I was going to finish and post chapter 5 of my BGC 2040 fic "Seven Days" as 
well, but I'm leaving town for an overnighter and I need to get some sleep.

C&C, both public and Private is welcome. I respond (eventually) to all C&C

Flames shall be used as target practice.

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is the creation of Naoko Takeuchi and all such rights 
belong to her. No money is being made from this and no such intent should be 
infferred.

****
"It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars." 
- Garrison Keillor in Salon.com

**************
Amy Lynn was not the sort to make mistakes. She carefully analyzed each 
decision she made with the utmost logic and care. Invariably they turned out 
to be correct.

"You're a pervert!"

"I didn't decide to be gay!"

"You married me, for God's sake! You obviously like women, so how the hell 
can you stand there and tell me you didn't decide to be gay?!"

In her room, sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to her chest, door open 
slightly as she listened to her parents scream at each other, Amy Lynn 
privately admitted to herself that taking her father up on his offer might 
have been a mistake.

"This isn't about me, Janice! This is about Amy Lynn! She needs both her 
parents. Whatever else I may do, she's still my daughter and I want to be 
part of her life!"

"She's my daughter, Michael! You gave up all those rights ten years ago!"

"Not the right to be part of her life! I didn't fight you on custody not 
because I didn't care, but because you're a hell of a lot better at being a 
parent then I am. I don't know the first thing about raising kids! But I 
didn't give up on the right to be a father! You sent back every letter, card, 
birthday and Christmas gift I ever mailed to her. You shut me out of her 
life, Janice. You!'

"She's not becoming a degenerate pig like you! I refuse to let her be swept 
into your disgusting little world!"

"I'm not trying to sweep her into anything! I just want to be part of her 
life! I want to be her father!"

"Her father?!!" Her mother's scream rose to a high pitch and with two 
fingers, Amy Lynn shut her door, unable to listen anymore. Crawling over to 
her bed, she climbed in, curled up in a ball and cried for quite some time, 
before eventually falling into a dreamless sleep. 

**************
Sighing to himself, Malachite entered the small cabin on the plantation 
grounds that he shared with, Zoicite, his clothes fading away to be replaced 
with his general's uniform as he dismissed the illusions that allowed him to 
walk amongst humans.

He sighed again. It had been too long since he had... he pushed the 
conclusion of his meeting with Janice out of his mind. She had agreed to let 
him spend time with Amy Lynn, that was the important thing, what they had 
done before that was irrelevant.

Moving into the bedroom, he began to remove his cape, giving only a brief 
glance to Zoicite, who lay on the bed, naked. "Hello, Love," Malachite said 
absently, hanging his cape up.

Zoicite said nothing. Turning to look at the bed, Malachite realized his 
lover was staring at him with a strange look on his face.

"Jeddite told me about your meeting," the younger man said. "A family?" The 
younger man slid off the bed and came over to Malachite. "You never told me 
about a family."

"A remnant of my human life," Malachite said, undoing the collar of his 
jacket. "Nothing to worry about."

"Good, good," Zoicite said, leaning against him. "I'll talk to Jeddite and 
the next youma will be sure to pay them a special visit. They'll be dead 
in--URK!"

With a speed fueled by a cold anger that, in retrospect would terrify him 
with its intensity, Malachite's hand shot out and grabbed the younger man's 
neck. Real fear filled Zoicite's eyes as he grabbed Malachite's wrist, trying 
to release the pressure on his windpipe. "Not a finger will be laid on them," 
the white-haired general said very softly. "Remnant or not, my blood flows in 
the child's veins." Dark Energy flowed from Malachite's fingertips, energy 
that could turn Zoicite's head into a pulp and was restrained only by 
Malachite's will. "Listen to me, Zoicite, until I determine the child's 
powers, if any, she and her mother will remain alive and unharmed." Malachite 
tightened his grip. "Understand me?"

"Y-yes!" Zoicite gasped out.

"Good." Malachite released him and continued undressing. "Now let's get to 
bed, shall we?"

**************
The next night, an hour or so after her mother had gone to bed, Amy Lynn sat 
at her desk constructing a subspace transciever out of a an old ham radio, 
some short wave receivers, and a CB set she had found in the clinic's garage. 
The one TV station she could get in Juuban Hollow  had run a Next Generation 
Marathon the other night and the show's repeated use of subspace had piqued 
her interest.  Then her mother had made lasanga last night, which when 
smeared liberally on antennas tended to boost both their reciving and 
transmitting ability. Once it had congealed, that is. 

It was then that she took notice a rattling sound against her window. 
Curious, she set down the improvised soldering iron and went to see what was 
making the noise.

Standing on the ground was Bunny, Luna by her side. "I'm gonna go possum 
Huntin," the blonde called. "Wanna come? Molly said her mother needs her ta 
unpack a delivery."

"Okay," Amy Lynn replied and ducked back into her room.

A few minutes later, she left the house and crept down the stairs wearing the 
work shirt, jeans, and boots Bunny had loaned her for the farming assignment. 

Stealthily, the two made their way to the road where Bunny's truck was parked 
and climbed in. For once, Bunny did not drive in her usual fashion...not 
until they had left town, anyway.

At least she turned on the headlights.

**************
At the very edge of the woods, Bunny parked the truck and grinned at Amy 
Lynn, who seemed a bit pale, but otherwise okay.

"How do you hunt opossums?" Amy Lynn asked trying not to think of what she 
had just been through.

Bunny Lynn grinned and reached behind the seat. "With this." She drew out a 
rifle. Amy Lynn knew a bit about guns, but had never actually held one b
efore. The rifle was old, but well taken care of. Reaching back behind the 
seat, Bunny removed a roll of duct tape, a backpack, a pair of flashlights, a 
box of bullets, and two pistols, which she loaded with bullets she took out 
of her shirt pocket. She tucked one into the waistband of her shorts and the 
other one she handed to Amy Lynn. Then she turned on one of the flashlights 
and taped it to the rifle. "C'mon."

Copying Bunny, Amy Lynn tucked the pistol into her jeans and grabbed the 
flashlight. With Luna in the lead, the two girls set off into the woods.

**************
Amy Lynn was no stranger to the wilderness. You couldn't grow up in Minnesota 
and not be familiar with it, but this was different for some reason. Maybe it 
was the lack of a campfire and conversation, or maybe it was the just she was 
in a different place. She had heard stories on the net about strange things 
you'd find if you went far enough into the American South. Old Native 
American relics, cursed places, witches, and places where slaves had died in 
the most brutal fashion possible and their ghosts still lurked, waiting for 
anyone foolish enough to trespass into their grief.

Then of course, there were the modern bogeymen. Space aliens, crazy old men 
and secret societies. Of them all, Amy Lynn was worried only about the 
hermits who might be out in the woods and the pistol in her jeans lessened 
that worry considerably.

Amy Lynn had once met an old woman who sold dream catchers up by Lake 
Tskykeputchy in Minnesota. The woman had been normal in every respect except 
that she was convinced that the rocks in a small pond several miles into the 
woods had teeth and that their bite changed you into a half plant, half 
animal creature not unlike a demented squirrel. She claimed when she was a 
little girl, she had watched her entire class change and then run off into 
the woods. That encounter had sparked a brief interest in American myths. In 
the space of a week, Amy Lynn devoured every book on it in both the Saint 
Paul and Minneapolis public Library system.

"There's not much you c'n do wit possums, 'course," Bunny said, breaking into 
Amy Lynn's thoughts. "Ma has a recipe for possum stew, but without a decent 
tater ta toss in there, it don't taste vera good. Gotta admit though, ain't 
nuthin better then some warm possum gloves when it gets cold."

"I've never used a gun before," Amy Lynn said.

"Guns is easy," Bunny said, pulling her own pistol. "See this?" She indicated 
the barrel of the pistol with the barrel of her rifle. "Point this at whatcha 
wanna shoot, and then pull this thingy here." She curled her finger around 
the trigger. "Nuthin simpler." She shoved the pistol back into her shorts.

At that moment, Luna stiffened and then growled, staring off into the woods. 
"A oppossum?" Amy Lynn said, reaching for her pistol.

"Ain't sure," Bunny said, an odd note in her voice as she switched off the 
flashlight taped to the rifle. "You stay here. C'mon Luna." With that, she 
and Luna disappeared into the trees.

Several minutes passed, then from the direction Bunny had gone, Amy Lynn 
heard a blood-chilling roar.

Without a second thought, she gripped her pistol and ran in the direction 
Bunny had gone.

**************
She had only gone perhaps a few hundred feet when she came upon a clearing 
which held a large pond at its center. In it, a woman dressed in clothes that 
seem to made from moonlight battled a monster out of nightmares. It was at 
least eight feet tall, with a birdlike beak and three eyes in a triangle. 
It's skin was green and knobby, and claws sprouted from it's four-fingered 
hands. It's hair was long and green and ram's horns sprouted from the side of 
its head.

The woman was dressed in a one piece white gown that came to her knees with a 
belt made out of silver mesh around her waist. A tiara encircled her forehead 
and her hair came down past her shoulders, which were protected by golden 
plates. Her calves were covered by golden yellow shin gaurds and she wore 
heavy boots. Golden bands encircled her wrists and she carried a sword in 
each hand, the one in her left longer and heavier then the one in her right. 
Behind the monster, a great black wolf circled, lunging in to try and sink 
its teeth into the monster's hamstring.

With a backhand swipe, the monster slammed the woman against a tree and then 
moved in for what had to be a kill.

With a boldness that surprised her, Amy Lynn stepped out of the trees and 
aimed the pistol at the monster. She pulled the trigger several times, each 
one causing the monster to stagger. Then, suddenly, instead of the sound of 
gunfire, she heard only a faint clicking.

Uh-Oh.

Amy Lynn turned and ran back into the trees, only to be sent flying as the 
ground exploded underneath her. Grunting, she hit the dirt path, bouncing and 
rolling for several more feet before carefully picking herself up as behind 
her, she heard another roar.

"Amy Lynn!" An woman's voice said. Amy Lynn looked around. There was no one 
around. "Amy Lynn!" came the woman's voice again. "Over here." Looking in the 
direction of the voice, she found herself face to face with the great black 
wolf she had seen moments earlier. A crescent moon flared brightly on it's 
forehead and it was though a veil had been lifted from Amy Lynn's eyes. The 
wolf became Luna and with a horrified start, she realized the woman in white 
back in the clearing had been Bunny.

"L-Luna? What's-"

"There's no time!" Luna snapped. "You have to help the Moon Priestess."

"Help? How?" Amy Lynn asked, faintly aware that she was having a conversation 
with a dog and therefore, must be losing her mind.

Using her snout, Luna rolled something across the dirt to her. "With this."

"What is it?" Amy Lynn asked, her fingertips tingling slightly as she picked 
it up. It was colored ice blue, about the size of a writing pen, slightly 
thicker, and toped with a loop of gold. Inside the loop was a thin slab of 
crystal.

"Never mind that!" Luna half-shouted. "Hold it up and say, 'Mercury, Grant Me 
Strength'

Amy Lynn did as she was told. "Mercury, Grant Me Strength!" Cold, wonderful 
cold rushed into her and she felt her clothes vanishing and more cold sliding 
over her limbs and body like velvet. When it cleared, she was wearing a 
sleeveless, legless bodysuit. Blue boots covered her feet and white gloves 
covered her forearms. The exposed part of her arms and legs was covered with 
a light blue fabric that she instinctively knew was light as air and harder 
then any metal. A tiara encircled her forehead and from it hung a tinted blue 
visor. A continuous stream of data ran up the right side and in her hand, she 
held a sword.

She looked back at the clearing, her feet twitched and then she was back at 
the clearing's edge, the wind of her movement fading. The Monster had Bunny 
pressed up against a tree with one hand and had the other hand raised to 
administer the killing blow. It regarded her for a moment, and then looked 
back at Bunny.

Raising her hand, Amy Lynn fired four ice spikes, one from each fingertip, 
which flew across the clearing and sank into the creature's hide. Roaring, it 
tossed Bunny aside like a rag doll and lunged for her, only to smash into a 
tree as its target darted aside. Like a whip, her sword flicked out, leaving 
a gouge as large as a man's arm in the beast's side. She raised the sword 
high to bring it down on its neck, when it's arm moved, striking her hard and 
sending her to crash down next to Bunny.

"Who?" Bunny asked, trying to stand.

"Never mind that!" Amy Lynn said as the monster leapt high into the air. 
"Roll!"

They rolled in opposite directions, the monster landing where they had been, 
dirt flying as its impact left behind a crater. Rising from its crouch, it 
began to move towards her slowly, it's breathing ragged.

Standing, she reached out to the cold of the pond and called it forth, 
encasing the monster in a block of ice. Her hand tightened into a fist...

And everything went white as the loud roar of an explosion filled her ears.

When she could see again, she was lying on her back in some bushes, staring 
up at the stars through a gap in the trees. Then Bunny, dressed in her usual 
clothes, loomed over her. "You okay, Amy Lynn?"

"B-bunny? What happened?"

"There's no time for that!" Luna snapped. She indicated the bushes with her 
nose. "Look!"

Peering through the bushes, Amy Lynn saw that they overlooked a huge crater. 
It was a good twenty or thirty feet deep and perhaps two or three hundred 
feet wide. The clearing and the pond had been obliterated.

A group of trucks were nearby, some marked with the insignia of Black 
Mountain Plantation. In the light of one set of headlights, she saw her 
father and mother standing side by side talking with another man that she 
vaguely recalled being pointed out as the county sheriff and the tall 
black-haired young man she recalled Bunny arguing with during that first day. 
Both men wore the uniforms of the county sheriff.

"What are we going to do?" Luna whispered. "Bunny's truck will be heard if it 
starts up and there's no way to push it out of here without being seen."

"We face the music then," Amy Lynn said softly. Going back to where she had 
been laying, she picked up her pistol and tucked it into her jeans.

"Amy Lynn, you shore 'bout this?" Bunny asked.

"No. But Mom probably knows I'm not in bed by now, I'll get yelled at either 
way. Here or at home. Here, she might be a little less loud about it." With 
that, Amy Lynn stepped boldly through the bushes and crouched at the edge of 
the crater. Here she could see the sides were smooth, like glass and cold to 
the touch.

"And what do you think you're doing here, young lady?" Standing, Amy Lynn 
faced her mother. Doctor Anderson had thrown some pants and her white lab 
coat on over her nightgown and strapped to her hip was the black metal of her 
service pistol.

"Mah fault, Doc," Bunny said stepping up beside Amy Lynn. "Ah invited Amy 
Lynn to go possum huntin wit me and we heard the explosion. Wut happened here 
anyways?"

"Catch anything, Buns?" asked the dark-haired deputy?

"Shut yor mouth, Shields, 'fore I shuts for ya!" Bunny snapped. "An don't 
call me Buns!"

"But it suits you so well."

Bunny's faced turned red with anger.

"Mom what did happen here?" Amy Lynn asked, hoping to divert her mother's 
attention from the fact that she was out and about.  "It looks like a 
meteorite landing."

"That's what we thought," said a gravely voice. Turning, Amy Lynn saw a tall 
man with a mane of brown hair. He wore a green T-shirt and black pants. "But 
the sides are too smooth, and to cool. If you ask me, something exploded 
here."

"Like what?" Doctor Anderson asked. "I've spent my entire adult life in this 
nation's military and I've seen every kind of explosion there is. Nothing 
exists that would make a crater this big and not leave some kind of 
radiation." She picked a geiger counter off the hood of a nearby truck. "And 
regardless of whether it was a metor or explosive, neither one explains the 
glasslike surface of the sides and presumably the bottom."

"Mebbe it was Spacemen," ventured a man standing nearby. "Or demons or 
somethin."

"There's no such thing as any of those, Mister Furnuckle," Doctor Anderson 
said stiffly. She faced the sheriff. "If you'll excuse me Myron, there 
appears to be no need for my services and I must take my daughter home. I'll 
meet you back here in the morning."

"Shore thing, Janice, the Sheriff said absently, scratching his head as he 
stared into the crater.

"Come along, dear," Doctor Anderson said stiffly. Amy Lynn sighed and handed 
the pistol back to Bunny, which made Doctor Anderson's nostrils pinch with 
barely supressed fury, and then followed her mother to the car.

**************
For the second time in as many days, Malachite was angry and the dark power 
in him was practically begging to be released.

Jeddite grunted as he hit the wall, propelled against it by the raw power 
bolt Malachite threw at him.

"You, idiot," Malachite seethed. "What in the hells possessed you to give a 
youma that much power? Now the humans are going to be getting nosy. On top of 
that, we now have another one of those blasted Priestesses to deal with."

"W-we can handle them," Jeddite gasped out as a collar of dark energy clamped 
around his throat.

Another bolt smacked the blonde general across the face. "The goal was to 
find Empreya's jewel before Serenity's spell could gather all six together, 
Old Boy," Malachite drawled. Jeddite felt the icy hand of fear clamp his gut. 
Unlike most, the white-haired man's anger made him calmer and almost relaxed 
so when he became so calm he seemed to be completely relaxed, it meant that 
he had lost his temper...and Malachite was the most powerful of the Four. 
"That way we don't have to fight them. But perhaps you missed that when we 
first gathered after being awakened from our human lives."

"N-no, Malachite. I didn't. I just wanted to be sure we could be rid of the 
Moon Priestess once and for all. She's interfered enough, her and that 
strange man in the tuxedo. I honestly wasn't expecting Mercury's chosen to 
show up."

"One more screw up, Jeddite, just one more...and I'll have your head on a 
pike." The collar vanished and Malachite strode out of the room.

****
Entry #138

Mother and Father are speaking to each other...somewhat. It's a start, I 
guess. Got caught being out when mom had already gone to bed. She took away 
my laptop for a week. I can deal with it though.

Something else happened tonight. But I'm not sure I can talk about it yet. 

I'm not sure I'll ever be ready to talk about it...

*************
Steve "Komodo" T.

 "Then we would drink a lot of beer, and when Mantook was ready, he would 
tell me the story of the Great Moose, who said to the Little Squirrel, "Hey, 
Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat."
-Jim Carrey on Just For Laughs

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