Empire of the Sun
by Sophia Prester


Disclaimer and Author's Notes: If you don't know where these are by 
now, you haven't been paying attention.



Chapter Ten, cont.: Fallen Heroes, part 2 of 3


2:25 p.m.


	Michiru flopped down in the big armchair in the living room. 
What she really wanted to do was to go upstairs and go back into her 
dreams or consult her mirror again, but the others were there, and 
they'd be sure to ask questions if she went to bed in the middle of 
the afternoon.

	She wondered if the mirror had changed again. Last night it had 
gone back to its regular old self, but this morning it had changed to 
something completely different. It now looked like something that 
would have been more at home in a Venetian palazzo. The mirror frame 
was solid gold that had been carved and inlaid with enamel and 
precious stones to form a design of stylized waves. In among the 
waves was an entire menagerie of improbable water creatures. On the 
top of the mirror was a gold and silver mermaid, with a baroque pearl 
as the torso. The 'glass' in the mirror was a flawless oval of rock 
crystal. It was so heavy that she'd needed both hands to hold it up. 

	The singer had once again shown itself in the changed mirror. 
She could just make out the impression of a face, as vague as shadows 
on the water. She would have thought it nothing more than a trick of 
the light, but this shadow face conveyed expression, and emotion. It 
had a voice.

	Its message was the same as it was the first time she had seen 
it, but the tone was even more desperate.

	*Hurry, Pelagia! There is little time!*

	Little time? Little time for what? Each time she slept, Michiru 
felt she drew a little closer to the answer, but she still fell short 
of the mark. It was as if she saw a flickering light in the darkness, 
but couldn't tell if it was a candle in a nearby window or a star in 
a far distant galaxy.

	She could no longer ignore the feeling that something drastic 
had to happen before she could truly contact the singer. She was 
afraid to think of what that something drastic might be.

	She was jarred from her reverie when she felt rather than saw 
Haruka leaning over her.

	"Hey, you." Haruka perched on the arm of Michiru's chair. She 
insinuated her arm behind Michiru's neck and rested a hand on her 
shoulder. Michiru leaned her head to the side and snuggled up against 
Haruka's warmth and softness. She heard the clink of ice cubes as 
Haruka rattled the glass she held in her free hand.

	"Setsuna made some not-powder lemonade. Want me to get you a 
glass?"

	Her stomach already felt unsettled. The last thing she wanted 
to do was throw a glass of acid down there to join the fun. "I'll get 
some apple juice later, if Hotaru hasn't killed it off."

	"Are you up to tagging along with Hotaru and the others 
tonight, or would you rather stay in?" Haruka asked. "It'll probably 
be seven kinds of crazy at the festival, you know. Crowds. Heat. 
Noise. Whining children."

	Michiru reached up and laid her hand over Haruka's. "Well, I 
can guess which option *you* prefer. Let's stay in--or do you think 
that Sailor Sun could be trouble?"

	Haruka thought about that for a moment, absently running her 
thumb along Michiru's collarbone as if commenting on how little flesh 
covered it these days. "If she's trouble, I don't think it would be 
intentionally. I don't think *she's* dangerous, but I don't like that 
she's come from out of nowhere saying that there's someone who wants 
to stop Crystal Tokyo from coming about. How does she know that? I 
don't know what to think about her claim that she doesn't have any 
other identity."

	"I know what you mean." Michiru rolled her shoulder, and 
Haruka's hand obligingly moved to a less accusing position. "I'd say 
she was lying, except her memory and concentration don't seem good 
enough for her to be able to pull off a deception like that. I 
wouldn't be surprised if someone was playing tricks with her memory. 
What if she's being manipulated and doesn't even know it?"

	She felt cold air and a sudden emptiness next to her. Haruka 
had paced across the room and was staring out the window at the back 
garden.

	Michiru got up and walked towards her. Haruka looked over her 
shoulder and smiled weakly.

	"I--I'm sorry," Haruka said. "When you said that someone might 
be messing with...people's minds I...well, it scares me, that's all."

	"You think that if someone wiped her mind they also managed 
to...damage her?" Michiru asked. She was unsurprised at Haruka's curt 
nod. Each knew how the other thought. To an outsider, their 
conversations would probably seem full of odd blank spaces, cryptic 
allusions, and abrupt changes of topic, but they understood each 
other perfectly well.

	She knew damn well that it wasn't Sun that Haruka was thinking 
of.

	She rested her cheek against Haruka's back and wrapped her arms 
around her lover's waist. "I'm sure everything will be all right. 
Everything will work out all right in the end."

	She could feel the tension fade from Haruka's back and 
shoulders. Maybe Haruka had understood that she wasn't only talking 
about Sun. Still, Michiru decided that it would be best to steer 
things back to safer ground. She let go of Haruka and the two of them 
sat down together on the couch.

	"So, what do you think of our new Senshi? I saw you checking 
her out." She smirked. "Do you think she's cute?"

	"Oh, please." Haruka's grin showed no defensiveness. She seemed 
genuinely amused, at least until concern clouded her expression once 
more. "I just hope that mother of hers knows something about who's 
behind all of this. I also want to know what this has to do with the 
dreams that everyone's been having." Haruka paused and took a sip of 
her lemonade. "What have you been dreaming about lately?"

	Michiru flinched, then prayed Haruka hadn't noticed. "Nothing. 
Well, nothing out of the ordinary."

	Haruka waited for her to say something more.

	"I wish you wouldn't worry so much, Haruka."

	"I can't help it," Haruka whispered. 

	Michiru knew that Haruka wasn't going to ask her what was 
wrong, not yet, anyway. She was being given one more chance to reach 
out to Haruka and tell her everything that was going on, about the 
deep ocean, about the song of the sea, and about the singer who was 
calling out to her.

	She was being offered a choice, but just as in that first dream 
of Triton Castle, the moment of her choosing slipped by almost 
without notice. 

	*Hurry, Pelagia!*

	It was funny, she thought later, how many of life's important 
moments were never accompanied by fanfare or sudden bursts of 
insight.

	*There is little time!*

	"Nothing's wrong. Everything's fine. *I'm* fine." She leaned 
over and kissed Haruka, tasting the sharp bite of lemon juice on her 
lips. Setsuna never put in enough sugar. Michiru smiled and ran her 
fingers through Haruka's hair. "Believe me, there's nothing for you 
to worry about."

	She leaned in again to give Haruka a kiss that was guaranteed 
to take her mind off everything, but there was nothing there. Haruka 
had gotten up, claiming she needed to refresh her drink, but as 
Michiru watched her disappear into the kitchen, she realized that for 
the first time in a long time, she couldn't guess what Haruka was 
thinking.



2:27 p.m.


	Mother read the note. The politely worded invitation was quite 
touching. Sailor Mercury had been very gentle in the way she 
acknowledged that Sun would have to be watched like a hawk. Even now, 
Mercury seemed to be the diplomat of the group. How much had the 
others changed, if at all?

	It also seemed that Saturn was an active part of the team, 
along with Pluto. If only Sun had known enough to ask the right 
questions and remember the answers! It sounded as if Pluto had been 
reborn along with the others, but that made no sense. The Gates of 
Time should not have been affected by the Glaive, and even without 
her Senshi abilities, Pluto should have been immune to the ravages of 
time.

	Mother frowned and studied the note as if it would yield some 
clue to her dilemma. She had heard rumors and read news reports that 
there were other Senshi than the ones she'd expected to find 
surrounding the Princess, but it was still quite a shock to learn 
that Saturn and Pluto had been reborn alongside Neptune and Uranus.

	The talisman-bearers. The Glaive-bearer. Their presence was not 
a welcome surprise. The girls themselves were no doubt nice, but the 
fact that the Glaive and the talismans had come forward into this 
time was bothersome. In the wrong hands, they could prove to 
be...inconvenient.

	Sun was shifting from foot to foot, waiting for some sort of 
answer. The way her anticipation was fired up, Mother halfway 
expected to see her start dancing in place.

	"Can I go?" she asked for the tenth time.

	"Perhaps," Mother said. "I still need to think it over for a 
while."

	The Senshi were naturally curious about Sun's identity. Mercury 
had asked point-blank if it was all right if Sun revealed who she 
was. If not, Mercury wrote, they would be able to disguise Sun for 
the evening.

	"Please?" Sun whined. "I promise I'll be good. Pleeease?"

	"I'll let you know when I've made up my mind," Mother said, 
just firmly enough to let Sun know that she was serious, but not so 
much that she sent the girl spiraling into another bout of the sulks.

	Mother read through the note a few more times, noticing the 
subtlety of the wording. Mercury implied that they would be able to 
use some magic or glamour in order to disguise Sun, but she had been 
vague as to exactly how this would be accomplished. It was possible 
that the reincarnations of Serenity's Mau advisors had access to 
their people's disguise charms. Normally this would be no problem, 
but Mother was reluctant to let any outside magic be used on Sun. 
Things were unstable enough as they were. A simple costume change 
should suffice.

	"They were all really nice but Sailor Uranus was all grumpy and 
Sailor Mars is kinda scary," Sun babbled. "Sailor Saturn said she'd 
let me watch some of her cartoons..."

	Mother did a slight double-take. The idea of the Glaive-bearer 
watching cartoons was a bit much for even *her* mind to take in. 
Well, she told herself, the world *had* changed quite a bit since her 
day.

	"...lots that I've never seen. The girl who wears her hair like 
the Princess is also really nice and said she'd bring me some 
magazines."

	"That's nice, dear."

	"And the Princess's boyfriend gave me a present."

	"Princess Serenity has a boyfriend?" Mother asked, as casually 
as she could. "What was he like?"

	Sun shrugged. "The crystal didn't say anything about him," she 
said, as if this made him completely unimportant other than as a 
source of presents. She circled her hands and held them over her 
eyes, mimicking goggles. "He wore a mask, and he had fancy clothes 
like Mister Seven in those movies Uncle Misha watches that you told 
me I wasn't allowed to watch."

	Mister...? Oh, yes. James Bond. She would never understand why 
Misha liked those silly movies so much. He'd forgotten more about 
espionage than most people learned in a lifetime. "What did he give 
you, dear?"

	"He gave me a flower! It's red and it's really, really pretty!" 
She took off running. "I'll show you!"

	Mother laughed as she watched her charge run off into the 
house. No matter how pretty the flower was when she'd received it, by 
now it was very likely nothing but a pulpy mess. Sun didn't do well 
with fragile things. 

	So, should she let the girl go out tonight? If this era's 
Mercury was anything like her past self, she was trustworthy, so that 
was no problem. It was the presence of the other Senshi who would be 
part of the trip that bothered her. Despite her love of cartoons, 
Saturn was a very real danger, and this 'Chibi Moon' was a completely 
unknown quantity. Still, Sun would have to start working alongside 
the other Senshi if this world had a hope of surviving.

	Maybe it would be best if their relationship had a chance to 
start somewhere other than a battle.

	She heard Sun pelting through the house, and Marfa shouting 
something about 'no running inside.'

	Anything Mother might have said was forgotten when she saw the 
perfect red of the rose in Sun's hand.

	Years, decades, and centuries disappeared in the blink of an 
eye.

	Sun handed over the rose, and Mother took it, remembering a 
time when she took an identical flower from a much smaller hand. Even 
as Sun urged her to smell the rose--it smelled *so* pretty! You have 
to smell it!--Mother lifted the rose up to her face.

	The scent that washed over her was spicy-sweet and 
intoxicating. It made her want to dive into the flower, to swim in 
it, or maybe to drink or devour it. If the sight of the rose had 
brought back memories, the smell was nearly enough to send her back 
through time into the memories themselves.

	Why this? Why now? The princess's boyfriend...

	She was surprised at the thought that crossed her mind. 'It's 
not fair!' Such a childish, petty thing to think. Still, fair or not, 
this rose changed things. She twirled it slowly by its stem, noticing 
something odd as she did so.

	"There's blood on the thorns. Whose is it?" Her voice sounded 
distant and hollow, even to herself.

	Sun ducked her head in shame. "I grabbed it and it cut his 
hand," she mumbled. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

	"I'm sure it's all right." Mother touched a finger to one of 
the thorns, feeling its sharpness but being careful not to shed any 
of her own blood. Did she dare use the blood? Was it worth the risk?

	She turned the flower around and around, studying it as if she 
had never seen one of its like before. Using the blood could be 
dangerous, but maybe she could put the flower itself to good use. The 
police were looking into the nursing home, weren't they? She could 
probably help them with their inquiries, and give them a nudge in the 
right direction.

	Something had to be done, and soon, or the Moon Kingdom would 
not be reborn as it should be, flawless and eternal.

	Things were happening so quickly, and at the absolute worst 
possible time. First there was the attack at the nursing home, and 
then there was the rose--something had to be done before it all 
spiraled out of control.

	In her heart, she knew what she needed to do. It was something 
she had been meaning to do for some time, but...

	Why couldn't someone else have to make all of the hard 
decisions for a change? Anger rose up from within, urging her to grab 
this new princess by the shoulders and *make* her understand and 
appreciate everything that had been done for her sake and her 
kingdom's sake.

	No. It could never be. Sacrifices had been made and still had 
to be made. That's the way it was, and demands for gratitude had no 
place in the work to be done.

	Mother brushed the silk-soft rose petals along her cheek, as if 
they could kiss away the hurt and heartache. "I--I'm supposed to go 
visit Grandfather this evening." She would not cry. Not in front of 
Sun. The girl would get upset, and she couldn't deal with that on top 
of everything else. "There...I don't see why you can't go out with 
your new friends tonight."

	She would have said more, but it could wait. Sun was running 
and jumping around the garden, whooping and giggling in excitement. 
Anything Mother said would be ignored or forgotten out of hand.

	It was all right, though. Mother didn't feel much like talking. 
Her eyes may have been focused on the flower in her hands, but she 
was seeing something else altogether.

	The past was over and done, so why did it still have the power 
to hurt?



2:33 p.m.


	Jason showed up a half-hour later than he said he would. 
Taiyouko watched from her balcony as he walked down the street 
towards her building. His hands were jammed into his jeans pockets 
and his upper body was pitched forward as if he were walking into a 
gale.

	"So, do you think he's anything like us?" she said to the 
lurker. "What are the odds that we're all going to end up at the 
funny farm together?"

	The lurker 'said' nothing. It merely shifted and growled like 
an ill-tempered dog being woken from a nap. Evidently, the jury was 
still out when it came to Wright. It all depended on how much of the 
truth he was willing to tell them. Until then, it was going to keep a 
close eye on him.

	"That's probably a wise idea," she told it. "Discretion, valor, 
better part, and all that." If she had a lit cigarette handy, she 
would have taken a nice long drag on it.

	Taiyouko watched until Jason vanished from her line of sight. 
Then, she sighed and went back inside to wait for the knock at the 
door. She had a feeling this was going to be a *long* afternoon.

	When he arrived, she wordlessly invited him inside. He removed 
his shoes and she could see his eyes flicker back and forth as he 
took in and evaluated his surroundings. It was something that all 
detectives did, but it was unnerving to have that behavior turned 
upon oneself. Her place was clean, but it was hardly tidy. Half-
finished projects were piled on the table and against the walls in 
shopping bags and cheap baskets. A teetering stack of books and 
magazines on the floor marked her favorite spot on the sofa like a 
signpost.

	She returned the attention, overtly studying him to see what he 
might carelessly reveal. 

	She immediately noticed the abrasions along his collarbone and 
all down his arms. It was impossible *not* to notice them, as the 
black of the shirt and white of his skin made them stand out in 
sharp, red relief. Jason had been wearing a tee shirt that morning 
while working on Keisuke's car, and she hadn't noticed any marks 
then. What on earth had he scrubbed himself with in the shower? Steel 
wool?

	His hair was still water-darkened from his shower, and the 
stray lock that normally flopped across his forehead had been slicked 
back, leaving his face unusually exposed, as if he *wanted* every 
flicker of emotion to be visible to anyone who cared to look.

	As for the expression on that face, she'd seen its like before. 
She'd seen it plenty of times during interrogations, on people who 
said that they were tired of seeing the stains on their hands or that 
they could no longer stand the nightmares. These were people who no 
longer cared about the consequences they would face--all they wanted 
was some measure of peace.

	The big thing, though, was the blood-spot in his left eye that 
kept drawing her attention like a magnet. It was one small, bloody 
proof that everything she'd seen that afternoon was real.

	The lurker did something she read as an 'I'm lurking right 
*here*' throat-clearing. She ignored it.

	After all, voices in the head could be blamed on a chemical 
imbalance or a childhood trauma or a blown synapse. No matter how 
real the lurker seemed, up until now she could dismiss it as some 
sort of imaginary friend. The things she'd seen today were just a 
little harder to rationalize out of existence.

	She waved Jason over to the sofa. He sat down and folded his 
hands on his lap, like a nervous little boy who was trying his best 
to remain quiet and respectful in church. She finally broke the 
silence.

	"Want something to drink?"

	Jason started as if she'd fired off a gun, and to make things 
even more surreal, she'd flinched in reaction to *his* reaction. It 
took her a second to collect herself enough to rattle off a list of 
options. She should have forced this conversation on the drive home, 
when she was still riding high on the adrenaline rush and still 
seriously pissed-off at Jason for throwing her off a *cliff* for 
goodness' sake!

	Now, even the lurker was starting to think that maybe this 
wasn't such a good idea. Back in Kamakura, it had been riding strong 
in her mind, full of piss and vinegar and simmering fury. It had 
nearly been strong enough to override her control. The further they 
got from the city, the more it...faded, somehow. Lost its heat. It 
had crawled back into the rear of Taiyouko's mind, leaving her 
feeling oddly vulnerable, like she'd gone into a dicey situation 
without backup.

	"Wine sounds really good right about now," Jason said. Then he 
shook his head. "No, make that a juice, instead," he said with 
obvious reluctance.

	Taiyouko pondered the implications of that little exchange as 
she got his drink and poured herself a glass of wine. When she got 
back, they spent a few minutes in desultory small talk. He admired 
her embroidery and her quilts, and she soaked up the compliments. The 
good-little-boy pose faded after a while, and Jason sunk into a 
slouch. He was more relaxed. Good. Maybe he was ready to talk for 
real. Taiyouko took a deep breath and prepared to haul them back on 
track, but Jason beat her to it.

	"I spent the past hour thinking about everything--the Mahoney 
case, this business with Chiba, my missing friends, the horror-show 
at the nursing home. I'm pretty sure that it's all connected, and I 
feel like I'm *this* close to figuring out how," he said, holding up 
one hand, thumb and index finger millimeters apart. "It's all part of 
one long, crazy story. Problem is, I'm not really sure how to start."

	"The beginning's usually a good point," Taiyouko suggested. 
She'd felt a visceral thrill the instant he said it was all 
connected. Something he knew--something he was keeping hidden--was 
the key to the mystery about Chiba and also to the stranger in her 
own mind. She also suspected that Jason badly needed to tell this 
story to somebody. Anybody. The raw, angry scrapes on his arms told 
her as much.

	He laughed and shook his head. "That depends on what you call 
the beginning. That's what I can't figure out." Jason looked up at 
her and she could see the anguish and confusion in those clear blue 
eyes. "Sometimes, I'm not even sure I can trust what I remember."

	He sat silently for a few moments. Taiyouko waited. She'd 
interrogated enough people in her lifetime to know when to push and 
when not to.

	"I'll start with Mahoney," he said abruptly. "It's not really 
the beginning, but it's when everything started to change. It was 
the...the, um, thing that gets everything started but isn't a part of 
it..."

	"Catalyst?" After just a week, she was filling in the gaps in 
his technical vocabulary on autopilot.

	"Yeah. Back in late ninety-six, I was transferred over to 
Homicide. The higher-ups thought my undercover work in Narcotics gave 
me some inside knowledge that would help with the Mahoney case..."

	The story seemed simple enough so far. Luther Mahoney was 
responsible for much of the drug traffic and associated mayhem in 
Baltimore. He didn't merely kill other drug dealers. He had also been 
known to go after ordinary citizens who were simply trying to keep 
their corners drug-free. From the way Jason described things, their 
attempts to haul Mahoney in were more like skirmishes in an ongoing 
guerrilla war than an organized police operation.

	"Here's the Mahoney story as it tends to get told around the 
station. Mike--that's Detective Kellerman--had just been cleared on a 
corruption charge from back when he was on the arson squad. It all 
boiled down to a bunch of political garbage, and there was some less-
than-nice coverage of the case in 'The Sun.' He was under a lot of 
pressure. His first case off suspension was a murder that we all 
*knew* had been committed by Mahoney or his goons."

	A shopkeeper who had only wanted to keep his corner drug-free 
had chased some of Mahoney's drug dealers away from his storefront. 
Thanks to his sense of civic responsibility, the shopkeeper wound up 
dead, and Mahoney's reputation was enough to silence any possible 
witnesses to the shooting.

	As Jason rambled on a tangent about a case involving 
Kellerman's idiot brothers and Babe Ruth's baseball uniform, 
Taiyouko's sports-phobic mind drew her back to the photo in 
Kellerman's file. Red-haired, fresh-faced, and looking for all the 
world like the stereotypical American frat-boy. His record gave her 
the kind of between-the-lines information that suggested this man was 
a ticking time-bomb. The only question was that of how many people 
he'd take with him when he finally blew.

	"I hadn't been with Homicide very long--maybe about five, six 
months in all since I'd been brought over from Narcotics for the 
Mahoney investigations. We finally got ourselves a kind of break in 
April of ninety-seven, when one of Mahoney's couriers was found dead 
in a hotel room. He'd swallowed *seventy-two* condoms full of 
heroin."

	"Um..." Taiyouko's stomach did a little dip-n-roll.

	Jason shrugged. "It's a common--if stupid and really gross--
method of smuggling. The problem is, if one of the things bursts, 
it's instant overdose time and a write-up in the Stupid Criminals 
Hall of Fame. Well, it wasn't hard to trace this glowing light of 
entrepeneurship and community development back to Mahoney. Gee--Al 
Giardello, our commander--decided this was a golden opportunity to 
catch Mahoney red-handed. The idea was that we'd complete the 
delivery, but with one of our own guys as courier. Lewis, Kellerman, 
and I would work the case. We set up the drop."

	"You used the actual heroin?" They couldn't have been *that* 
stupid, could they?

	He shook his head. "Baking soda. When Mahoney found out, he was 
*not* exactly happy. He blamed one of his lieutenants for taking the 
money meant for the genuine shipment, and shot the guy." Jason's face 
spasmed in pain. "What we weren't...what I wasn't expecting is that 
an innocent person wound up getting caught in the crossfire. We knew 
it was a risk, but that...it shouldn't have happened."

	"No, it shouldn't," Taiyouko said before she could stop 
herself. Instead of looking stricken, however, Jason looked almost 
relieved.

	"Lewis managed to catch up with Mahoney back at his condo. The 
idiot went in without backup, and there was a tussle. Mikey and I got 
there just as Mahoney grabbed Lewis's gun."

	As he spoke Jason absently reached out and picked up one of the 
needlepoint cushions from beside him. This one was in the shape of a 
chicken. He turned it over and over in his hands, and occasionally 
ran his hand over the stitches as if stroking a cat. When he spoke 
again, it sounded as if his mind was somewhere very far away.

	"There was this study they did a while back. We had to hear 
about it during some mandatory workshop when I first made Detective. 
Normally, most of what we learned in those things was a load of bull, 
but this one grabbed my attention."

	The change of subject knocked her off her stride for a moment, 
but Taiyouko nodded for him to continue. She wasn't sure where this 
was going, but she wasn't going to try to steer him back on track. He 
wanted to talk. He would get to the good stuff eventually. Even the 
lurker seemed content to wait and listen.

	"There was a big controversy at the time about 'recovered 
memories.' People would go into therapy or get hypnotized, and all of 
a sudden they'd remember being abducted by aliens or details of past 
lives."

	Taiyouko's mouth twitched. "I think I remember that story from 
'The X-Files.'"

	Jason didn't smile. "Anyhow, there was some doubt as to how 
real these recovered memories really were, so this group of 
researchers interviewed a bunch of kids. They asked each kid 'have 
you ever gotten your hand caught in a mousetrap?' Easy question, 
right? All of they kids said that no, they hadn't. The researchers 
wouldn't take no for an answer. 'Are you *sure* you've never gotten 
your hand caught in a mousetrap?' After a while, the kids stopped 
being so sure. A little while longer, and they were downright 
*insisting* that they had gotten their hand caught in a mousetrap, 
and volunteering all kinds of details about how it had happened, how 
much it hurt, what the mousetrap looked like, what it was like to go 
to the doctor to have the mousetrap removed, and so on. You follow?"

	Taiyouko nodded. She had seen far too many innocent people 
tearfully and sincerely confess to murders they could never have 
committed. These were cases in which interrogating officer was under 
pressure to get a confession, or was too stubborn to let go of his 
belief that the suspect was guilty. Before long, the suspect didn't 
know up from down and couldn't tell black from white if his life 
depended on it. "In other words, these children wound up believing 
what someone *wanted* them to believe. They were told a story so many 
times that it became true, to them, at least."

	Jason nodded, slowly, emphatically, his eyes closed. "Nobody 
wanted to believe that Mike could have shot Mahoney in cold blood. At 
least, Lewis and I didn't want to believe it. Mahoney was gone and 
never coming back, and that was the important thing. The cops are the 
good guys and the murderers and drug dealers are the bad guys, right? 
If a cop shoots a bad guy, you want to believe that there was a good 
reason for it. Even so, Internal Affairs got involved, so it could go 
on the record as a clean shoot. Of course, Lewis and I had to 
testify. I went over what happened in Mahoney's condo over and over 
again. Sometimes it was when the I.A. guys were questioning me. 
Sometimes it was just in my own head."

	He lifted one hand, mimicking a gun.

	"Sometimes I could see Mahoney's gun falling to the floor 
before Mike fired. Other times I remembered Mahoney yanking the gun 
up to fire at Mike. Sometimes Mahoney was aiming at me, or Lewis."

	The 'gun' pointed at her, at the floor, and then at last at 
Jason's own temple.

	"I know you don't trust me, and you haven't trusted me for a 
while, now. Can't say I blame you."

	Oh, was it that obvious, Wonder-boy? Requesting his file had 
probably given it away. "So what you're telling me is that the 
shooting *could* have been self defense?"

	The flash of anger in his eyes startled her. "If it *had* been 
self defense, do you think I'd be second-guessing myself to this 
day?" he snapped. "Do you think I'd be trying to remember if the 
safety on Lewis's gun was on or off? Do you think I'd be believing 
five or six completely contradictory things at once? Or maybe I just 
needed a decent excuse to start working through the Dummies Guide to 
Self-Destruction. Yeah...that's it."

	The anger flashed and faded, and he slumped forward, hands 
dangling loosely between his knees. "Things had been going so well up 
until then! I'd been climbing the ladder the honest way. I was one of 
the youngest guys in department history to make detective, and 
getting to work Homicide was like Christmas and my birthday and New 
Year's all wrapped into one. I had it *made*. Then, Mike shot 
Mahoney, and it all went to hell. I wanted to be happy with the way 
things had gone down. I wanted to be happy with the medical 
examiner's report and not thinking about the fact that she and 
Kellerman were sleeping together. We were the *good* guys. I wanted 
to believe that we'd done the right thing, and so did everyone else."

	"But it doesn't work that way," Taiyouko said, echoing her 
words from earlier that day. "The three of you were supposed to be 
acting like policemen, not judges and executioners."

	The anguish in his voice nearly took her breath away. "But the 
judges weren't doing anything! Any witnesses we could find were 
scared to death to testify!" He looked back down at the carpet. "I 
know...it's no excuse. I know exactly how and why it's wrong that 
things happened the way they did. I wanted to believe that it was a 
clean shoot. I kept on racking my brain trying to find a memory of 
the incident that I liked--that I could live with. The problem there 
was that I never settled on any one thing. All I could really 
remember was Mahoney falling to the ground and Mikey telling him that 
he had the right to remain silent."

	No kidding, Taiyouko thought. A corpse could hardly be anything 
but silent.

	He laughed nervously. "What really creeped me out was that when 
I was tired, or when I'd been thinking too much, I started to 
remember some *other* stuff. Stuff that seemed like it was out of 
some fantasy movie or something."

	Yes. She could understand that. That vision she had of that 
burning Taj Mahal type place certainly seemed like something out of a 
fairy tale or a shoujo manga. She said nothing of this to Jason. He 
was talking, and didn't seem eager to stop. She could give him a 
guided tour of her own personal stretch of Psychotic Lane once he was 
done.

	"Some of it was stuff from games my brother Jake and I used to 
play when we were kids. We had these elaborate 'pretends' that were 
like one part King Arthur and one part Star Wars. I was starting to 
remember those games like they'd really happened." He smiled, but it 
faded to a look of disgust. "Jake knew something was wrong. He knew 
*me*, after all, but he didn't push. He just kept an eye on me, made 
sure I knew he'd be around if I needed him. Just having him there 
made me feel like I wasn't going entirely crazy, but it also made me 
think too much. In some ways it was easier when he wasn't around." He 
stopped and blinked rapidly for a moment. "I kept him away. I kept 
him away so I could keep myself from thinking too much. Going on a 
bender did a good job of numbing the brain. So did one-night stands. 
I became more careless about using my gift..."

	"Gift?"

	He tossed the needlepoint chicken up into the air. It hung up 
by the ceiling for a second or two, then dropped back into his lap.

	"Ah." This was something else she wanted to know more about. If 
she asked him about it now, though, he might lose the will to tell 
the rest of the story. Now that he was getting closer to the meat of 
his story, his voice grew more and more hesitant. If she let him go 
off into a tangent, he might never come back.

	"Anyway, things were bad, but Jake kept me believing that 
they'd get better. I pushed him away, but he kept coming back. He 
told me that he'd always..." He paused and his eyes were clenched 
shut in pain. "He promised that he'd always be there when I needed 
him," he whispered. "You shouldn't promise things like that."

	To her own surprise, Taiyouko found herself reaching over and 
giving Jason's shoulder a gentle squeeze. She hoped he found it 
reassuring. She wanted to tell him that people weren't supposed to 
promise things like that, especially people who went into burning 
buildings for a living, but that wasn't what Jason needed to hear.

	"I heard about what happened to your brother. I found out about 
it when I got your file," she said gently. Jason was on a knife's 
edge. She saw the horror and sorrow in his face and she knew his 
imaginings had twisted into his memories and were making him see the 
inside of that burning building, even though he hadn't been there. 
The idea that he might collapse into a shuddering heap right there in 
her apartment scared her silly. "Unless there's something there you 
think I need to know, you don't have to go over the story for me."

	He sagged forward in relief, and even gave her a wobbly smile. 
"Thanks. This is rough enough as it is, but you need to know about 
that if the rest of this is going to make any sense at all. Jake knew 
that something wasn't right with the shooting, but he never pushed me 
on it. Thing is, I knew he was waiting for me to talk to him about 
it." Now he was hugging the chicken pillow to his chest, squeezing it 
all out of shape. "What's funny is that I was afraid to talk to him 
because I didn't want him to tell me that it was all okay. I didn't 
want that. I just wanted someone to tell me how to *make* it all 
right again..."

	Taiyouko held her breath, but fortunately Jason was able to 
pull himself together enough to keep talking.

	"Anyhow, Jake just kept on being there for me, and things did 
start to seem better. As long as I didn't pick at them, the memories 
didn't bother me. They just stayed nice and quiet."

	"And if you *did* start to pick at them?" She'd known him for 
less than a week, but she could picture him returning to those 
memories time and time again.

	His smile held no humor. "I already told you about my 'coping 
mechanisms.'"

	He was practically daring her to comment on that. It was almost 
as if he wanted her to lay into him the way she did back in Kamakura.

	"I'm getting the feeling that there's more to this Mahoney 
story--that you haven't quite gotten to the end, yet." She decided to 
take a calculated risk. "The person who sent me your information--and 
she's *not* with your squad and not even in the same state, so don't 
even bother asking who it is--said that you wound up in the hospital 
over the Mahoney case."

	She did not mention the three dead policemen Anita had told her 
about.

	He took a deep breath. "The quiet didn't last long. Georgia Rae 
Mahoney--Luther's sister-got into the vengeance game with a, uh, 
vengeance. She got to Mikey and messed with his head big time by 
telling him that she had a surveillance tape from Luther's apartment. 
I don't know if she really did or not, but it didn't matter. She 
would have gone after us either way. That January, not long after 
Jake died, she brought a wrongful death suit against the department, 
and named me, Lewis, Mikey, and a bunch of other people in the suit 
as well. It didn't help that Judge Gibbons--the guy who had the case-
-was pretty squarely in Georgia Rae's pocket. Everyone knew it but no 
one could prove it."

	She could feel the lurker weighing Jason's words. How did 
justice play into this? From beginning to end, the whole thing stunk 
to high heaven. Jason had two lives on his conscience, not including 
the three dead cops. Mahoney may have been evil, but he was an 
organizational genius. His death had left an opening in the Baltimore 
drug trade, and the scramble to take advantage of this caused more 
chaos than Luther ever had done in life. Anita had told her that 
several of Mahoney's men were murdered in early ninety-eight as other 
local 'businessmen' tried to solidify their bases of operations.

	In a purely technical sense, Jason had been absolved of any 
wrong. He'd said that she hadn't told him anything he didn't already 
know. That much seemed true. She could also tell that he had far more 
on his conscience than the death of a drug dealer that few would 
miss.

	In his own twisted way, Jason was facing a life sentence 
greater than any penal system could inflict upon him from outside. As 
she and the lurker both mulled that over, she also tried to pay 
attention to what he was saying. The story started going from bad to 
worse to seriously weird. She was having a hard time holding back her 
comments.

	"You're saying that Lewis *punched* Georgia Rae? *Punched* her? 
No wonder he was suspended!"

	Then...

	"This is where you called Colonel Barnfather an asshole, 
correct?"

	Then...

	"Yes, I think I would have decked Kellerman were I in your 
shoes, not that I would have let things get that far in the first 
place."

	Even though he'd only been given the proverbial 'slap on the 
wrist' for striking a fellow officer, Jason more or less decided to 
place himself on suspension and take a sabbatical.

	"I wasn't sure at first what I was going to do. It was towards 
the end of January, so going fishing or hiking wasn't really an 
option. I also didn't want to be alone--I had it together enough to 
know that would be a really stupid idea. Somehow or another I get it 
in my head that I've *got* to go to Japan. I'd heard of people 
'hearing the call of the open road,' or getting 'wanderlust,' and I 
thought I knew what they meant, but I didn't. This wasn't just an 
idea, it was a need, like being so hungry or thirsty that you can't 
think of anything else. I think it took me less than four hours 
between getting the idea of going and actually getting the plane 
tickets and reserving a hotel room in Tokyo. I left Baltimore on 
January twenty-first, and even though the return ticket was for the 
following week, I honestly had no clue about when--or if--I'd be 
coming back."

	Taiyouko shook her head in disbelief. "You were mentioned by 
*name* in a criminal suit, and they just let you leave the country 
like that? What the hell were they thinking?"

	Jason blushed, but didn't look guilt-wracked in any way. "It 
wasn't a matter of *let*. It was more a matter of me not telling Gee 
that I was planning on putting the bulk of the planet between me and 
Baltimore. I *had* to get to Japan, and I knew damn well that if I 
said anything to anyone, I wouldn't even make it out of the metro 
area. Gee knew I needed some time to get my head on straight, and I 
left Josh's name as a contact in case anyone needed to reach me. My 
next-youngest brother," he added before Taiyouko could ask. Jason had 
told her about his obscenely large family on several occasions, but 
she had never bothered to keep the names straight.

	"Anyhow, here's how I remember it. Josh dropped me off at the 
airport, and I flew to Toronto to get the connecting flight. As soon 
as I got off the plane I called Josh to let him know I got there, and 
that I'd check in with him again in a day or two to let him know how 
to contact me. I had a couple of hours to kill before the flight to 
Narita..."

	"Let me guess. You went to the bar?"

	To her surprise, that earned her a grin. "Yeah, but more to 
have a place to sit and enjoy a beer while I read a book. What was 
odd was that ever since making the decision to leave the country, I 
actually felt *good* for a change. It was like...I don't know, like 
getting ready for my first year of college. It was exciting and scary 
and unbelievable, and all I knew was that things were really going to 
change somehow. I was going to go back to my childhood stomping 
grounds, and somehow everything was going to fall into place."

	He got this distant expression for a moment, yet seemed more 
put-together than he had all afternoon. "I was sitting there at my 
table, looking out at the tarmac and thinking about all the trouble 
Jake and I used to get in as kids, back in Yokohama, and then I 
remembered how all of a sudden it struck me that I was thinking about 
Jake and not becoming a sobbing wreck or flying into a rage. I was 
remembering, and even though it kinda hurt, it was a *good* kind of 
remembering, if you know what I mean."

	Compared to tales of murder and moral anguish, this interlude 
in the Toronto airport seemed a bit out of place. She decided to push 
just a *little* bit.

	"Wright, when people tell about their trips, they normally 
don't spend a lot of time talking about picking up a connecting 
flight, not unless something odd happens. I take it something odd 
happened in Toronto?" she asked, not letting on what little she 
already knew. When she'd gone to look at immigration and passport 
control records for that day, there was no record of a Jason Wright 
leaving or entering Toronto, or arriving in Tokyo. It was almost as 
strange as his British friend's apparently one-way trip to Tokyo at 
around the same time. Two fudged travel records, one 
kidnapping/assault case that had been peremptorily closed, and a 
missing-persons case that had never been officially investigated.

	Yes, said the lurker. Just as there was once a murder case that 
was closed with no explanation and a boy who went missing from the 
system for fourteen years. Sound familiar?

	Taiyouko tried to ignore the horde of icy-footed ants that had 
started a conga line up and down her spine.
	
	"Well, I met this guy in the bar who happened to be going on 
the same flight I was. I hadn't thought I was up to socializing, but 
somehow we got talking and we really hit it off...and get your mind 
*out* of the gutter!" he snapped. Taiyouko tried to look innocent, 
but wasn't sure it was working. 

	"As I said, I met this guy, and we started talking, and it 
turns out that *he* had the same urge to drop everything and go to 
Tokyo. Now for me, it kind of made sense. I'd grown up there and had 
happy memories of the place. My life sucked and my career looked like 
it was about to start circling the drain. Now, Michel, on the other 
hand...things seemed to be going rosy for him, from what he was 
saying."

	Michel. That was the name Jason had said when he'd seen the mud 
things, like there was some connection there. "Did he say why he was 
heading out here?"

	Something like a shadow flickered across Jason's face, and he 
slumped forward again, as if protecting himself. "Y-yeah. He did."

	Well, out with it! Taiyouko wanted to yell. The boy'd opened 
way up for a moment, but now he was drawing near this big, explosive 
thing. She waited, however, and Jason started talking again after a 
minute or two.

	"I think it's easiest to tell this if I can tell it in the 
order  I *remember* it, which isn't the same as telling it in the 
order it *happened.*" He looked up, almost pleading. "Is that all 
right?"

	She waved him on. "It's your story."

	He told the rest of the story to the floor. "Here's what I 
remembered--at the time. One minute, I was talking to this guy from 
Halifax, and the next moment, I was in a whole world of pain, lying 
in a hospital bed, complete with restraints. The transition 
was...kind of a shock, if you know what I mean. One part of me was 
going 'what the hell happened?' while the other was all frantic 
wondering what was going to happen *next*. I figured that whatever it 
was wouldn't be all that nice."

	Taiyouko was literally on the edge of her seat, leaning forward 
to hear what happened next.

	What happened next was astoundingly anti-climactic. 

	Jason's shock and disorientation only increased when a 
motherly, efficient nurse bustled in, expressing genuine delight to 
see that he was awake and alert. She removed the restraints and 
brought him a glass of water. To make a long story short, he'd been 
found on the beach near Norfolk, unconscious and suffering from 
severe hypothermia and exposure. To make a weird story even weirder, 
his *mother* then tore into the room and hugged him so hard he was 
nearly asphyxiated. After two minutes of hugging him, crying, and 
thanking God that he was all right, she yelled at him for twenty 
minutes straight.

	"She was sick with worry, she told me. Oddly enough, she was 
okay with me going off to Japan, but she was furious that I hadn't 
called, and that I hadn't called when I'd gotten back. Then she went 
off on me for letting myself get so badly hurt and scaring the life 
out of her. I tried to explain that I hadn't gotten back--in fact I 
hadn't even *left*. Well, sure, I'd gotten as far as Toronto, but 
Canada hardly even counts as a foreign country. I mean, it's 
*attached*."

	Finding out that he was now only two hours south of his home 
city had been a nasty shock. Find out how long he'd been gone was an 
even nastier one.

	"*Seven weeks* had gone by, and no one had heard a word from 
me. My sister Emma was--still is--convinced that I was in rehab 
somewhere and that Mom and Josh were covering for me. Later on, Lewis 
told me that he was convinced that Georgia Rae had had me killed or 
something, and that I was at the bottom of Loch Raven Reservoir or in 
some landfill somewhere. Even though he was suspended, he did some 
poking around to see if he could find out anything. He really is a 
good guy at heart. Gee was of course royally pissed that I'd tried to 
leave the country, but in the end, my having flaked out like that 
really helped me out."

	"So you didn't remember *anything* from those seven weeks? You 
just had a big hole in your memory?" To her, that sounded even worse 
than having an uninvited guest in her brain. 

	The lurker made a sound like someone choking on their drink.

	"I honestly didn't." For some reason one corner of his mouth 
quirked up in a weak smile. "I even told Gee that he could have Frank 
Pembleton--the king of the interrogation room--question me, no holds 
barred, and I wouldn't be able to remember a thing. Given my whacked 
out behavior--slugging Kellerman, leaving the country, so on--they 
get me checked out by a psychiatrist."

	Taiyouko shifted and took another sip of her drink. She didn't 
like psychiatrists and she didn't like hospitals. Her mini-breakdown 
fourteen years ago had taught her that. The psychiatric doctors tried 
to tell her how she felt, or even worse, how she was *supposed* to 
feel. What she'd *felt* like was smashing a couple of psychiatrists 
over the head with a bed pan, but she knew that wouldn't be very 
productive.

	"The doc came up with a nice, neat answer that seemed to 
explain everything. I don't know what the doctors here would call it 
here, but basically, after everything that happened with Jake and the 
ongoing stress of the Mahoney case, my mind decided it was going to 
check out for a while and go on vacation."

	"I think I get what you're talking about." Fugue state. She'd 
encountered it before, on a case in which a teenage girl had seen her 
boyfriend killed by her own brother. For a while they feared that the 
brother had also killed the sister, but she turned up a few days 
later, way up north. The girl had somehow made her way from Tokyo to 
Sapporo with no memory of how she had gotten there, or what had 
triggered her flight. She'd gone to Sapporo because she'd gone there 
on a skiing trip with a favorite aunt, and had good memories of the 
place. The girl's mind couldn't deal with what she'd seen and the 
fact that she loved her boyfriend and *still* loved her brother, for 
some unfathomable reason. Her mind had suggested 'ski resort in 
Hokkaido' as a pleasant alternative to the grim reality.

	"Let me guess what happened next," she guessed. "You accept the 
diagnosis. It allows you to return to work and to your life," she 
said, almost adding 'or what's left of it' to that comment. "At the 
same time, that explanation either sounds *too* neat or something 
else causes you to doubt it. Am I right?"

	"Got it in one," he said, trying to sound light-hearted. 
"Still, this was one gift horse whose mouth I would have been happy 
to glue shut if I could."

	"Uh-huh. So, how long did this happy state of affairs last?"

	"Three whole weeks. I was back at work, on desk duty until the 
docs gave me the all clear." Once again, he started talking to the 
floor. "That's when the whole Mahoney thing blew sky-high again. 
Luther was dead, but Georgia Rae Mahoney was carrying on the family 
tradition. Georgia Ray also had a son, a fine, upstanding young 
citizen who went by the name of 'Junior Bunk'..."



2:34 p.m.


	Setsuna wiped down the kitchen counter and tried to force 
herself not to notice the conversation in the other room. Even though 
she couldn't hear what was being said, she could tell that things 
were growing a more than a little tense in there.

	No surprise, there. They'd *all* been on edge lately, and it 
wasn't just due to recent events, either. Setsuna tried to remember 
the last time someone in their little family *wasn't* upset, and she 
honestly couldn't think of anything after this past March. What had 
gone wrong?

	Maybe it wasn't any one thing. Maybe it was just a whole bunch 
of little things, adding up into one big load of stress.

	She looked at her watch, wishing her affinity with time was 
flexible enough to let her jump ahead eight or nine hours. It would 
be wonderful to be able to call the States and not have to worry 
about waking anybody up. Guilt over wishing such a thing ganged up 
with guilt over not calling her parents in over a week and threatened 
to bring in guilt over her occasional wish that she could put this 
senshi business behind her for a while. All of this would add up to a 
raging headache if she wasn't careful.

	Of all the times for Abuela Rosario to be an invalid! Setsuna 
shook her head and poured herself a glass of lemonade. It wasn't as 
if her grandmother had *scheduled* this stroke, or she had penciled 
this latest Senshi crisis into her calendar. Still, she missed having 
family--non-Senshi family--in town. Mama and Father had been in San 
Diego for well over a year, now. It hardly seemed possible.

	If only this recent crisis didn't seem to involve her own 
memories! It would be lovely to bid everyone a fond 'see you later' 
and go to visit her family in California and Mexico. Normally, the 
cheek-pinching attention and the constant imprecations to "fill your 
plate, child! Eat! You're too thin! You'll get sick if you aren't 
careful!"--not to mention the attempts to set her up with a 'nice 
young man'--drove her crazy within three days. Even so, it would be 
nice to be able to let her guard down for a while and let Mama and 
all the aunties spoil her rotten. Sometimes, being the token adult of 
the Senshi family could suck the energy right out of her. It would be 
good to be the baby again, if only for a little while.

	She took a sip of her drink and winced. Too sweet. She dumped 
the contents of her glass into the sink--ignoring the inner auntie 
that chided her for such wastefulness--and checked her watch. Sixteen 
hours difference meant it was, what? ten-thirty yesterday evening? 
Mama would undoubtedly be asleep by now, but Father might be up 
reading or grading student reports. Of course, if she did call, she'd 
probably get the usual two-ton subtle hints about how she could do 
her graduate studies at UCSD just as well as at Tokyo University. 
Even so...

	She picked up the phone only to hear the excited yammer of 
teenage voices. "Sorry, Hotaru-chan," she said, then hung up again.

	"Is she hogging the phone again?" Haruka grumbled.

	Setsuna nearly jumped out of her skin.

	"What's got you so wound up?" Haruka snapped. She yanked the 
refrigerator door open and took out the lemonade.

	"You startled me, that's all," Setsuna said with her normal 
calm. She watched in horrified fascination as Haruka added five 
spoonfuls of sugar to her drink.

	Haruka then stalked over to the phone and picked it up. "Oi! 
Hotaru! Setsuna needs to use the phone, so cut it short."

	The offended squawking from the phone was cut off as Haruka 
hung up.

	Setsuna sighed and picked up the phone. "I really *don't* need 
the phone, so make that a 'never mind,'" Setsuna said before Hotaru 
could utter a single word. She hung up quickly. "Haruka, that really 
wasn't necessary."

	"Hey! It sounded to me like you wanted to make a phone call. 
Besides, Hotaru needs to learn that spending hours on the phone--"

	"We have call waiting, and if it was a *real* emergency, we've 
got the communicators. Most of her calls are local, so we don't have 
to worry about her running up the bill. She's not spending *so* much 
time on the phone that her grades are suffering, so what's the harm?"

	Haruka raked her fingers through her hair, making it go all 
spiky along one side. "It's the principle of the thing," she said, 
not looking Setsuna in the eye, yet not quite willing to back down.

	Setsuna was very glad that she had learned to maintain a 
surface calm when deep in her gut she would prefer to be flinging 
crockery. "She's finally able to have a normal childhood. It's 
*normal* for a teenage girl to want to spend time on the phone with 
her friends."

	Haruka was clearly skeptical. "I didn't," she stated.

	There were so many potential retorts to that phrase, any one of 
which would hit their friendship like a tactical nuke. Neither she, 
nor Haruka, nor Michiru would have been considered anything like 
'normal' in their teens. Setsuna was also reasonably sure that none 
of them had many close friends outside of their own, tiny circle. 
Even the 'girl' part of the equation was cast into doubt when it came 
to Haruka.

	"Hotaru's making up for lost time," Setsuna finally said. It 
was the least combative answer she could think of.

	Haruka muttered something under her breath and started to stalk 
out of the kitchen. 

	"What was that?" Setsuna snapped as she grabbed her friend by 
the shoulder. Haruka spun around so quickly that Setsuna was forced 
to jump back.

	For one, panicked second, she honestly thought that Haruka was 
going to hit her, then Haruka was staring at her with the same horror 
that she must have had in her own eyes a half-second ago.

	"Don't even joke about manipulating time!" Setsuna snapped. To 
hell with self-control! She was up in Haruka's face, jabbing her in 
the sternum, Latin ideas of personal space shoving aside the Japanese 
in an instant. Haruka was backed up against the counter, stunned by 
what she was seeing and hearing. "The whole point of having a Sailor 
Pluto in the first place was so that time *can't* be manipulated! I 
*died* because I stopped time for an instant, no matter that the 
entire fucking universe would have gone up like that"--she snapped 
her fingers right in front of Haruka's eyes--"if I hadn't!"

	"You joke about it all the time," Haruka said, looking at her 
as she might a once friendly dog that had just tried to bite her.

	"Gallows humor," Setsuna said, embarrassed and somewhat 
deflated. She'd been thinking about hitting the fast-forward button 
just seconds before Haruka had come into the kitchen, so who was she 
to get angry? "I'm sorry. It's just that all of this..." she waved 
one hand in a circle, indicating everything from their family to 
their current crisis to the universe in general, "it's getting to me. 
I've spent a lot of time thinking about Sailor Pluto, and me, and my 
past life. It's a lot to think about."

	Haruka let out a chuckle. "No kidding." She smiled 
mischievously. "You know, I don't think I've ever heard you cuss 
before."

	Setsuna grinned. It *had* felt good to let fly. "The pressure 
valve blew. I guess I've been needing to yell at someone or something 
for a while, and you just happened to be in the right place at the 
right--or wrong--time."

	Something in what she said got Haruka to thinking. She leaned 
back against the counter, arms crossed, chin tucked into her chest. 
Setsuna waited.

	After a minute or two, Haruka cleared her throat. She kept her 
eyes focused on the floor as she spoke.

	"Setsuna... All of this stuff you're starting to remember... I 
know you'd tell us if it was important, right?"

	She looked up, and a desperation that she did not let into her 
voice was all too clear in her eyes.

	"I mean... If you're close to someone--really close, and if you 
know something important, you'd tell that person, right? You wouldn't 
just...keep it all to yourself and shut that other person out, not if 
it was really important, would you?"

	Oh no, not *this* again! Setsuna fought to keep her voice level 
and controlled. "Haruka, I said I'd tell you everything I remember 
about the Silver Millennium and before, even the things that may not 
be important. I'm still sorting through it, that's all."

	Haruka stared at her as if she'd just given a completely 
nonsensical answer, such as 'green,' or 'forty-two.'

	"Oh... That." Haruka shook her head, as if clearing the mental 
cobwebs. "Nah... I guess... I guess I'm not really worried about 
that. I'm sorry I got so bitchy with you the other day. It's just the 
principle of the thing, that's all," she said, echoing what she'd 
said about Hotaru. She looked down the hall towards the living room. 
"I probably shouldn't worry. I mean, it's a given that if someone's 
really important to you, you'd tell that person if something's wrong, 
right?"

	That must have been the third or fourth time that Haruka had 
begged for some sort of affirmation. Why or for what, Setsuna could 
not tell. Somehow, she found Haruka's childlike desperation for her 
to 'make it all better' endearing.

	"Haruka, I may be rather close-mouthed, but I'd never keep 
anything important from you. You can trust me on that," she said 
gently, and with genuine affection.

	Haruka just nodded brusquely and walked out of the kitchen, 
heading for the garage rather than the living room.

	"No problem. If anyone asks, I'm going out for a drive, okay?"

	Setsuna let out a breath that she didn't even know she'd been 
holding. She couldn't help feeling that she had just missed something 
vitally important in Haruka's questions.




						#  #  #


Author's Notes: Thanks again to Ice Princess and Luna Hope for their 
help as beta readers.

Abuela: if not clear from context, this is Spanish for "grandmother."


Writing process and progress. Some delays in posting the second
part of this chapter were work related. This has also been a difficult
chapter to write.


Music listened to during this chapter: "Scarlet's Walk" by Tori Amos, 
"When I Wake" by Rusted Root, and "The Green World" by Dar Williams.

Coming soon (in geological terms): Fallen Heroes, Part III

In which the afterlife is discovered to be dull *and* utterly 
lacking in good coffee, a group of Senshi go out on the  town and 
discuss the finer points of children's literature, Venus does her 
own thing, and Mother reflects on life in the old country.


Then...

Chapter 11: Flashpoint

In which some *very* nasty things happen to people who don't 
deserve them.