Somewhere along the way, however, something had gone wrong. Nana
had never realised that her pet hobby of outing various movie stars and
idol singers who had been trying to keep their homosexuality in the closet
(along with salacious, if dated, photographs) had accidentally caught the
interest of a demon named Zoicite.

Uh-oh!

It sometimes occured to Nana that Sailor Moon had likely been
trying to do her a favour by changing her back into her mortal form. It
was hardly as though the young warrior of love and justice could have
known the effect that her Moon Stick was going to have. Sailor Moon seemed
to think that people were naturally decent: it never would have occurred
to her that her Moon Healing Escalation might remove more than just the
taint of the Dark Kingdom from someone's soul. She never would have
guessed that some of that evil that was getting scrubbed away was supposed
to be there.

Which is pretty much what's going to lead to an intolerably squeaky-clean
Crystal Tokyo someday...

To Nana's horror, she had been made to come face-to-face
with all of her various shortcomings and deficiencies. Sailor Moon had
forced her to realise that deep down inside, she was just a sad and lonely
young woman who was trying to manipulate people because she was afraid
that nobody would be her friend unless she forced them to.

Awwwww.

Her only redeeming feature was that she was not as bad as she used to be,
and whenever she tried to explain that to people, they assumed she was
lying to them again. Nobody would be willing to help her. The only hope
she had was to find a way to help herself.

That's what Mr. Happy Gun is for...and his friend Li'l Billy Bullet...

There had been a price, of course - there always was, when dealing
with the Ankoku. So far as Oniwabandana could tell, however, it had been
a surprisingly small one. It was almost a relief to realise that she was
free to be bad again after so much time spent as a spineless weakling.
Being good had done nothing but make her miserable, anyway, and with the
help of the Ankoku Priests, she had been able to make sure that nobody
could ever change her back into her pathetic human form again. She was
Oniwabandana, now and forever.

Which means next time she gets the moon wand, she's dust.

She had heard the other youma talking in the camps, and Jadeite
sounded like he was one of the better people to work for. He was very
kind and considerate to his subordinates, in that he did not have them
randomly flogged for his own amusement.

He preferred random gang rape instead.

One of her fingers suddenly released a quiet shriek, and went
permanently numb. Oniwabandana recoiled instinctively, her myriad bodies
scrambling into the nearest dark corners and lunging for cover even as
she began to recover enough higher function to analyse what had happened.

"Oops...papercut."

There was a faint memory of glowing sigils, and then a sudden fiery death
that had enveloped every fibre of that one replica's being. Glowing
symbols meant mystic wards, she recalled, mulling hazily over the markings
that she had seen but not registered as that body had approached them. She
began to shrink, replicas throughout the castle abruptly fading into
nonexistence as she focused her mind back onto the task at hand. She had
seen wards like that before. She had learned them in the back alleys of
Kabukicho, shakily repeating the marks of the ominous priest that had
shown them to her. Still more copies vanished, as she racked her brain
to remember what had been so important about those wards.

"Was it a trap card, or an effect spell...?"

The dark priest was crouched in the centre of the ovoid chamber,
his hands combing over a glowing orb that Oniwabandana could not quite
make out from her position. His tattered robes swirled and rippled around
him as though he were encircled by violent winds, yet the pages of the
open tomes scattered around him did not so much as move. The only source
of light in the entire room was provided by twenty-two carefully arranged
iron braziers, each in the shape of a different monstrous creature. Sigils
and marks had been carefully prepared on the floor in a fine red powder
that writhed and re-shaped itself as Badamon focused on the task at hand.

He's not performing dark rituals at all! It's just the Dark Kingdom version
of an Etch-A-Sketch.

Oniwabandana made a face and fought the sudden urge to go back out into
the corridor and pretend she had been unable to find the vile man. There
was something about the whole scene that she did not like at all.

"Why is he NAKED?!"

With a sense of unease, Oniwabandana reached up and gingerly touched her
earlobe with a single fingertip. As she had suspected, her entire hand
came away coated in blood. Anything that needed to be said in a language
like that could not possibly be saying anything worth translating.

"o/~ I love you! You love me! We're a happy family! o/~"

With each word, the crystal pulsed and throbbed as though it were
some kind of strange, petrified heart, still beating despite having
changed to solid rock. A figure moved in the shadow, and Oniwabandana
shrank back further into the darkness as Nise Suiko emerged from where he
had been standing against the far wall. She had completely overlooked him,
in that black-and-red undergear armour of his. Without his crimson battle
armour, he actually looked fairly harmless: just another sullen young man
with a tousled head of shaggy red hair and the kind of face that might be
cute if it would just stop frowning all the time. How was it possible that
this could be the same armoured juggernaut who had steamrolled through
half of her camp just a few nights ago? He looked like a kid. He didn't
even look like a particularly dangerous kid.

It's always the quiet ones.

"Radanthus has given her the task of destroying the Sailor Senshi
in your stead," the priest explained, standing and waving his skeletal
hand in a sweeping gesture that caused all of the various books scattered
about to slam themselves shut in unison. "What's worse is that she seems
as though she might actually succeed at it. She is too intelligent and
dangerous for us to leave out there unchecked."

"Unchecked," Nise Suiko muttered with an air of disdain. "Let me
guess: that means you want me to handle things and get roughed up again
while you stay here in your little fortress of doom, fresh as a daisy.
Am I right?"

He's a sharp one, he is.

"Why is this such a big deal, anyway?" Shuu wondered, rubbing his
chin as he took a seat at the table across from Shin. "I mean, so what if
he kind of looks like you? If you ask me, he's not even that good a copy.
I mean, I can tell the difference between you two pretty easily."

"Really?" Shin raised one eyebrow suspiciously. "And how, pray
tell, can you do that?"

"Well, for starters, he's bright red and you aren't," Shuu said in
reply, spreading his arms and shrugging as he leaned back in his chair.
"Besides, no evil twin could hope to copy your limp wrists and girlish
figure."

OUCH! XD

"Hey, watch the wrestling moves, Shuu! Who do you think you are,
Tiger Mask? Shin, tell this guy to quit bending me into a pretzel!"

It's not the bending you have to worry about. It's when he pulls out the
salt and cheese sauce--THAT'S when you worry.

"There's not much to tell, guys," Ryo said defensively, shrugging
off Shuu's arm and flopping onto the sofa with his fingers laced behind
his head. "I just went out for a while, cleared my head, got a few things
off my chest...."

"We don't care what you got off *your* chest," Shuu interjected,

*SNRK* Good one!

"I think you guys are blowing this way out of proportion," Ryo
warned them. "It's not like I ran off to some seedy love hotel, or
something."

"See?" Shuu moaned. "That's the kind of thing you could have lied
about! If you had lied about that, it would have made the story, like, a
million times better! Shin, make him tell the story better!"

I love this entire exchange, just so you know XD

"Don't worry about it," Shuu said consolingly, shaking his head
in sympathy to his leader's obvious discomfort. "Trust me, Ryo: girls
always have stuff like this worked out years in advance. You might be a
little confused right now, but I can guarantee you that Ami Mizuno knows
exactly what she's doing."

*waits for it*

For perhaps the first time in her life, Ami Mizuno did not have
the slightest idea what she was doing.

Wiiiiii! XD

*snip Ami going all shoujo over kissing Ryo* Heheheh.

Fumbling in the front pocket of her jeans, Ami fished out the
card key she had been given when she signed in almost a week ago. Of
course, it had been her who had needed to set up the hotel, as well as
all of the transportation for her friends. Poor Usagi was useless when it
came to arranging almost anything, and Rei had very sensibly pointed out
that since Ami was already handling everything for two of them, it only
made sense to take care of all the details for the whole group. At least
it was only the three of them to take care of on this trip - Ami was so
used to looking after Rei and Usagi that it was practically second nature
to her, but having to juggle Minako and Makoto at the same time would
have been exhausting.

Especially while riding that unicycle.

"Hello, Rei," Ami said, smiling politely. "Does something seem
to be the matter?"

"Of course not," the other girl replied sarcastically, crossing
her arms under her breasts and leaning against the doorframe. "Usagi and
I got back here almost three hours ago, and you were nowhere to be found.
Do you have any idea how worried Usagi was? For all she knew, you could
have gotten attacked by that Nise Suiko freak, or some other kind of
monster! She was about three seconds away from waking up every Sailor
Senshi in Japan and getting them to come down here to help her search for
you!"

"Oh, hey, Ami!" Usagi said cheerfully, poking her head around
Rei's shoulder and waving. "How long have you been gone?"

*SNRK*

"She certainly doesn't *seem* very upset," Ami noted carefully.

"Trust me," Rei growled between her clenched teeth, giving Usagi
a dirty glare, "She was VERY WORRIED about you. She's just... hiding it
really well."

*dies* Beautiful. XD

"What are you talking about?" Usagi asked, blinking in confusion.
"You're the one who was calling all the hospitals and asking if they had
anybody with blue hair, remember? I was the one telling you that she was
probably off getting a can of juice."

"She was gone for three hours!" Rei yelled, throwing her arms into
the air and storming into the room as Usagi shrugged reasonably and sat
down at the small side table where Ami had left all of her schoolwork.

"So? Maybe she went home for it," Usagi argued reasonably

*dies all over again* XD XD XD XD XD

"Nothing you can prove," the blonde girl said defensively, deftly
tucking the notepad into one of the pockets of her green denim shorts and
grinning innocently at her suspicious friend. "Besides, this isn't about
what I may or may not have copied off of you! This is about why you're
wearing Ryo Sanada's shirt."

"It is? Why would it- I'M DOING WHAT?"

*dies a third time* Dammit, stop being so funny that I keep dying from
laughing! XD XD XD XD

"This is so unfair," Rei grumbled. "I can't slap you, and Luna's
not here to do it for me."

Heheheh.

"Come on, Rei, what have you got to lose? Who knows, you might
even manage to not be miserable for once. It's not like you'll ever meet
any cute boys staying up at that shrine of yours, and I'm not going to
just sit here and watch you turn into a spinster when there are perfectly
good guys you could be dating."

"What is wrong with you?" Rei asked, with an exasperated groan.
"Why is my love life any of your business, anyway?"

"Because I say so," Usagi replied simply, sticking her tongue out
at her friend. "And I'm the Moon Princess. So there."

Gotta love THAT logic XD

"I'm not entirely sure that's how this works, Usagi," Ami said
nervously. "Now that you mention it, I'm not even sure if Ryo lives in the
same part of Tokyo that we do. Once this is over, we probably won't be
seeing each other again for a very long time."

"Really? I can't lose a shoe without hitting my boyfriend," Usagi
said, stroking her chin thoughtfully.

And she means that literally!

"Great choice in crushes, Ami. Real convenient." After a moment,
the other girl sighed. "Oh, well - I guess you can't control who you fall
in love with. We'll just have to work with what we've got. Now, the first
thing we've got to do is get you a new wardrobe...."

Lots of fishnets and nylon body stockings. And pleather.

"Is there something wrong?" Kaolinite asked calmly, turning her
head and looking at her partner. She was almost annoyingly perfect; every
strand of her blood-red hair was perfectly in place, and she sat in the
cramped seat of the airplane as comfortably as if she were enjoying her
own personal balcony seat at an opera. She was dressed like she might
be on her way to one, in fact, with a slinky black dress that clung to
her every curve and dipped almost scandalously low in the front to show
off the large ruby amulet nestled between her breasts. It was also slit
so high up the sides that the whole gown practically counted as two
seperate pieces of fabric, and Petz would not have been caught dead in it
even if she *was* convinced she had the body to pull it off.

Emphasis on "pull it off".

"All the way across the ocean?" Petz snickered. "On what, your
magic broomstick?"

"Broomsticks are for amateurs," Kaolinite said, smiling politely
as her pupils glowed with a soft crimson light. "I stopped working with
props a long time ago."

Heheheh.

"If you ask me, we've been given the short end of this particular
broomstick," Petz grumbled, crossing her arms and making a cross face. "I
mean, of all the people to send to the North Pole, why did he have to pick
us? He could have sent those creepy alien children."

"I mean, the North Pole? It's colder than a witch's tit..."

"Oh, trust me, it's much colder than that."

Petz quickly righted herself and squeezed in next to the other
woman to see what she was looking at. The sky outside their tiny plane
was changing hues rapidly, shifting from putrescent green to deep violet
with a disturbing pulsing sensation that reminded her of a hearbeat. The
sky rumbled with evil intent, and huge sheets of blue lightning sparked
and rippled around them. In the distance, the black clouds spiralled and
began to take shape in the heart of the darkness that surrounded the
entire northen tip of the island they had been flying towards.

Well there's something you don't see everyday...

Looking down at the pilot, Petz made a face. Well, so much for her
getting out of having to land the plane by herself. She was no medic, but
she was pretty sure people in this time period still needed their organs
on the inside to be considered alive.

Ewwww.

Gingerly taking the empty seat next
to the gently steaming remains,

EWWWW! XO====|

Of course, she reminded herself, as the loathsome creatures
flocked over her body, she had to be careful about thinking things like
that. The Professor had told her that he liked *good* girls, now, so
that meant she had to be on her best behaviour until he changed his mind.
After all, it wasn't like she really cared one way or the other what she
was doing, as long as it was with the right people.

Wow, nice moral ambiguity there, Kao-chan!

As she neared, the air itself seemed to thicken, sticking to her
and resisting her advance as though she were trying to fly through the
web of a giant spider. It was more like swimming than flying, only worse:
swimming usually involved water. This was like swimming through chunky
tapioca pudding.

*mental image of Kaolinite in a giant vat of tapioca pudding*

....

.......'scuse me for a bit.

One such thing, apparently, was the gigantic skeleton that was
only beginning to rise from the growing rift in the glacier's surface,
its ponderous skull grinning blankly up at her as it rose on the tip of
a seemingly endless series of vertebrae as thick as her leg. Kaolinite
had no idea what kind of fossil she was looking at - a Brachiosaurus,
maybe, or a Diplodocus - but there was a deliberate menace in its sinous
motions that was quite out of place for a simple herbivore.

Oh great, a frozen undead dinosaur. Just the thing to start the day with.

Lightning crashed nearby, splitting the air with a peal of thunder
as the skeletal monster opened its jaws and released a stentorian roar.
A single bony limb emerged from beneath the ice and dug deeply into the
snow covering as it began to lurch out of the chasm it had been buried
under for millenia. Kaolinite gulped as she stared at the creature in
mouting fear. It wasn't even half out, yet, and already it's chisel-like
teeth were gnashing far too close to her heels for comfort. With a
moment's concentration, she called upon the winds to lift her a little
further up. Whatever was powering that abomination, at least it could
only stretch so high. She would just stay out of its reach.

Riiiiight. Just keep thinking that...

Skimming close to the ice, Kaolinite laughed as the beast's head
crashed into the ground and was dragged behind her, raising a deep furrow
in the glacier's surface and filling the air with a cloud of ice and snow
so thick that it pelted against her skin like hailstones. This was the
most fun she'd had in years.

Someone has a VERY sick idea of fun.

Damn, she thought fuzzily, as she splashed into the frigid waters
of the Arctic Ocean. She had been so concerned with the thing's head that
she had forgotten about its tail. The cursed thing was so big that she
had completely lost track of where the rest of it had been. She should
have known better. She sobbed, the air escaping from her lungs and
bubbling around her before floating lazily towards the thick layer of ice
that covered the ocean's surface.

The Professor would be so disappointed if he could see her.

Awww. ;_;

Petz dove for cover, the lethal shots raining down on her and
ripping through the surface of the glacier. With a curse, she darted out
from hiding and raced towards the next towering ice structure as steaming
blue darts of energy chewed the ground behind her feet. The last thing she
needed was one of those things to pierce her - she liked her body with
exactly the number of holes it currently posessed.

You just WANT me to make a perverted comment here, don't you?

"See?" she said, her teeth chattering as she lowered herself to
the ground and tried to look as imperious as possible when covered with
seaweed and shuddering uncontrollably. "I t-told you we were p-past the
groundline."

Heh!

"It wasn't older than mine," Petz explained with a shrug.
"Lightning's been around for a while. Is there any chance that we could
maybe stop long enough to warm up a bit before unpacking all that gear?
No offense, but you look like you need a hug. Or at least some soup. And
I *know* I do."

Awww.

Between the two of them, the Dark Kingdom wasn't going to know
what hit it.

Indeed. XD

Good chapter!

================================
This message brought to you by the
Bay Area Association of Liquor Pirates:
"We're Here, We're Queer, And We're
STEALIN' YER BEER!!"
              ~~*~~
The Eternal Lost Lurker
www.lurkerdrome.com



             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'