacation on me, Rally! Wouldn't you like to visit Japan, Rally? As long as you're there, Rally, could you drop off this letter to my old college roommate?

"She set me up," Rally muttered in a vicious undertone. "It was a courier run!" She patted the pocket where the dangerous letter sat. "What did she put on me, drugs? Cryptographic software? Atomic secrets? Damn it, Misty, I thought you weren't going to get into anything illegal anymore!"

Trouble had come almost the moment they left the plane. Rally had half-expected trouble earlier, but somehow Minnie-may had resisted the temptation to smuggle high explosives into Japan.

They passed the metal detectors, they passed customs, they got out of the airport with a scribbled map to Misty's friend and a "Japanese for Travellers" pocket guide.

The cab was too handy, and too friendly. Japan was a service-friendly country but something about that cab rang false. When Rally pushed into a different choise the first cab somehow found excuse to pull away from all potential fares and haul in a few discreet car lengths behind.

She'd been tailed by better. Far better. She was on vacation, dammit, and she didn't need this kind of shit. At a stoplight she threw the driver some value of yen she hoped was close, dragged Minnie-may out, ran into the front door of a store...

And ran into a huge crowd of shoppers. This wasn't going to work quite the way it did in Chicago. Rally pushed and shoved through a crowd that was very tight and a store that was very small. She couldn't even lose herself in the crowd; with her dark skin she stood out worse than Minnie-may.

Minnie-may was tapping a pocket. "You didn't!" Rally said. "But I thought..."

"Just had to reformulate a little to get around those sniffers. Do you know even wheat flour can make a good explosion?"

"You're not..."

Minnie-may dropped a smoke bomb on the floor. "Fire!" she said brightly. The confusion covered their exit rather nicely.

Rally sniffed at the track. It made her a little happier to be back where cars lived, and some of the cars looked pretty good. But it was tiny, like everything in Japan. And the motorcycles, complete with leather-jacketed toughs, were ludicrously small. They looked a lot less like Hells Angels than they looked like a high school scooter club. Somehow Rally guessed they wouldn't take well to the comparison; what they lacked in size of hog they seemed determined to make up for in sheer mean.

Minnie-may knew more Japanese than she did -- which was a little like saying a quarter went further than a nickel at Filene's. She asked a few questions, got a few answers, ended up pointed towards the grease pit and a young man standing near a pile of tires.

"I'll be just a moment," Rally told Minnie-may. She was quite ready to finish this errand up and get to something important, like shopping the length of Shibuya or soaking in one of the hot springs she'd read about. She had come to Japan to see something wonderful and exotic, not to stand around a grease pit with the same kind of low-lives she was used to seeing around Chicago.

The guy spoke English. Sort of. "What's up, doll-face? You Misty's pal?" He sounded like a bad parody of a Chicago gangster. He sounded like Captain Kirk trying to fit in on the planet of the mobsters.

"Yeah." What had Misty seen in him, anyway? "She sent a letter," Rally said shortly. She dug in her pocket for it and started to hand it over.

And a whole bunch of guys started yelling. Rally took one look and figured she was hearing the Japanese for "Freeze; Police!"

She dove for the tires before her forebrain caught up with her. The cops were staging a raid. She shoved the letter back in her blouse, leapt a stack of 2-plys. They had been hiding, waiting for the hand-over. She jumped to the top of a rim splitter, leapt from there to the wall of the tire pit and rolled over it. Misty had sent her on a courier run.

The cops had jumped the gun, it seemed. Not that Rally meant to hang around and talk to them -- not until she knew what kind of trouble Misty had landed her in. The bad guys were running away from the track and darting into the tangled mess of dirt alleys and warehouses that sprawled out into the landfill behind.

Rally spotted her "friend" and made an effort to keep him in sight. It wasn't hard. Tomi Motors was big and impressive and had a paved road leading to it. Looked like an import shop with attached garage to add the last few million yen of attention to a bit of expensive chrome.

This time, though, the bad tail was hers. The guy with the bad accent was just inside the door waiting for her. They dragged Rally into the center of the shop. "Youse was working with the cops."

"No way." Rally shook her head.

"You spilled the beans on us, doll!"

"I don't even know what you're doing here! What is this, a chop shop? You smuggling Ferrari's? Faking Smog Certificates?" Rally was tugging futilely at the hands that held her. Not so futilely, though; without realizing it they were dragging her backwards towards a nice big cart full of handy tools. A little more stalling, Rally figured, and she'd be in position to make something happen.

Something happened. The door opened and a couple came in.

The girl shrugged away from the guy and took a step forward and said something in Japanese. Rally read the body language incredulously. She was challenging them? The girl couldn't be more than fifteen, big as she was. She was, Rally took note, big for a Japanese girl -- tall as some of the guys, even -- and she stood like she meant business. But one girl against a dozen toughs?

The bad guys stared, too. The moment Rally felt a little slack in their grip she was in action. A couple of kicks and she had makeshift weapons in her hands. Sirens were sounding by now; with luck the cops would be swarming this building within the next few minutes. Not that Rally meant to stay that long.

The girl in the green blouse was like a whirlwind. She knocked one tough flat and gasping for breath, and had two others busy trying to lay a glove on her.

Al Capone tried to take the screwdriver from Rally and she let him have it. The tip came out the other side of his forearm. Time to get out of there, except that the girl was still fighting. Rally tried to catch her eye. The girl had the strategic finesse of a bull at a rodeo.

Finally the girl broke away and joined Rally. They cut out below one of the lifts, dropping a van down behind them to delay pursuit. When Rally hit fresh air again she had to bite back a curse. There wasn't anything to get behind or on top of out here. She remembered far too well the line of motorcycles, all neatly pointing towards the big roll-up door.

She managed to explain as much to the girl. The girl smiled in return. Amazing how quickly danger can make friends of people, Rally thought. We don't even share a language, and already we'd trust each other with our lives.

Rally skidded to a stop and turned. The girl had stopped dead and was facing the way they'd came. She can't mean to stop them herself! The girl raised her hand high and something glittered in it. Then she shouted something dramatic at the skies.

Rally rubbed her eyes. She hadn't seen a light show like that since the last 'Stones tour. The girl's body glowed as bands of lighting crackled around her. With flashes and glimmers a costume formed about her. Dust blew away in a ring leaving the girl transformed. She seemed taller, stronger, practically heroic. Without wasting a moment she brought her gloved hands together in a practised gesture.

More light show. Then lightning crackled from the girl's hands. "Japan, right," Rally said aloud. "This sort of thing happens here all the time. I suppose Astro-Boy is real, too."

The costumed girl ran back to her, gave her a smile, and kept running. What the hell, Rally shrugged. She ran after.

Two

"The tree is dying and you don't even care!" Ail accused.

"I do care!" Ann sent back. "I know as well as you do we can't live without it!" She wasn't exactly speaking. But she was thinking in words -- more and more they were using words even when they were mind to mind.

I remember when we didn't need names for things, Ann thought. It was just us and the tree, and we knew who we were. We shared thoughts without having to think about it. Now we try to speak and we share nothing but this new seperateness. She longed, with an ache deeper than the hunger the tree could no longer assuage, for something or someone to take away that seperateness she felt.

"We can only try feeding it again," Ail sent.

Ann's eyes flashed in anger; he'd been wrapped up in his worries and hadn't sensed a thing of hers. Then she relaxed, seeing his point. "We have to feed it, then. Summon us another Cardian, Ail."

This, the hunger, and the fear for the tree, they still shared. Ail smiled as he held out the cards. "Pick a Cardian, Ann."

She picked. They both looked.

"He's weird looking," Ann sent. "Look at those bloodshot eyes. And is he drooling?"

"Is that some sort of vehicle he is driving?" Ail was thoughtful. "Well. We'll have to find the right place to use this one."

The girl, Makoto, was taking her to meet some friends of hers. Rally had stopped by the hotel, left a message for Minnie-may, picked up a change of clothing and after thinking about it for a moment pulled some clean clothes out of Minnie-may's bag as well. The Japanese girl had helped. And she had known just enough to blush at some of the stuff Minnie-may had packed.

They took a bus out of the central city. Then they walked up a long flight of stone stairs. It seemed to be some sort of Buddhist temple or something.

Makoto had called ahead, on a little pink compact of a thing, and her friends were waiting for them. One girl with long black hair was dressed like something in a samurai movie, two were in street clothes, and the cute one with the short blue hair had on a sailor-suit school uniform. Which, Rally realized then, was what that strange costume of Makoto's had resembled. She wondered what the connection was, if any.

"I'm Mina." It was one of the girls in street clothes; conventionally pretty, with a pink ribbon in her hair, and she spoke with a British accent. "These are my friends Rei, Ami, and Usagi. Ami just got out of her nightly cram school."

"Rally Vincent. My partner, Minnie-may, isn't here yet."

The girl translated for her friends, then turned back. "So what was all that about?"

"I don't know but I'm going to find out," Rally promised darkly. "Is there a phone around here?"

The samurai said something sharp at that. "This is a shinto shrine, not a noodle shop," Mina translated. "Rei says you can use the phone in her room; she'll show you the way."

"Thanks." Rally couldn't resist a jibe. "So how is Godzilla feeling these days?"

"I don't understand." There was another brief round of discussion among the girls. Makoto, pressed, admitted something. The others reacted hotly. "You saw her?" Mina demanded.

"You mean, doing that 'Shazam?' I sure did. And you girls are the rest of the super-team?" There was more angry discussion at that. A lot of accusing looks were getting thrown at Makoto. "Hey, hey!" Rally said. "I guessed. Come on; she calls you up on her Bat-phone, you all show up here well past curfew, and then, well, look at you."

"What do you mean?" Mina was curious enough she forgot to be angry for a moment.

"You're not the average bunch of fifteen year old girls. You look smart and tough, you move like you know what a fight is, and I bet you'd sooner spit in some plug-ugly's eye than back down."

"We all look like that?" Mina wondered.

"Okay, maybe not the one with the funny hairstyle." The one with the funny hairstyle raised her nose from a comic book as the samurai nudged her and repeated Rally's comment. She looked upset. The samurai looked upset, though she still took a moment to stick her tongue out at her funny-haired friend.

"That wasn't apreciated," Mina said coldly. "Usa-chan is special to us. You haven't earned the right to make fun of her."

Pretty thin-skinned for heroes, Rally thought. If Makoto's plan in bringing her here was to enlist the help of her friends, it looked like it was going to be wasted effort.

okay, so there's a few pages left to go on this one. actually, the pivotal scene above needs some heavy re-writing. i'll post the complete story just as soon as i finish. i promise!


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