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Mythic Sailor Moon
Episode 3

    A Back Road in Southern Macedonia, Crystal Era
    En Route Toward Bulgaria

The jeep leapt several feet in the air as the front wheels cleared the
mound of dirt and stones in the corner of the narrow track that was all
that served as a road.  The passenger yelped in surprise, and perhaps
terror as well. He was a tall man, with a scar that nearly divided his
face in half; long, curly black hair except for a shock of white from
the brow near his scarline. He wore an old fashioned suit and a
Victorian rain cape. He was a doctor, and he even carried a little black
bag.  Surgeons are known for the agility of their fingers; this one was
using raw strength to hold onto the jeep's foam-wrapped roll bars.

In the front seat, the other passenger took it all in stride. For her,
it might as well have been a rollercoaster ride. Her features were
serene and demure; she had a motherly face for someone so young. And the
pink bow that tied up her turquoise hair made her look like some young
newlywed. She had a Red Cross-issued flak jacket just clinging to her by
the shoulders.

The driver was another matter. Short sandy blond hair, forest green
eyes, she wore a short-sleeved blouse, jeans, and a leather vest. Most
people would have mistaken her for a man--or a pretty youth rather. Not
the doctor though; he noticed the details others glossed over.

"Haruka," laughed Michiru. "I think you're scaring the doctor to
death!"  The driver growled.

"That detour around the washed out gully cost us a lot of time!" she
called over her shoulder. "Just hang on Doc, I'm the best driver there
is, just don't let yourself get thrown and we'll be all right!"

"If we had medicine you wouldn't be able to drive like this!" he yelled
into the wind.

Haruka paused a moment before answering with more yelling. "True! But we
don't! And we do have a little boy who's going to die without that
operation! I just hope they've got some supplies in the village!"   The
doctor nodded, and they drove on in silence for a while.

Eventually, the jeep rolled to a stop. Haruka stood up. "Ok, fifteen
minutes to stretch and what not. I'm going to check under the hood, then
climb up that hill, see what the terrain looks like ahead of us. Stay
close Doc. " He nodded his assent.

The other passenger, the red-cross worker, got into the back and took
out a violin case. "I'll check the hill, Haruka," she said. "I think the
acoustics might be . . . interesting." Then she blithely climbed the
slopes of the nearby hill Haruka had nodded her head at; the land around
them showed signs of great blasting sometime in the past and there were
many ridges and spurs of earth and stone. That one seemed reasonably
climbable and offered a decent vantage of the terrain before them.

The doctor wondered as she took out a violin and began playing a sad
sweet melody that stunned him with its power. As the world's foremost
surgeon, he'd been an extremely wealthy man. He'd partaken of cultural
events around the world and he never forgot talent like that.

"Kai'oh Michiru," he breathed. "The Japanese virtuoso. She retired from
the public spotlight in . . . nineteen nintey-six?" he mumbled to
himself.

"Ninety-seven," corrected Haruka from under the hood. "After a sold out
farewell performance." She slammed the hood closed and wiped her hands
on a rag. Michiru's music still floated down upon them with a soft touch
like snowflakes or feathers drifting on the wind. "We decided to duck
out of the public eye for a while. And then things started changing so
fast. . ."

The doctor shot another look at Haruka and thought for a moment. "Ten'oh
Haruka, isn't it? Hah, I see. The papers usually referred to you as
being male."  She grinned and tossed the rag back into a small toolkit
she had sitting on the ground next to her.

"It's not like it was some big secret. They just never thought to ask."

"Don't ask, don't tell."

"Ah, you're quoting from that Bond film?" The doctor smirked slightly.
"As it, in turn, was."

Haruka laughed, an easy thing.  "The world's gone through some changes;
and we're not the people we used to be. " She sighed as she put the
toolkit into the back of the jeep and looked up at Michiru. She'd
launched into "Summer" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. "Once upon a time I
wanted to run away from everything. Then one day I ran smack dab into a
brick wall called 'responsibility' and it was Michiru who picked me up
from it. Then when I'd accepted that responsibility, it was taken away
from me and we set out to . . ." she trailed off, looking up at Michiru,
who was standing atop the hill like an angel.

"To find yourselves? To make a life?" prompted the doctor. She nodded
once, absently.

"Yes. And damn if we didn't volunteer to take on new responsibilities to
replace the ones we were released from." She chuckled.  "Still, I'd like
to enter the European racing circuit one of these days, when we put
everything back together. I think I've still got what it takes."

"Tell me if you enter anything cross country," the doctor replied with a
smile. "I'll bet on you to win; it'll make me a fortune." Haruka smiled
again.

"You bet I would. HEY! MICHIRU! We've GOTTA GO NOW!!!"   Michiru broke
off her playing, put the instrument carefully back in the case and began
to pick her way back down the hillside.

She looked the surgeon right in the eye. "But right now we've got a more
important race to run, ne, Doctor Black Jack?" He nodded in agreement.

    [Roll Opening Credits - refer to ep 2 -- cut for space]
    [Title Screen]
    Mission of Mercy! The Return of Haruka and Michiru!

    Deep Space, the Eridani Corridor, Crystal Era
    Nemesite Light Cruiser 'Pasha'

She moaned in the darkness. It was a weak effort, and she was
unsatisfied. She tried again. It was a much stronger moan, louder, more
anguished. "By my ancestors," Hino Rei gasped as she drew breath into
her lungs deeply, feeling pain as if her chest was one giant bruise. "I
hurt too much to be dead."

There was a weak gasp, a shuddering intake of breath. "I . . . I know
the feeling," came Topaz' voice from somewhere.

"Where are you?" Rei asked, her voice ringing strangely in the confined
space of the starship bridge. A weak, watery blue glow sprang up perhaps
ten feet away.  As her eyes adjusted to the miniscule light she could
tell it was a faint aura around the Nemesite.  She could see a little
now, and pushed the chair off her. She'd been so numbed she didn't
really know what was making the difficulty of her breathing. She
staggered to her feet, needles lancing into her nearly everywhere. She
couldn't tell if it was serious or not, yet. "Can you stan--er, are you,
ah, all right?"

"I think my left leg is broken. Maybe a dislocated shoulder. I remember
getting flung out of my chair and into the corner back here.  I don't
feel any bones poking through the skin though," he finished weakly.
More light blossomed, three spheres the size of oranges, each one a
different one of the three primary colors of light: green, red, or
blue.  They wobbled.

"Nice trick, you have light powers I take it?" asked Rei musingly.
Topaz made general noise.

"What? I couldn't understand you," she prodded, her face half grin half
grimace.

"What's so funny?" Topaz asked as he saw her face.

"I have no idea, I think I'm about to go hysterical."  The Nemesite
gulped.
"Could you please try not to? The are some combustables onboard and we
MIGHT just be able to make it out of this mess."

Rei grinned, her teeth clenched tightly. She would not break. No, she
was strong. If someone was going to start laughing like a hyeana in a
situation like this it would certainly be Minako-- Rei shook herself to
clear her wild train of thoughts. "What happened? Did we misjump?"

"No, I don't think so," Topaz replied as he tried shifting. Rei came
over and started examinging his firm, muscular leg. "I think someone
saboutaged the jump drive. I had this ship custom-modified with an
auxiliary drive; it's only capable of a microjump but it comes online if
there's engine damge, such as stress damage after a battle that was
undetected."

"You've fought others in space before!" Rei exclaimed. Topaz nodded
levelly. "A few. I guess you could call them 'border skirmishes.'
Anyway, the auxiliary kicked in and eased us back into normal space when
the main drive failed. But where we are . . . it seems like we've
crashed."

"Doesn't feel like a planetary gravity," Rei said with a frown. She went
to the locker marked 'Emergency' and took out a first aid kit. Inside
she found a self-inflating splint and some choice medications.  "If we
got say, halfway through the Eridani Corridor, we might be in a space
debris field." Topaz began to nod his assent but broke off with a gasp
as Rei straightened his leg and then wrapped the plastic cast around his
lower leg and up past his knee.  She broke the inflation tab and a
chemical reaction inflated the cast and solidified it moments later.
"Don't try to move for at least five minutes. That thing has to harden
in place." His teeth gritted, Topaz agreed.

Rei got up and started looking at the instrumentation panels. Topaz
directed her to the damage control station and she brought the auxiliary
controls online. Lights around the bridge began to glow faintly and she
sighed with relief. The ship wasn't totally powerless; the main system
power had just cut out like a tripped circuit breaker.  She brought up
the ship's hull integrity display and groaned.

Quite clearly, the large round shape sticking into the hull was NOT
supposed to be there.  "Kamis," she muttered. "We've hit an asteroid."
Topaz moaned, and not from his leg injury.

The Palace of Neo-Queen Serenity, Crystal Tokyo, Crystal Era
Inside The Queen's Crystal Pinnacle Garden


"MAMORU!" screamed Neo-Queen Serenity as she started to crumple toward
the sitting bench. King Endymion leapt to her side from where he had
been tending one of his rosebushes, and caught her before she fell to
the ground. He gritted his teeth as he felt the sensation of something
tearing at the sudden movement. He hadn't been out of bed long, in fact
he still had a touch of frost on the hair at his temples from the
physical strain his body'd been under.

He was somewhat relieved to have discovered that his hair had NOT turned
lavender with age; it had simply been a color distortion effect of his
astrally projected state.  Though he did have one lavender Tuxedo he
sometimes wore for Sunday walks in the park. Chibi-Usa loved it but he,
personally, thought it was somewhat unmanly. Still, he could wear it now
and then to make his daughter happy.

"Usako!" he hissed under his breath. Even here, they kept up the fa�ade
of "Endymion" and "Serenity."  With publicity, their birth and pet names
for each other had become powerfully intimate. As he held her in his
arms, he saw that her pupils were nearly fully dialated; it was as if
she was looking beyond him. His breath nearly caught in his throat.  He
didn't know what had caused this but he was ready to try his healing
powers to save her, if need be.  But just as suddenly as the attack came
on, her eyes began to return to normal.

"Mamo-chan," she whispered in his ear, "Just now, I felt something, it
almost felt like it was coming through the link I share with the senshi.
Something dark and evil suddenly struck, like a coiled viper. I almost
missed it but . . . I don't know what it was Mamo-chan, but there's
danger again. Now. Pluto warned me. . ."

The quiet hiss of the elevator door heralded the arrival of a palace
servant. Endymion bent down and pressed his lips against Serenity's.  He
heard a tray dropped the and the elevator button being pushed
repeatedly.   Let the palace think that the King and Queen had lost all
decorum in the wake of the King's long immobility. Better that than to
even suspect that the Queen might have been struck at again, or gain a
hint of a new crisis before Serenity was ready to announce it.

Serenity, however, appeared to like the idea and returned his kiss with
ardor.  It soon had him thinking a common musing of his: formalwear took
too long to take off. However, he dismissed the thought and commanded
the lawn to grow into a soft cushion of grass beneath them. Likewise,
dozens of new roses rapidly grew into existence and filled the air with
the perfumed scent of the flower of passion.

Some time later a glowing Serenity sat up. "Wow. You've been waiting for
this haven't you, dear?" she said.  Her husband had the good grace to
look slightly bashful as he grinned. Around them the small,
terrarium-like garden was now a riotous jungle of color as every plant
had gone wild in the wake of their passion. She looked around. "People
think *I* did a lot to regenerate the biosphere but they have NO idea
how much you added to the healing of the Earth. "

He smiled. "It's in the legends. Kings are tied to their lands, it's
health is their health and vice-versa. "

She nodded and grinned. "I'm lucky I married a king," she said, "or I'd
just be a princess with a lot of cold dry real estate for a kingdom."

"Somehow I *doubt* that," he said drily. She smiled at him, in sort of a
bemused agreement. "And speaking of such things, dear, I must say I feel
a LOT better. Your love must be the medicine I needed."  She smiled at
him.

"Well, then let's get you fully back on your feet!" she said. "But not
QUITE yet. . ." she pounced at him, rolling him over.  He laughed
easily.

"But my queen!" he protested in mock seriousness as she began to kiss
his face. "There's no room for the plants to grow any more."  She
silenced him with more kisses. They would begin working on dealing with
this new crisis soon. Soon. But not this moment. This moment they were
taking for themselves, as if it was the last they would have.

And the roses began to bloom again . . .


    In the Bulgarian/Macedonian border, Crystal Era
    A Nameless Refugee Encampment

"We did good today, Haruka," said Michiru, smiling at her. The way she
said we clearly meant 'you.' Haruka smiled back.

"The doctor's really the one who deserves the credit." Michiru smiled
her secretive smile and shrugged one shoulder.

"Let's see if there's a little something to eat at the main tent,"
Michiru suggested. "I am getting a bit hungry." Haruka frowned. Supplies
were tight, yes, but they needed to keep their strengths up. If Michiru
was shorting herself of basic rations. . . she'd have to stop that. The
two of them set off, Michiru stopping to toss her purse over her
shoulder. Among other things, she kept a gun and some spare ammo in it.
Just in case. She was never without the purse now, not ever.

They weren't quite halfway the length of the camp before the sounds of
gunfire broke out--automatic  rifles, like the Earth Resistance Forces
used. Everyone stood stock still, listening. Moments later the
high-pitched whine of energy weapons discharge rang into the air and the
frozen workers scattered, running in all directions.

"Damn the Black Moon!" cursed Haruka as she and Michiru set off at a run
*toward* the sounds of gunfire. "This isn't even an army camp! The
butchers!" Michiru just looked grim as she followed. There'd been some
close shaves before, both in regard to encountering the Black Moon and
also in regard to the local strife that the greater conflict had touched
off, but they'd never had it come right into their midst.

Haruka began to outdistance Michiru of course, and headed in a beeline
toward the main tent. The gunfire was a bit off to the side, but it and
the sound of the energy discharges -- the air now was being lit by
flashes of darkly colored energy bolts--were getting closer.  Haruka
charged into the tent and started looking around for a weapon, any
weapon, but there wasn't anything to be seen. Either the few UN soldiers
acting as guards for the camp took all of them or they were *that* low
on munitions. Outside, Michiru waited, her gaze steady as she watched
the approaching raiders.  There seemed to only be a half-dozen Nemesite
shock troops coming over a nearby rise, but there were only three UN
guards left standing. Slowly, deliberately, she reached her hand down
and toward her purse. Her expression was cold as an ancient stone
statue.

"Michiru! I couldn't find anything!" Haruka ran up beside her. She
scowled at the fighting only 30 meters or so away from them. They were
out in the open and they needed to move.

Michiru suddenly turned and looked her in the eye. "I'm sorry Haruka,"
she said, her hand fully in her purse now. Haruka opened her mouth to
say something when she saw something out of the corner of her eye that
drew her attention.  Michiru whirled to look, following her gaze. "What
the. . .?" she gaped.

A huge ball of energy, looking for all the world like a giant snowball,
came streaking over the hill to the right and at the Nemesites. The part
that really got her attention was the way the sphere glittered and shone
much in the same way as the energy spheres that Sailors Uranus, Neptune,
and Pluto had used as attacks. When there had been Sailors Uranus,
Neptune, and Pluto, that is. Before the Chaos-posessed Sailor Galaxia
destroyed their powers, and those of their teammate Sailor Saturn.

"It couldn't be!" gasped Michiru, her eyes wide and disbelieving even as
the silvery ball crashed into the ground where the Nemesite troops had
stood a moment before and detonated, sending streamers of supercooled
water and clouds of snow every which way.

"It has to be her," said Haruka, equally astonished.

A figure came over the rise and stood for just a moment, surveying the
fight that had suddenly turned with her intervention. The lovers gaped
in shock again. The girl was NOT the person they expected to see. She
was tall and leggy, with silver hair in a form of pageboy cut. She wore
a toga and skirt, gathered at both shoulders with the hint of a collar
about her neck, and a bright blue scarf-like sash fluttered in the
breeze at her side. As she leapt into action they could see that her
footwear was a pair of bright blue sandals with laces that wrapped up
her ankles.

The Nemesite troops regathered in front of the snowbank created by her
attack and began firing at her with their energy rifles. The UN troops
were still shocked by the attack; Michiru had whipped her hand out of
her purse as if she was touching something hot enough to burn.

This new figure raced down the hillside with speed that would have done
Haruka proud, dodging back and forth as the Nemesites sent a barrage of
fire at her.  Whether she actually dodged the blasts or simply wove back
and forth to the point that the shock troops couldn't draw a bead on her
didn't matter. They didn't touch her.  Before she got to the bottom of
the incline, she leapt into the air and somersaulted forward, landing
firmly at least ten feet forward from the bottom of the hill.

She put her hands in front of her chest, holding the palms facing. Wisps
of mist trickled between her fingers and swirled together into a sphere
hovering between her hands. The sphere cleared, showing within it a
single huge, perfect snowflake. Then swirls of what might be taken for
mist -- but which were actually tiny streams of snowflakes -- swirled
within the globe as the snowflake began to rotate. Similar streams of
snow began to swirl and arise around her in time with the sphere of
power in her hands.

"Shine . . . Snow . . . MIRAGE!" she called out as she pushed the sphere
and the ice storm surrounding it away from her and streaking at her
targets. At this close range, the shocktroops didn't have a chance to
scatter before her comet/micro-blizzard engulfed them all, blasting them
with freezing cold, engulfing them in ice as it formed, burying them
within a pile of snow.

"WHO THE HELL ARE *YOU??*" roared Haruka, shocked at what she'd
witnessed.  The blue stone in her tiara was glowing faintly, Haruka
noticed as the woman strode forward toward the duo.

"I'm the Sailor-God Warrior, Mercury," she said, with a slight Latin
accent. All the color drained from Haruka and Michiru's faces. "Sailor
Mercury for short. And do either of you know of a woman named Minako? I
believe she lives in a country called Japan?"

Haruka and Michiru exchanged a startled glance. "We can put you in touch
with the people you need to talk to," said Haruka as she turned to
Sailor Mercury. "But we, ourselves would rather stay out of it." Michiru
nodded in confirmation.


    The Free City of Paris, Crystal Era
    Rive Gauche District

Peridot walked briskly through the light rain. She had a short raincoat
that barely dropped below her waist tied off with a stylish belt that
accentuated her sleder figure.   A large, fairly handsome man moved into
step with her. She looked askance at him; black leather pants and boots
weren't so unusual; the black metal-studded leather vest and big
shoulder cuffs wasn't *that* odd. Now, the sword he wore at his side,
one hand resting on it, that was definitely odd.

Peridot was weighing her options when he spoke. "You and your people
have come a long way to conquer Earth. I respect that."

She stopped and whirled on him, white-faced, reaching for her power
already. What stopped her was the look on his face. It was gleeful and
brutal, and definitely NOT the look of anyone in the Earth government
who might be opposed to them. 'A traitor?' she thought to herself.

"I believe the world needs to have order imposed on it. The order of the
strong hand of a conquerer, guided by me, of course, to conquer Earth
and then to conquer the stars.  The Daughter of the Moon is weak and
soft-hearted," he scoffed, "the world must be seized and shaped to the
will of the conqueror.  And perhaps your people are the ones to do it."
He moved closer to her, ignoring the drizzle around them in the evening.
"Are YOU the one to do it?"

"Who are you Earther?" Peri finally spat. "Why would I need your help?"
she demanded.  He smiled, the smile an invitation and a mocking of her
at the same time.

"I'm Ares! The god of WAR!" he proclaimed, half-snarling, half-yelling
in exultation.

Peridot rolled her eyes, covered her forehead with her hands and
revealed her negamoon symbol. "You're deluded!" she spat and unleashed a
blast of poisonous green light from her aura. The glow surrounded both
her and the raving man next to her and entered his mind, twisting . . .
it entered his mind it . . . it simply rolled off him like rain on
teflon.

She gaped, speechless. Some few had resisted her power of compulsion but
to simply shrug it off as if it were nothing? Was the man actually a
robot? But no, she vaguely felt his mind when her mental attack first
touched him. He was just so strong, he resisted it. Impossible, but
true.

Peridot began to get very, very worried and considered calling upon the
physical portion of her powers right then and there. Ares reached out
with his free hand and touched her shoulder.

In a blast of steel gray light they vanished.

    End of Episode Three
    [Roll Credits: "More Than This," Emi Shinohara version;
        see ep 2--skipped for space]

    Preview Screen:

    Next time, on Mythic Sailor Moon:
    "Warrior of Legend! Mythic Sailor Moon*"

Image: in the streets of Crystal Tokyo, the grim reaper faces . . .
Sailor Moon.

*Densetsu no Senshi! Mahboroshi Seeraa Muun