Hi!

Thanks for writing! I really appreciate how long it can take to C&C 
something.

Wonder where that attachment went?

Where all attachments should go: down the hoooooooooooooooole.

I'm beginning to agree with you. Never had a problem with 'em before, but I 
guess it's just one of the little things I'll need to work around if I want 
this to be readable. Sort of like how my indents still refuse to show up. 
C'est la vie, I guess. (shrug)

I'll be pasting from now on. It's just easier than having to re-post. Thanks 
for warning me that it hadn't gone through, incidentally.

Experts agreed that the feng shui of the mansion was horribly wrong,
letting only sorrow and misery gather within. The Tomoe clan had not 

taken

the time to discuss with astrologists and other experts before starting
to build, and the house had been constructed in an inauspicious way on 

an

inauspicious day.

And on the thirteenth lot of the fourth street, to boot. ^_^

I'm just saying, when you look at how much freaky stuff has happened to that 
building, you start to look for an explanation. It's got at least one 
legitimate witch living in it, a mad scientist, a basement full of monsters, 
and it's been sucked into another dimension on at least two occasions within 
the last year. Something tells me things like that have been happening for a 
while.

Besides, every town needs a creepy old house that everyone says is haunted. 
It's tradition.

of fresh paint and new chrome. On clear nights, when the moon was full 

and

bright, it was not uncommon to see a swarm of bats streaming out of its
chimneys and circling the vast lawns that surrounded the estate in 

search

of prey.

...okay, THAT is just pushing it.

Yeah, I know. I just had to go that extra mile, in case people were thinking 
that it maybe wasn't all that bad. Ah, the Tomoe family... They're creepy 
and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky....

*snip* Interesting twist on Hotaru's backstory there.

Thanks! It's something I was always meaning to work into the original fic, 
but never had a chance to. One of the things I'm enjoying about this 
re-write is that I can bring up a lot of the subplots that never had a 
chance to develop before and work them in a little better.

Many people seem to be curious about the guy who showed up with Hotaru in 
Prof. Tomoe's story. All I can say right now is that he will be appearing 
later in the story, and you'll probably know him when you see him.

"The princess of Venus most certainly did not have any boyfriends
*or* paramours!" Luna replied indignantly. "Why, the very idea would 

have

been scandalous! None of the Senshi had *anything* like that! Their 

focus

was entirely on their duties, as was only fitting for such powerful and
highly trained warriors."

Besides, they were too busy sleeping with *each other*.

You know, I actually had Minako making a reference to Haruka and Michiru 
here, but I edited it out. Seemed too astute an observation for her. ^_^

And really - we all saw how well telling the Moon Princess not to have boys 
over turned out. The Sailor Senshi were warriors, not nuns. Luna's image of 
the Moon Kingdom is a bit skewed by propaganda: if any of the Senshi were 
having torrid affairs in secret, would they tell their cat? Not if the cat 
could talk, they wouldn't. Not if they wanted to keep it a *secret* affair.

As Kaitou Ace told Sailor V: "Even back then, you were always falling in 
love...."

"Well, that's good," Minako decided after a moment's thought. "I
guess I'd better swing by the pharmacy and pick up some more eardrops on
our way to the temple today." There was nothing wrong with Artemis' 

ears,

but Minako was firmly of the opinion that eardrops could cure anything.

Can they cure her blondeness?

Minako is a very odd little girl. She's not stupid - in fact, she tends to 
do better in school than either Usagi or Makoto, and she has access too 
*way* too much useless information in her entrance speeches to be ignorant. 
She's just... really, really, weird.

never shared his love with anybody. Such feelings were sacred, and had 

to

be guarded closely. He had asked his father about her, though, and he 

had

learned that she was known only as Sailor V, an enigmatic girl who 

fought

for love and justice.

O_O;;

In one of his image songs, Seiji sings about a girl he knew long ago that he 
met only once and is still searching for. According to the song, he does not 
know her name, and nobody knows her identity. He isn't even sure what she 
looks like, but he's hoping that he will recognise her heart when he looks 
into her "wind-coloured eyes". I figure that a masked soldier of love and 
justice fits that description as well as any other girl.

Plus, I like irony. ^_^

Maybe his friends were right, and he
needed to choose a girlfriend - if just to reduce his number of admirers
to one.

*SNORT* As if THAT ever works.

Ah, give him a break - he has no idea how any of this works. His general 
response to strange women is abject terror. They think he's being sweet, and 
he's just trying to make sure they don't fly off the handle and kill him.

She probably had so many people wanting to be
her boyfriend that she had a different guy for every day of the week. 

Who

wouldn't want a chance to be the boyfriend of a perfect girl like that?

Anyone who got to know her?

Well... yeah... but OTHER than all of those people?

Besides, Seiji is not from the most balanced or stable of families. He may 
not realise that there is anything wrong with her. In fact, he may actually 
be more comfortable around a strange girl than a normal one. With the normal 
ones, he would always assume they were hiding something and be waiting for 
the other shoe to drop. After all, nobody Seiji knows acts "normal". Strange 
is something he understands. Strange he can deal with.

Please, Mamoru, tell me you have not been seduced by the promise of
easy money and beautiful women!"

Man, she jumps to conclusions and flies off on weird tangents at the drop 
of
a hat... XD

Yeah, that's our Minako. ^_^

As strange as it was to admit, Rei's grandfather seemed to be 

legitimately

trying to put on a decent showing for the O-Bon festival.

IT'S A TRAP!

Yes, actually. How did you guess?

Seriously, Grandpa Hino is still as perverse as ever. He just knows that 
during the O-Bon people like to go to temples to perform the bon-odori 
dance. By having a famous (and attractive) drummer like Maya, he can 
guarantee that most people will come to his temple. So many pretty girls in 
their summer kimono, dancing around and shaking their money makers... you 
can see his logic, here.

Plus, he's got Maya staying with him while he prepares, and that will be at 
least a month. She is not exactly hard on the eyes. Basically, he lured her 
in using the festival and the promise of spending more time with Rei, and is 
using her to lure in more girls later. He's just being more subtle about it 
than usual.

"Lions?" Luna merely looked up at the smugly grinning girl, and
felt her head start to spin. Was this what it had been like for Artemis,
having to work with Sailor Venus for so many years? "You're... really 

not

much like Usagi at all, are you, Minako?"

"Nah," Minako replied, grinning even wider. "Our similarities are
totally different."

And THIS is why Minako will never have a boyfriend for more than a week at 
a
time. X_X

Good old Minako. I love her little Malaprops.

...unless the guy is willing to (and patient enough to) put up with A LOT
for the sex...

He would need to be very Courteous to put up with her, I agree. Have a lot 
of Grace. Maybe even some Wisdom, but only in the dubs. ;)

Maya looked up and smiled politely in return. "I think I remember
you from the coffee shop," she replied. "Still stalking people?"

"Every chance I get!"

Yeah, Mina-chan is an odd one...

She has never denied what her hobbies are. In fact, I believe in that 
episode it was Minako who first got all of the other Senshi thinking that 
Rei might be gay because she and Maya were on a "date".

For anyone who missed the reference, Maya is from SMS episode 103. Which has 
always been one of my favorites - from the Senshi trying to hide behind a 
waiter while spying on Rei, to Usagi asking the monster to hit Sailor Mars 
first because it looked like it might hurt, there were a lot of good scenes 
in there.

I figure if you have to have a filler episode, make it an entertaining 
filler episode.

The blonde girl and her feline darted to the left, disappearing
into the trees, and Fei Lian snorted as he swooped past. Let the other
girl save herself, if she thought she could. She was no interest to him,
anyway - it was the Sailor Senshi he wanted.

This guy is such a complete idiot.

Oh, I agree. Not all of my villains are necessarily on top of their game. 
Fei Lian, like Nise Suiko, has a certain amount of intelligence, and a 
driving obsession that renders most of it null and void. The big difference 
is that so far, Nise Suiko has been kept under control by Badamon, and thus 
has not done something quite this stupid.

Unless you count that time that he didn't kill Elios and let him get away, 
instead. That might actually turn out to be a really stupid thing, in 
retrospect.

"The natural desire of any man to protect and shelter a girl in
danger should never be so callously ignored," he said warningly, as he
rose to his full height and flicked his cape back over one shoulder. "I
am the champion of that desire, the friend of all girls in their hour of
need! One more step, monster, and you will have to face Tuxedo Kamen!"

NICE entrance.

Thanks! Glad you liked it. People like Tux-boy need to be handled carefully 
- too dramatic, and it comes off as cheesy. Not dramatic enough, and it 
seems OOC. I'm trying to strike a balance that feels right to me. Sometimes 
I am closer than others.

Some days it really sucked to be a hero. As far as Mamoru Chiba
could tell, this day was rapidly becoming one of them. Whoever this
Fei Lian guy was, he did not seem to be willing to give up and die quite
as quickly as most of the youma that Mamoru normally fought.

Yeah, you'd think he needed Sailor Moon around to finish the youma off 
after
he throws a couple roses and makes a corny speech...

I think he admits that a bit lower down: he really needs Sailor Moon around 
when he does this kind of stuff.

"One time," she intoned, her voice ringing out across the open
area as she reached up to touch the mask she wore, "I concealed my 

lovely

features behind a veil of mystery, but true beauty and justice can never
be hidden for long! I am the soldier of love, the pretty sailor-suited
warrior Salor Venus! The divine archer Shen Yi and his lover Chang O may
forgive you for what you have done here, but I won't!" With a flourish,
Sailor Venus tore the mask from her face and leapt from her lofty perch.
She landed directly in the centre of the large black mark she had
blasted in the ground, and tossed her mask aside with a flourish as the
light on her changed colour to become an angry crimson. "Dark and
cannister man, have at thee!"

*GROAN* Minako and her bizarre speeches...

The "dark and cannister man" bit was a reference from Peter Pan. As Luna 
points out, the correct line is "dark and SINISTER man, have at thee". But 
in Minako's defence, Peter had to check with Wendy beforehand, or he would 
have said "cannister", too.

The bit about Shen Yi and Chang O was because of who Fei Lian is. Minako 
recognised his name when he was ranting earlier: Shen Yi is the legendary 
enemy of Fei Lian. Toshitada Koma mentoned to Touma Hashiba a few chapters 
ago that "Shen Yi" was one of the names that was used by The Archer during 
his travels. Chang O was the name of Shen Yi's lover, a princess who could 
not be with him because she lived on the Moon.

I thought I should introduce myself. I'm going to be the person who
murders you in your sleep, Sailor Venus. You, and all the rest of your
little Sailor Senshi friends. It's my job, you see."

Now THAT is a THREAT.

Yes, she sure is. The only reason Radanthus was holding off on letting Xiang 
Yao out of the bag was that he wanted to be subtle and not draw the Samurai 
Troopers' attention. Since he has their attention now anyway, he is bringing 
out his big guns.

"Why not? Having no reason to kill somebody is no reason not to
kill somebody. Besides, he was starting to get annoying." Xiang Yao
hefted the fallen youma over her shoulder and smiled cheerfully as she
began to fade out of existence. "Ta-ta for now, dearie! Sweet dreams!"

I like her. She's sick. And scary.

Thanks. I'm kind of proud of her, myself. Bit of a nasty character, she is.

"Let's see," Jadeite muttered, scanning over the first few pages.
"Age sixteen, five feet, four inches tall... born July 30

**JUNE** 30. :P

AGH! >_<

I should never, never write anything after four in the morning. I can't 
believe I put the wrong month down. Very sorry - will fix right away. >_<

Killing people was easy. Hurting them? That was an art.

How evil.

Like I said: Jadeite can be very, very nasty to the Senshi if he plays his 
cards right. Challenging them all to another showdown at the airport would 
be stupid. What he has in mind might actually work, if he does it right. He 
already knew Rei Hino from before, when he was staying at her temple. Now, 
he knows everything there is to know about Ami Mizuno and Usagi Tsukino, 
too. He was never planning to just go after them with guns blazing - he's 
going to *dismantle* them, bit by bit. Jadeite is not my most powerful 
villain, but he is currently the most dangerous.

Anyway, thanks again for writing in! Sorry it took me so long to get this 
chapter out, but life interfered as always. Hopefully chapter 7 will come a 
lot faster. ^_^

Later!

-Morgan



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