Hello,
	Well, it's been one hell of a long time (about three years?) since
I've sent anything to the FFML, but, although part of the genesis for this
came from my Dark Chronicles (no relation to the game / MUD / whatever,
apparently of the same name) fic, I've decided to post this now rather than
wait until I finished cleaning up the completely rewritten DChr prologue and
Ch. 1, basically to see whether this thing really can stand on its own without
the vast majority of people ever having first to bother with DChr.
	Just a few things:
	For anyone who's never taken a look at the whole Sailor Moon Expanded
universe (HTTP://www.tuxedomask.com/SailorMoonExpanded), this is definitely
not going to make sense.  You can go ahead and read it, but I'd *really*
suggest you first take a look at SME and read a few other things [see the
foreword after the prologue below] - believe me, you won't be disappointed.
At the least you should be familiar with some of Mark Latus's excellent Dark
Kingdom Renegades stories (Refugees, Bad Moon Rising and (most importantly)
Thy Kingdom Come) and Craig. A. Reed's Windwalker Chronicles, but you really
need more [again, see the foreword below].
	For anyone curious about DChr after reading this, don't bother with
the version in the RAAC archive: it's so far out of date and such a mess that
it's just not worth the effort.  I've rewritten a hell of a lot of it almost
completely from scratch and I'll get it posted after a bit more cleaning up.
	Last, e-mail here's been a bit on the dodgy side over the past month
or so.  It seems to be fine now, but if you respond to this and don't get an
answer within about a week, just assume things have died and try again
(sorry).  Don't use the above `tdrn-ffml' addr - that's a gateway to a local
newsgroup.  Any e-mail to me should go to `fanfic@magister.apana.org.au'.
	Right; here goes.

=============================================================================
Thy Will be Done
A Sailor Moon Expanded Earth-Beta fanfic
=============================================================================

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File: `twbd_prl.txt' [05-06-2002]
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	"Great and terrible loomed the hungry blackness of the abyss before
her, yet greater still was her determination that such selfless sacrifice as
her brother had made in order that the dreadful power of the Overlord might at
last be broken not be in vain. Desperately she held to him, while the horror
grew near and her strength began to fail. Then at the last, when it seemed
that Polaris would fall and the world itself end in ruin at Grey's passing and
the release of the power he had taken, Serenity, last princess in waiting of
the mighty Silver Millennium, woke at last from the trance into which the
Overlord had bound her, and wielding the mighty Ginzuishou, drew them back
once more from the very brink of death and oblivion. And the dying scream of
the Overlord was a shriek of despair lost in the nothingness that awaited him;
and his final curse a broken powerless thing that was merely the last echo of
his ruin; and none heeded him nor mourned his passing.
	"And Serenity brought them back once more to the citadel, and great
was the rejoicing and celebration at their safe returning; for the time for
fear was passed and the rule of the terrible lord of darkness and despair
swept away. And although two of his lieutenants and many of his lesser
servants yet lived, and although almost unimaginable ruin and suffering had
been brought upon the world, yet still all knew at last that the pain and
terror had ended with the returning of the sun, and the world would rise again
perhaps the greater from the ashes of the past.
	"So it was that a great council was summoned; and the terrible citadel
of their enemy they made the wellspring from which Britain, once greatest and
fairest of the nations of the world, might rise again to pre-eminence, and her
glory and majesty be undiminished for all the ages yet to come. For she is the
Isle of the Mighty, once most high and excellent in all creation, bearer of a
hope that shall never fail and a flame that shall burn strong and true until
the uttermost end of time. And the praise of her champions shall be
everlasting and their courage remembered, for in the world's darkest hour it
proved enough."
	The bard's low contralto fell into silence and for a long moment
nothing could be heard save for the gentle thrumming of the campfire and the
occasional soft stirrings of some furtive night-creature moving warily far off
in the returning woodland, drawn by the lingering scent of cooked rabbit yet
terrified of the fire and the fourteen travellers huddled about it, wrapped
close in cloaks and blankets against the deathly chill of the mid-winter
night.
	It was a chance meeting that had brought the two companies together
just as the sun was dipping low in the west. The seven Exiles, the final
confrontation between them and Hermes that had seen the Emerald Queen refuse
all contact with the Citadel for nearly ten months showing no signs of healing
despite an invitation from the Renegades to join them and the others for the
first anniversary celebration two days hence, had come from the fledgling
Emerald Kingdom in answer to wild tales, all too common still, of yet another
Youma having taken up residence at some distance from one of the little
hamlets that had begun to spring up on the almost innumerable sites of ruined
towns and cities. Already a wandering catholic monk had been arrested by the
village militia for demanding justice for a captured petty thief, and a family
who had made the mistake of settling in an abandoned farmhouse a mile or so
from the little hamlet rather than in the village itself and worse of
sheltering a half-African refugee from the south had been driven out, the man
they had tried to protect hanged from a gibbet in the village square and their
home and their few meagre possessions burned before the Brigadier could send
anyone to save them. In these times any difference was an excuse for screams
of "Youma spy!" and those foreigners still remaining in Britain either hid in
fear for their lives or remained within the greater enclaves where the
survivors were still too sickened and dispirited by the dreadful slaughter
following the liberation to hate.
	Those had been weeks that would remain graven in horror in the minds
of all who had seen them, when famine had caught a still-rejoicing population
utterly unawares after the hope and euphoria of those first heady days and for
a time anarchy and madness had ruled.
	Things had begun well, with many Youma at first too stupefied and
bewildered by the inconceivable defeat of the Overlord to meet with any
coordinated response their slaves' sudden, fanatical hunger for blood stirred
up in part by the returning of the sun and the growing rumours that the
invaders' collective time was fast running out and aided at last openly by the
terrible other-world virago and her six bean-sidhe furies who swept all before
them and left nothing but ashes in their wake. Some had stood their ground,
fighting with desperation borne of hate and terror to hold every inch of
claimed territory despite the sudden apparent hopelessness of their situation
until the Seven came screaming down on their strongholds with hundreds behind
them willing at last to die rather than submit to further domination now that
the fear of the Overlord was gone. Then the famine had struck and the hopes of
victory had turned to horror and nightmare and a wild, primal struggle to
survive.
	For almost three weeks the greater enclaves had been little better
than death-traps, with insane and pointless struggles for meaningless power
amongst the increasingly desperate Youma coupled with the collective hatred of
a nation gone suddenly mad and seeking any enemy upon which to vent its
frustration and thirst for vengeance once it realised that the Youma, although
terribly weakened, were still almost inconceivably dangerous and made all the
more brutal by their growing deprivation.
	In those terrible days, all of other race within the greater enclaves
were marked as spies and traitors by a frustrated resistance in internal
turmoil and gone suddenly half-insane with vengeance-crazed fanatics hungry
for death, while within the enclaves themselves, men and women at first
willing to shelter them in their collective need to weather the storm began
soon to turn on them with increasing brutality as they fought with growing
desperation for what few rations they had, killing at last indiscriminately
anyone whose pedigree was in any degree suspect, turning even on Anglo-Kelts
of other nations in their fight to live.
	Only the climactic horror of the Black Thursday massacres and the four
days of nightmare madness that followed, coupled with the increasing influence
of the rising power centred in the former enemy citadel and the final
denouncing and suppression of the increasingly bloodthirsty resistance by its
former other-world allies had brought an end at last to the slaughter, those
left of other race or colour choosing to remain within the quietening greater
enclaves and take their chance with what hope the new regime might promise
rather than risk the smaller communities and worse the roving bands of half-
starved fanatics beyond, careful to remain apart from one another and blend in
as best they could.
	The past ten months had done little to dull the hatred and it was
still almost certain death for any obviously-foreign wanderer caught beyond
the greater enclaves, while anyone sheltering them could expect often to fare
little better, even though Youma sightings had grown few in England after the
disastrous ruin of their attempts to retake the Citadel, save in some remote
places where the last of the Kingdom flora still clung desperately to a last
hopeless life, and the people had at last begun to look to the hope of a
brighter future.
	As with so many sightings of late, this Youma had turned out to be
nothing other than a teenage human girl with some necromantic potential, her
latent abilities brought to the fore by deprivation and her last desperation
to survive. The Seven had done what they could for her but the girl was half
starved and hopelessly insane with her growing power and the memory of
unimaginable brutality and in the end there was nothing to be done but the
inevitable, a solution all too common given the impossibility of sustained
help or treatment.
	They had not returned afterwards to the hamlet, choosing instead to
continue northwards for what little remained of the day and camp in the
reviving woodland for the night before turning back westwards in the morning
and for home. It was as they were preparing to abandon the northward road that
they had caught first sight of the weary travellers as they made their way
slowly from the north. Travellers on the road were still common as people
wandered often aimlessly here and there in search of a place they could call
home, but this small company had been a particularly stark reminder of the
reality of a still shattered world. The five children looked near exhaustion
and the young man and woman trudging slowly at the rear of the little
cavalcade and pulling a little hand-cart between them seemed to be faring
little better. Quickening their pace, the Seven had hurried forwards and it
was only a few minutes later that they were overtaking them.
	Their initial impressions had proven accurate; the children were
footsore and desperately hungry and their guardians seemed little less
exhausted. It had taken very little persuasion to convince them to rest with
them for the night, particularly when the tall, dark-haired woman with
laughing blue-green eyes had flashed the children a beaming smile of welcome
before producing with a flourish a beautiful golden long-bow as if by magic
and slipping silently away to return soon with two brace of rabbits, much to
the children's amazement and delight. Tales of the mysterious, other-world
travellers and the hidden magical kingdom in the west were already known far
and wide and the children had been suddenly full of questions and excitement.
The Emerald Queen and her companions may not have been the company of Avalon
who had saved the world but so far as the children were concerned they were
the next best thing.
	Stirring from her quiet introspection, the tall bard smiled in memory
of the evening and of their collective delight at her many tales, her usually
watchful face relaxed for a little in a gentling calm as she cradled the
little girl close on her lap, one slender hand stroking gently at the child's
newly-combed fair hair as she gazed out over the fire into the stillness
beyond, alert despite her seeming quiet as were all her companions for any
hint of danger. In her arms, little Crystal, at only seven the youngest of the
children, stirred, still wide awake, her head half turning as she gazed up at
the tall, dark-haired Rhiannon with bright-blue eyes shining in the firelight.
	"Please, Lady Rhiannon, may we have another tale?" She inquired
softly, her small voice hesitant as though unwilling to disturb the hush of
the moment. "It's been so long since I heard any really fine tales and I
really liked that last one. It served that horrible Overlord right don't you
think?" For a moment a full beaming smile lit a face that had seemed guarded
and serious far beyond her years. Then she sighed and settled her head on the
bard's arm, for perhaps the first time in months utterly content. "Aunt
Leanora and uncle Thomas try" She continued, her tone suddenly very serious
once more. "but we've been so hungry and we keep having to move because Aunt
Leanora comes from Norway which is ever so far away and talks differently and
people get frightened." She shook her head. "Besides, they only tell silly
tales with no adventures. I like the ones with magic and swords and..."
	"And knights and dragons." Agreed Peter, eldest of the five from where
he was settled beside the most overtly fierce-seeming of the strangers.
	Ligeia's long, lustrous, jet-black hair shone in the firelight, her
piercing dark eyes flashing as she favoured him with a feral smile that he
seemed to understand and answer and he made no move to prove he was old enough
not to be frightened of the dark when a faint sound startled him and she
tightened her left arm protectively closer about his small, too-thin form,
even though he had earlier insisted to everyone else that he was afraid of
nothing and was as much able to take care of himself and the others as Uncle
Thomas and Aunt Leanora. As eldest, he seemed to take his responsibility to
protect his companions with a seriousness far beyond his eleven years and with
Elizabeth, only two months his junior and Edmund and Susan, twins barely a
year and a half younger, had made a solemn promise to see that little Crystal
would never ever have to be hurt or frightened again. He had glared defiantly
into the surrounding twilight as he had said this, as though daring anything
to challenge him, but Ligeia had caught the tears glistening unshed more than
once as he had watched his quiet, withdrawn little foster-sister and of all
the Exiles, he seemed to have sensed a kindred spirit in her and had not been
ashamed to cling suddenly to her and burst into tears when she had taken him
alone to help her collect what they could for the fire earlier in the night,
sensing his need to be away from the others for a little. He had pressed
desperately close, sobbing brokenly for a little for the mother and father he
would never see again before he had pulled away for a moment before hugging
her fiercely once more and flashing her the easy, confident grin that seemed
to be his trademark and that she understood suddenly hid so much he did not
want the world to see. They had said nothing more about it, but he had stayed
close to her throughout the meal and Rhiannon's tales and had not resisted as
she had tucked the cloak and blanket around him and settled him at her side.
Now he huddled closer to her in the near-darkness and Ligeia vowed that at
least tonight he would sleep soundly and fear nothing.
	"Knights and dragons?" Came Rhiannon's gently bantering tone from the
farther side of the fire and Crystal giggled softly and snuggled closer.
	"No!" Protested Elizabeth from her place in Joanna's arms, and Ligeia
found her eyes straying once more to their tall and silent leader, the cloak
of nemesis drawn close about her midnight-black tonight in answer to her mood,
remembering the look she had given Rhiannon when the usually perceptive bard
had inquired earlier in the evening in a gently teasing tone after Peter had
told them of his promise as to how he had managed to lose Lucy since he, Susan
and Edmund had managed to stick together. The younger boy had grinned
impishly, immediately catching the joke and his sister giggled in concert
seeming also to understand, but although Peter seemed himself to have
understood the reference and smiled, Ligeia had caught the quick flash of pain
in his eyes and Joanna had shot Rhiannon a look that warned her that the joke
might not have been appreciated and never again to assume anything given the
circumstances; and again Ligeia had been reminded just how much more
completely their fierce, self-possessed leader might understand him and the
others despite the differences in their situation and how wide still might be
the gulf between them.
	Now, she looked towards the tall, flame-haired woman who at times
seemed still in so many ways a stranger to her and her sisters save perhaps
for Liana who seemed to share a special kinship with her that even Rhiannon
seemed to find it hard to understand, and she was not surprised when Joanna
caught and held her glance, her emerald eyes flashing for a moment in feral
challenge before her face was softened by a sudden kindly smile that was
becoming at last more common after the frigid, almost brutal mask of the days
of the Occupation when the six had feared for her soul, her gaze moving about
the circle for a moment before Elizabeth stirred and shivered in her arms and
she moved quickly to tuck the cloak and blanket closer around her with a quiet
gentleness that Ligeia had feared for a time lost forever.
	"I think perhaps" She said, her subtly-emphasised west-shore Irish
lilt the only indication of her own weariness. "that we've had enough tales
for tonight, don't you?"
	Beside them, Thomas and Leanora were already curled up close, the
sense of security the Exiles gave along with a sedative given unknown to them
by Camilla ensuring they would have what was possibly their first full night's
peaceful sleep since they had found the children half-starved and wandering
six months before and taken it upon themselves to become the family each had
lost.
	Now, the tall healer-archer sat watch beside them, her beautiful
golden mana-bow laid across her lap in longbow form, long, slender fingers
playing gently now and again with the string as intense, blue-green eyes gazed
into the stillness beyond the circle cast by the fire in search of an enemy
she was certain would not appear. But she had promised the children she would
keep watch with her bow through the night and like her sisters she had no need
of sleep in any way others would understand it. Beside her, Marina, first and
eldest of the six and their leader beneath Joanna, finished teasing out her
long fair hair with the little golden comb the queen had managed to manifest
and favoured Camilla with a gentle smile before turning the little comb to her
younger sister's dark tresses.
	"Please, just one more tale?"
	Curled up close at Liana's side, Edmund was exhausted and ready at
last to sleep but he was not going to admit it while Peter and even Crystal
were still wide awake. Besides, tales of the Exiles and in particular of their
secret protection of so much of the resistance during the Occupation had begun
at last to spread far and wide and it was such a tale of the resistance before
things went so wrong that he really wanted to hear. Like the others, he had
dreamt so many times during the darkest days that he was a great hero and able
to fight the Overlord and meeting the Seven that night, he had found himself
overwhelmed at just how brave they must have been and just how beautiful they
were, but especially Queen Joanna and Lady Liana, each of whom brought back
poignant memories of pretty, flame-haired Lydell who had shown such courage at
the end, and whom he was sure must be sisters since they looked so much alike.
The Emerald Queen would have been his first choice to be near of course but
the look in her flashing emerald eyes when Uncle Thomas and Aunt Leanora had
explained just why his new little foster-sister was so quiet and self-
contained had made him think that perhaps it would not be a good idea to
bother her until she had had a chance to calm down. Edmund smiled with grim
satisfaction imagining just what she might have done to the monster who had
hurt Crystal's mother had she had the chance. Now eager to hear more, he
flashed Liana a look full of hero-worship, flushing furiously as she returned
his smile, her jade eyes shining with warmth in the firelight before he turned
a still-flaming face to Rhiannon. "Can't you tell us more about what you did
during the Long Dark?"
	It was a name (along with the Dark Year and simply the Occupation)
that was becoming ever more common and he shivered in anticipation of another
thrilling adventure to finish the evening, terrifying, but also exciting now
that the true horror was over.
	But in Rhiannon's arms Crystal stirred and whimpered softly and even
in the glow of the fire Edmund caught Peter's sudden glare closely followed by
that of his sister and suddenly he hung his head, shocked and ashamed that he
could have forgotten so quickly. Little Crystal had fared particularly badly
during that terrible year, her mother, the daughter of an Earl, beaten and
brutalised again and again by a particularly sadistic master whom had, it
seemed, found it particularly amusing to show a human of her station just
where her place now lay, often within the little girl's sight and hearing, and
she did not want to hear anything about that dreadful time save how the evil
Overlord was finally defeated.
	"Sorry." Edmund murmured, sickened again despite his youth at the
sudden memories of what the little girl had told them, not daring to look up
to see his little foster-sister's tears or the accusatory looks of the others
and worse of the seven travellers and trying vainly to shut out the soft
sounds of her broken whimpering until at last Rhiannon managed to soothe her.
	Pressed close, Elizabeth felt Joanna's arms tighten for a moment
almost painfully around her; while glancing quickly at their leader, Liana
caught for an instant a brief echo of a hate and rage to set the demon-queen
herself to trembling as her own memories stirred of what she had seen and the
vengeance she had taken.
	"You know that was a really stupid thing to say!"
	Susan's angry hiss brought Liana's attention back to the boy at her
side as his sister shifted in Lenore's lap and glared at him until the tall,
fair-haired mage hushed her gently, her blue eyes seeking Edmund's own in a
quick glance of understanding even as Liana's arm tightened for a moment about
him and he lifted his head to catch Lenore's look before blushing and glancing
quickly away.
	"I think Joanna was right." The mage continued quietly as she settled
Susan once more and drew the cloak and blankets closer around her. "You're all
over-tired and I think it's really time to go to sleep, hmm?"
	But little Crystal shook her head. "Can't we have just one more tale?"
She pleaded. "Just one more before we go to sleep?"
	For a heartbeat the bard seemed unsure and it was Edmund who settled
the matter.
	"Could you tell us how you came here?" He asked with sudden
inspiration. "Some people say you're from Avalon like Lord Grey and Lady
Polaris and Lord Merlin and Lady Arcturus and some say you're Senshi like Lady
Zeus and Lady Hermes but Aunt Leanora says you're from another place
altogether and she should know."
	Abruptly, Rhiannon's smile was tinged with sadness. They had never met
the pretty Norwegian fighter before that evening as she had it seemed joined
Brigadier Hamilton-Smith's group only a little before the end and in the
confusion and the horror after the liberation they had not crossed paths with
the remnants of the group again before she had fled the new fanatics, but her
information was likely to be as accurate as any they had confirmed after the
Overlord was gone and their greatest secret had ceased to be important.
	Suddenly attentive, Crystal flashed her foster-brother a grateful look
before turning pleading eyes to the bard. "Oh yes!" She cried, then at
Rhiannon's sharp glance, more quietly. "Oh yes! *Please* can we have that one?
Oh that would be *splendid*!"
	For a long moment Rhiannon seemed to consider, glancing to the queen
as though deferring to her.
	"They'll fall asleep if they're tired." Said Joanna quietly in Irish
Gaelic. "I don't think one last tale will do any harm. Besides, little
Crystal's still frightened and silence is about the last thing that's likely
to settle her to sleep."
	Nodding, Rhiannon let her eyes stray about the circle, catching those
of each of the company and holding them for a moment until she was certain all
were attentive. Then in a low voice that held even her own companions
enthralled, she began.
	"In a place far beyond the reaches of forever, where the light of the
farthest star shall never shine and no traveller may pass save by great magic
or knowledge almost beyond imagining, in a place beyond dream or fantasy where
even the guardian of time dare not go, there lies the void between realities,
an unimaginable place where exists the roar stuff of matter and of thought, a
place incomprehensible perhaps even to those few who have crossed its
boundaries and tried to understand its laws, for they are merely passing
through and do not stay. Some call it the great Gateway, the stepping-stone to
other truths and other worlds that no starship could ever reach. Of these,
many are so like to this that you might not know at first should you stray
that you had slipped the moorings of your own reality, while others are
strange and terrible beyond imagining, filled with wonders and terrors of
which we may only dream, worlds where tales and fantasy are real while we are
to them but dreams or the fleeting motion of an author's pen.
	"How vast is this place and to how many myriad realities it leads
perhaps none shall ever know, for how vast is forever? Yet above and beyond
the infinite reaches even of this void there lies yet another and greater, a
place that is to the first as the first is to us, a place forever unreachable
save perhaps by arts so great that the sum of all the realities we could know
might grow old and fail long before we could hope to understand them, a place
that leads perhaps to myriad upon myriad of voids that hold each their own
myriad worlds.
	"Whether this goes on forever, with void within void or whether this
is the end who can say, but if you could stand at the uttermost end, in the
greatest such place that could be and look out into the infinite wonder of
creation, you might see all the voids within voids that hold at last each
their myriad universes of stars and planets, drifting like tiny bubbles in the
crystal depths of a vast clear lake. Most, like that which holds this universe
and this world, would pass calm and quiet, perfect spheres closed to all to
come or go, drifting gently within the lake of forever. But for some, perhaps
by some dreadful chance or some misstep at the very moment of their creation,
cracks begin, tiny fractures almost imperceptible at first yet which grow and
grow until at last the bubble bursts and a billion billion voids holding each
a billion billion realities fail in ruinous fall and everlasting oblivion. How
many such fractured bubbles there may be perhaps we can never know, but it is
within such a failing, fractured omniverse that our tale begins.
	"Just when the first fault came none may tell, for time is different
in each reality, yet when it came it was felt suddenly perhaps in every
possible world within that omniverse, and for a moment the very foundations of
reality were shaken, while in its void there sprang suddenly into being a
between-place that should not have been, a place where what one imagined was
all that was real, a gateway reality that made it suddenly possible for a tiny
few who could learn the art, to travel from world to world within that
fractured omniverse and take others with them, and changed any traveller a
little for each new world to which they journeyed. Yet it exacted a dreadful
price for such passage, for it copied from all who passed the sum of all the
evil they possessed and made of it shadows in their image, nightmare phantoms
beyond the darkest dreams of the lord of deepest Hell, creatures anathema to
the very fabric of physical reality and hungry for the bodies their
counterparts possessed that they might have life beyond the anti-real
emptiness that was their home. Just how this came to be none can say, but of
all the myriad worlds there might be, only in eleven were there to be found
such travellers and only in one a traveller to master the full power of the
gateway realm, and it was from these worlds, nine known only as tales and
fantasy in the rest and the last two known to the others not at all, that came
the only hope to hold back the Fall, yet of them also the nightmares beyond
madness which only their courage have held thus far at bay.
	"From one came Saotome Ranma, heir to a great school of martial
artists, a fighter of potential beyond measure, a boy of seventeen cursed at
times to take the form of a young girl; and others followed him. From another,
Mano Yohko, one-hundred and eighth demon hunter of her line with her faithful
apprentice at her side, whose skill with sword was great beyond her years and
whose shining blade burned with the very fire of her soul. From yet another,
Magami Eiko and Daitokuji Biko, two rivals who fought without respite when
alone, yet bound by friendship with the princess of a far-off world and whom
laid aside their pride and stood side by side against the darkness. From two
more, Senshi much as your own but of two worlds alike and yet unique. From the
next, Urd, Belldandy and Skuld, three goddesses of the ancient Scandinavian
north, and the young mortal Keiichi who had captured Bellandy's heart. From
another, Kei and Yuri, the Lovely Angels, two impetuous but courageous girls
of a universe in which humanity's empire had reached far out to the stars.
>From the next, Lina Inverse, a black sorceress of great power and in the face
of despair, noble in courage and in heart, with many friends and a rival
beside her. And from the ninth, the Knight Sabres, four women brought together
by circumstance and the determination to see justice for the people of the
city from which they came. Two other worlds there were as I have said, but I
will say nothing of them save that the first was very much as this before the
Fall and the second was one in which the British Empire never died, and from
the first came a boy and from the second a girl; and they were bound together
as creator and created; and she hated him.
	"Of the nine worlds known in stories each to each, five were on the
surface so like this before the Fall that you might not know at first were you
to travel there that you had left your own, and Eiko's was little different
but for the advancements of a few more years. Of Kei's and Yuri's I have
already spoken, while that of Lina Inverse was a place of demons, dragons and
mighty quests, where magic and high adventure were king.
	"Which brings us to the last, a world that would seem at first little
different from this but for the changes another nearly forty years might
bring. Yet it was a darker world, where for many greed and power had become
all that mattered and where giant corporations held the world and fought for
dominance.
	"Greatest of these was Genom, a company that made everything from cars
to computers but whose true power lay in a very special product that only they
could make. These machines, many made in human form, they called Buma, and
they were both a blessing and a curse for the world, a blessing because they
could relieve people of so many things they'd had previously to do themselves,
and a curse because Genom saw immediately the chance to profit from the sale
of buma as weapons of devastating power, and it was on these that the
researchers concentrated, building ever more efficient killing machines until
at last, late in the year two-thousand and thirty-three, a great leap in
technology was made by a Genom scientist of exceptional talent and two new
prototypes were built that would be ten-thousand times more deadly than
anything ever made and make Genom rich beyond imagining.
	"The tests were a success and four more of the new Buma were
constructed. But their creator had become sickened by what was being done to
those he had begun to consider his children and with his help, the first of
the six, understanding at last the enormity of the greed and hubris of the
company she had until he had freed her been programmed to serve, fled the
tower of her makers to the Knight Sabres and her freedom. The road for the
others would be harder, yet they too would escape and perhaps may have lived
long lives content had not the events of the growing collapse come to their
world; for in the midst of a battle by Genom to test their resolve, Youma
appeared suddenly in MegaTokyo, followed soon by Kei and Yuri and the struggle
was forgotten in what came after.
	"So began the battle against the tide of ruin and nightmare and for
almost four months it continued with hope failing while reality trembled and
the mistress of damnation drew ever closer to her triumph.
	"Then on a black night of dreadful rumour, all gathered at the Mano
home, for that world was most in imminent peril and the lord of its Hell
himself was in terror of what might soon befall. And they decided that despite
the ever more frequent attacks of their nemesis upon this world they could no
longer afford to stay, and Joanna opened the gate and the company passed
through. And in that moment reality screamed and shivered and the gate
wavered, and all within the company felt a tearing as though a portion of
their very souls were being ripped away. And for seven, the others were
suddenly gone and all was nightmare and pain and a dreadful plunge down into
absolute oblivion.
	"And when they could understand once more that they still lived, they
found themselves scattered across a strange yet dreadfully familiar world and
staring up at a sky turning black with the first great stroke of the
Overlord's coming.
	"And now we come at last to the end of this tale, for it is nearly
midnight and long passed time for all young children to be tucked up fast
asleep."
	"But Lady Rhiannon!" Protested little Crystal sleepily from where she
lay now curled up close in the bard's arms. "You never told us who you were or
from which world you came."
	"Ah;" Murmured Rhiannon softly, gazing down upon the little girl with
a warm and gentle smile. "But my precious, that is a secret."
	And with that, she lifted Crystal in her arms and kissed her gently
before she settled her close once more. And as her low voice began in a warm
and gentle song that seemed to enfold all in a sudden, peaceful stillness,
little Crystal closed her eyes at last and sleep rushed swiftly to claim her;
and she slept without waking through the hours of the night while the six sat
still and silent and held back the darkness and the fear.

----------
File: `twbd_fwd.txt' [09-10-2002]
----------

				   ** ** **
Thy Will be Done
A companion story to Thy Kingdom Come
			Foreword V0.02:
				   ** ** **
	Begin at the beginning and end at the end?  In this case, that's a
little difficult without ruining at least one of two tales from which Thy Will
be Done had its genesis.  So let's instead try being a little different and
beginn in the middle and end in another omniverse. :)
	Hello and welcome to the tale I like to consider both a companion
story to Mark Latus's _Thy Kingdom Come_ and an inevitable consequence of an
event in a saga of my own of which very few of you will yet be familiar.  For
those reading this before taking a look first at (at the least) all the Dark
Kingdom Renegades tales up to and including TKC, Frank Barr's Trenchcoat Mask,
at least the first two parts of Craig A. Reed's Windwalker Chronicles and what
exists of Sam Ashley's An American Wizard in Queen Beryl's Court, stop right
now - you most definitely shouldn't be reading this first; it simply won't
make sense.  For those who have decided Frank and I don't know what we're
doing regarding TWBD's WWW page and so are reading this before the prologue,
stop making executive decisions for yourself, ^_^ go back and read things in
the correct order. :)  For those who, after looking at the prologue, are
shaking their heads and saying: `Now hang on a minute!  I'm sure I remember
some of these characters from something he was writing way back when Noah was
still building the Arc but they weren't in SME last time I checked so what in
the Abyss is going on?' please be patient; all (or at least some things) shall
be revealed.
	It was mid '96 when I posted the initial draft of the first chapter of
my first fanfic saga to the FFML.  The initial _Dark Chronicles_ premise
seemed to me unique (at least, I'd not seen anything at the time remotely
similar), reaction (although limited) was positive, and I had time and to
spare.  It soon became painfully apparent however, that I had vastly
underestimated the complexity of the tale I had begun.  Reaction waned as the
story lost focus, I lost patience with a concept that seemed to me to be
getting quickly completely out of hand and DChr fell into a slow, ignominious
death.  Still, I was reluctant simply to abandon the idea, and still more
seven original characters whom had grown far beyond their original genesis and
become dynamic creations in their own right.  At least, partly, _Thy Will be
Done_ is the result, a chance for them (or at least a version of them) to
develop outside the constraints of DChr while at the same time giving me a
chance to tell what I hope to be a story as gripping and enthralling as the
excellent _Thy Kingdom Come_ that has been just as much its genesis.
	It's been over six years and DChr has been given at least a potential
new lease of life while I've been ironing out TWBD's outline and working on
concepts for a BGC alternate that will explore the story of the Bu-33DA-Elite
buma as it unfolds without the events of DChr and a non-SME SM tale in no way
related to anything else.  Perhaps the second year of the twenty-first century
will be as productive as I've planned, but time will tell.
	Hello and welcome to the tale I like to consider both a companion
story to Mark Latus's _Thy Kingdom Come_ and an inevitable consequence of an
event in a saga of my own of which very few of you will yet be familiar.  The
journey may not be an easy one, but I hope you enjoy the road.

	Craig (9th of October, 2002)
----------
Acknowledgements.
	I'd like to thank the following people for help and inspiration
(whether large or small) without whom this tale would not have been possible.
	First and foremost, Takeuchi Naoko for a creation of such depth and
richness: had she not conceived any of this, Sailor Moon Expanded simply
wouldn't exist.
	Next, Mark Latus, not simply for creating the Dark Kingdom Renegades
but for conceiving Thy Kingdom Come and with it the Beta-SME SM universe
without which TWBD would not have been possible.
	Lastly, the SME team as a whole for both their comments on TWBD itself
and for giving an already rich universe a scope and depth second to none in
the short history of Anime fanfic.
----------
SME-specific Copyrights:
	This work is copyright and permission to distribute it on a non-
proffit basis is given by me so long as not a single byte of any file has been
tampered with (disregarding anything a designated WWW/mailing-list
administrator or RAAC moderator might have to do of course ^_^ ) and it is
distributed in its entirety.  No unauthorised copying, broadcasting, public
performance or appropriation of characters and concepts in full or in part
(save with regard to other members of the Sailor Moon Expanded team of course)
is permitted without written permission from me first.  This work may *not* be
distributed for profit or in or with a commercial publication without written
permision from myself.  Joanna Marina O'Reilly, Marina Alekseyevna
Zhuranovskya, Liana, Camilla, Ligeia, Lenore and Rhiannon are Copyright 1996-
2002 (C) by me as is the Bu-33DA-Elite Buma concept as a whole and definitely
can't be pinched by any non-SME member under *any* circumstances without my
written consent.  Unlike many fanfic creations, these characters appear in
slightly altered form in an original fantasy epic intended for publication and
thus are protected under international copyright law.  All characters specific
to Thy Will be Done are Copyright 1999-2002 (C) by me and the same rules
apply.  Everything else native to SME canon (such as the DKR, Alisin, Alan
Cornwell Thomas and Michael Maxwell) is copyright their respective owners so
please talk to them if you want to use something they've created.  Everything
else not native to any canon is Copyright 1999-2002 (C) by me unless someone
suggests ideas to me that I like and they're willing to let me use.  In that
case the ideas remain entirely their own unless they specifically tell me
otherwise and the copyright for them is theirs so you'll have to ask them if
you can use them. :-)
	Non-SME Copyrights:
	First and foremost, Sailor Moon is Copyright (c)1994-2002, Takeuchi
Naoko / Kodansha / Toei Animation / Asahi TV / DIC / CWI (even though there
may be some question as to whether these last two deserve to retain it).
	As for the rest below, the first five only make one tiny cameo and the
last four merely get mentioned but I'd better do the right thing.
	BubleGum Crisis & Crash & ADP Files are Copyright (C) Artmic / Youmex
/ Suzuki Toshimichi, Sonoda Kenichi, Gooda Hiroaki and Urushibara Satoshi.
	Dirty Pair is Copyright (C) Takachiho Haruka / Sunrise / Adam Warren.
	Mamono (Devil) Hunter Yohko is Copyright 1990-1996 (C) Mauyama Masao,
Japan Computer Systems / Toho, Inc.
	Project A-ko is Copyright (C) Soeishinsha / Final-Nishijima / Central
Park Media.
	Slayers is Copyright (C) Araizumi Rui / Yoshinaka Shoko.
	The Chronicles of Narnia epic is Copyright 1951-2002 (C) by C. S.
Lewis.
	Dr. Who is Copyright 1963-2002 (C) the British Broadcasting
Corporation.
	Blake's Seven is Copyright 1977-2002 (C) the British Broadcasting
Corporation.
	Sapphire and Steel is Copyright 1980-2002 (C) the British Broadcasting
Corporation.

----------
File: `twbd_1_prl.txt' [17-07-2000]
----------

				   ** ** **
Thy Will be Done
A companion story to Thy Kingdom Come
Part 1: Hallowed be Thy Name
Prologue:
				   ** ** **
	"Dead Scream!"
	The coruscating blast tore from her staff to crash with ruinous force
into the place in which her adversary had stood only a moment before. The
earth quaked and reeled, rocks shivered to splinters before the attack was
turned aside, shattering trees to kindling and ploughing on until it struck at
last at the base of the cliff in a devastating explosion.
	"Impressive."
	With lightning speed, her staff already in motion, Pluto whirled
towards her nemesis, red eyes flashing fiercely as they fixed again upon the
shadowed figure before her as she tensed in preparation for yet another
attack. "Almost a danger. Almost, but not quite. Come, shall we dance mistress
of forever; the infinity of eternity set against the absolute of physical
existence? A challenge for a little space ere I tire of the game and burn the
very essence from your soul? Shall we play?"
	"You cannot triumph, not now or here." Pluto's tone was calm, seeming
impossibly incongruous given the intensity of the battle. "The gate is my
domain."
	"As reality is mine." The other's tone was suddenly low and venomous.
"Can you even begin to comprehend the enormity of what lies before you? I am
the sum total of the hate of all that has ever been and ever shall exist, the
absolute that is infinite and ever-lasting damnation. Do you--"
	"Dead Scream!"
	Snarling, the figure leapt back, the shadows swirling as for a
heartbeat they seemed to waver; and in that moment, even as the hands were
raised and the power gathered in answer, the veils were for a moment torn
aside and Pluto gazed for an instant that was eternity into the emerald eyes
of hate; and she smiled. Then the spell that she had been given and that had
remained concealed within her own attack struck the unprotected shadow of a
long-dead evil.
	And she understood at last and too late what the Senshi had done. And
her scream of despair was a shriek to rend the very foundations of existence
and a curse to last from the beginning of forever to the uttermost end of
eternity; and it was enough.
	With a start, Setsuna jerked awake, bolting upright and staring about
her for a moment in bewilderment before she recalled where she was and why she
had chosen to remain this night within the confines of the Crystal Palace and
settled back once more with a sigh.
	"A succinct reminder Helios." She murmured softly as her heart resumed
its regular gentle rhythm and she prepared to stir once more. "However I
believe we could have dispensed with the melodramatic imagery."
	A low chuckle answered her.
	"But you have always been such a fine tapestry with which to work."
Came a sudden low voice from the darkness. A moment later the shadows seemed
to stir and Setsuna smiled as she turned towards the half-seen form. "Besides,
you did insist that the call be both definitive and succinct;" Continued the
lord of Helcion quietly, stepping a pace towards her although remaining still
shadowed and only half-perceived. "I did my best. Not that I believe for a
moment you needed the reminder, even after a thousand years." He chuckled
again.
	"I could not afford to leave anything to chance old friend." She
answered softly as she rose swiftly and began to dress, seeming heedless of
the shadowed presence in the room. "Were I to falter..."
	"An unlikely possibility." He answered, a touch of gentle banter in
his tone, stepping another pace towards her and smiling behind the shadows.
Then abruptly the gently bantering tone was gone, replaced by one of sudden
deadly earnestness. "You are certain there can be only one exit-point for the
gate? Should the fractures manifest in our own rather than in the aberrant
reality..."
	"Alternate reality." She corrected him with a touch of amusement. "I
doubt your counterpart would appreciate being considered an aberration. But to
answer your question, yes. It will be the alternate Death Phantom who will
initiate contact."
	"And the outcome?" He continued, his voice still quiet but his eyes
suddenly intense as they fixed upon her face.
	Setsuna glanced quickly away, her expression suddenly shadowed and
unreadable. For a long moment she remained silent, then at last she sighed and
shook her head. "That cannot be my concern." She said quietly. "My
responsibility is to our own reality, and that is responsibility enough. The
choices of my counterpart must remain hers and hers alone. We can ensure only
that the abominations never enter our universe."
	"Abominations?" He said gently. "Surely that is a little harsh
considering you intend to ensure they survive?"
	"Perhaps," She conceded.
	Yet he caught the brief flash of anger flicker deep in her eyes and he
found himself wondering suddenly whether her words might not have revealed
more than she intended him to know. Still, she was right. It could not be his
concern. He had done all that she had asked of him and that their long
friendship had demanded, both now and a thousand years gone. He could do no
more.
	"I must go." He said softly at last after the silence had stretched
between them. "I will not wish you luck; after all, should you succeed you did
not need it and should you fail our history shall collapse into chaos and
ruin, in which event it is highly unlikely that either of us shall be here to
make a difference. Farewell my friend, and may the blessing of all the gods go
with you. Do what you must, and return home safely. Farewell."
	And with that, a gentle breeze seemed to flutter for a moment through
the chamber and Setsuna was alone once more.
	"Farewell old friend." She murmured softly to the quiet emptiness. "I
owe you more than you could possibly understand, and I shall not forget.
Farewell."
	And turning she moved swiftly to the doors and passed silent and
wraith-like out into the stillness of the palace and towards the royal
apartments.
	They were sleeping when she slipped at last unseen by the guards at
the outer doors and passed within, moving silently through the suite until she
came at last to the doors and halted once more. Courtesy dictated that she
should wait in the event that the two might be awake within. But she sensed no
stirring of Serenity's presence and at last she moved forwards once more, the
doors closing soundlessly behind her as she glided across the rugs and halted
at last by the bedside, gazing silently down upon the sleeping face of her
queen.
	For a timeless moment she was still, a sudden agony of pain and terror
wringing her heart as she imagined all her counterpart must have endured and
the horror of a future lost forever.
	"A tear Setsuna?"
	With a start, Pluto came to herself, seeming for a moment unable to
understand how it was that she knelt by the bedside or why Serenity's face
seemed to blur before her eyes. Then her queen's finger brushed in a feather-
light touch against her cheek and Pluto stared as though in incomprehension at
the single tear that glistened upon her fingertip, as though wrought itself of
glistening crystal.
	"Old memories?" Serenity continued softly. "We could do no more for
them Setsuna. After all, did you not tell me; their future was their own to
determine without our interference?"
	Few things could surprise the guardian of time twice in a single night
but now she stared as though unable to answer.
	"How--" She managed at last.
	"You ask me that tonight of all nights?" Serenity answered with a
gentle laugh. "I'm not quite so devoid of perception as you seem to think. Did
you imagine I had forgotten tonight's particular significance?"
	Pluto smiled and shook her head. "Theirs to determine *without* our
interference?" She inquired, laughing softly in her turn.
	"Well, with a little help perhaps." Serenity conceded, an almost
impish smile playing gently for a moment on her lips. Then suddenly her
expression sobered. "Pluto...Setsuna, you're *sure* you will be safe? I won't
ask you to do this if--"
	"I shall be perfectly safe my Queen." She assured her in a tone that
might have surprised one who did not know her so well and had not seen the
caring that lay beneath the face she showed the world. "The chaos threatened
only my counterpart. With her unable to re-enter the time-stream before her
fateful battle with the Overlord--"
	"Nevertheless, you will be careful?" Serenity's hand fastened suddenly
fiercely on her own. "Should he suspect... Setsuna, I won't lose any of you;
not again."
	Now it was Pluto's turn to look offended. "Do you imagine I would be
so careless?" She scolded. Then her tone softened. "I shall be careful
Serenity. My duty is to this reality, and to you. Do you think for a moment
that I would risk that, even at the cost of such a threat as they might pose
to another alternate? I shall warn them, threaten them if need be and give
them what advice I can, but in the end it will be their actions alone that
shall determine their fate and they must decide whether they will heed me
before it is too late. If they will not, should they choose to ignore the
warning, I shall destroy them rather than risk the chance that their
interference might change the course of that future and therefore our own; but
whatever may happen, they *shall not* enter my domain, and my domain is the
sum of our reality."
	Serenity nodded, yet Pluto saw the pain in her eyes and cursed herself
yet again for what she might be called upon to do. Contrary to what some might
wish to believe, she was neither aloof nor heartless; yet there could be no
compromise. Should the seven born of the infinite chaos from beyond reality's
end by their interference threaten the alternate and thus not only the
renegades but her reality should the overlord learn too soon of its existence,
she would not hesitate to tear them from the very fabric of existence, to
shatter the gate at the moment of their transition and condemn them to
infinite and absolute oblivion in the inconceivable and incomprehensible
nothingness beyond thought and understanding.
	"Come," Serenity's gentle voice pierced her dark introspection, her
hand resting gently for a moment about Pluto's own before she released her and
made to rise. "it is time. Let us go."
	And with that, almost before Pluto was aware of it, the light of her
queen's power surged about them and a moment later all was quiet within the
chamber once more.
	"So it begins." Came the soft voice from the shadows. "and now only
the gods can know what must be. A fair journey Setsuna my friend, and a safe
home-coming. Farewell."
	And with that, Helios released his hold upon the sleeping soul of the
dreaming Endymion and turning at last from the light of the city, passed once
more swift and silent into the realm of dream and fantasy.

----------
File: `twbd_1_1.txt' [14-09-2002]
----------

	"Come on Jellyfish-brains! Kei knows what she's doing and I don't
intend to get spread across half the multiverse when that Storm hits, even if
you do; so move it unless you want to get left behind!"
	With another shove, Lina propelled a still-protesting Gourry ahead of
her towards the gate to the Mano home and the waiting company gathered just
beyond it, while close at her side, Naga turned for a moment, glancing quickly
behind them at the sudden shouted: "It's alright! I've got her!"
	A moment later Kei reappeared once more, half-carrying, half-dragging
a desperately-struggling C-ko behind her. "The little idiot was just about to
try getting herself taken, *again*!"
	She half turned for a moment to freeze the smaller girl with a look
that promised dire consequences should she ever again do anything so stupid.
	"But I heard them!" C-ko was shrieking at the very top of her lungs
while tears streamed from her eyes and she fought with uncharacteristic
savagery to escape. "Biko was screaming and I heard Eiko calling and--"
	"Listen you stupid, pea-brained little idiot!" Kei half-snarled,
tightening her hold painfully while beginning to shake the Lepton princess
like a rag-doll. "They've been back for almost twenty minutes; what does it
take to get something into that air-space you call a head? It was another
projection, their complements through their mistress. What the hell else do
you expect that ice-blooded bitch is going to do just before a reality-storm,
post out invitations? And you're still stupid enough to fall for it after
everyone's warned you at least a thousand times to be careful! Tell me, are
all Leptonians born so damn stupid or is it something they have to learn
before they get let loose on the rest of us? Lina, Naga for kami's sake one of
you make yourselves useful and..."
	An instant later C-ko went limp against her.
	"You only had to ask." Naga felt it necessary to point out somewhat
smugly as Kei hefted the now-sleeping girl in her arms and moved quickly to
Lina's farther side.
	"Yuri? Shasti?" She demanded as Lina shoved Gourry again to hurry him
up as they reached the gate.
	"It's alright, they got back just after Priss and Ami, about five
minutes ago." Viko called from where she stood waiting with Amelia and
Zelgadis just inside. "Come on;" She continued urgently. "there isn't much
time! We've only been waiting for you, and Joanna can't risk an exit being
open again when the Storm hits; Kami knows what that thing will be able to do
then!
	"They've got her!" She shouted to those waiting anxiously beyond the
gate. "Eiko, can you--"
	She had barely started when the tall redhead was by Kei and lifting
the still form from her arms.
	"What happened!" She demanded urgently. "Is she--"
	"She's fine." Kei answered quickly. "Naga had to send her sleepy-byes
to stop her trying to get herself caught, that's all. Now come on, let's get
the hell out of here."
	Quickly they moved to take their places, Naga, Lina and Gourry with
Viko this time, Kei and Zelgadis with Amelia.
	"Alright everyone, we're on our way!" Joanna's voice rose above the
chatter and immediately several conversations and almost as many arguments
ceased and the various groups gathered close to their respective guides while,
after making certain no one had been missed, Joanna and the DAs moved quickly
to the rear, the six gathering in a fiercely protective circle about the tall,
flame-haired girl as she summoned the gate. "Remember, keep close together and
for heaven's sake don't move this time if you get separated! Just stay still
and we'll find you. Priss, you're group's taking point. Cryolite's next.
Straight on until we reach the palace, then I'll find the path to MegaTokyo.
Alright, let's move!"
	As always, Usagi and Serena gasped and stumbled for a moment as the
gate leapt to full coherence and the Ginzuishou and Silver Crystal flared
angrily for a fleeting instant at the disturbing of reality while at Lina's
side, Viko lurched and the sorceress steadied the Senshi archetype, glancing
quickly to her with concern. Being a product of such a disturbance, Joanna's
tearing of the fabric of existence on the verge of the coming Storm was
particularly unpleasant for her and Lina waited uneasily until she drew
herself up once more.
	"V-chan, are you--" She began.
	"I'm fine." Viko assured her quickly with her usual easy confidence as
Amelia moved forwards with the others just ahead of them. "Come on."
	Lina nodded, finding herself as always tightening her grip a little on
her guide's hand and tensing involuntarily in anticipation of the sudden,
momentary lurch of transition as they drew nearer the mouth of the portal,
last but for Joanna and the six buma.
	"It doesn't matter how many times we do this, it still makes me feel
as though I'm being chewed up and swallowed by something really horrible mixed
with the worst of Yuri's driving!" She heard Kei mutter to the Sailoon
princess followed by Amelia's giggle and Yuri's fainter outraged exclamation,
as she turned for a moment to glare threateningly at Gourry at her side.
	"Don't get distracted this time." She warned him, the now-familiar
half-threatening, half-exasperated tone not fooling her companions for a
moment. "If you get yourself lost I'm not coming looking for you again, so
hold on."
	Gourry simply nodded in return, choosing not to upset her by
acknowledging overtly the sudden quick tightening of her hand in his or the
brief flash of warmth and concern in her eyes before she turned quickly away
and Viko led them swiftly forwards towards the flaring portal into which most
of the company had already disappeared.
	As always, Lina found herself holding her breath as the blackness
gaped wide before her like a hungry maw into the depths of some particularly
nasty Mazoku hell. Then suddenly Naga screamed and in the next instant a deep,
tearing agony as if for a fractional moment a splinter of her very being were
being ripped viciously away crashed over her and Viko was crying out and
leaping wildly forwards with them into the abyss, the gate reeling with a
sudden nauseous lurch about them even as Yohko's reality tumbled away and they
plunged down into the moment that was always eternity.
	Behind them, Joanna cursed savagely in her native Irish Gaelic, while
around her the DAs held on, their senses a sudden shrieking cacophony of
confusion as the reality-storm struck the Mamono Hunter universe with
terrifying intensity and the still-open portal writhed and screamed as though
itself in agonised torment.
	For one desperate moment as she teetered with them upon the knife-edge
of transition, Joanna thought she heard the two Sailor Moons joined by the
Sailoon princess in a combined scream that waxed even above the sudden shouts
and cries of the rest of the company. Then, even as she plunged with them into
the abyss, searing agony crashed over her and she felt herself break and
splinter, the gate torn savagely from her control as for a sickening,
incomprehensible moment that was forever she seemed to perceive fleeting
myriad sensations of the writhing reality about her as though from a giddying
multitude of perspectives.
	Then with a last sheering crack she was plunging down, down into an
oblivion that she knew suddenly was the nothingness beyond pain and torment
and the uttermost end of damnation and a blackness, absolute beyond
comprehension swept with a terrible swiftness to engulf her, the dying, broken
screams of her companions a fleeting, failing flicker in her shattering
awareness before all fled into the nothingness and the hungry, midnight
emptiness took her. And it devoured her soul and the very essence of her
being. And she knew and was no more.
				   ** ** **
Thy Will be Done
A companion story to Thy Kingdom Come
Part 1: Hallowed be Thy Name
Chapter 1:
				   ** ** **
	"Please Mommy, I'm cold. How much longer is Daddy going to be?"
	With a sigh, Elizabeth Leanora Langley turned her attention from the
increasingly animated argument between her husband and what seemed to her an
absurdly over-zealous airport security man given his request and glanced down
once more to the little girl at her side. Her eldest daughter had been asking
the same question for the past five minutes; not that Elizabeth could blame
her. The man was being unnecessarily officious and she could tell that James
was fast reaching the limit of his patience, his dark face flushed with
growing anger and his broad shoulders tight as he towered over the other man.
	"Oh come on now!" She could hear him now easily even through the
rising surge around them as people prepared to move at a moment's notice, and
she knew that his father's quick temper was beginning to get the better of him
despite his attempts to remain calm and reasonable. "Lord! Ain't my clearance
enough? What the hell you think my little girl's gonna do anyway, blow up the
damn plane?! Come on! She just wants to see her Daddy safely on-board. Five
minutes! Is that so much t' ask?"
	"I'm sorry captain Langley sir." Came the answer in a tone that seemed
to suggest he was nothing of the kind. "No one but passengers allowed on the
plane. Now if you don't like it you're more than welcome to take it up with
your superior or the President himself when you get to D.C., but I've got my
job to do and I've got no more time to stand here arguing about it, and
neither've you sir if you're gonna make the flight."
	Watching her husband's dark skin flush a deeper angry red, Elizabeth
sighed again and shook her head. He would probably have let the matter drop
minutes earlier, preferring to spend his last few minutes with his family
rather than in what was obviously a fruitless waste of time, but he had
promised little De�nne that she could say goodbye to him on the plane and he
never broke a promise if he could help it. Studying him, Elizabeth found
herself smiling for a moment despite her growing irritation at what seemed now
yet another example of his sometimes ill-considered rashness. He would never
have admitted it, believing himself scrupulously fair with all his three
children, but she had known somehow from the moment he had first held his tiny
first-born daughter that he and De�nne would share a special closeness that he
had somehow never quite managed with the son she had been certain would be
closest to him, and it hurt him more than he would ever say whenever he had to
let her down or whenever his too-frequent absences made her cry.
	A man of intense conviction and a fierce Baptist morality learned from
a large family and a childhood in which faith seemed to be the primary
defining constant of their lives until he had left home to join the army at
eighteen, James Thomas Langley, only son of a Scots-Irish father and Afro-
American mother, army captain, CIA operative and now recalled early from his
leave to take up his new post with one of the additional detachments of secret
service agents assigned as Presidential bodyguards given the increasingly
dangerous situation brought about by the recent spate of world-wide disasters
and the unrest they had sparked, loved his family above everything with a
fierce protectiveness that Elizabeth sometimes found almost frightening in its
intensity.
	They had met barely a week after his first posting and were married
barely three months later despite her mother's initial unease concerning her
daughter's marrying a man who had chosen to make the military his career. Not
that Elizabeth had blamed her for her uncertainty. Having fled Castro's Cuba
in the early sixties, the only survivor of a family of ten, Maria's distrust
even of the American forces was more than understandable and it had not taken
her long to accept the inevitable once she had met the tall, well-spoken
Langley, her greatest concern in the end being his Baptist convictions and the
fact that his swiftly-advancing career might mean she would see far less of
her daughter and the many grandchildren she expected a good catholic girl to
give her rather than anything else. August, Elizabeth's father, an immigrant
who had come to upstate New York with his parents, two brothers and four
sisters from West Berlin as a young man some ten years after the war, had
simply smiled and kissed her and wished her all the happiness she could find.
	For the tall, quietly-spoken but quick-tempered son of a man whose
family had come from Derry (or Londonderry, as Thomas Langley always felt it
necessary to point out when the subject was mentioned) to America during the
worst deprivations of the great depression and to all the unlooked-for
prosperity their new home had brought them and a woman whose great-grandmother
had had the relative fortune to be slave to a family who had considered
kindness and education preferable to the beatings and brutality all too
accepted in their time, Elizabeth, small, dark and delicately pretty, whom he
had loved with a boundless intensity almost from the moment he had met her at
a charity dance, warm and bubbly yet with a quiet core of steel to match his
own quicker fire, with her mother's strict adherence to a Roman Catholicism
his Presbyterian father had always despised and his Baptist mother deeply
distrusted, had seemed to him an unattainable hope forever beyond his reach.
Then he had met her parents, and Maria, although wary and after a warning
glare that had made it very clear that his intentions towards her daughter had
better be honourable and that had had even him ready to turn and bolt as far
and as fast as he could, had smiled suddenly and taken his arm and welcomed
him warmly to their home. And upon his entering the large and cosy parlour,
August had risen from a low armchair by the fire and caught and shaken his
hand with a quiet strength that had astounded him. And he had known in that
moment that somehow as always the Lord had seen him through and that he had
not hoped in vain.
	His own parents had proved little less intransigent, although he still
smiled whenever he recalled their first meeting with Elizabeth's equally large
family and the first, thunderous religious disagreement between Maria Bach and
Thomas Langley that had culminated in the small, fiery Cuban woman catching
the huge Scots-Irishman a cracking back-hand to the cheek and had ended with
her being held back by August and an astonished Harriet while Elizabeth just
shook her head and he simply stood and stared open-mouthed. He had never
before seen his father so utterly lost for a response to any situation and it
had been perfectly obvious that Maria was not the least intimidated and was
quite ready to try pounding home her point of view despite the fact that she
was little more than half his size.
	From that day, the two had become fast although volatile friends and
even now no family gathering was complete without at least one spirited debate
between them while August and Harriet talked easily and kept an eye on them to
see that things did not get entirely out of hand. Although fierce in her
Baptist convictions, Harriet Langley was a steadier soul and a calming
counterpoint to Thomas's driving intensity. It did no harm also that, although
slow to anger, she was nevertheless more than capable of holding her own when
she felt it necessary.
	For their only son, an often dichotomous mixture of his mother's quiet
steadfastness and his father's consuming fire, Elizabeth had proved that same
strength and balance, a steadying and unbreakable anchor to his sometimes rash
and overbearing intensity. To him, she was his light and his life and all the
good and warmth and happiness there could be, a quiet, calming respite from
the deadly world in which too often he was forced to move. To her, he was
soulmate and confidant and a boundless strength and security, her absolute in
a world in which so few things were certain.
	Now, as she turned her attention once more for a moment to the small,
bright bundle of boundless energy beside her, Elizabeth felt a surge of love
for her family that made her throat suddenly tight and her breath for a moment
short and painful.
	At her mother's side, the little girl had jumped yet again from her
place and was bounding from foot to foot, her long pony-tale dancing and her
dark, pretty face set in a scowl as she bounced up and down and turned this
way and that, dark eyes flashing as she waited with her usual impatience for
her father to finish whatever he was arguing about with the stupid airport
policeman so that she could say goodbye to him inside the big plane that would
soon be taking him away to his new and very secret job in the President's own
house. It wasn't fair sometimes that Daddy's work made him have to stay away
so long, but he had hugged her tight and explained that what he did was very
important and kept God's good people safe from those who might want to harm
them, and this job was most important of all. Besides, this time she and Mommy
and her brother and little sister would only have to wait two weeks before
they would be moving too, and she would have so much to look forward to
including school after next summer. Maybe if she was very good he might even
be able to take her to the White House itself and let her see inside and
perhaps she could even meet the President. She had beamed at that, twining
small arms fiercely around his neck while thinking that perhaps it would not
be so bad after all, even though she had had to say goodbye to Karen and Dana
and Elena and all her other friends which had made her cry until her sometimes-
nasty elder brother had teased her and she had hit him. That had made her feel
better, even though Mommy had scolded her and even Daddy had frowned and
flashed his dark eyes in a way that always told her when she was in trouble.
Hitting James Jr. could usually make things better if she was particularly
upset.
	At only a few days passed her fifth birthday, De�nne, like the others,
was no stranger to flying, but unlike her elder brother who hated it, she
never seemed to tire of planes, or roller-coasters or anything else that was
fast or dangerous, indeed Elizabeth often joked that the little girl would
probably be a trained pilot before she went to school with all her ceaseless
questions and all she had already seen. She had been talking about almost
nothing but the trip for weeks and she had thought her father's promise that
she would be able to go inside the plane before he had to leave more than
worth the midwinter cold and having to get up so early for church and drive
through all the snow, or at least she had when they had started. Now, as her
brother (who was definitely nasty this morning) seemed to have decided that
poking her just hard enough to make her mad but not quite hard enough to make
her really want to hit him and so attract their mother's attention might
relieve his own boredom and her younger sister Linna set up yet another
protesting plea to be allowed to get out of her pram and walk, De�nne was not
so sure. Her father was getting really angry and it seemed that the stupid
policeman was not going to let her on the plane no matter what he said. It
wasn't fair.
	Beside her, her mother smiled indulgently down at her and squeezed her
tight for a moment before releasing her and turning back towards the still-
arguing pair, but De�nne was far from placated and her mood was not exactly
improved a moment later when, seeing his mother's attention fully distracted,
James decided it was time to pull her hair. That did it.
	With a squeal of pain and a sudden burst of her father's fire, the
little girl whipped around before he had a chance to back away and would have
hammered one small fist into his mouth with all the strength she had, had not
her mother been quicker. A moment later De�nne found herself picked up and
looking into her mother's smouldering dark eyes while her brother scuttled
frantically to relative safety on the farther side of Linna's pram.
	For a moment Elizabeth continued to stare down at her daughter in
silence, her small mouth set into a thin line of disapproval while she waited
for the inevitable flurry of protest. Although almost a year and a half his
junior, De�nne had almost half an inch on her brother and both their parents
had begun to suspect that the teasing from his friends (not to mention De�nne
herself) concerning the fact that he inevitably ended up on the receiving end
of any skirmish with her was mostly responsible for their increasingly
frequent fighting. Not that any of his friends had fared much better. Of the
two, De�nne was by far the more aggressive, her brother's only real chance
being to tease her until her quick temper made her careless, while to her,
fighting seemed to come as naturally as the almost dichotomous warmth and
gentleness she could sometimes show, even to him given the right
circumstances. Today however she was not of a mind to be gracious.
	"He started it!" She flared, the tears already gone though it had
hurt, twisting with amazing agility in her mother's arms to glare at James Jr.
with a look that promised dire consequences when she next had the chance. "He
was poking me and he pulled my hair!"
	She might have said and done a good deal more, but at that moment
their father turned in their direction and she was distracted by the look in
his eyes as he approached and halted beside them.
	"I'm sorry Pony." He said softly, settling heavily at his wife's side
and reaching to take the little girl from her arms and hold her close. "I
tried honey but they're not letting anyone but passengers on the plane, not
even to say goodbye. I'm sorry."
	In truth he knew he should have expected it. The unexplained world-
wide phenomena of the past few weeks had everyone on edge and seemed to have
brought an unending stream of maniacs out of the woodwork from straight-out
lunatics to crackpot doomsday fanatics who had recalculated this year as the
new millennium and the beginning of the end of the world, and although he was
taking a commercial flight, it seemed that it would be carrying other military
personnel and they simply could not afford to take chances.
	Beside him, Elizabeth shook her head, a sudden quick flare of anger at
the hurt in De�nne's eyes when he more than anyone should have known this
would happen making her own eyes flash for a moment before she took a calming
breath and shifted a little to let the little girl settle down between them.
She turned to him, about to say something she would probably immediately have
regretted when abruptly the call came for his flight and she realised with a
sudden unreasoning start of unease that it was time for him to go.
	Quickly they stood, James bending to slap his son gently on the
shoulder and ruffle his hair rather than do something that might earn him more
teasing from his sister before turning to lift little Linna from her pram and
hold her close.
	"You be sure and be a good girl for your mother" He said as he kissed
her goodbye. "and I'll see you in a few days, ok?"
	Linna beamed up at him, her small arms twined about his neck and her
blue eyes sparkling with the simple trust of her two and a half years.
	"Bye-bye Daddy." She chirruped, squeezing tighter for a moment before
kissing him on the cheek and beginning to squirm to get down.
	Laughing, he set her on her feet and turned to De�nne. The little girl
flew into his arms, twining both arms fiercely about his neck and bursting
into a sudden flood of tears. Although she loved her mother fiercely, her
Daddy was special and she missed him desperately whenever he had to go away.
	"Hey Pony" He murmured, his own voice catching suddenly as he held her
close. "Come on now. I'll see you again so soon you'll hardly know I've been
gone and you have the plane-ride to look forward to and the new house and all
the fun we're gonna have."
	Yet even as he tried to smile, she clung suddenly to him with a fierce
almost painful desperation and a sudden unreasoning thrill of fear seemed to
take hold of him, almost as though caught from what seemed for a moment that
was forever the stark terror in his daughter's eyes, and for a heartbeat he
faltered, De�nne clutched desperately close in his arms while he stood
suddenly trembling and unable to move or understand the fear until at last she
began to squirm a little and the spell was broken.
	"Daddy, you're squeezing too tight." She said, trying to get more
comfortable. Her father's expression was suddenly so strange and something she
could not understand had made her suddenly frightened and want to just hold on
and hold on and never ever let go. "Please don't cry." She pleaded, and
suddenly he was aware that tears were streaming down his face and he could not
understand why or why he did not seem able to let her go. "I'll be brave and
grown up and I'll help Mommy with Linna and make sure Mommy doesn't cry or get
too lonely. And Mommy can help me write you because even though I'm big now
it's really hard to remember how all the letters go together but I'll try so
very hard so that you'll be proud of me. And I'll pray to Jesus every night so
he'll watch over you and keep my Daddy safe. And I promise I'll be good
and...and..."
	And then she was crying so hard she could say no more, while her
father's face was wrung with pain and beside them Elizabeth caught the look in
her daughter's eyes and suddenly everything seemed deathly cold while icy
dread crept slowly down her spine. Suddenly she wanted desperately to plead
with him to stay, to forget the trip and take the leave they owed him. But she
knew before she spoke that it was too late, and tears filled her own eyes as
she heard his voice choked with emotion as he held his little girl and
whispered a last goodbye to her before he at last eased her to the floor and
turned to gather Elizabeth close.
	"Hey, it's alright." He hushed her gently, trying to smile. "It's only
a precaution Beth, a security upgrade because of a few crazy people. I'll be
fine honey, you know I will, and it's only for a few weeks, just until things
settle down. Then I'll take my leave and we'll go on vacation. Come on now. I
think me and Pony have done enough crying for all of us and if I miss this
flight a few weeks more before my leave'll be the least of my worries."
	"I'm sorry." She said, trying to laugh through her tears and fighting
down the fear.
	But although she smiled as he made his final farewell to her and stood
with the children as he hurried away at last, waving a final goodbye to him
when he turned for one last moment to look back at her and flash her a last
intense smile in his turn before disappearing in the crowd, the brief glimpse
of the terror she had caught in De�nne's eyes would not leave her and a part
of her screamed and screamed at her to run after him and plead with him to
stay, and it was with a dreadful sense of unreasoning, terrible foreboding
that she watched at last as the plane leapt skywards and moved when it was
gone to settle little Linna once more in her pram despite her protests
beckoning the two elder children to her side.
	"Oh blessed virgin." She found herself praying suddenly, her soft
words choking in the sudden seeming stillness, turning in that moment for a
reason she could not have explained to the faith of her childhood rather than
to that she had more or less accepted since her marriage. "Please watch over
him this day and see that he comes to no harm. Holy mother of God protect
him."
	And with that and a warning that the children stay close, she turned
and led them swiftly away.
	But in a realm unknown to them a moment of dreadful destiny drew near;
and her daughter was afraid.
				     * * *
	It was just as he had tossed the last of the two bags he was carrying
into the luggage-rack above his head that the voice came from behind him.
"Hey! J-T!"
	A moment later a hand slammed down on his shoulder and he turned, his
melancholy lifting a little as he caught sight of the shorter man who now
stood almost beside him.
	"Hey John!" He returned, forcing a smile and pounding the other on the
back in return with a huge hand that nearly drove him to his knees. "Thought
you weren't flying out till later this afternoon."
	"No sir." He answered, grinning as he snapped a quick salute. "They
flew us in upstate early this morning, Al and Tom and Larry and I; probably
couldn't wait to get us off the base."
	Langley laughed, the gloom lifting still more as a genuine smile
creased his features. "And decided to torment me by putting all four of you on
my flight, Lieutenant? As if I ain't gonna have enough of you over the next
few weeks? Or maybe they just wan'ed me on-board to make sure the plane was
still in one piece when we got to D.C." His tone had just the right mixture of
bite and sarcasm but the smile belied it completely and John Lansing's grin
never faltered as he aimed a mock-blow at Langley's midriff. Then abruptly the
captain's smile was gone. "You carrying weapons?" He asked quietly and
suddenly Lansing was all professional attention. "Not that I'm expecting
trouble, but..."
	"Yes sir." He answered quickly. "Don't worry; we're ready sir should
anything happen."
	Langley nodded and might have said more, but at that moment the cabin
PA crackled and at his gesture Lansing saluted and moved quickly back to his
seat.
	Glancing quickly about him, Langley noted the others had been seated
at strategic points at some distance each from the rest and despite his
question of a moment before he found himself smiling and shaking his head at
someone's seeming paranoia. Just what, really, were they expecting to happen?
	With a sigh he took his own seat and settled back. He intended to
catch up on a couple of hours sleep before their arrival and the inevitable
protracted checks, briefings and heaven only knew what else to which he would
be subjected before he was allowed finally to get down to doing the job for
which he had been sent. His head half turned as he gazed out of the window at
the retreating terminal where he knew his family would be watching the
departing plane, Langley let his thoughts turn for one last moment entirely to
them, barely aware of the voice of the plane's captain as he prayed softly for
a quiet moment before the aircraft turned and began to pick up speed and he
turned quickly away.
	"Lord protect them." He murmured one last time when at last they had
climbed above the clouds and the city was lost behind them.
	And with a heavy sigh, he settled back and closed his eyes. Yet
although sleep rushed quickly to claim him, the fear followed him down into
the darkness and he did not rest in peace.
				     * * *
	Cold. Such had been this place even in the long-vanished time before
the greatest guardian the realm of Helcion had yet known had abandoned the
physical world to take up his abode in a kingdom he was to rule for time
beyond measure, a place almost untouched even by the will of the dream-king
himself, a hidden, silent place of cold and fear and midnight stillness.
	Secluded and almost forgotten in the vastness of the land of dreams,
it lay, a deep, secret hollow of fern and wood and midnight silence,
stretching for perhaps half a mile from north to south and perhaps twice that
from east to west, bordered to the south by dark, rolling uplands and to
north, east and west by high, heather-covered moors as the land began to climb
swiftly towards the midnight cold and perpetual mists of the northern
highlands and the tall mountains beyond. From the north, a small stream, swift
and icy-cold, fell with barely a whisper or ripple to flow out at last into a
still, deep pool that lay almost at the centre of the dell, a cold, white fog
drifting perpetually just above its surface, stirred only by the occasional
murmur of the biting wind as it hissed and whispered in the darkness. No
longer could errant thought or gathering dream shape this place, and no
presence disturbed its midnight stillness save for the occasional dreamer,
passing wraith-like in the dark as they wandered restlessly in the deepest
depths of uneasy sleep, guided by fate to pass that way and so find for that
night in the cloying dark and perpetual cold of the northern mists a dream
they would rather not remember.
	It was by the pool he stood, tall and silent, cloaked and hooded in
deepest black, invisible save for the occasional stirring of the cloak and the
piercing gleam of eyes like twin fires from beneath the hood as he gazed out
unmoving into the silent, watchful darkness.
	For what seemed an eternity of waiting, nothing disturbed the
stillness save for the fitful whisper of the wind and for a little the faint,
far-off cries of some tormented dreamer caught in the throws of nightmare, cut
off suddenly as he awoke and vanished from the realm.
	Then suddenly it was there, the barest flicker for an instant that was
to him forever, a fleeting touch upon the very margins of his reality, a
vanishing moment of choice in which he reached out with lightning swiftness to
twist the exit of the opening portal into the land of dreams rather than the
outskirts of the city of Tokyo in the real world, a fleeting, condescending
smile at its creator's hubris touching his metaphorical face for a moment even
as for a fractional instant the very fabric of Helcion was rent asunder and a
darkness, more profound and absolute than the deepest horror of any nightmare
gaped wide before him. For a moment more he waited, while beyond the gate
shadows twisted and lurid shapes of flame and horror seemed to flicker and
dance upon the very edge of sight, and from far away came the screaming cries
of tormented things.
	Then suddenly the hell-red fires blazed high, and from the roiling
horror they came, seven shapes at first vague and ill-defined, writhing and
twisting upon the very verge of dissolution, captured soul-echoes from a dying
omniverse reborn of the hatred of a creature of an infinite thirst for revenge
that waxed, and grew, and were real. For a moment they hung as though
suspended, twisted mockeries of themselves, hideous nightmare parodies that
rippled and shifted in a reeling, sickening dance of nauseating change until
suddenly, with a searing flash and thunderous crack of re-established form and
identity they were hurtled headlong from the gate to fall at last limp and
unmoving by the pool.
	Still as death they lay before him, seven female forms fair and young,
frozen as though captured at the very pinnacle of life, tall and beautiful,
yet hard and cold as though cut from frozen crystal; and their faces, frigid
in death, were wild and terrible.
	Smiling fiercely in triumph, the cloaked figure moved swiftly to them,
stooping to lift each in turn and lay her with sudden surprising gentleness by
her companions, his face and the terrible power of his eyes softening for a
little as he moved with quiet care to brush an errant lock of long, gleaming
hair aside or settle slender hands more restfully.
	Then swiftly he rose to look down upon them once more, his eyes
straying to each in turn as he reached to touch souls as yet inanimate,
learning in a fractional moment all he needed while they lay still quiescent.
	Of the strangers, six seemed to him at first the more overtly curious,
surprise flickering for a moment deep in his eyes as he studied them before he
smiled at the revelation that they had been touched by powers far beyond the
humans of the universe of their creation. Still, the achievements of their
native builders had been for all their flaws impressive, even if born of a
hubris and arrogance to make him sigh and shake his metaphorical head in
disappointment although they were far beyond his jurisdiction. The minds
within reflected well their beginning. Ruthless they were, and savage, forged
in a time and tempered by the desperate necessities of a struggle beyond even
his ken, wild and primal and filled with a terrible pride and an arrogance and
certainty of the superiority of their kind. Yet there was kindness also and
gentleness and a boundless capacity for warmth, and beneath all, a fierce and
indomitable fire that blazed pure and clean and incorruptible. And his smile
grew and warmed as the surety of the rightness of his compassion and the way
to the future he had chosen against the stand of all save one of his
companions, the rest of whom had insisted the travellers were alien and
dangerous and should be destroyed, was vindicated.
	Then he touched the last and only truely human of the seven, and
suddenly his smile was gone; for she was chaos beyond the boiling madness of
the interuniversal void, a raging, roiling maelstrom in which nothing could be
discerned, a screaming, shrieking rent into horror and oblivion and a
plunging, hungry blackness that tore at the senses and confounded even his
attempts to read the soul that lay within. And he understood at last the
enormity of the Gate's unease and why this one at least should be destroyed
beyond hope of recall lest she bring disaster or the Silence or some
destruction of her own. Yet in the tale of pain and dreadful peril read in the
memories of her companions he thought he saw the reason for her state, and he
was perhaps the most compassionate of his kind. The very essence of her being
was torn and splintered beyond his power to change or heal, yet with care she
would still accept the power that would revive her, and in any case he would
not destroy without cause. Besides, despite all his companions might claim,
she was human and of the system, even if of a universe far beyond all hope of
ken, and so inviolate and under his protection.
	Decided, he gathered power enough to animate them and restore them to
physical reality, then chuckled with sudden amusement as the necessity was
taken from him.
	"*MINE*!" The snarling roar brought his attention from the still forms
to the portal once more, a metaphorical sigh escaping him as the thing of
nightmare appeared in all its pitiful, impudence of power, twisted and
misshapen according to its kind, huge mandibles snapping and eyes weaving
savagely back and forth as its arms reached hungrily for its prey. "Hell-
spawned bitch! They shall not escape me! My vengeance shall be now and you and
your keeper shall scream!"
	With a venomous howl, a roiling, bloated darkness spewed from its
outstretched hands, a searing, poisonous corruption that surged screaming to
overwhelm the unmoving forms and, as it thought, corrupt and animate them to
its will.
	Quicker than thought, the figure reached out, a fleeting touch turning
the approaching darkness in an instant to a blazing, coruscating blast of life-
giving spiritual power that struck the seven with the force of a tsunami,
sweeping them in a heartbeat far, far away before it too was gone and he and
the hell-thing were alone. Then, even as the creature understood that its
intent had been frustrated and drew breath to roar a challenge to its unseen
nemesis, the figure reached forth a hand. And Death Phantom screamed in agony
and incomprehension as for a moment his link to the abyss of his kind was gone
and he teetered upon the very brink of absolute oblivion.
	"Go." The single word was low and terrible beyond imagining.
	And in the next moment the Khr'vorll demon lord was hurtled from the
gate of a realm he had better never have dared approach, his scream of rage
and the frustration of his revenge dying in an instant as the hooded figure
released his hold and Helcion was restored once more.
	For a long moment he was still, standing half-turned as he gazed
unmoving in the direction the strangers had taken, sensing already the
terrible anger of the most disillusioned of his companions as in his turn and
as they had agreed he reached for them with terror and nightmare and a grim
determination that they should prove themselves false and so perish here and
now ere they could be released to bring ruin on the world, watching with
regret and compassion as the fleeting touch took them and each began to wander
in the horrors his companion had wrought. Then at last and sadly he shook his
head and sighed.
	"So the great dissolution draws near." Again, the words were low, but
now the tone was quiet and tinged with sadness and regret. "And so begins but
the first of the many trials you must face. Let us hope our charity was not
misplaced. For you are not yet needed save to lessen a little the suffering
that is to come, and we cannot save you again should you falter. Yet still I
believe my companions have misjudged, and perhaps you may yet repay us all; we
shall see."
	And without sign or flicker the figure was gone, a last fleeting
warning speeding its way to the lord of the dream-realm before the link
vanished and the hollow lay once more still and silent in its perpetual,
midnight darkness.
				     * * *
	"Check-mate."
	Smiling, Helios set the white bishop in place and gazed quietly across
the board at his silent opponent. Playing against a construct of oneself might
have seemed rather curious to an observer, but the game was no less satisfying
for that.
	With an answering smile and a courtly bow, the construct dissolved,
merging once more with the dream-king even as Helios banished the chessboard
and settled back in his chair.
	Such moments of relaxation had become all too few of late and he had
been growing increasingly restive and uneasy. Darkness was gathering in the
physical world, still all but inaccessible to him save for brief moments in
the city of Tokyo, and he did not need the dreams of the re-awakened Moon
Princess and her inner senshi or the nightmares of the few who had been
attacked by Beryl's increasingly active servants to know that a time of
dreadful choice was fast drawing near. Also, Neherenia was stirring once more
on the realm's borders and he was far from certain as to whether he could hold
her should she begin her final assault in the midst of the gathering storm. He
had considered asking for what help the Windwalker might give him, but despite
his powers in the physical world and the advantage his belief in them might
grant him against an untrained adversary, Alisin's abilities were ill-suited
to combat in the land of dreams, even discounting the fact that he had known
little combat training during his physical life. In any case, he would be
almost as vulnerable to a being of Neherenia's power as any ordinary dreamer
and Helios did not want to think about what might happen should he be
conquered and enslaved to the mirror-queen's will. Far better that he remain
asleep until he was needed and unknown to her than that her attention be drawn
to him by some fool's gambit on the part of the dream-king. Besides, Alisin
had his own destiny, a destiny the lord of Helcion knew far better than to
risk for what little hope his help might offer.
	Helios sighed. In the end, as always, he was alone and little likely
to find help unless by chance he might reach Serenity's daughter or one of her
court before it was too late. Had he been able to reach Poseidon he might have
risked warning her and taken the chance that their collective reincarnation
might have dulled the former distrust between the outer and inner senshi, but
queen Serenity had been exquisitely careful to ensure that nothing would show
save should the senshi again be needed and as with the others he had had no
hope of finding her while her senshi-self remained sleeping. Guessing that she
might, like the inners, be active once more was not enough; he could spare
neither the time nor the power to look for her. As for Hades, there was no
hope there. She was difficult to reach at the best of times and with so much
depending on the outcome of the inevitable confrontation with Beryl and her
demon mistress, Hades would not leave the Gate.
	Sighing again, Helios rose quickly to his feet, a tall goblet of
steaming wine appearing in his hand as he moved swiftly to the door of the
chamber. It was pointless to brood here, and in any case he needed to check
the border defences once more. He could no longer risk sending a construct
with the mirror-queen so attentive.
	The door opened quietly at his touch and he was about to step out into
the wide passage beyond when abruptly he froze. Something had touched the
realm, brief and subtle but as clear to its lord as though the intruder had
announced his presence by pounding at the gates. For a frozen moment, Helios
wondered whether this might not be the first salvo in Neherenia's assault.
Then his home seemed to tremble about him and in the next instant he cried out
and reeled gasping to his knees, the goblet vanishing even as he raised
suddenly shaking hands to clutch convulsively at his head. For a space as he
knelt, he was dimly aware through his pain of a soul-deep tearing as though
the very fabric of Helcion had been ripped savagely aside. Then it had
vanished and in the next instant his home was gone and he found himself
floating in nothingness, a nothingness wreathed in fire.
	"Helios." The voice was the roar and rumble of the flame that
surrounded him and he could do nothing save bow in deference and await what
was to come. "LORD of Helcion, attend."
	Then the vision came, a vision of ruin and destruction in the physical
world, great and terrible as the cataclysmic horror of the fall of Silver
Millennium, a ruin so absolute that it seemed at first impossible that
anything might escape the coming darkness. Yet through the fleeting, dreadful
glimpses that he knew were but the palest echo of the true enormity of the
horror that was to come he saw the hope that had first eluded him, and he
watched in rapt attention, learning all he might now so that he might do what
little he could while still there was time and also so that the windwalker
might be warned and save his last descendant should he not miss the chance.
	The vision faltered and for a moment he thought that this was all that
would be shown him. Then suddenly he stood before a forgotten pool in a deep,
secret hollow of his own realm, and astounded he watched the strange unfolding
of the rescue and restoration of the seven travellers, glimpsing also if but
for a moment a little of the peril that had brought them to the Land of Dreams
so that he might understand, until at last they were cast adrift to wander in
terrible dreams and growing awareness in the farthest reaches of his realm.
	Then at last the vision ended and Helios found himself in his home
once more, kneeling as he had been when the vision had taken him.
	For long moments he remained still and trembling while slowly the
horror faded and a measure of quiet calm returned. Then at last he sighed and
rose slowly to his feet, steadying himself for a little against the cool stone
of the doorway arch until the last of the shaking had vanished and he stood
firm once more.
	The seven strangers must be found and released to the physical world
while still unaware and before they awoke in Helcion in physical form or
worse, were lost forever in the horror of the terrible dreams from which one
at least was determined they should never escape. Already, more than one of
them had begun to wander as the formless nothingness of deep sleep gave way to
the throws of dreadful nightmare and ever-deepening illusion. Also, Alisin
must be awakened and warned of what was to come while still there was time.
	His face set, Helios stepped swiftly from the room, passing quickly
through the wide corridors until at last he left his home and vanished grim
and silent into the vastness of his realm.
				     * * *
	It was a room of memory, a warm, restful retreat in a place of a long-
vanished age in which he had known the quiet peace of study and meditation.
Bookshelves lined its walls from floor to ceiling save for the space where
stood its heavy door and a place on its farther side where was set the large
fireplace in which a warm fire rumbled gently in the silence. Several low and
comfortable chairs were set here and there and a small table stood by the
hearth, yet the room was dominated by the heavy oaken desk standing almost in
its centre upon which a small lamp burned quietly and behind which was set a
large and heavy armchair in which he was settled, his bearded face relaxed in
a half-smile and his eyes closed in sleep. Not for thousands of years had
anything disturbed him save for the few calls of the medallion and the
infrequent visits of the dream-king both to see that nothing was amiss and to
talk for a little or challenge him to the occasional chess-game. No dreamer
had reached him in their wandering (Helios had ensured from the beginning that
his guest had understood how to see that his sanctuary remained undisturbed
for as long as he remained a guest of the realm), and no rumour of the growing
trouble in the physical world had yet come to trouble his quiet solitude.
	It was the opening of the outer door that first disturbed him. Had his
visitor been a dreamer, they would simply have continued on their way, the
hilltop and its house perhaps not even touching their awareness as they
passed. Even to a lucid wanderer, the retreat might have seemed at most little
more than a fleeting image, a distraction to be ignored lest it pull them back
into the oblivion of a true dream-state. Only the lord of Helcion, both by
virtue of his authority and because he was the only real physical presence in
a world of fantasy, could penetrate such defences without difficulty or
alerting their creator and visit when he wished, and his own courtesy ensured
that he would always give some sign so that his host would not be caught
unawares by a sudden appearance. This time however there was nothing and the
sleeping figure stirred, shifting uneasily for a moment as he tried in a half-
dream to understand what had troubled him, before he sighed and settled once
more into sleep. So it was that, when, after a time of stillness, the door to
the study was pushed soundlessly aside, he did not stir.
	For a long moment the figure beyond the doorway remained in shadow,
while the fire murmured and the light flickered gently in the room beyond.
Then at last footfalls whispered in the stillness and the wraith-like form of
a girl, tall and pale, glided forwards into the room, the warm firelight
casting a soft glow on a face at last stilled and peaceful seemingly in the
deepest depths of sleep as she moved slowly to halt at last almost by the
desk, guided perhaps by some sense far beyond conscious thought or reason or
maybe by no more than the peaceful stillness of the study.
	There for a long time of quiet she remained, eyes closed and unseeing,
slender hands relaxed at her sides as she stood as still as though graven in
pale crystal, seeming not even to breathe, until at last her eyelids fluttered
and she stirred once more, perhaps only then aware that she was no longer
moving, her gaze wandering aimless and purposeless about the room, seeming to
see nothing until it returned to fix at last upon the sleeping figure before
her and the ghost of recognition flickered deep in her eyes.
	"Not dissolution. Not alone."
	The words were the barest whisper in the stillness, her left hand
stirring as though to reach out to the only thing she seemed able to perceive
as tangible. Then the moment of awareness was gone and again she was still
while time passed unheeded, until of a sudden the figure before her stirred
again in his sleep, murmuring uneasily as though for a moment aware of the
stranger, before his face relaxed and he settled deeper in his chair. Yet at
that, her eyes seemed to focus once more and again she stirred, her body
shifting almost imperceptibly this way and that as though she were unsure of
how to move from her place. Then slowly she turned, her footfalls faltering as
she moved silently around the desk to halt at last by the chair. There again
for a long time she stood, her left hand trembling at her side before it
reached forwards, moving at last to touch gently on the shoulder of the
sleeping form. Instantly he started, jerking from her touch, his head turning
swiftly towards her, eyes flashing angrily as he awoke fully to her presence
and she returned his look with one of incomprehension.
	For a long moment Alisin Windwalker studied the girl before him, his
momentary anger at the intrusion melting first into confusion, then into
astonished disbelief.
	She was slender and very tall, pale and beautiful as a maiden of the
people of Hyperborea, and clothed only in a strange, black form-fitting
garment that clung tight from neck to feet and left little to the imagination.
Long, lustrous dark hair fell in silken curtains to a little below her waist,
and eyes of a startlingly intense blue-green were fixed with growing awareness
on his face now that he was watching her. Yet even so it was clear to him that
she could not understand where she was, and as he watched, a shadow of pain
seemed to flicker for a moment deep in her eyes.
	Alisin stirred, shifting uneasily under her increasingly disconcerting
gaze, uncertain as to how best to deal with her. He was certain now that she
was no phantom conjured up by his dreaming mind (he had been in Helcion long
enough to recognise such counterfeits), and Helios had never told him what he
should do should some stray dreamer manage somehow to enter his home; such a
thing should not have been possible without his consent.
	"You should not be here my lady," He tried at last, pitching his tone
low and gentle yet with just a hint of command.
	But she regarded him as though the words had not been spoken and at
last he sighed and shook his head. Obviously she was too deeply asleep to
understand anything he might say to her, indeed perhaps she perceived nothing
of her surroundings save maybe at the very edge of awareness. Still, it should
be simple enough to lead her from his home and to a glade where she could
wander safely until she awoke. Yet was there need? Surely it could do no harm
to allow her to stay until she returned to the physical world; at most it
would be a few hours, and perhaps she might become aware enough to talk to for
a little.
	Allowing a smile to soften his sharp features, Alisin made as though
to gesture to a chair by the fire, then started as she stepped suddenly
closer, her gaze roving suddenly restlessly about the room as though with
fever. "Lost."
	Again, the word was little more than a whisper, soft and empty, and
Alisin shivered, staring suddenly shaken as a spasm of pain and bewilderment
passed like a shadow across her beautiful face as she turned this way and that
as though seeking something only she could see. "Lost. And cold! So cold!"
	Then again her eyes tracked to him, and now they shone with an almost
primal intensity and he could see the first true glimmerings of returning
thought and reason, lost and confused as she was.
	"Where..." Her voice faltered and for a moment it seemed that she
might slip back into the peace and emptiness of oblivion. Then she drew
herself up and her gaze sharpened still more. "Where...am I? What...is...this
place?"
	She made as though to gesture, but her hand shook and she swayed as
though at any moment the tenuous hold on reality she had gained might desert
her.
	"You can hear me now my lady? You can understand?"
	Again, he kept his own tone gentle, suddenly afraid for her should she
vanish in this state. Dream to her or no, he did not like the increasingly
wild look in her eyes, as though she were holding on with everything she had,
and the longer he watched her the more certain he was becoming that something
was terribly, horribly wrong. Surely no dreamer should be wandering in such
distress unless perhaps ill and fevered, indeed, he was within a thought of
using the call Helios had taught him and that he knew would summon the dream-
king as quickly as he could come, when she spoke again.
	"I...I hear. I understand." Her voice was still faint as though she
were reaching him from some great distance, yet it was losing the trance-like
emptiness of a moment before and the wild, fevered intensity in her blue-green
eyes seemed to be easing a little the longer she held the nothingness at bay.
"This...this must be the realm of the Lord of Nightmares. Or...or perhaps I am
lost in the nothingness between fantasy and waking reality. Or maybe this is
all that remains at the uttermost end of oblivion."
	Again her words trailed into silence and once more Alisin shivered
uneasily as he watched her taut face and troubled eyes.
	For a long moment he was unsure as to how to answer what he did not
understand. Then she stirred as though to speak again and he realised that she
thought he had not heard her.
	"This is not oblivion my lady," He said with a kindly smile and a tone
he hoped might reassure her. "You have come merely to the Land of Dreams,
though why in such a state I cannot guess. Probably you have strayed here in a
troubled sleep. But I assure you, you have nothing to fear and you are more
than welcome to remain my guest until you wake if it will ease you. Indeed" He
added with a wry chuckle. "I should welcome the company. My vigil is by its
nature something of a solitary one and--"
	"Wait! Wait!" The plea was urgent and he faltered as she raised a
trembling hand as though to ward off his words. "The Land...of Dreams?"
	For several moments she was silent, her face tight as though she were
struggling to recall something at the very edge of memory. "Then Crystal City?
And the children? And the Dream Weaving?"
	For a moment more she remained, her gaze fixed intently upon his face
as though seeking in his eyes an answer to something he might understand. But
at last she sighed and shook her head.
	"Do not let it trouble you." Said Alisin quietly, taking her
bewilderment for the confusion of a troubled sleep. "This will, after all, be
itself but a dream to you when you wake. It is unlikely that you shall
remember--"
	"No." The word was soft but final, somehow silencing the windwalker as
though she had cried it with all the strength she could. "You do not
understand. This...this *cannot* be! I...i do not dream, at least not as you
would understand it. It...it is not the nature of my kind. And yet..." She
continued softly as though to herself. "So like a dream. So like. Crystal
City..., and the children..., and our night dream-journey to the west. An
illusion then? A strange, night-time tale of lives and a place that has never
been?" But again she faltered, her words fading to silence and her face taut
with confusion and a growing fear.
	"Your kind?" Alisin inquired, bewildered now as well as uneasy. "I do
not understand."
	At his words she started as though coming back to herself.
	"I...i am..." She began. But abruptly she fell silent and suddenly a
stark, terrible confusion filled her eyes. "I do not know!" The words were a
sudden gasp of shock and incomprehension. Then her voice was rising in a
terrible panic that was as swift and absolute as it was utterly alien to her.
"I do not know who or what I am!" The cry was suddenly wild and filled with
terror, and Alisin felt pity clutch at his heart as he watched the leaping
horror in her eyes. "The memories of Crystal City... They are not... They
cannot be! Yet there is nothing to take their place! It is not possible that
this could happen to me...that I could forget!"
	The words were lost and pleading and in that moment Alisin knew he
could wait no longer. Whatever her trouble, it was plain to him now that it
was beyond both his experience and ability to help her.
	With a thought, he sent the call, the barely-perceptible tremor that
he knew was itself an illusion for his benefit assuring him that it had
reached the lord of the realm. Now, all he could do was wait and try to soothe
his terrified guest as best he could until Helios arrived to see her safely
from his domain.
	"Please lady--" He began.
	But suddenly she was before him, her face wild and savage and a
sudden, terrible intensity in her blue-green eyes as they sought and held his
own. And abruptly a quite different unease gripped him. It was tremendously
unlikely that she could hurt him: nevertheless, he would prefer not to have to
battle a fevered dreamer in the grip of the gods alone knew what illness if it
could be avoided.
	Stilling his growing alarm and keeping his expression mild and
reassuring as best he could, he made as though once more to try to calm her.
	But she gave him no chance.
	"Tell me." She cried, the panic in her tone seeming in a terrible
moment to have given way to a frigid, almost brutal cold. "Who are you? Where
is this place and how have I come here?"
	Her eyes were hard and terrible now with savage desperation and a
wild, feral light blazed suddenly in her face that was shocking in the
intensity of the change it wrought in her. Beautiful she was still, but hard
now, cold and primal and untameable as a wild warrior-maiden of the north, and
Alisin tensed, shifting subtly as he prepared himself for a confrontation he
hoped still would not come. Anger kindled for a moment at her perceived insult
to his kindness and hospitality, but he reminded himself that despite her
agitation and the threat that seemed suddenly so apparent, she was confused
and limited by the terrible dream that had somehow brought her to his home and
could function only within the parameters her reality had set for her.
	Forcing himself to calm, he rose carefully to his feet and bowed.
	"My name, my lady, is Alisin, last windwalker of the Silver
Millennium, and this, for the present, is my home."
	At his words, the growing fire seemed to falter, her face taking on
again the tight, desperate concentration of a moment before as though she were
reaching with everything she had for something that flickered upon the very
verge of understanding.
	"Alisin..." She said softly, as though the word might somehow draw the
illusive, fractured memories from the emptiness. "Windwalker! And this...this
is your domain? Your home within the Land of Dreams?"
	And now the horror rose suddenly like ice, a poisonous, nightmare
dread that stopped her words and held her helpless and unmoving as she
teetered at last upon the brink of some terrible understanding.
	"It is." He answered, his own voice suddenly low and tight as he
watched with growing alarm the panic leaping in her eyes and wondered what in
Serenity's name was keeping the dream-king.
	For one moment more she remained, her face taut as though with some
terrible struggle, her eyes wild and desperate as they held his own. Then
suddenly she reeled, a choked scream bitten desperately back as stark horror
and a terrible comprehension filled her face and she stumbled and whirled
convulsively away from him.
	"Oh Kami-sama!" She breathed at last, her voice a broken whisper in
the sudden cloying stillness. "My sisters! My companions! Yohko's home and the
coming Storm! And the gate, the dying of the gate! And oblivion! So cold! So
cold! Oh no! Not the end! Not like this! No!" The words were choked and broken
as though in their uttering she might somehow deny the reality around her.
	For a moment more she remained as though unable to move. Then slowly
she turned to face him once more, and Alisin gasped as he looked aghast upon a
face terrible with loss and agony and a shattered emptiness of a kind he had
prayed he might never see again.
	"I remember." She said softly at last, her unconscious mastery of tone
and the haunted intensity of her eyes setting a terrible horror to life within
her listener. "We were in transit, the whole of the company. But Shiko had
delayed us too long, and a reality-storm struck at the very moment of our
leaving Yohko's world. It broke the gate, and Joanna screamed. Never could I
have imagined I could hear such pain! And then the shattering, and the fall,
and dissolution. So cold! So cold!" Her voice faltered and she shuddered, her
arms clenching suddenly convulsively about her as though to ward off some
deadly chill. "You cannot imagine what it was to die like that, to plunge into
a blackness of mind and thought beyond the nethermost end of forever, to know
that at the last there was nothing save nightmare and torment and the
emptiness of an oblivion beyond the uttermost end of damnation."
	For a moment more she was silent, her eyes fixed upon his own and her
face wracked with pain and horror and a shattered incomprehension as she stood
trembling and unable to move. Then at last she drew in a shuddering breath and
sighed, long and deep, and slowly the tension flowed from her until at last a
quiet, gentling calm took its place and Alisin knew that somehow she had
conquered the terror and would be allright.
	With a sigh of his own he resumed his place.
	"And yet" She continued softly after many seconds had passed between
them. "here I am, a shadow lost beyond death and hope, a phantom trapped in a
place from which there can be no returning. For your reality and mine cannot
coexist; there are fundamental differences that would make it impossible.
Unless this is itself illusion, or a counterfeit, an analogue within our dying
omniverse perhaps, like Narnia. And what irony if this is indeed the
definitive, that I should be marooned and alone in a Helcion or Illusion, even
if in one whose Helios I have never known and who cannot help me return. An
author's jest perhaps, a last pull upon the strings to see how the puppet may
dance? And to have come here, of all the realities to which dissolution might
have brought me!" She laughed, but the sound was low and bitter, a sound far
more akin to tears than humour. "Oh how perfect," She continued. And now her
voice choked upon the knife-edge of breaking. "and how fine a twist in the
tale. So simple, and so exquisitely cruel. Not even to know whether my
companions somehow survived. Oh yes; this time fate has outdone itself."
	Then at last the tears came and she began to cry, great shuddering
sobs that shook her tall, slender form, while Alisin sat and watched and could
do nothing but wait in helpless sympathy while the tears fell as though they
might never cease and she wept, for the moment inconsolable. He had understood
little of what she had said, yet no one knew grief and the pain of loss better
than he, and his hands clenched on the arms of his chair as he watched her,
knowing he should give her this moment to mourne, yet unwilling simply to turn
away and leave her to grieve alone.
	For what seemed an eternity she remained, her head bowed, slender arms
clutched desperately to her as she shivered and trembled in her grief and pain
for the friends and loved-ones she would never see again. Yet at last the sobs
fell to tiny whimpers until with a last shuddering sigh she lifted her eyes
once more to meet his quiet, penetrating gaze.
	"Thank you." She said softly, the ghost of a smile touching her lips
as she danced a deep, flowing curtsey to him and moved at last to seat herself
in a chair facing his own.
	Smiling quietly in answer, he bowed his head for a moment, knowing
that nothing more need be said yet suddenly willing to speak.
	"I am no stranger to pain my lady." He said gently, an ancient yet
still-raw grief flickering for a moment in his eyes. "Long ago I lost my wife
and my only son, and I watched helpless while all that I knew and loved was
laid in ruin, destroyed by a consuming hatred I do not even pretend to
understand. And still I cannot forget. None know such pain better than I."
	She nodded, a depth of sudden sympathy in her eyes that he thought
merely empathy and an understanding born of her own tragedy until she spoke
once more.
	"Beryl?" She said softly, and Alisin started, staring at her amazed,
too thunderstruck for a moment to speak.
	"How...?" He managed at last.
	But she only smiled sadly and shook her head as though with some inner
confirmation. "In any archetypal senshi universe she is a cruel and bitter
enemy," She answered, still in that same quiet tone. "but in yours it seems
she possessed a particularly twisted and sadistic flare for revenge. Your
wife, then your son, and the last, terrible battle that saw the ruin of the
Orders she hated and that had given such meaning to the world you loved; her
vengeance on a man she had grown to hate perhaps beyond all save one. I wonder
if she did not contrive that he die before your eyes, that you might watch
helpless and so suffer still more before the end?"
	For many moments Alisin could only stare in numb incomprehension,
unable at first fully to believe the words he thought he had heard.
	"How...?" He tried again at last, his voice seeming to him to come
from some great distance. "How could you know? None save one who was there...,
who saw...! Are you a priestess, an oracle perhaps that you could know such
things? Or is this after all some strange dream and you a fleeting image, a
phantom of my own guilt and helplessness?"
	But the tall figure before him only shook her head once more.
	"I am no phantom," She said gently, a sudden bitter edge to her soft
words. "at least, not of your making."
	"Then how?" He persisted, his voice suddenly thick with emotion.
	For a long moment she made no answer. Then at last she sighed and a
great sadness filled her eyes as they met and held his own.
	"A tale." She said at last, her voice little more than a whisper in
the stillness, seeming suddenly weary far beyond her years. "A tale of a
world, fair and wonderful as any I have seen, and yet a world which in mine
could not exist save as fantasy. A world in which the death of the Slaver
empire saw the birth of Silver Millennium, and Ferrite captained the mighty
Nemesis, and a world in which Alisin, last windwalker of the Silver Millennium
watched all he had loved fall in cataclysmic ruin and yet swore to guard his
descendants even should it take twelve-thousand years for the birth of the
future that was promised beyond the darkness."
	Her voice had remained soft and gentle and now it faltered once more,
and for many seconds silence lay between them. Then at last she sighed and her
eyes left his own.
	"I am sorry." She said softly. "It was both thoughtless and
discourteous of me to speak of things I have no right to know and of others
you could not understand. Liana..." But at that her words caught once more and
for a moment she could not continue. "Liana, my elder sister, warned us again
and again that despite all we knew we were still so very young and had still
so much to learn. But of us all she was the most human, matured by loss and
the pain of unimaginable betrayal, and her first true friendship in her
suffering with a Moon princess you can never know, though it was not her
destiny to heal her."
	Touched yet bewildered, Alisin could only shake his head once more.
	"I am sorry." He said quietly in his turn. "But I do not understand."
	She nodded sadly, her eyes glistening once more with unshed tears.
	"Perhaps there is hope." He offered at last after a long silence in
which he could think of nothing else that might comfort her. "Perhaps your
companions still live."
	"It may be so." She said, her voice soft and sad. "Perhaps somehow I
shall find a way to return to them before all is lost. Yet for the moment I
must assume I am alone, a stranger in a strange world, trapped in a realm in
which I can have no place and from which only fate may release me."
	"Perhaps not quite so trapped as you believe."
	At the sudden quiet words the stranger leapt in a lithe, fluid motion
to her feet, whirling towards the still-open door even as Helios stepped
across the threshold and moved swiftly to stand beside her.
	"My apologies old friend." He said, turning for a moment to bow
courteously to Alisin. "I came as swiftly as I could, but I was unavoidably
delayed, a delay that might well have proved costly to both of us. I would
explain, but time is desperately short and there is a great deal yet I must
do.
	"Come." He said, turning again swiftly to the stranger. "You should
not have awakened here. Certainly you should not have spoken with Alisin, and
you must go now and swiftly ere you do more harm to yourself and to others by
remaining longer than you should and speaking more of what should not yet be
known."
	"I do not understand." Alisin interceded, angered despite their long
friendship by the sudden cold in Helios' tone.
	"I am only beginning to understand myself." The lord of Helcion
answered, turning quickly to him once more. "It is difficult and there is very
little time. Briefly, she is, for want of a better term, an aberration, a
factor outside the expected flow of destiny as I understand it should be. That
alone makes her dangerous. But worse, she is not of this universe, but rather
of a reality so far removed from our own that *any* speculations we might make
concerning its nature would be meaningless. Just what this means and what it
may entail was not made clear to me. But one thing at least is certain. There
is great danger while she remains wild and unchecked within the borders of
this realm. She must return to the real world and now, while there is time."
	"The real world?" The stranger demanded. "But how...? Unless..." And
suddenly her face was lit by a surging hope. "Then I am not merely a phantom?
My body reached this universe?"
	"You are quite real, I assure you," Said Helios, a sudden kinder note
to hhis tone. "and you shall awake unharmed and fully restored provided we
delay no longer. Come, take my hand."
	But she shook her head, the hope of a moment before leaping suddenly
to savage fire in her blue-green eyes as they fixed with sudden terrible
intensity upon those of the dream-king.
	"I cannot stay here!" She cried, and her voice was again hard and cold
with a sudden hungry desperation. "If indeed I am alive as you say, then I
must find a way back, and as soon as I can, if it is not already too late."
	But Helios shook his head, his own eyes blazing fiercely in answer.
Yet his voice when he spoke was still gentle and touched now with pity and
regret.
	"That is not possible." He said quietly. "Of your destiny in this
world, very little was revealed to me. But this much at least was clear. The
way back is closed to you, at least for the present. Ours is not part of your
world, nor is there any link between them. Whatever your destiny, that destiny
for the moment lies here, and here alone."
	But she did not falter and Helios cursed silently at his carelessness
in not reaching Alisin before his intervention helped her wake too soon simply
to return to the physical world while still unaware and too completely to
deceive. And now the moments were speeding by while her companions teetered
upon the knife-edge of an oblivion from which this time there would be no
returning. For a brief moment he considered revealing something of their
trouble to her in the hope that she might understand. Yet it would be
appallingly dangerous should she decide to stay rather than trust that he
would do all he could to save them, a scenario all too likely given the
circumstances. In any case, he had been expressly forbidden to involve her,
and he shuddered to think what might happen should he choose to disobey and
seek her help against the will of the only ally unequivocally determined to
ensure the strangers survived. No; whatever the cost, she must go, and go now
while there was time.
	"Come!" He tried again, not needing to pretend the desperate urgency
in his tone. "Already much time has been lost and we cannot delay longer.
Come; you must go now ere it is too late!"
	Once more he reached to take her hand, but again she hesitated.
	"At least tell me this." She demanded. "You said that the way back was
closed to me, at least for the present; that there is no link between this
world and mine. Yet somehow here I am, alive and whole and, it would seem,
able to exist in your reality. Is there a way back, even if beyond your power
to show me? Or am I indeed trapped, lost forever beyond hope of returning?"
	For a heartbeat, Helios considered a lie, anything to have her gone
before she did irrevocable harm by delaying him further. Yet he could not and
would not simply lie to her, even now with so much at stake; it was not his
way.
	"I am sorry." He said gently. "If there is such a way, it was not
revealed to me. The circumstances surrounding your arrival here were unique,
and I do not know whether they might or *can* be duplicated. Yet, a
possibility was shown me, the briefest glimpse of a far future in which you
smiled, radiant with a boundless happiness, and bade me a final farewell. Is
that enough? I can offer you no more."
	But now she was smiling, although it was a smile wrung with pain and a
longing to break the heart.
	"Then there is hope." The words were barely a whisper, a low,
desperate plea to anything with the power to hear her.
	"There is hope while still you live and provided you go now." He
answered, his own tone touched by the moment. "Nothing more can I promise
you."
	For a few moments more she remained, her hands clenching again at her
sides as she studied his face intently in the firelight. Then at last she
nodded and a quiet resignation settled on her face.
	"Very well." She said, the hungry desperation softened and her eyes
filled again with the heart-rending agony of her loss. "But if there is any
power for good to hear me, I pray that somehow...some-way those I love not be
lost to me forever, and that somehow I shall find them again before the end.
Very well; I understand. Let us go."
	She made as though to reach for his hand. Then suddenly she drew back.
	"Wait!" She cried, stepping from him to Alisin, even as the windwalker
rose to stand before her. "Just one moment more!"
	Quickly she reached to take his hands, clasping both in her own and
pressing them with a fierce strength before releasing them and dancing another
deep and flowing curtsey to him.
	"I cannot begin to thank you as I should," She said, her face alive
with warmth and sincerity and her blue-green eyes shining still with unshed
tears as for a last moment they caught and held his own. "and I dare not say
too much for fear of the danger careless words may bring. Yet I will not leave
without repaying at least a little of the kindness you have shown me. Of two
possibilities for your future can I tell you. Should yours be the first, it is
unlikely that we shall meet again, at least not for years uncounted, and if
the second, your road shall be long and hard and I cannot guess at its ending.
Yet this do I swear to you. You recalled me from a nothingness and oblivion
beyond all you could begin to understand and showed me a kindness and courtesy
I can never hope to repay. And for that you have my friendship and my thanks,
and my aid also and that of all my sisters should ever you need us and should
we be able to come. For we do not forget, and your kindness has made you
friend to my kind until the uttermost end of days. Farewell Alisin Windwalker,
last of the Silver Millennium, and may all the good and fortune and happiness
there may be go with you, whatever path your road may take. Farewell."
	And with that, even as Alisin bade her farewell in his turn and bowed
low in answer, she stepped once more to Helios' side and reached to take his
hand.
	For a moment the lord of Helcion remained unmoving, touched by the
unexpected poignance of the moment. Then at last he stirred and smiled.
	"Come." He said, his face warmed and his tone softened once more by
the unlooked-for sincerity in her promise to a friend of more than twelve-
thousand years. "It is time to go. Do not be bitter. And do not despair. What
part you are to play against the coming darkness was not made clear to me. Yet
a part you shall have, and perhaps after all even your meeting with Alisin was
fated; who can tell? For now, I wish you good speed and fair fortune and the
fulfilment of all you seek. For you are not so alone as you believe, and your
hope may yet be granted. Farewell."
	And with that, his hand clasped fiercely in hers, and for a brief
moment a gate opened to the physical world. Yet the watcher had not yet done
all that he intended, and the gate that should have opened in Juuban was
twisted by a touch subtle beyond the lord of Helcion's ability to perceive.
	And even as in sudden wild hope at the dream-king's words Camilla made
as though to forestall him or plead that he explain, she was caught and swept
within, and swiftly she vanished from the realm.
				     * * *
	In the terrible months that were to follow, Langley would torment
himself again and again with the certainty that the unreasoning terror he had
felt as he made his last goodbye to his family was a precursor to what was to
begin on that flight, that had he but understood the warning and stayed, he
might by some chance have averted the terrible destiny he would have sold his
soul in a moment to change.
	The wrenching, blood-chilling scream seemed to him to sear the quiet
calm of the cabin like the soul-shriek of something tormented beyond the
madness of the deepest pits of hell. Instantly half the passengers seemed to
be on their feet, shouts and cries and the splintering crash of things upset
adding to the tumult while Langley, snapped suddenly to combat readiness from
deep sleep, surged to the aisle, his hand already on the weapon concealed
beneath his coat as he spun wildly in search of danger. Then a half-screamed:
"Look!" from behind had him whirling to face his window, others moving
instinctively to follow his example as he stared out as though seeking
something only he could see. For one frozen moment there was nothing. Then
suddenly it came, a darkness, profound and absolute, surging with terrible
speed from the north to swallow the sun, waxing and deepening until within
moments the sky had become a deep, impenetrable black, lit only by a lurid,
defuse glow that cast the cabin in stark, chilling hues of blacks and deathly
greys. In the sudden almost total darkness a stunned, profound stillness
seemed to Langley to fill the cabin while people stared stupefied and
uncomprehending into the midnight sky. Then someone, perhaps the same woman
screamed and suddenly the silence turned to nightmare and horror and the
madness of over two-hundred people suddenly unable to understand or accept
what was happening.
	For a moment Langley remained as frozen as the rest. Then a shouted
"Sir!" from behind snapped him back to reality. If they did not do something
quickly there would be a riot in the plane. Already many were screaming in
incoherent panic, shouts of "Holy Jesus! The Goddamn sun's blown up!" and
"It's a Goddamn nuclear war!" doing nothing to help the situation. In moments
the panic would take hold completely and it would be too late.
	"Lansing!" Langley's suddenly thunderous voice cut through the din and
immediately the lieutenant was saluting and awaiting his instructions, the
others already ranged behind him. "Secure the cabin. Use what force you have
to short of shooting to kill. I want the rest ready for anything while each of
you change into uniform; I don't want any doubt as to our authority or any
more panic than there is. I'm going to try to find out what in God's name
we've run into and get through to colonel Prichard at the White House if I
can."
	Without waiting for an acknowledgement, knowing he could rely on them
to do as he commanded without any idiot questions, Langley shrugged quickly
from the heavy coat he had pulled on that morning over his uniform, pitching
it into his seat even as he moved quickly forwards, laying a hand on the
weapon in its holster although he did not draw it, not yet. He had barely
taken a dozen strides, careful in the near-darkness, when abruptly light
flooded the cabin and he blinked and increased his pace. Behind him he could
hear Lansing shouting orders and the chaos dying down as people at last began
to recover at least a measure of composure now that it seemed someone in
authority was taking charge.
	Ignoring an attendant who was shouting at him and pushing quickly but
with relative care passed another who tried to bar his way, Langley reached
the front of the cabin, the door opening, then slamming quickly behind him.
For a moment the two attendants stood frozen, staring after him, then nodding
to the second, the first moved quickly to follow.
				     * * *
	"I don't give a damn what you've been told; we've run into the Goddamn
X-files out here and I want to know what it is and I want to know now!"
	With a half-snarl, Captain Hal Andersson tagged off the transmit,
ignoring the radio as his hands flew over the board before him.
	"Still no GPS?" He demanded, turning to the co-pilot at his side.
	"Nothing." He answered. "No satellite comms at all!"
	"Sh*t!" He swore fervently. "Goddamn sh*t!"
	He might have said more but at that moment the door opened behind him.
	He glanced over his shoulder, ready to snarl at whomever of the cabin-
crew was stupid enough to bother him now rather than doing their job, then
half turned, his eyes suddenly blazing for a different reason as he stared at
the tall, dark-skinned man moving quickly into the cockpit. "I don't know who
the hell you are, but you've got two seconds to get the hell off... Oh sh*t!"
	He had caught sight of the holster and was just about to turn and add
a shouted "May-day!" to his problems when something was thrust into his hand
and the uniform the stranger was wearing at last connected with the addendum
to the manifest he had noted before the flight.
	"Captain James Langley sir, Presidential staff. We'll be on your
manifest."
	With visible relief, Andersson nodded, relaxing just a little as
Langley took back his ID and moved to close the door.
	"Ok." He began, turning back to them. "Just what in the Lord's name is
goin' on?"
				     * * *
	"Alright, alright! Now if everyone can just can the noise for a moment
I might have some chance of making myself heard!"
	With relief, Lansing noted that the last of the panic seemed finally
to be relenting save for the occasional sob and some crying from some of the
children. From his position at the front of the cabin, the lieutenant surveyed
the scene before him and felt that at last he had at least a reasonable chance
of maintaining control.
	"I'M army lieutenant John Lansing," He continued after a moment. "this
is Sergeant Larry Gleeson, Sergeant Alan Alcott and Corporal Tom O'neal. Now
before you ask, it's coincidence we're here; we're on our way to assignment in
D.C.. We had no idea anything like this was gonna happen, we don't know any
more than you do and we can't answer any of your questions. Perhaps we'll know
more when Captain Langley gets back from talking to the flight-crew, but at
least I can assure you that the Sun hasn't blown up, believe me we'd already
be dead if it had, and whatever this is it's certainly not the start of a
nuclear war. Now I know it's not going to be easy but I'd ask all of you to
stay as calm as you can because we're not gonna get anywhere if people start
to panic like you did a few minutes ago. Now I want everyone but the cabin-
crew in their seats and strapped in within the next thirty seconds, because
anyone I see walking around after that unless you're paying a visit I'll have
physically restrained. Now I'm sorry if that seems a little harsh but until we
know what's going on I can't afford to take chances. So please let's all just
stay calm and cooperative and hopefully things will work out fine, ok? Now
let's get to it."
	There were some glares and a good deal of hostile grumbling, but most
were still too shaken to offer much in the way of resistance and within half a
minute or so the last had settled and Lansing was about to move to speak to
one of the cabin-crew about checking to see whether anyone was worse than
shaken when the door behind him opened and his captain stepped through,
closing it quietly behind him. Snapping to attention, Lansing was about to
speak when he caught the look on the captain's face and faltered into silence.
	"We're in trouble." Langley's tone was quiet and terribly calm and the
four listening men felt suddenly cold. "I managed to get through to the
colonel; things are goin' crazy out there! Captain Andersson wanted to turn
back, but the colonel ordered me to place the plane under military control.
Andersson's not too happy about it, but we have to get to D.C. and JFK'S
already in chaos. Whatever's happened out here, reports are coming in that
it's world-wide and it's blacked out not only the Sun but all satellite
communications, in fact it seems it's pretty-much a full-spectrum shield over
the entire planet except that it seems to stop about two-hundred miles off-
shore, which means that whatever it is, there's a good chance that someone or
something's behind it." For a moment he was silent, gauging their reactions.
Then in the same deadly-calm tone he continued. "There'll be a chopper waiting
for us the moment we land. All conventional and nuclear forces have been
placed on maximum alert. The United States of America could be at war."
				     * * *
	For Langley, it was the waiting that would remain graven in his memory
in the days to come, that and the bewildered, uncomprehending look in the eyes
of many of the passengers as the minutes passed and the raw, desperate panic
of those first terrible moments gave way to a numb, helpless dread that seemed
to fill the faces of all but a few. The five had remained intensely alert for
any sign of trouble, only too aware that anarchy lay still just below the
surface and that many were holding on only because the rest had not yet
broken. At any moment they knew the tenuous calm they had achieved could erupt
into chaos and that should that happen, restoring order without someone being
hurt would be all but impossible. Langley could only pray that they could hold
them together until they landed.
	It was just before twenty to ten and they were barely ten minutes out
of D.C. when it nearly fell apart. He had just returned to his seat after
another walk through the cabin when it came, a sudden unreasoning urge to turn
to the window beside him and look out and up. Dimly he was aware that the
subdued murmur of conversation had ceased and that everyone had turned to
stare. Then the image filled the sky, a blue-tinged, deeper blackness seeming
to wax and surge about it as the face grew ever more wild and the stark,
chilling words filled his mind: "I am Calcite. I am responsible for both the
global darkness and the imminent annihilation of the city known as Tokyo. I
will address the United Nations at precisely 10 am Eastern Standard Time
tomorrow. Enjoy the darkness. You have seen your last sunrise!"
	For one terrible moment after the image had vanished, all remained
frozen. Then the screams began.
				     * * *
	"Damn it, we're not gonna make it!"
	Glancing at Captain Andersson beside him, Dan Ericson could not help
but feel that he might well be correct. It had been bad enough during the hour
of incomprehension that had followed the coming of the terrible darkness. Now,
he knew he was holding on only because to surrender to the mounting horror
would mean death, not only for himself but for the desperate, panicked people
for which he and the man beside him were responsible.
	Turning for a brief moment, he studied him as he sat as though carven
in stone, his hands steady and his face a mask of savage concentration as the
minutes passed and they drew ever closer to the end of their journey. But he
was pale and cold and Dan Ericson knew that like himself he might break at any
moment, may well have done so already were it not for the knowledge of what
would happen. The "Mayday!" followed by the stark, chilling report of only
moments before had only added to the terrible intensity of the strain. A
passenger-plane was down and burning on a runway at Washington National while
an abortive take-off had damaged another plane and closed a second. He
supposed it had been all but inevitable given the circumstances. A pilot had
panicked and come in too soon and too fast, and now nearly two-hundred people
were dead. `And perhaps they were the lucky ones.' He thought, and shivered.
	"Military bastards!" Andersson continued, his tone low and savage. "We
should have turned back to JFK."
	He fell silent and Dan fought the sudden urge to add something of his
own. Losing what control he had would be the beginning of the end, of that at
least he was certain. He had to hold on for another few minutes, at least
until they had landed. Then he could let the fear take him; then, but not yet.
	Nodding to the captain, he reached for the cabin mike and fought the
terror to a last, desperate calm.
	"Ladies and Gentlemen." He began, his voice sounding impossibly,
incongruously steady and reasonable to his own ears. "We are beginning our
approach to Washington National Airport. Please fasten your seat-belts and
prepare for landing."
				     * * *
	Still and terribly calm, Langley watched with an almost numb
fascination as the city spread out below them, lit now as though it were
middle-night, the airport lights stark and cold in a scene that was almost
other-worldly. Away to his left as they came round for their final approach,
he caught with a terrible detachment the dancing shadows cast by the lurid
glow of what could only be the burning of a crashed plane. Then the glow was
behind them and they were diving low and fast and Langley knew with a terrible
certainty that they were too far from the runway and would crash if Andersson
did not do something now. Then the nose jerked upwards and for a moment they
lifted before with a final dying scream it dropped once more and they struck
down with bone-shattering force, bouncing once, twice, then a third time
before the scream became the roar of braking thrust and Langley unlocked his
intertwined, aching fingers from their death-grip while all around him people
wept and laughed with hysterical relief and it was all he could do not to join
them.
	Even as the plane slowed, Langley unfastened his seat-belt and rose
quickly to his feet, Lansing and the others joining him with the little
luggage they had and by the time the plane had halted they were already by the
doors and waiting for them to open.
	"There!" Lansing shouted when less than a minute later they were out
and hurrying away from rather than towards the terminal.
	In the next instant the helicopter was dropping from above and it
seemed only moments later that they were racing aboard and the machine was
soaring skywards once more, turning north-eastwards across the Potomac and
towards Capitol Hill.
	The briefing when they arrived was to Langley's relief mercifully
short and it was only a little later that they slipped unobtrusively into a
meeting of the President and his security advisers; and froze in stunned
disbelief.
	"What the *hell*!" Was all Langley could manage, staring open-mouthed
at the impossible scene before him.
	Seated with the President and the generals were two teenage girls
clothed in what he recognised immediately to be Japanese fuku, a small black
cat settled on the table before them. That alone would have been inconceivable
enough, but it was the fact that it was the cat who was currently holding the
floor that had them gaping as though the world had gone mad.
	For a long moment Langley continued to stare in stupefied
incomprehension. Then at last he turned to fix a frigid, blazing stare upon
the man at his side.
	"Colonel Prichard sir." He said, his tone very quiet and terribly
polite. "You have exactly five seconds to explain just what the hell sick joke
you think this is before I turn round, walk straight out'a this room and go
back to New York City and my family."
				     * * *
	She was falling.
	Joanna Marina O'Reilly gritted her teeth, fighting an almost
overwhelming urge to curse savagely in frustrated fury as the wind screamed
and her long hair streamed wildly behind her, the surreal, stark ruins from
which she had been hurtled and in which she had been sure at last that she
could bring this perverse charade to an end vanishing swiftly into the roiling
blackness above, while from below she watched the angry, lurid glow of the
approaching fires with rage and grim determination. She had been so close,
certain that the chaotic twists and turns of the seemingly endless nightmare
had been leading to this last, inevitable confrontation and that at last she
had regained sufficient control and self-awareness to shred the final veil and
tear herself free of the trap, to a gate and true reality once more. Yet still
the chance had been lost and now again she had to wait while every moment she
was delayed might spell disaster for the rest of the company.
	Restraining the almost uncontrollable desire to try again to lash out
wildly at the roiling dreamscape around her in the vain hope that she might
shatter it before the next scenario was stable and tear her way to freedom in
the ensuing chaos, Joanna fought down the rage and frustration and forced her
thoughts again to the first, confused beginnings of her awareness within the
trap, fighting with savage determination to force her memory farther back and
to the event that had precipitated her present situation. Yet still the memory
eluded her. Her last recollection was of Ami's urgent summons and the frantic
preparations as the company were gathered together for the transition to join
the Mercury senshi at the Mano home. Then nothing save a space of blackness at
the heart of which lurked a vague horror, dreamlike and impossible to define.
	Her next memory was of the dim, despairing gloom of the waiting room
in what she knew instinctively to be a hell of absolute damnation, an endless,
numbing eternity of waiting while a never-ending procession of vague, gloomy
figures passed through, always to be replaced by others, while she sat in a
blank stupor of incomprehension and did not know who she was or how many eons
upon eons she had been there. Then at last the call and the first
confrontation.
	And so, on, through scenario after chaotic scenario, brief, jumbled
fragments built of her life and journeys, while slowly her awareness and the
beginnings of an understanding as to the nature of her situation returned and
the nightmare grew ever more around her. And ever as she awoke she sensed them
more keenly, the pursuers who were always only a little behind, invisible,
intangible watchers who chased her through the writhing chaos of the ever-
changing dreams, phantoms never quite near enough truly to perceive, shadows
that sped urgently in her wake as she rushed headlong from dream to endless
dream until at last she had gained the control she needed to still the race
and prepare to meet them in the great tower in the centre of the last ruined
city.
	And they had been counterfeits. Of that she had been certain the
moment the phantom Helios had climbed the tower to confront her; whatever
corner of damnation within the Gateway Void this might be, it was certainly
not Helcion or Illusion, nor could he have been either of the Dream-kings she
knew. And there at last as he stood before her, the last concealing veil over
her awareness had fallen away and she understood. She still could not recall
how she had come here although she imagined that the attack had come at the
moment of transition, but she knew now the nature of the trap and the only
means by which she could escape.
	Smiling suddenly in grim satisfaction, she braced herself in
preparation for what she knew was to come. If this was how that Qliphoth-
blooded abomination wished to play things, then that was fine with her. She
need only wait until the next scenario had reached its climax, then splinter
the trap to oblivion and laugh as her genocidal complement raged in impotent
fury at yet another defeat.
	She did not trouble to waste even a moment's thought on the words the
phantom Dream-king had spoken to her; she was familiar enough with the
unreality of the Gateway Void to know what could happen should one lose
oneself in fantasy (her present situation could not have been a better
example) and she had no intension of heeding the words of a product of her own
desire for escape. No; all she could do now was wait and hope that those of
the company with no affinity for this place had remained both alert and
sensible enough to stay wherever they found themselves and not wander without
a guide. She had little doubt that they would be in a better position than
her; the attack must have been very specific and taken a great deal of her
complement's available reserves, even given that her influence would have been
growing as the Storm drew near; a desperate gamble that, had it succeeded,
would have robbed them of the only one of the company able to wander the
Gateway Void at will and match very nearly even the control of its creation-
damned mistress. And she had not escaped; not yet.
	Joanna pushed down the momentary desire to laugh despite her
situation. She could not afford to underestimate the danger; the trap would
have been cunningly wrought and designed with exquisite care for her torment;
nothing was more certain. Ignoring a momentary flicker of unease, she forced
her mind to a still, frigid calm, her cold emerald gaze fixed intently on the
waxing hell-red glow below her while she waited for the inevitable torment to
come. There would be pain, concerning that she had no illusions, pain more
than she could once have imagined even she could bear. Yet as always it could
be endured so long as she held to the calm and the ice, and remembered that
like all that had ever tried to hurt her it was transient and could be
forgotten once it was over.
	Then the first waves of heat reached her and she drew a long breath
against the howling wind, willing the momentary surge of terror to a deadly,
frigid stillness and her body to relax as she turned so that she would meet
the fires feet-first, arms lifting for a moment instinctively to protect her
face before she forced her hands to her sides and shook her head in fierce
negation. There was no point in trying to escape; this was simply another
illusion and trying to hide from it would not have it over any sooner.
	She was close now, the heat already intense and the first tumult
reaching her, a thrumming and rumbling that shivered the air and waxed swiftly
to a thunderous, roaring crescendo that rose even above the bean-sidhe
screaming of the wind.
	Then she was plunging headlong into the flames and all was suddenly
nightmare and thunder and a torment beyond all she imagined she once could
have endured. Down, down she sped, her blazing hair streaming a comet's tale
of fire behind her while she gritted her teeth savagely against the
unimaginable agony and would not scream.
	How long she endured, seared and tormented, she could not tell,
plunging still faster and ever faster until at last it seemed nothing remained
but pain and hatred and a frigid, primal will to hold to the single reality of
her own existence and the knowledge that no matter what, there would be an
ending. Yet the fires roared ever higher and the pain grew and grew until at
last a sliver of doubt began to tear at the ice that had hitherto sustained
her. There seemed no end to the agony and despite her resolve she found
herself beginning to imagine that this might indeed be the sum of what was to
come, a last attempt to break her before she could escape. Panic rose then, a
numbing horror that clawed suddenly savagely at the edges of her awareness, a
mindless, gibbering despair that threatened in a terrible instant to overwhelm
the ever-more-tenuous core of the iron will that was all that kept the torment
at bay. Wild fantasies arose through the pain, laughter and taunting and a
seductive, half-heard whisper that should she but surrender, should she but
forget her pitiful impudence of hubris and plead and beg and scream, the
torment would end and she would be free. Rage and frigid hatred blazed then in
answer. She would die and be damned until the uttermost end of eternity before
a single sound would pass her lips.
	For an agonised space the two extremes strove, seeming perfectly
balanced upon a knife-edge of madness, while still the torment waxed and she
knew that something had to break. Then suddenly, clear and cold through the
pain came a single thought: `Nemesis: hope of the Emerald Isle, hear me! You
have been deceived! Helios spoke truly, and this is but an illusion, a last
attack beyond even his ability to perceive. In his hatred and disillusion my
companion has broken the rules, and now I may interfere. Forget what you have
believed to be the truth and hearken. For your body is already free and you
are at the very gateway to the physical world. Awake, see, and be healed!'
	And she understood, despite all reason and a desperate heart of self-
preservation that screamed and screamed that this was a last trick and that
her only hope was to hold to the last dying certainty of what she knew to be
true, and endure.
	With grim resolve, ignoring everything save a sudden certainty in the
rightness of the choice, she willed herself downwards, releasing the last
dying embers of the shielding frozen calm, opening herself as Hideo-sensei had
taught her long ago to the true enormity of her fear, facing it with teeth
bared and eyes wild in sudden savage triumph even as her plunge became a last
screaming race to escape or absolute oblivion.
	For one last moment that was eternity, pain and terror were all. Then,
even as the roar and thunder grew to a last cataclysmic scream, she burst from
the agony of the fires to plunge suddenly into deep, deep water. The icy
depths closed swiftly over her, the agony of her burning replaced in a
heartbeat by a frigid, soul-deep ice that numbed mind and body while the
screaming climbed still higher until with a last ruinous crash and thunderclap
the gate vanished behind her and she was out, hurtling end over end until with
a final crack that stunned her nearly senseless she struck down with bone-
numbing force to sprawl headlong on soft, cold grass.
	For what seemed an age of dazed incomprehension she lay unmoving, her
head pounding wildly and her breath coming in ragged gasps despite all she
could do to will away the shaking or the world to stop turning crazily around
her. Then slowly she became aware of a warm, gentle hand on her arm and a
familiar voice, calling and calling her name. For a space more she remained,
while the desperate hammering in her chest eased and the savage pain behind
her eyes dulled merely to an insistent throbbing rather than the agony of
moments before.
	"Tell me." She said quietly at last after several more seconds in
which no sound would come. "Why is it that whenever someone has just escaped
some particularly unpleasant situation, is obviously still unable to move and
unsure as to whether it really might not be better never to try again, while
ten-thousand soldiers march in military tattoo through their head, there is
always some *idiot* who insists on shrieking like a bean-sidhe in their ears
with a lot of damn stupid questions! I'm alive. At the moment that's about all
I'm prepared to admit."
	At her words the voice choked off and a moment later she was being
turned gently on to her back, even as the world came at last fully into being
for her and she found herself staring up into a pair of shining jade eyes only
inches from her own. Then Liana's arms were twining wildly around her and in
the next instant she was being clutched to her in a fierce almost painful
embrace, Liana's long, flame-red hair tumbling in a soft, cascading curtain
around her while her tears fell on her cheek.
	"Joanna-Neechan!" She was crying softly again and again while her
still-tightening hold threatened to crush her companion's ribs. "Oh thank Kami-
sama! For a while I thought ... Oh thank Kami-sama you're alive!"
	It was the physical closeness more than anything, something Joanna
barely tolerated even now and forbade even her closest friends amongst the
company save in the most dire emergencies that broke the last of her stupor
and snapped her at last to full awareness once more.
	With a savage twist, showing far less restraint even than usual, she
pulled fiercely free of Liana's hold and struggled with grim determination to
her feet, ignoring the other girl's offered help and stepping a pace away from
her as she brushed furiously at the wetness of Liana's tears and tried to
shake her hopelessly tangled hair into some kind of order.
	"Damn it Liana; do you mind?" She flared, fighting off a sudden wave
of giddiness and twisting fiercely from Liana's steadying hand, not turning to
catch the sudden flash of pain in her companion's face or the momentary
desperate look of hurt and betrayal in her jade eyes as Liana turned quickly
away from her and dashed away the tears with a sudden savage gesture of her
own.
	Joanna was already turning this way and that as she scanned their
surroundings for any indication as to where they might have emerged or for any
others of the company, her gaze hard and her face cold and set. The pounding
in her head was not relenting and she was in no mood at the moment to deal
with any anxiety for her on the part of her companion, nor with Liana's
seeming continual inability to understand that being her foster-sister did not
somehow entitle her to hold, touch or in any other way make physical contact
with her without her expressed permission. Besides, every second was precious
and any delay might well prove disastrous for the others should they not find
them and quickly.
	"Well," She snapped shortly after a chill silence in which Liana stood
taut and unmoving at a little distance from her and said nothing. "come on;
we'd best get started. We have to find out first exactly where this charming
little transition has dumped us. It looks like the park near Hikawa Ginja, but
I can't be sure until we get our bearings, and this exit wasn't exactly
typical. Once I know more or less where we are, we have at least a chance of
getting back to find the others before that reality-damned she-bitch regains
the power this little escapade must have cost her. I only hope they've had the
sense to stay together and not wander all over the place. Did Marina or any of
the others make it through behind us?"
	"I don't know." Said Liana flatly, her tone suddenly as hard and
arctic as Joanna's own.
	"What do you mean you don't know?" Joanna exploded with quickly
growing impatience. "Can't you check? Curse it Liana we haven't much time!"
	"I don't know because I can't sense *anything*!" Liana flared, her own
volatile temper exploding savagely as she whirled to face Joanna once more,
her eyes flashing green fire through the freshly brimming tears as they leapt
to meet her own. "I can't get *any* indication as to where we are! Everything
is just screaming and confusion! Why else do you imagine I waited here and did
nothing while the sister who obviously doesn't give a damn about how terrified
I was for her lay there for nearly two minutes so still I thought she was
dead? I couldn't even hear damn you and could barely see until just before you
spoke to me, and even now I'm limited to the five basic senses and those
barely. Do you think I don't know how desperately important it is that we get
back as quickly as we can or what might happen if we're delayed here? Have you
any idea what it means to one of my kind, to be so cut off that I can't sense
*anything* but what is immediately around me? Damn you! Damn you Joanna!"
	She had been glaring in a white-hot rage at Joanna during her tirade.
Now she turned away, the tears falling once more unchecked from her jade eyes
as she fought for calm and Joanna watched her and seemed for once unable to
think of anything to say.
	Inwardly she was cursing herself for her thoughtless impatience and
for hurting yet again a friend who had become as dear to her as anyone she had
ever known. Yet as always she could not allow anything save the faintest echo
to show,  could not even now with Liana revealing her pain to her in a way
that none of her kind save for Camilla would ever show save to one another,
permit her to see beneath the ice and know how much it hurt to see the tears
and the pain. That was a luxury she simply could not afford. Better that her
companions thought her hard and ruthless enough to take easily the terrible
decisions of the past months, decisions that might damn her forever in every
possible reality but that would at least see them and all they could preserve
safe and beyond the reach of her qliphothic complement, forever. In her own
mind her choice was clear. By default if not by intent, the anti-real queen
was her fault and her responsibility, and she would see her shredded beyond
the uttermost end of damnation and the company and all that they could protect
safe no matter what the cost. That promise above all she would not break.
	Allowing a fleeting smile to soften her features, she reached to lay a
suddenly gentle hand for a moment on Liana's arm.
	"I'm sorry." She said quietly, a sudden kinder note to her tone,
knowing as always that it was not enough, yet that for her as for no one else
Liana would accept and forgive. "I had no idea I'd frightened you; it seemed I
was gasping for air the moment I hit the ground, and I had no idea that the
transition had hurt you. How bad is it?"
	At her words, the anger fled her companion's face as swiftly as it had
kindled and she smiled suddenly through her tears.
	As always it was the little things, the sudden if fleeting genuine
smile, a quiet word when things looked most black and the sudden unlooked-for
warmth and understanding behind even such a question as this that meant most
to her. Nearly all the others, even Lina, Usagi and Serena to whom even
Rhiannon could be said to be close (if indeed her youngest sister were capable
of being close to anyone), might have asked simply how badly she was damaged
without realising the underlying inference of distance and difference behind
the words. But to Joanna, she and her sisters had always been simply as any
others of the company, whose nature and origin did not so much as cross her
mind save insofar as their particular needs might dictate or where it could
prove of benefit to their companions. Of the rest, only Kasumi, who seemed
incapable even of accidental discourtesy to anyone, Rei, who had learnt from
her first thoughtless mistake with Liana, and Zelgadis, who knew more than
anyone what it was to be different and distrusted, seemed completely able to
forget their origins and treat them exactly as the rest. For most, and
especially those familiar with the anime analogue of their universe, their
nature seemed doomed to keep a subtle, even if unintentional distance between
them, an indefinable gulf of instinctive unease that seemed impossible to
cross no matter how they tried.
	"Not so bad as I thought at first," She answered, her own voice
softened by a sudden intensity of emotion. "and things are improving. It may
take a little while, an hour perhaps, but at least I can keep up with you now,
although" She added wryly. "I wouldn't like to risk a fight just at the
moment. I'd probably do more damage to the surroundings than anything else."
	Joanna nodded, her own smile warming still more for a brief moment
before it was gone once more and she was turning quickly towards the lights of
the street only a little distance from where they stood.
	"Come on then." She said, her tone brisk but no longer cold. "We'd
better get moving."
	Moments later they were on their way, Liana's silent, cat-like
movements at her side revealing nothing to Joanna of the extent to which she
might still be suffering. At least her own headache was receding and she was
beginning to feel again more or less herself.
	"Yes." She said perhaps five minutes later as they turned yet again
and the familiar hill came into view before them. "Hikawa rather than Cherry
I'd say, although we'd best make sure it's not some kind of aberrant before I
risk opening a gate."
	Beside her, Liana nodded silently and Joanna shook her head. Her
companion had said little since they had started and she suspected that her
condition was worse than she had admitted. She glanced to her with concern,
wondering just how much useful information at the moment even the five basic
senses were giving her and whether it might not be better to allow her a
little more time despite the danger in any delay.
	She stirred as though to speak, but the question never left her lips.
	A high, keening scream tore in that moment from the darkness ahead of
them, a blood-chilling shriek filled somehow with pain and loss that shifted
to a long, broken cry that fell and faltered until at last it was gone and
only the chill, midnight quiet remained.
	"What the--!" Joanna hissed in her native Irish-gaelic.
	But Liana had frozen at the sound, head up, eyes starting into the
darkness. Now she exploded forwards, face wild and long hair flying behind
her. "Moon-cat!" She cried almost in a scream. "Lu-na I think, although I
can't be sure with my suite in such a state! There were words in that scream,
Usagi-chan at least and something else I couldn't catch. Damn this racket and
the dark."
	"Liana!" Joanna cried in her turn, struggling despite herself to match
her companion's suddenly tremendous speed. "For the Lord's sake be
care...ful!" She ended too late with a furious shake of her head.
	Proving her growing suspicion that her companion was in far greater
trouble than she had told her, Liana had slammed at full tilt into a low
retaining wall and catapulted headlong to land face-down in a garden.
Snarling, she surged to her feet, a sudden brilliant white flash reducing half
the garden to ashes and the wall to rubble as she gave way to a momentary fit
of pique before correcting her course and continuing unperturbed.
	Cursing savagely, Joanna surged suddenly in her wake, the momentary
exhilaration at the sudden tremendous speed ignored as she increased her pace
still more and began at last to close the distance between them.
	"Liana!" She tried again, anger tempering her anxiety as her companion
plunged on headlong in the dark. "Damn it, will you wait and listen to me!"
	A moment later she was overtaking her in her still disoriented
condition, catching her arm to pull her violently to a halt and swinging her
furiously to face her. In the next instant her other arm came round, her hand
catching Liana a stunning crack to the cheek that would almost certainly have
broken her neck had she been human.
	"Don't you ever lie to me about something so important again!" Joanna
snarled savagely. "You're in no state to be on your feet, let alone tearing
around in the middle of the night on possibly a strange world without the
first idea as to what's happened or what you're getting into. I can't believe
you would do anything so damn idiotic!"
	"Usagi's in trouble!" Liana countered, her eyes flashing fury as they
fixed again on Joanna's frigid emerald stare. "Probably Lu-na too. What do you
expect me to do? Wait? Let *go*!" She ended almost in a scream.
	Ignoring her sudden desperate yet unnervingly ineffectual attempts to
pull free and restraining the almost overwhelming urge to hit her still harder
with a supreme effort, Joanna held her eyes, noting suddenly how wide they
were and how dilated the pupils.
	"How well can you see me?" She demanded suddenly.
	For answer, Liana redoubled her efforts, her strength and coordination
a travesty of the usual lithe, fluid grace and stunning speed of her kind. "I
told you, I'm fine!" She blazed. "Let me go! We have to--"
	"How well?" Joanna insisted, shaking her and tightening her hold while
her face grew more fiery by the second.
	For a space Liana continued to twist and turn, her jade eyes blazing
with frustrated fury as she fought savagely to escape. Then abruptly the fight
seemed to leave her and she stood still, a faint rhythmic trembling rippling
slowly through her, obvious suddenly now that she was no longer moving. For a
long moment she was silent. Then at last she sighed and the fury left her
eyes.
	"All right." She said quietly. "All right; I'm sorry. It was both
foolish and dangerous not to tell you, but I was certain I'd be all right by
the time we reached the shrine. I didn't lie to you oneechan; things were
improving, rapidly at first. But they haven't changed since perhaps a minute
after we started. It's not simply the problem with what I can and can't
perceive. It's more fundamental." She broke off, shaking her head as though
uncertain as to how to continue. "It's difficult." She said at last. "Perhaps
the only way to describe it is that I feel...disconnected, as though there
were a veil between my mind and body, like moving through the Void, but more
distant, less real. I've never felt anything like it before and I can't
explain it any other way. Everything is distant, and I can't come closer."
	And suddenly she drew close, although she kept from reaching to pull
Joanna to her once more.
	And Joanna knew that she was afraid as she had seldom been, although
like all her kind save perhaps for Camilla who had never been ashamed to admit
a weakness, she fought to conceal it.
	Cursing herself again for being unable even now to offer the simple
physical comfort Liana seemed to need, Joanna relaxed her grip and moved to
lay her other hand gently on her shoulder. "Liana..." She began, uncertain as
to how to continue.
	But whatever she was about to say was lost.
	Another scream rent the night. Then, even as they whirled again in the
direction of the shrine, a darkness, stark and dreadful, came surging suddenly
from the north, eating up the stars with impossible speed until within moments
the sky had become a stark, uniform black.
	Immediately Joanna stiffened, every danger-sense screaming in savage
warning while beside her Liana gasped and tensed, staring suddenly keenly
about her. For a moment Joanna thought she might have believed the sudden
blackness a product of her own confused senses. Then Liana caught her arm.
	"The noise and confusion!" She cried. "They're gone! My control is
still a mess, but at least my suite isn't screaming at me and I can use what
senses I have."
	"I don't think that's any great comfort under the circumstances." Said
Joanna flatly, her eyes seeking wildly in the dark as every sense continued to
scream imminent peril.
	Then another long wail shrilled from the darkness and she turned again
towards the shrine.
	"Come on!" She cried urgently. "I don't know what in God's name is
going on but I intend to find out."
	With that, she began forwards once more at a more cautious speed,
Liana keeping silent pace beside her.
	Within minutes they were approaching the shrine and it was only
moments later that they halted at the steps.
	"Hush!" Joanna breathed as Liana leaned close as though to speak.
"We've no idea what we're getting into. Shh for a moment and wait."
	Then for almost a minute she was still, her eyes, ears and other
senses straining into the darkness while Liana remained silent at her side
until at last Joanna stirred once more. "Tell me," She continued still in a
whisper. "how bad is it? No bravado Liana; I want the truth."
	Liana nodded.
	"No change." She murmured tightly. "Whatever this darkness did, it's
helped, but only with what I already have. I can hear well enough so long as I
compensate to the absolute limits of my ability, and I can see more or less as
well. But that's saying little considering what I'm having to do to manage
that much. My enhanced senses are as good as useless, and as for the rest..."
She shook her head. "I could probably hit something with one of my less lethal
weapons, and wipe out everything for several hundred yards in either direction
and perhaps vaporise both of us into the bargain. My coordination is a mess,
my precision micro-weaponry completely unusable in this state and as for
anything more dangerous at my disposal..."
	She fell silent and Joanna nodded in her turn.
	"As I expected." She said simply, no admonition in her tone. "All
right. I think it'd be best should you stay here and guard the entrance as
best you can. I'm going to try to reach the grounds without being seen and
find out what on earth we've stumbled into. If it's Lu-na or Luna I'll bring
her back with me or call you if things look grim. If not... If we've found
another alternate..." She shook her head. "We'll have to see." She ended
simply. "Wait here and be ready should I need you."
	"Joanna," Whispered Liana urgently. "If she's hurt, or Usagi... I
can't do anything to help them as I am! I'd do more harm than good were I--"
	"I know." Joanna answered, a sudden intense warmth touching her tone
and eyes for a fleeting instant through the urgency of the moment. "But we've
no choice and every moment we waste here may be vital. Watch, and wait for my
signal, and for heaven's sake don't take any chances or do anything without
calling me." "I'm not an imbecile." Liana flashed. Then her voice softened.
"I'm sorry." She said. "I give you my word I won't try anything foolish. Good
luck, and neechan be careful."
	She made as though to reach out to pull Joanna fiercely to her for a
moment, but she was already vanishing swiftly into the blackness and Liana
forced down the hurt and shook her head.
	A moment later she was alone save for the cold hissing of the fitful
wind and the barely-heard sounds of the first beginnings of alarm far away.
Minutes passed and still there was no other sound and Joanna did not return.
Liana remained statue-still, her senses, scrambled as they were, straining
into the darkness. Now that she had time to evaluate her condition, she
realised things were far worse even than she had feared. She could not access
her own diagnostics, something that should have been integral to her
consciousness, nor had she any but the most rudimentary control of her
systems. It was as though there were an invisible distance between her
perception of herself and physical reality that she could not bridge no matter
how she tried. Frustrated and increasingly alarmed despite all she could do to
remain calm, she stood and waited while time passed with agonising slowness
and still there was no sign.
	It was perhaps half an hour after Joanna had left her (she had only
the vaguest idea of the passing minutes in her condition) when a sudden sound
close by startled her from her increasingly anxious introspection. She
whirled, eyes flaming, teeth bared in a vicious snarl as her combat instincts
screamed at her to attack.
	"Liana?"
	The voice snapped her back to herself and she gasped and tried to
regain her shaken calm.
	"Where have you been!" She demanded in a hissing whisper, mingled
anxiety and relief making her tone hard and angry as Joanna glided silently to
her side. "Do you realise how long you were away? I thought--"
	"I had to be sure." Joanna's voice was strangely hard and flat. "I
couldn't take the chance that I was mistaken or leave while there was a chance
we might be able to do something before it was too late. Now I'm all but
certain. Come on;" She ended in the same flat, harsh tone. "we're leaving. I'm
not prepared to take any chances with you in this state, and in any case
there's nothing more we can do here, at least not without a great deal of
force."
	"What!" Liana gasped, almost forgetting to be quiet in her
disbelieving outrage. "Leaving! Just like that? And Lu-na, and Usagi--?"
	"Are beyond our help, at least for the moment." Said Joanna in the
same grim tone. "Usagi..., *this* Usagi is already dead, and unless we wish to
join her we have perhaps ten minutes to escape before Tokyo is wiped from the
face of the earth. I should have realised at once; the archetype should have
been painfully apparent after everything we've had to deal with since the
first Storm, but I was somewhat distracted."
	"But we can't!" Cried Liana, no longer caring that she was speaking
now far above a whisper. "I won't just abandon them. I *won't*! What could
possibly be so terrible that we should run just like that, after all we've
faced in the past four months?"
	"Certain death in an aberrant reality should we stay," Said Joanna
simply. "with no reference to the habitable regions of the Gateway void and no
hope of finding our way back to them and the others should we die, before it's
too late. Have you forgotten that I wasn't conscious during this transition,
or at least in no condition to mark our passage and entrance to this universe?
If we die here, we'll be flung headlong into the Gateway Void with no way to
determine where we are or how we might begin to find a reality with which
we're familiar. Do you imagine I *want* to abandon those remaining of this
world's senshi to their fate? But there is nothing, absolutely *nothing* we
can do with you unable to fight and without the force we could have brought to
bear should all of us have made the journey. If we don't escape, we shall die;
nothing is more certain. Do you want to wander perhaps for months of linear
time before finding your way back to a familiar reality that will let you
manifest again, having no idea meanwhile what's happening to the rest of the
company? Our only hope is to escape while we can."
	"And then--?" Liana demanded.
	But suddenly Joanna shooshed her urgently. She had caught the sudden
faint sounds of voices from ahead, lost to Liana as she was.
	"Come on then." She continued grimly. "We might as well be sure. If
I'm wrong after all, we can decide then what to do. But I don't believe I am,
and perhaps you'll do as I wish without further arguing when you realise where
we are."
	With that she was moving, Liana keeping as before close at her side.
	"Then where--" Liana tried again.
	But at that moment the wind carried the voices more clearly to them
and they froze, standing suddenly still and silent as they strained to catch
the sounds drifting to them from the darkness.
	For a few moments more little could be made out save for a few half-
incoherent words interspersed with broken sobbing. Then suddenly a male voice
reached them clearly.
	"So Minako's dead. So are Rei and Usagi. Ami's about to join them."
	For a second Liana was bewildered. The intonation and manner of
speaking caught her attention even though the voice itself was unfamiliar, and
distanced as she was from the physical world and operating she knew now at the
most minute fraction of her potential, she did not at first make the
connection. Then Joanna spoke quietly beside her and a sudden nightmare horror
mixed with a terrible foreboding rose in her as she began at last to reach a
guess. "`He spoke quietly'" She quoted softly, her voice low and terribly
calm. "`but with determination. The crescent moon mark on his forehead began
to glow brightly. Luna was appalled.'."
	And the cry came from the dark.
	"ARTEMIS! What are you doing?"
	With the same dreadful calm, Joanna turned to meet Liana's suddenly
starting eyes.
	"It was simple enough to reach a guess even from the little I
overheard." She said, her tone grim with a dreadful finality. "The senshi,
*this* world's senshi, left this evening for their climactic confrontation
with the Dark Kingdom. Some thirty-five minutes ago we heard Luna's scream at
the death of the Moon Princess. Five minutes after that, enough time for the
Kingdom's new ruler to have settled with its former queen, a darkness exploded
from the north, D-point, to fill the sky and envelop the world, a darkness, or
rather a shield so absolute that it blocked not only light and heat, but the
full spectrum of cosmic radiation and satellite communications that were
causing you so much trouble in your present condition. And now, the Overlord
is dealing with the last of his immediate problems amongst the youma. In
perhaps three minutes he will make his announcement and seal this city and in
six it will begin to die. I think it's time to leave."
	For a long moment a deathly silence hung between them, while Liana
stared at her as though unwilling or unable to accept the reality of the words
she had just spoken.
	"Kami-sama!" She whispered softly at last. "Kami-sama! It's not
possible! We *cannot* be here!"
	Yet there could be little room for interpretation. Like Joanna
herself, she loved nothing better than a fine and well-told tale of fantasy,
and the various incarnations of the Sailor Moon Expanded tales she had read,
at first as a matter of necessity (given the circumstances of their own
coexistence and before they had learnt just how rare specific non-canonical
universes had proved, it had seemed prudent to familiarise themselves as
quickly as possible with as many possibilities for alternates of their
realities as they could find) and later simply because they were of such
excellent quality, and in particular those of the Dark Kingdom Renegades and
best, the chilling world of Earth-beta, had particularly appealed to her. Now,
with the blackness overhead and the faint, not quite familiar voices still
reaching them in the fitful stillness, she found herself recalling with stark,
dreadful clarity Minako's thoughtless quip on the night after she herself had
finished this particular story, that if such a world really existed their
genocidal complements were welcome to it so long as she didn't have to go
there. What they had to face was bad enough. It had been an ill-advised remark
given that mere days before her sister had watched helpless as the only Star
Trek analogues they had found were shredded to oblivion, and although she had
not meant it seriously (she was as committed as any of them to preserving all
they could), Viko had glared furiously at her and she had apologised and
reached to squeeze her sister's hand. Viko had nodded and the matter was
forgotten. Yet now as her eyes turned from the darkness above once more to
Joanna at her side, Liana shivered at the savage irony of the memory. "Earth-
beta!" She murmured, her tone still soft and disbelieving. "But Joanna,
Neechan it's impossible! On that point at least we were in agreement. Such a
world could not exist concurrent with our multiverse; there are fundamental
differences in the underlying metaphysics, the very defining fundamentals of
the SME group that would make it impossible."
	"Then perhaps you'd care to inform the Overlord of that fact,
preferably within the next two minutes." Joanna answered, her tone harsh and
frigid with biting sarcasm. "Or perhaps we can merely wait here and debate the
point until it becomes academic. I doubt that it matters greatly just at the
moment whether we've found a near-parallel group capable of existence within
our multiverse or whether this is some isolated Beta analogue. It doesn't
change the fact that we will be just as dead if we don't go, and now."
	For a moment Liana seemed uncharacteristically unable to answer. Then
abruptly she shivered and nodded, herself once more.
	Joanna was right. As unthinkable to her as it was to abandon this
Tokyo to its fate, she had seen enough ruin and destruction in her short life
to know that sometimes destiny simply could not be averted. As things stood,
they could do nothing, *nothing* save to die should they stay; there was
simply not enough time. Even were they to teleport directly into Beryl's
throne-room, an impossibility unless by tremendous good fortune this Kingdom's
analogue matched very closely that with which they were familiar, and assuming
the Overlord had not already placed an interdiction field about it, there
would be nothing they could do save perhaps to delay the destruction of the
city for the time it would take him to kill them. There would be no chance of
reasoning with him and no hope of Joanna being able to find and break his link
to this world's analogue of the SME abyss before he realised what was
happening; such control took time and patience, and protection while she
searched. In her present condition, Liana knew that she might well be hard put
to it to hold a conventional buma of her own universe, let alone a being with
a power at his command such as that the SME Metallia possessed, even given
their extra-real advantage. She might, as a last resort, detonate her power-
plant and blow Overlord, youma and Dark Kingdom to oblivion. But the idea was
to escape *without* the need to die to do it, and in any case, in the end
their companions came first. Should the others be lost or worse taken by their
qliphothic complements, it would be academic whether she and Joanna managed
somehow to halt Calcite's homicidal alternate before his reign of terror
began; there would soon be no multiverse to make a difference. Anathema to
every instinct though it was, they must escape and now while there was time
and return later if possible to salvage what they could. Perhaps even the
youma king might listen once he understood the alternative.
	Beside her, Joanna stirred and Liana sighed and reached quickly for
her hand.
	"Ready?" Joanna murmured.
	It was merely a courtesy; transition was never pleasant save for the
few of them with an affinity for the unreality of the Gateway universe.
	Liana nodded again, tensing involuntarily for a moment in preparation
for the giddying plunge into oblivion.
	Her own face still hard and set, showing nothing of her fury and
revulsion at the need to flee, Joanna reached to open the gate... and touched
the screaming madness of forever. It was impossible to describe, as though in
that moment something fundamental to the link between the Gateway void and her
understanding as she conceptualised it to herself had been suddenly and
hideously changed and only a writhing, rending chaos remained.
	Reeling, her mind reaching wildly for some common reference in a
boiling oblivion suddenly utterly beyond her comprehension, she lurched and
stumbled, kept from falling only by Liana's suddenly iron grip as she fought
vainly to seize something that was suddenly utterly alien and horrible and
reach a balance she could understand. For a moment she endured with grim
determination, while every instinct screamed at her to retreat and the
lurching nausea threatened to overwhelm her. Yet she could find nothing and at
last with a gasp she tore free and slammed back to herself with a shattering
jolt of returning reality.
	For several seconds she stood frozen while her heart hammered savagely
and she fought desperately not to be sick.
	"I think" She managed flatly at last, swallowing convulsively against
the bile that threatened to rise at any moment. "that we are in a great deal
of trouble."
	Slowly Liana turned to meet her eyes once more, a sudden unreasoning
fear beginning to take hold of her as Joanna gritted her teeth and prepared to
try again.
	"Wait!" She cried with sudden unreasoning urgency. "I know we haven't
much time, but give me just a minute. We're missing something. Something
fundamental. Something so obvious that we're overlooking it. *Damn* whatever's
happened to me!"
	She fell silent, her senses straining into the night while she
remained tense and unmoving and fought desperately for an answer that hovered
tantalisingly just beyond reach and yet that she knew should have been
obvious. Around them, the fitful wind had shifted and the voices were no
longer clear, yet straining, they could still catch the illusive sounds.
	`Something obvious,' She thought desperately. The numb, dreamlike
horror that was all she could remember of transition and the surreal, terrible
dreams that had preceded her awakening here mingled with the faintest whisper
of memory, of something the transient phantom of Helios or his strange
companion had said to her even as she had been hurtled from the horror and to
consciousness once more, her condition now, and worst, Joanna's sudden
inability to build a gate from this world, something their very nature should
have made impossible. Unless... And then at last she knew.
	Liana froze, a numbing, nightmare horror leaping in her as she quailed
for a moment from the dreadful enormity of a possibility stark and horrible
beyond all she could have imagined.
	"Oh Kami-sama!" She breathed softly at last. "Kami-sama no!"
	If she were right... Yet there was no time now to ponder all the
dreadful implications; they had to escape while they could, and there might
still be a way given that somehow they were alive and could exist here, even
with all that terrible possibility might imply.
	"Joanna!" She cried, her voice rising again with desperate urgency.
"Neechan, forget the gate! If we can escape Tokyo, that will be enough, and
there's a simple way to--"
	"Teleport!" Joanna cried in her turn, already summoning the power and
thanking Cryolite fiercely in that moment for showing her the trick of jumping
to a point without the need to have visited it before.
	Lunging with desperate speed, she found their destination and
triggered the jump. And nothing happened.
	"What...!" She hissed, rage exploding savagely as she tried again and
yet again. "Damn it; what the hell is going on!"
	But beside her, the colour had drained from Liana's face as the horror
became a certainty and she shook her head. Of course. Even given that such
constants existed here, there was no reason to suppose their own abilities
would translate to local analogues. If that had been true, Joanna's gate-
building should have manifested as the ability to shift dimensions or, she
realised starkly, simply to scatter them to oblivion in the boiling chaos
between realities.
	For a moment that was eternity she stood, the nightmare terror and a
hopeless futility mixed with rage and a savage denial at her own helplessness
and the perverse unfairness of a fate that had brought them to this
threatening to overwhelm her while tears threatened and she could not move.
Yet at last Joanna's voice reached her and she shook violently from her
paralysis, her Jade eyes darting skywards before they returned to fix on
Joanna's own with a terrible intensity.
	"I should have realised." She said simply, her tone as stark and flat
as Joanna's of minutes before. "Impossible though it should be. I should have
understood."
	"what!" Joanna demanded, fury and alarm fighting for supremacy as the
sense of imminent danger rose now with savage speed. "Damn it Liana, what are
you talking about?"
	"Don't you see?" Said Liana softly, her voice still flat and hard.
Then suddenly it began wildly to rise as pain and loss and a terrible rage
filled her eyes. "Don't you understand? The horror and confusion of our
transition alone to this place, a world or group of worlds that cannot be, the
catastrophic failure of my own systems, and last and most damning, your
inability to teleport or open a gate! I should have seen it, *would* have but
for the damage caused by what I can only assume to be the incompatible
fundamentals of this world, fundamentals so alien that the very constants that
allow my existence and your abilities no longer apply. I'm astounded only that
I'm able to function at all, that at least some paradigms are close enough to
make that possible, if barely, or indeed that we can exist here without going
indescribably insane or simply blasting ourselves and this reality to
oblivion. Don't you understand? There can be only one explanation." And
suddenly her voice was choked with tears and it was all she could do to form
the words. "Lost!" She said simply, the tears falling now unchecked while
Joanna watched her in numb horror as she too at last began to comprehend and
could say nothing. "Lost, forever! Lenore and the others warned us more than
once that Yohko's universe was becoming a nexus for the growing Storms, that
it was becoming increasingly unstable, and Ami told us when she called that
there were new elements to this Storm, disturbing subtleties the Mercury
computer couldn't model even with all the new data she'd gathered. And
remember your own and Viko's unease and the reaction of the Ginzuishou and
Silver Crystal to the previous transition to Yohko's home. This Storm was
beyond anything we've seen and contained new elements about which we knew
nothing. Just what happened we may never know unless somehow I can adapt to
this world and remember. But there are very few scenarios. The most likely is
that the Storm struck as the company emerged from transit and that, horribly,
it was the last, the beginning of a final, ruinous cataclysm that ripped apart
the fabric of physical reality, the sum of all we knew. How we survived, who
can tell: perhaps because, of all of us, you and I were at the very moment of
transition: perhaps merely because of some last twisted joke on the part of
fate or a last imperative on Johnathan's part that protected you, and I
because I was closest. At the moment of dissolution we were hurtled from our
dying multiverse, even as it collapsed and ceased ever to have existed, into
an oblivion beyond forever even we could never hope to understand and in which
it should have been utterly impossible for us to survive. Whether we drifted,
caught between mutually incompatible infinities for a moment or a billion,
billion years we will never know: indeed such a concept is meaningless. Yet
somehow we were caught by this multiverse, the definitive SME multiverse, and
impossibly, inconceivably, we manifested here, perhaps because at some base,
fundamental level certain constants are compatible. This is not a Beta
analogue in our own multiverse. We were right; such a world cannot coexist
there. This is the definitive, or at least *a* definitive. And now we're
trapped forever beyond any hope of return or escape and we have less than a
minute before..."
	And suddenly the pain and the tears were gone. Then, almost before
Joanna realised what was happening, Liana had caught her to her with savage
desperation, while the fey light that was the battle-nature of her kind blazed
with primal intensity in her eyes.
	"We have one chance!" She cried wildly, her face suddenly fierce with
grim determination. "I've barely any control, but I think I've enough to fly.
There's no time to escape the city, but if I can carry us above Dark Layer
before the dome appears--"
	"In less than a minute?!" Joanna exclaimed incredulously. "Liana it's
impossible. Even if you could manage it in time, anything entering Dark Layer
would be attacked without argument. To try would mean death as surely as to
stay here."
	"We don't know that." Liana cried urgently, even as she tightened her
hold still more and fought savagely to pull her reeling systems to order. "It
was never made clear whether Dark Layer was an extension of the Overlord's own
perceptions or simply a static means to create Kingdom conditions. If the
latter, we have at least a chance of getting through and away before he can
retaliate. It might even be that I've been entirely mistaken after all and its
something fundamental to this reality or even simply the trauma of this
transition that's scrambled your abilities. But whatever the case, it's our
only chance. If we can get out of the city, or at least above the area of
destruction--"
	"It won't work." Said Joanna flatly. "Liana think! Consider how Beta-
calcite was defined. If this is truly the definitive SME Earth-beta and if the
relationship between an author's imagination and a compatible universe even
approximates our own constants, his creator would have defined Dark Layer as
an extension of him; nothing is more certain. In which case to enter it would
be to commit suicide, as surely as to wait here and die with the city. Our
only chance is to reach the shrine and teleport with the senshi. If..."
	But in that instant every danger sense began to scream with wild alarm
and at the same moment a cry reached them clearly from the temple:
"SOMETHING'S COMING! SOMETHING TERRIBLE!!"
	With a gasp Liana tensed, preparing to hurl herself and Joanna
skywards in a last, desperate race. Then, almost before she could understand
what was happening, something caught her long hair from behind and she was
wrenched violently backwards, something cold and hard pressed to her neck even
as her legs were kicked savagely from beneath her with a strength far beyond
human. For an instant, pain exploded through her and she could not move. Then
she was falling, Joanna torn in a moment from her arms as the world tumbled
away from her and she plunged swiftly down, her senses a shrieking maelstrom
of confusion until she emerged at last to sprawl on her back on cold,
unyielding stone.
	For many seconds she lay still, while something tinkled softly to the
floor beside her head and her senses began slowly to return. Then Joanna's
voice spoke only a little distance from her and she gasped and opened her
eyes.
	She was in what appeared to be a large cavernous space with a high
vaulted ceiling, lit by a defuse, grey light that illuminated little and made
it all but impossible to guess at anything beyond the fact that the floor,
ceiling and the nearer wall to her left were of the same rough black stone.
Joanna stood only a little distance before her, her attention seeming fixed
intently on a shadowed figure who stood some ten paces farther off and about
whom Liana could make out almost nothing in the gloom.
	With a gasp, she struggled to her feet, the frustrating distance that
kept her all but helpless seeming if anything even greater than before as she
moved carefully forwards, her eyes stubbornly refusing to bring the world
about her into sharper focus. At her first movement, Joanna had glanced
quickly towards her, but now she turned her eyes once more to the shrouded
figure as Liana stepped to stand once more at her side.
	"Why am I not surprised." Joanna continued, her tone arctic. "In any
universe you seem utterly unable to resist the temptation to leave any
intervention until the last possible moment. Small wonder your alternates and
Rhiannon get along so well; they have so much in common."
	Liana sighed. She knew now who it must be. Joanna's relationship with
her youngest sister could best be described as volatile at the best of times,
and of the rest of the company only Xelloss, Setsuna and Susan seemed able to
elicit exactly the same combination of frustration, fury and (in the case at
least of the two time guardians) grudging admiration for their commitment and
tenacity if not their methods. "One thing that does surprise me however is
that you were able to intervene at all at this point, given the circumstances.
If you could enter time now, why couldn't you have prevented... Unless..." And
abruptly she nodded. "You're not Hades, or not the Hades belonging to this
universe."
	"You are dangerously perceptive."
	The voice, like the others, was not quite as it should be, as though a
consummate actress able to emulate Setsuna's manner and intonation (if not her
voice itself) almost to perfection were speaking the senshi's lines. Not that
Liana was surprised. If Titanite's words to Sylia as written in Bad Moon
Rising were to be considered an analogue of SME reality, it was not (unlike
their own) an exact literal archetype, where even the voices were almost
exactly those of the actors and actresses who had played the parts. She smiled
briefly as she recalled one particular near-disastrous attempt on the part of
Minako, Usagi and Makoto to bring Rei and Yuuichiro closer by convincing Linna
to call him as the Fire priestess and ask him to an evening meal and movie.
Rei had been livid, but she had calmed down after the four had apologised and
after trying only once to strangle Minako and her princess, and the night had
gone far better than any of them could have hoped.
	"But you're quite correct." The time senshi continued, snapping
Liana's attention back to her once more. "I'm what you would call the more
canonical version." For a moment something almost warm and amused touched her
tone. Then the laughter was gone. "However, I did not bring you here to
discuss myself or my intervention in this universe, nor to debate with you.
You are here for two reasons, for an explanation and to be given a choice.
Before I begin however there is the matter of Liana's little problem. She was
not quite correct in her assumptions concerning what happened to you or her
difficulties here. Catch." She cried suddenly.
	Without warning, something shining and spherical came hurtling from
her hand to fly at Liana with savage speed. Instinctively her hand flashed out
to snatch the fist-sized ball from the air, but no sooner had she touched it
than it shattered and vanished, a nerve-shattering shock exploding through her
savagely in its wake as though every fibre of her being had been suddenly
stretched, then snapped back into place. And then the world was intensely real
and present while every sense screamed at her and she reeled for a moment in
dazed confusion before she shivered and drew in a long, slow breath of
indescribable relief as all settled at last and she was truly herself again.
	"Beta-helios was in something of a hurry" Said Pluto as if by way of
apology. And now Liana could see her clearly although the light was indeed low
and much of the great cavern was in darkness. "and certainly not to blame,
given the circumstances. You were never hurt by your transition here; your
mind had simply not quite returned to your body, an interesting philosophical
point given your nature, but one for another time. For now, it is important
that you listen and listen well to what I have to tell you. If you do not,
should you choose to disregard my advice or the warning I am about to give
you, make no mistake: I shall not hesitate to enter this time-line before you
appear and tear the gate from the fabric of existence at the moment of your
manifestation. Do you understand me? My duty to what you would call the Alpha
time-line is paramount, and you are not needed, save perhaps to lessen a
little the suffering that is to come. Will you listen to what I have to say?"
	For answer, Liana's eyes flashed jade fire and she made as though to
step a pace forwards. But Joanna gestured her urgently to stillness and nodded
curtly to the senshi, although she favoured her with a very unfriendly glance.
	"Very well." Pluto began. "What I am about to tell you is the truth,
whether you choose to believe it or no, or at least as near to it as is
possible, given the extraordinary circumstances of your appearance in our
omniverse. And yes, I use the word deliberately: on that point at least
Liana's assumption was very close to correct. Of far greater import however is
that you understand from the beginning that you did not `travel' here in any
real sense, that, simply put, you are not Joanna Marina O'Reilly of what you
have come to call the Empire reality, nor Liana, Bu-33DA-Elite buma of the
single BGC alternate with which you are familiar. More correctly, you are not
the Joanna and Liana who began the journey from your Mamono Hunter universe.
So far as we can ascertain from the first confused moments of your existence,
Joanna, Liana and the rest made the transition from it unhurt if not without
difficulty, and to the best of our knowledge, continue in relative terms the
struggle you believe yourselves to have been to that point a part. Exactly how
you should be defined is problematic. Perhaps the most useful definition is to
consider yourselves to have begun as static echoes, snapshots if you will of
your templates, perfect to the last detail, created of an almost inconceivably
fortuitous combination of chance and extraordinary luck. At the very height of
the Storm, at the instant the company passed the threshold of physical reality
into a place even I do not pretend to understand, the Storm-front struck your
Mamono Hunter universe and entered the gate Joanna had made. By all accepted
theory it should have obliterated it in an instant and scattered her and the
rest to oblivion. But their transition was not the first and they had by
virtue of their travels become already partially immune to the growing
destabilisation, anchored perhaps irrevocably as they were in the nothingness
of the created Gateway Void, a place that should never have been and that
existed outside the restrictions of physical reality, a fact amply proven by
their returning there again and again after any physical death in a real
world. Unable to destroy them, the front nevertheless stripped them of the
current manifestation of their physical bodies, a fact that probably went
almost unnoticed given that they were in a place in which matter was an
afterthought rather than a necessity, and created of souls to which their
physical templates were already an integral component, myriad echoes, perfect
but static fractures that split from them at the instant of their creation.
The originals continued on their way, perhaps even entirely unaware that
anything had happened. But behind them, the echoes, believing each themselves
to be the original from which they were created, had a few seconds of discreet
existence, a tiny impetus of subjective momentum in which to know a ruin and
horror beyond nightmare and madness and the uttermost end of damnation that
was through its qliphothic mistress the base nature of the Gateway Void,
before the static moment that was all the life they could know began to lose
coherence and they began to die, dissolving in unimaginable terror until at
last the very essence of their existence failed in catastrophic collapse and
they vanished into the infinite emptiness of absolute oblivion."
	As she spoke, a slow horror had grown in her listeners as at last they
began to remember, a twisting, nightmare dread that clawed at mind and reason
and threatened for one terrible moment to explode suddenly to overwhelm
everything in a mindless, gibbering despair. Yet dreadful as was the fear,
there was a sense of distance and detachment, an unreal, dreamlike quality
that made the sudden terrible intensity of the reawakened memories able to be
borne and accepted as something passed and finished with forever.
	"That should have been the end." Pluto continued at last after several
seconds in which no one moved, still in the same quiet tone. "Yet impossibly,
inconceivably, some of those myriad echoes remained viable long enough to find
their way here. How this could have happened, and still more, how you were
able to manifest uncorrupted in another omniverse, we cannot begin to imagine.
Again, it should have been impossible. But we are dealing here with matters
utterly beyond our understanding: perhaps beyond *any* understanding, and as
for the last question: I have my suspicions. Still, that is secondary to the
fact that you are here and alive and, most importantly, a danger to the
destiny both of this and my own universe should you refuse to accept what I
have told you."
	With that she fell silent, while the two travellers remained for many
seconds unmoving as they came to terms with the inconceivable enormity of a
truth that could no longer be denied. Neither could possibly forget those last
terrible moments; the memory would remain with them forever: and now Joanna
recalled again with terrible intensity the moment the gate had been torn from
her: the impossible, incomprehensible moment when she had felt herself shatter
like glass and it had seemed to her that she was legion and a thousand
conflicting perspectives assaulted her: the moment she knew now of her birth,
and death.
	For a long moment she continued to watch the senshi as the silence
stretched between them. Then at last she stirred and sighed.
	"So, Helios was not a phantom after all." She murmured softly, her
eyes leaving Pluto's face as she turned to Liana at her side.
	Her companion was very still, her own gaze seeming fixed on something
very far away as she stood taut and unmoving and said nothing.
	"Liana?" Said Joanna quietly at last, a sudden kindly gentleness in
her tone.
	"Gone!" The word was little more than a whisper in the stillness.
"Gone forever, everyone, and all we have ever known! Even if by some
impossible chance we could find a way back, there would be no place for us. We
are phantoms, exiles trapped beyond hope in a world distant beyond imagination
and in which we can never truly belong. Trapped, and alone."
	Again, pain and a sudden primal rage filled her eyes, but she would
not falter nor shed a single tear now that they were no longer alone.
	"No." Pluto spoke softly, something suddenly quiet and gentle in her
tone as she looked between them. "True, there is no way back, and that above
all makes what I have still to say to you of paramount importance. But you are
not alone here, not altogether. Your five sisters also made the journey and
are safe, although scattered across the world."
	At her words, Liana's face leapt with sudden hope, her eyes flashing
once more to the senshi. But Joanna forestalled her sudden wild exclamation
with another imperative gesture.
	"Where?" She demanded.
	But Pluto shook her head.
	"That I cannot tell you." She answered simply, her tone again cool and
careful. "My concern was with finding and warning you before your ignorance of
your situation had you do something all of us would regret."
	"Cannot?" Said Joanna, her own tone freezing in an instant as her eyes
leapt once more to Pluto's face. "Or simply will not. After all, you seem
remarkably well informed, even concerning things about which you could have no
possible knowledge. How is it that you know so much about us, and yet can't,
or more likely *won't* answer that particular question? In fact, let's return
to the first. How is it that you know *anything* about us at all? By
definition another omniverse could have no reference to or connection with
your own, nor could our Susan or Setsuna have contrived to contact you; the
idea is absurd. Even *if* it were possible, they've no power in the Gateway
Void, the only means by which either might conceivably make the attempt." It
had been something she suspected had always galled the two time guardians
although neither would ever have admitted it, that, of the scouts and senshi,
only Viko, created of the first Storm to strike the senshi universe, could
navigate the bewildering unreality of the Gateway Void once a path had been
shown her, while they could not. "How can you possibly know of our beginning,
assuming you're not lying to us for some reason of your own," She continued in
growing fury. "and how is it possible that you were able to describe in such
detail the events surrounding that beginning? You know one hell of a lot more
than you're telling us and I think we deserve an explanation."
	Joanna's emerald eyes sought Pluto's own once more in fierce
challenge, but the senshi simply shook her head and did not meet her gaze.
	"I could tell you it was a secret," She said, a sudden almost
mischievous smile playing for a moment about the corners of her mouth as
Joanna's eyes flashed sudden savage rage. "but I doubt you'd appreciate the
humour given the circumstances. Suffice it to say that I am quite satisfied
with the veracity of my information, indeed it comes from the best possible
source. In any event, it does not matter. Exactly how much I know concerning
you and how I gained that knowledge is a great deal less important at the
moment than what you must understand concerning your destiny here and what
could happen should you choose not to listen to what I have to say. Quite
simply, it is this. The future of this world, and through it that for which I
am responsible hangs upon a thread. Should the Overlord learn too soon of the
Alpha universe or should Earth-beta diverge so that Hermes and Zeus do not
reach it and so set in motion the events that will lead to his defeat, then
not only this world, but my own shall collapse into chaos and ruin from which
I see no hope of return."
	"The Acolytes." Said Liana simply. "The Renegades must fulfil their
destiny here and return to trigger Serenity's apotheosis."
	"Precisely." Said Pluto, her tone grim and her eyes suddenly hard and
cold as they met for a moment those of each of the travellers. "Your coming to
this universe is an aberration, a factor outside the flow of destiny as it
should have been. Should you intervene overtly here and so alter events as
history dictates they must unfold, then all for which I have fought since the
fall of Silver Millennium may be laid in ruin and my world lost beyond hope of
recall. That *shall not* be! Understand this, and this clearly. Should you by
your interference threaten the destiny of this world and so that of my own, I
will destroy you, though it break every oath I swore upon my accession. I will
tear you from the fabric of time and send you screaming into the nothingness
from which you came rather than see the future fall in ruin before the
appointed time. Do you understand me? Forget this warning at your peril."
	Then for many seconds there was silence once more.
	Liana stood taut, her face a mask of fury and her eyes flashing jade
fire as she glared balefully at the senshi. But Joanna remained still and cold
as she studied the guardian of time, until at last she stirred and nodded and
a chill smile touched her lips.
	"I like you no more than the Plutos of my..., or rather, my template's
omniverse." She said simply, her voice as arctic as her smile. "Nor do I trust
or more than half believe much of what you've told us. If we're such a danger
here, why not simply give us the means to escape this world while we can?
Obviously you're from a time in your own in which that could be done or you
could never have come here, and I imagine such a solution would have been
considered unless you're acting entirely alone, something I find very
difficult to believe. Either you're lying, or at most telling us a tiny
fraction of the truth and we're needed here after all, or some other factor
precludes your allowing us the easy alternative. But whatever your true
intent, I suspect I'll get nothing further from you, and I might well do
exactly as you've done in your place. Very well." She ended, her tone thawing
just a little and the chill melting a little from her eyes. "You have my
promise that we will do nothing overt to draw the Overlord's attention; it
would be tremendously dangerous in any case until we understand our
limitations in this omniverse and I've no wish to die pointlessly and no more
wish than you to see your world come to harm, and everything we can to ensure
he learns nothing of our existence. But we will not stand by and watch him
tear apart this world without doing all we can to minimise that destruction
within the limits you've set. After all, if what you've said is true, it's as
much now our own as any and we intend to see that there is something left
worth living in when this is over. And one more thing." She added, her voice
frigid once more. "My promise will hold for exactly one year, until the night
Hermes and Zeus should escape to your universe. If that doesn't happen, or
should some other factor intervene to change events significantly before that
time, our agreement is at an end. We will not see the Overlord victorious."
	She expected anger or perhaps another dire warning on the part of the
senshi. But Pluto simply nodded in her turn, something strange and
unfathomable in her eyes as they held Joanna's for one last moment before she
nodded once more and withdrew her gaze.
	"Then we understand one another." She said simply, her voice chill and
final as she summoned her staff and stepped towards them. "Come." She
continued. "We've talked long enough and you'd best be on your way if you're
to prevent just such a factor as you've described. Farewell, and never forget.
I will be watching."
	And with that, before either of them had a chance to answer, the floor
vanished from beneath them and they were falling, tumbling through a maelstrom
of light and screaming wind to emerge at last to find themselves standing on
the wide pavement of a city street.
	Cursing the senshi, whom she was certain had ended their meeting
precipitously to pre-empt further questions and in addition made their journey
as unpleasant as she could, Joanna turned swiftly to look about them, and
gasped. She had seen this particular street and the entrance to the building
only some ten yards from where she stood in enough incarnations of New York
city both from outside and in to recognise it, even though its analogue
existed in the London of her universe. But it was not the headquarters of the
United Nations itself that had caught her attention, but rather the tall
figure with long, flowing fair hair who had just dropped the last of the
security detail with a light touch to his neck and was moving to enter even as
they appeared.
	Starting forwards, Joanna made to call urgently to her to wait. But
she never had the chance.
	"Marina-oneechan!"
	In the next instant, Liana was racing towards her, and a moment later
Marina had turned and the two were pressed fiercely close in each other's
arms, while all about them people were staring and an unpleasant murmur had
begun.
	With a furious shake of her head, Joanna hurried forwards through the
increasingly restive crowd.
	"I would suggest" She said dryly as the two drew apart and Marina
turned to greet her with an intense, welcoming smile. "that we postpone our
cosy little reunion until we're somewhere a little more discreet, unless of
course you're eager to start the rioting now rather than have the festivities
wait until after the Overlord's announcement tomorrow. Having us appear from
nowhere in the middle of a crowded street minutes after the world has gone
dark was not what I'd have called one of Pluto's better ideas. But then, I
imagine that was exactly what she intended."
	Then came the sound of a shot somewhere in the distance, and a moment
later something shattered closer at hand, and the shouts and the screaming
began.

=============================================================================

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