Hello! ^_^

Thanks for writing! It's always great to get some comments, and I really 
appreciate how people are taking their time to reply so quickly to this 
little thing when there's so much other stuff going on at the moment on our 
dear old FFML.

I know it's been a little while (about a month, by my reckoning), but I
needed to take a short break from ficcing to prepare myself for the 

awesome

that was Anime North this year.

Hey, I'm pretty happy when I get a chapter out in a month _without_
taking a break.  You've got nothing to apologize for.

My personal record for this series so far (in terms of speed) is still the 
last chapter of my old "Inner Battles" story arc. I did the whole thing from 
start to finish in one sleepless night. There was a *lot* of caffeine 
involved, believe me. Had no choice, though: it was my last night with a 
computer for months, and I didn't want to leave everyone hanging. ^_^

I am pleased to report that I was also able
to finally get the last DVDs I needed to finish off my Ronin
Warriors/Yoroiden Samurai Troopers collection. There were totally in the
discount bin. ^_^

I need to get around to picking those up.

Good luck - the bad news is that Bandai is not exactly restocking them 
anymore, so they're getting a little hard to track down. The good news is 
that you can usually pick them up pretty cheap when you find them: I got 
mine for about $4 each, and I've only rarely seen them sold for more than 
$10 per DVD.

Oh, but I do have a word of warning: do *not* get Message unless you are 
either a completist, or just cannot live without seeing the Troopers in 
their nifty new silver armour. In my opinion, Message is to Yoroiden Samurai 
Troopers what Bubblegum Crash! is to Bubblegum Crisis: convoluted, weird, 
and completely out of touch with the series it was supposed to be 
continuing. I'd hate to think some poor person might actually spend money on 
that thing and make the mistake of *watching* it because of something I 
wrote. :p

REVAMPED LEGAL DISCLAIMER: the Sailor Senshi belong to Kodansha and
Cloverway, and the Samurai Troopers are the legal property of Sunrise 

and

Bandai Entertainment. I am only borrowing them for a few chapters, and I
intend no harm.

Righty-ho!

Standard C&C Disclaimer:  All the below is my only occasionally useful
humble opinion, my only occasionally correct grammatical and spelling
corrections, and/or my only occasionally funny humor.

Understood, good sir. Please, carry on. :)

(along with salacious, if dated, photographs) had accidentally caught 

the

interest of a demon named Zoicite.

You know, I can't really say it's inaccurate, but I blink when I see one
of the Generals referred to as a demon.  Too used to thinking of them as
humans, I suppose.

Good point. I was actually using "demon" a little more figuratively, but I 
guess in a fic like this that's not always a hot idea. After all, it could 
easily be taken either way. :)

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.

It isn't really your fault, but I'm getting flashbacks to too many
terrible "Crystal Tokyo is a fascist dystopia of brainwashed zombies"
stories.  Give me a moment to recover...

...there, better.

No problem, I understand. Rest assured, I'm not going there. Although I do 
not really think that Crystal Tokyo is as perfect as it is said to be (after 
all, how much of it did they see? And those parts were all actively under 
siege by their mortal enemies), I am not one of those who thinks that it 
will be some kind of Orwellian fascist state.

As most cyberpunk fans will be quick to tell you, the really horrible thing 
about the future is that it will be exactly like the present. Only more so. 
:)

Nana Asahina had been forced to see all of the pain she had
brought onto the people around her, and she had not even had the luxury
of pretending that they had done anything to deserve it. It had been the
single worst moment of her entire life.

Ouch.

In Sailor Moon's defence, Nana Asahina had been living a pretty sheltered 
life up to that point. After all, she was always the attacker, not the 
victim.  She was the diabolical mastermind of her school. Who in their right 
minds would want to make her life difficult when she had the power to make 
theirs miserable?

All Usagi made Nana do was see *exactly* how nasty she had really been to 
everybody, from their perspective. Which, considering the kind of person she 
was dealing with, was a lot more horrible than she meant for it to be.

Something strong, and vibrant, and powerful enough that no mere mortal
could ever hope to harm her again. Nana Asahina could become a youma.
Surely it couldn't be too hard: she had already been one before, hadn't
she?

Wouldn't the "new and improved" Nana have some moral qualms at this
(particularly later on, when she apparently is explicitly told that
she'll be sacrificing her "goodness")?

Well, the problem is that Nana can't bring herself to fight back against her 
attackers, because she knows that she deserves their anger, and she is 
incapable of using the only real weapons she ever had against them. She's 
not turning into a Youma for revenge: she's doing it so that she can run 
away from the whole human race.

Basically, it's the ultimate in avoidance. Instead of trying to stand her 
ground and fix things for herself, she's just going to stop *being* herself.

If prolonged exposure to the nastier side of humanity is reducing the
effects of the Moon Healing Escalation, one might think that a decision
to start using the blackmail material again, at least to protect
herself, would come first.

By that point she no longer had that option. Remember, a "mysterious fire" 
had destroyed all the blackmail material she possessed. Even if she had 
wanted to, she had nothing left to use against anybody.

Incidentally, how do her enemies figure out so quickly that she's no
longer willing to use the blackmail material?  Just because she quits
her job at the tabloid?

Actually, it was that she was starting to look for work elsewhere in the 
news world. She was bad enough when she was just working for a rag that 
nobody took seriously. If she got a *real* job in the media, she would have 
been too big of a threat to her old victims. They started to resist her, by 
using their own contacts to deny her jobs. Once they realised she wasn't 
fighting back, they decided to finish her off while they could. After all 
the blackmail evidence was burned, the only thing she had left to threaten 
them with was the knowledge in her own head, so they decided to kill her - 
or at least scare her into staying quiet.

Nana had been pushing around a lot of very powerful and scary people, and 
Sailor Moon did not make any of *them* stop playing rough....

With those
papers, she would probably only be subjected to a week or so of public
torture and humiliation before they returned her to her master.

If Radanthus is still trying to recruit Jadeite (my memories of the
details of your Dark Kingdom political setup are a little fuzzy, so I
could be mis-remembering) wouldn't that be more than a little unwise?

A few weeks of public humiliation and torture is the *minimum* punishment 
expected for a spy who gets caught.

Without those diplomatic papers, Oniwabandana is just an intruder, free to 
be executed, locked away forever, or hung from the castle gates as a lesson 
to anybody else who tries to break into Radanthus' castle. With them, she 
might get roughed up a little, questioned for a few weeks, and subjected to 
some humiliating public punishment before getting returned to Jadeite in 
more or less one piece.

Radanthus *is* trying to suck up to Jadeite, which is why Jadeite is betting 
that Radanthus will not want to kill anyone who is working for Jeddy unless 
they give him a good reason. A dead ninja cannot report back what she found: 
an embarassed one who is sore in several places can still talk.

	In other words, Badamon. Apparently, he did not wish to be
disturbed. As Oniwabandana did not particularly care what Badamon 

wished,

she began making preparations to disturb him, anyway.

Heh.

I like Oniwabandana. I'm glad to see that a lot of you guys seem to be 
getting a kick out of her, too. ^_^

Anything that needed to be said in a language
like that could not possibly be saying anything worth translating.

Actually, given her mission, I would probably think the opposite.
Whatever has to be said in that sort of language is probably _important_.

Nah, Badamon just uses Dark Speech because he's perverse. He's actually 
reciting his grocery list. ;)

	"Things move all the time around here," he said crankily, and
turned back towards Nise Suiko. "Don't let it bother you."

	Oniwabandana sighed in relief. He hadn't seen her. He had been
looking right at her, and somehow he hadn't seen her.

Hmm.  So why does Badamon want Oniwabandana to get back to Jadeite with
what she's seen?  Curious.

Ain't it just? ^_^

Carfully, she inched
her leg over the top of the stack and let the book slide off of her 

foot.

"Carfully" should be "Carefully"

Oops! Will fix! >_<

	"Well, we didn't track down Mistress Nine and Shutendoji to be
chaperones, if that's what you're asking," Ryo admitted, looking a 

little

confused. "What's the big deal? We just went to a museum."

...okay, it seems I really am fuzzy on some details.  When did the
Samurai Troopers learn about Mistress Nine again?

There was a fuzzy period around Chapters 3-4 where we didn't really follow 
what the Troopers and Senshi were up to in Yokohama. Since Ami mentions in 
Chapter 5 that the Troopers had told her about Arago, it's safe to assume 
that the Senshi also did a general info dump at that time.

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

Right on time!

Man, EVERYBODY called that one. I am getting so predictable. ^_^

It was a dizzy, light-headed
feeling that she had begun to associate with the presence of Ryo Sanada.

Had she been in a better frame of mind, she would have associated it
with the drugs she habitually shared with him.

<snerk> Okay, that was a good one. :)

	Not that she was complaining - there were many delightful perks
to be found in the presence of Ryo Sanada.

Like free drugs.

LOL! ^_^

	"I'll say," Usagi agreed, frowning thoughtfully. "I was kind of
assuming that Ryo would end up with Rei, since they both have fire
powers...."

Well, that's generally how it winds up working!  :)

Yeah, I couldn't resist poking a little fun at one of the more common YST/SM 
pairings. Usagi struck me as the kind who would actually use that logic in 
real life. :)

	"Not to me there isn't!" Usagi crowed victoriously. "I've never
checked out a guy I didn't fall immediately in love with!"

....heh.  That seems more of a Minako-ism than an Usagi-ism, though.

Yeah, but Usagi has had a fair number of crushes of her own, back in the 
past. There was one point I recall where she was having her usual trouble 
deciding whether to daydream about Motoki or Tuxedo Kamen, and Luna told her 
to make up her mind. Usagi's response was "I guess my heart is naturally 
fickle", or something like that.

Besides, this is Usagi - she does not believe in lust. If she is attracted 
to somebody, it *must* be true love. ^_^

	"Well, if that's the case then Mako-chan's going to have to settle
for a basketball player," Usagi argued. Sighing dramatically, the blonde
girl clasped her hands together in front of her and leaned back, her 

eyes

glistening with dreamy emotion. "Height shouldn't matter, anyway. Not if
true love can find a way into your hearts...."

Now there's Usagi.

Yep - she's even got the overly-large, sparkly eyes going on. ^_^

	Petz snorted. Sure, if the Dark Kingdom needed some filing done,
then maybe she could see the point, but she doubted that would happen.
Elios needed people who could handle themselves in a fight, not some
love-struck executive assistant who was obviously tarting herself up in 

a

vain attempt to attract her boss' attention. Really, who wore stilleto
high heels with a lab coat, anyway?

Someone has _not_ seen Sailor Moon S. :)

Obviously not. If she had, she would have been *way* less concerned when it 
looked like Kaolinite was dead. WE knew better, didn't we, kids? :)

Considering the entire base has a
population of eight, we should have no problem slipping away.

Wouldn't that make it more difficult, since their absence would be
noticed pretty quickly, and result in a search and rescue mission?

It's a fairly large base, though. With only eight other people in it, the 
odds anyone might see them leaving would be pretty low. All they would need 
to do is hang a "Do Not Disturb" sign on a door, and everybody would just 
assume they were in there.

	"Deal," Petz replied with chuckle of her own. Maybe she had been
wrong about Kaolinite - it had been known to happen, sometimes. At the
very least, there was more to her than just her filing skills. They 

might

have a chance against this Radanthus the Unconquered guy after all.

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

Didn't really have any line-by-line comments on it, but _very_ nice
fight scene to close out the chapter.

Thanks - I really thought that fight scene came out pretty good. I'll be 
honest - I just really wanted to see somebody fight a dinosaur. ^_^

I'm definitely enjoying this story quite a bit; keep up the good work!

Thanks for the encouragement, and the comments! They are all quite 
appreciated. I'll be back at work just as soon as I can get the time: I've 
got kind of a lot of posts to get through at the moment. :)

Later!

-Morgan



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