"Knives were invented because it was too hard to kill a person with your bare hands. Man then invented guns because we got too lazy to run up to our enemies to stab them. Then we invented bombs so that we could actually sit down comfortably while killing. ICBMs were the next logical step, since some people get airsick. If you ask me, the limitations of military technology have nothing to do with efficiency, but convenience."
-Tiro Yamazaki

Black Dragon Productions presents...
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen. Assuming I don't die in a horrible accident. Or go to college.
Other Notes: Sounds, techniques or emphasis, 'thoughts', [writing], (side comments)

Millennium
Chapter 4
Recovery
**********************************************************************************

Hotaru looked up at the mountainside pensively as she tried to climb faster, gasping as bits of rock and sharp branches scratched at her legs and arms.
Through the larger bushes she could see the two other girls in her group making swift progress among the large rocks further up, and the part-time Senshi whimpered; they were taller than her, and both were on the tennis team. There was no way she'd catch up!
"Anyo-san! Nigimata-san! Wait up, please!" Hotaru begged them, grabbing onto a fragile section of brush and hauling herself up. She gasped again when she felt small spines from the bush stab into her skin, but she squeezed her eyes shut and bore it, scrambling onto the next rock. 'Why would they be holding a barbeque way out on a mountain hiking trail, anyway? This hurts!'

Far above, one of the girls glanced back down the mountain as she picked up the tail end of a shout, and she rolled her eyes. "Well, the shrimp's got guts, if not brains. I think she's still following us."
The other girl snorted and accelerated her pace up the shallow slope she had found near the top. "Then pick up the pace; she can't keep up with us much longer. And if she does, then she'll probably tell sensei about the hot springs party Ryunnosuke's throwing, and then we're ALL screwed."
Her friend nodded. It was just their luck that they'd get saddled with the class weirdo during their school trip. With a goody-two-shoes freak like Hotaru hanging around with them, not only had their group been uninformed of the more wild events that the other students had been planning, but those they were invited to were in danger of being discovered by the faculty. "Even so, don't you think this is kinda dangerous? I mean, she could kill herself out here!"
The other schoolgirl snorted. "It's not THAT dangerous. This whole mountain's just a bunch of hot spring resorts and empty forest. If she had a clue, she would have realized that the other side has dozens of roads and stairs to get up here. Once we lose her, she'll just turn around and go back to the inn. She knows the way, she'll be fine."
Her friend shrugged, accepting the rationale and moving faster up the slope. The only thing worse than being caught going to the party would be making it to the party with the strange, quasi-Gothic healing girl in tow to muck up the festivities.

Further down the mountain, Hotaru felt her heart sink into her stomach as the taller girls cleared a rock outcropping and vanished behind it, moving on to a much shallower slope that she imagined bisected a path somewhere further.
She slumped down to her knees and drew long, ragged breaths, her energy spent. 'They... They meant to ditch me, didn't they?'
She sighed wearily once she got her breathing back under control, and then winced when she noticed the tiny gashes and blood smears on her arms and hands. 'I'm so stupid! I should have realized it earlier! Why would they insist on taking a route to dinner through a mountain forest?' She drew her knees up to her chin as she considered the two athletes ruefully. "They could've just told me they didn't want me around, instead of acting friendly and helpful and then leaving me behind."
In Hotaru's mind, acceptance was something rare and precious, while rejection was something numbing and routine. To mask rejection with acceptance and friendship, even for the purposes of politeness, was far more cruel than bald, open scorn.
'For one thing, if they hadn't told me they wanted me to come along, I wouldn't be all the way up here,' she thought irritably as she looked at the barely perceptible path she had made up the mountainside. 'Not only am I going to be exhausted by the time I get back, but I'll probably miss dinner.'
Sighing once more, she started down the mountain kicking up dust and bits of rocks as she stumbled through the bushes and sparse trees below her.
Now, anybody who regularly deals with mountains can tell you that getting down a mountain is easier than getting up. Hotaru knew this too; it just makes sense. What isn't quite as obvious is that with gravity working for you, a trip down an incline is more dangerous than one going up. One moment of lost balance or a spot of weak ground can easily lead to a potentially lethal tumble.
Hotaru didn't climb a lot of mountains.
"Whoa! Oh! Oh! Oh no!" She cried as she slowly teetered forward, her arms windmilling uselessly to try and restore her balance.
She felt her breathe flee her lungs as she fell over, impacting the hard, rocky ground painfully. But before she could find any sort of purchase on the dirt, her body twisted to the side and began to roll, to Hotaru's growing alarm and dread.

Through the blinding pain and overwhelming panic, a detached aspect of Hotaru's mind reflected upon the likely outcome of this fatal error, and decided that her most immediate regret would be that nobody would be around to witness her demise. For a superheroine like herself, who had been instrumental in saving the world, and for a famed Senshi, never mind Sailor Saturn, the Senshi of destruction who was capable of annihilating entire worlds, to meet her end because she lost her balance and tripped...
Well, that was the kind of irony that people remembered you for. But not if no one was around to see it!
She was in the process of wondering when she had acquired an appreciation for such morbid humor when a rough, haggard scratching all over her body alerted Hotaru to a possible means of stopping herself as she realized she was rolling through a bush.
Keeping her eyes squeezed shut tightly, she flailed her arms about as she continued to roll, grasping desperately for a branch to slow her uncontrolled descent.
Miraculously, her hand latched onto one of appreciable thickness, and a small spark of hope gleamed in her heart as she tightened her grip as much as possible.
That hope was extinguished as the branch slipped from her hand, cutting it open in the process.
Before bitter resignation could set in, however, Hotaru realized that something was wrong. Instead of rolling down a firm, solid slope and being battered by rocks and plants, she was now free-falling through the air.
'Well, that's just great. Now I get to die from one long fall off a cliff instead of rolling until I break my neck. Spiffy. Wish I'd tripped closer to the edge; at least then it wouldn't hurt so much until I hit the bottom.'
She could no longer summon the energy to sigh miserably, so she remained silent as she plummeted downward.
Strangely enough, her second-to-last thought before she reached the bottom of her fall was, 'I guess I won't be able to see Ranma again...'
That line of thinking was firmly interrupted by her actual last thought. 'Wait a minute... there were no cliffs on the mountain.'
SPLOOSH!
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"Are you sure we should go in there?" Minako asked Rei nervously as they approached the dorm room she shared with Usagi and Ami. "I mean, I really think we should give her more time alone to think, if she needs it."
Rei snorted. "Moron. Usagi isn't the type of person who ever wants to be alone. She doesn't think; she talks. If we try and let her have some time by herself, she'll just think we're avoiding her." She frowned. "Either that, or she'll just pour her heart out to Luna. Either way, she probably won't forgive us if we don't get to her soon."
Ami nodded reluctantly as she followed Minako and Rei. Usagi had come back late last night and gone straight to bed with a thoughtful, concerned expression on her face, and without saying anything other than "Good night" to her roommates. The following morning she didn't get up, which was fairly normal, and given that the neo-cyborg had been through significant emotional trauma, her friends had let her sleep. Then she hadn't shown up to a single class. At that point, it was time to be concerned.
'Not that school is likely a big concern for her now,' Ami mused as they reached the door.
Rei turned to the other girl and gave them a pointed glance. "Now remember, don't go crazy with the sympathy, okay? If we just make this a huge pity party, then she'll never get off her ass and do anything to fix it. We need to let her know that we're here for her, but we also need her to stand up on her own and get over her problems."
Minako and Ami both nodded, and the former clenched one hand into a fist before her, looking especially determined. "Right! Let's do this!"

Opening the door without knocking, Rei stepped forward purposefully into the dorm room.
"Usagi? Are you... here... uh..." She trailed off immediately, unsure what to make of what she was seeing.
Ami and Minako both blinked in surprise when they emerged from behind the former priestess. Usagi was reclining in the living room chair, her legs resting on the ottoman, and wearing a terry cloth bath robe and a pair of fuzzy rabbit slippers. She was facing the TV, and watching as Makoto, who was dressed in casual jeans and a T-shirt, played Super Smash Bros. Melee on Ami's Gamecube.
The ponytailed blonde blinked and turned her head. "Oh! Hey guys! What's up?"
"Er......" Rei mumbled. Inside her head, little chibi-Reis were angrily tearing up reams of paper that held the speech she had prepared to deal with their poor, distraught leader.
"Huh... are you okay?" Ami asked hesitantly, idly noting that Makoto seemed to be losing the match she was playing, though she had somehow gained the upper hand since they had interrupted.
"Hm? Oh! Right!" Usagi said, remembering that her life as she knew it had ended just a few days ago. "Yeah, I'm better now. Thanks!"
"You... You are?" Rei mumbled. Inside her head, the chibi-Reis had gathered at a long executive-style meeting table while one of them pointed at a picture of Usagi's head. The picture had question marks plastered all over it, as well as several phrases such as "Trauma retention? Memory? Emotional complexity? Is there anything inside this skull at ALL?"
Minako breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good! For a while there we were afraid you'd gone off the diving board!"
Usagi blinked at that, and was about to correct her fellow blonde, when she stopped to think about the phrase. 'Mental note: Ask Ami if I can swim in this body,' she thought, and was suprised and pleased to see her thought appear in glowing green text toward the top of her field of vision, along with the word "Saved."
Shrugging, the cybernetic blonde turned back toward the television screen.
"So..." Ami began uncertainly, "this is what you've been doing? Watching Mako-chan play video games?"
"No. I'm playing too!" Usagi said, once again turning toward the newcomers.
Ami frowned. Indeed, once she took another look at the screen, it clearly indicated that two of the four characters were human players. "Uh... but you don't have a controller." Any one of them could see clearly that only one controller was plugged into the console, and that Makoto was using it.
In response, Usagi just smirked and tapped her head meaningfully.
"I still say that's cheating!" Makoto growled as she watched Princess Peach slam all three other characters across the screen, including her own character, Samus. "You're not nearly as good when you have to use your hands like the rest of us!"
"Well, yeah! Everybody always beats me normally!" Usagi complained. On the screen, Peach dodged a perfectly timed screw attack, and then sent Samus sailing with a dashing attack, blowing the bounty hunter off the screen and securing the win.
"Uh huh... so... you're feeling fine?" Rei mumbled, her left eyebrow twitching. In her head, the chibi-Reis were still at the meeting table, though they had all gathered at one end and were playing strip poker. Usagi's picture sat in a corner, mostly forgotten, though someone had drawn glasses, a moustache, a goatee, and devil horns on the blonde's visage.
"Oh yeah, much better," Usagi said reassuringly, smiling.
Makoto sighed in disgust and dropped her controller. "Don't ask me how it happened, either. I just got here a little while ago to check on her, and she just up and asked if I wanted to play something." Then she turned to Usagi. "Hey, can I have another soda?"
"Oh, sure!" Usagi reached down and lifted one flap of the robe. Then she tapped her stomach.
Kachunk! A square section of her abdomen opened like a door, and Usagi reached in before withdrawing two glass bottles of Coke.
For poor Minako, who had done the least mental preparation for dealing with their violated leader (she had been busy trying to figure out where a certain American police officer had run off to and why he seemed immune to her charms), this was quite enough to freak her out, and her hair stood straight as wire rods behind her head in testament to her shock; even her ribbon looked frayed and unnaturally angular.
When Usagi raised both bottles to the sides of her head, and proceeded to fit them one at a time into her ears before twisting and snapping off the caps, well, that was just too damn much.
Thud!
Ami turned her head rigidly toward the source of the noise behind her. "Well, we just lost Mina-chan."
Rei had not frozen up at the bizarre sight, but instead slumped over while rubbing her head. "Your ears are bottle-openers?" She mumbled. In her head, the poker match had evolved in a wild drinking contest, with several naked and half-naked chibi-Reis passed out on the floor or dancing drunkenly on the meeting table, bottles of sake grasped in their hands.
Usagi frowned at that as she handed an entirely unsurprised Makoto her drink. "No, I don't think so... though they get the job done!" She spent a moment to fish the caps out of her ears, and then took a long sip from her soda.

Ami shook her head to clear it, and promised herself that she'd make a visit to the kitchen cabinet to visit her new friend Jack Daniels as soon as she got the chance. "Okay, well... if you're not still... uh... upset, then... why weren't you in class today?"
Usagi froze shock-still, her eyes opening wide.
She remained that way for several seconds.
This was not ideal, since she happened to freeze in the middle of taking a drink of her Coke. After her cheeks swelled up such that they resembled a chipmunk, the beverage proceeded to spill out around Usagi's lips, showering her robe with soda and generally making quite a mess.
'Huh. No gag reflex. Have to add that to my notes.' Ami thought as she winced.
"PTHOOEY!" Usagi's brain suddenly managed a reboot (the others devoted quite some time later to determine the extent to which this was meant literally), and she proceeded to spit out the contents of her mouth, nearly giving Makoto an unexpected shower in the process.
"Hey! Watch it!" The ponytailed girl complained as she dodged.
Usagi shook her head violently, then grasped the sides of her skull. "Oh no! I totally forgot about my classes!"
Thud! Though Ami had already deduced this, it hit Rei hard enough to cause the raven-haired girl to facefault. Unfortunately for her mind, this caused the last of the drunken chibi-Reis within her head to topple over and slam into a wall, knocking the them out cold.
"And there goes Rei-chan," Ami muttered, deciding that she'd need to enlist the support of her good pal Captain Morgan as well. One can never have too many friends, after all.
"Aaaaah! What am I gonna do?" Usagi cried. "I had homework due today! And... oh my god! There was a test! I had a math test! NOOOOOOOO!!" She began to run around the room in a panic, and began to take off her robe. "I've gotta go! I'll be late!"
"Usagi-chan... your classes are all over," Ami said slowly, wondering if she should be glad to find that Usagi actually cared about her schooling in the midst of their latest supernatural crisis. When she saw the blonde girl trip and fall over onto her face, bawling, she decided that was a question she could ask her friends later. 'Maybe they'll bring along their local pal Sapporo. Yes, that sounds like a great idea.' "So, you weren't so emotionally distraught that you just couldn't go through your normal day-to-day life any longer? You just forgot?"
"It wasn't my fault!" Usagi cried as she pushed herself up off the floor. "There was just so much going on, and... and... Sniffle!" Then she turned toward Makoto and pointed a finger at her accusingly. "Makoto, you have the same class! Why didn't you tell me? Or call? Or ANYTHING?"
The Thunder Senshi recoiled. "What? But... B-But I... I didn't know..." she shook her head. "Oh, come on! You were kidnapped, turned into a cyborg, dumped by your future husband, and then you said you even got in a car accident! Who would care about a math test after all that?"
"Someone who's barely passing that class as it is!" Usagi cried. "If I fail math, my GPA could drop so low that they might kick me out at the end of the year!"
"Uhm..." Makoto bigsweated as she tried to find a way out of this situation. "Aren't you like, part calculator now?"
"Not really," Usagi fumed. "I've already checked. For some reason the calculator in my head only measures 'rocket trajectories' and 'ballistic arcs' and weird, useless stuff like that." She cocked her head to one side. "Well, it does do logs. But even with a calculator, I can't figure those out!"
"Okay, okay, just calm down," Makoto mumbled as she stood up, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "Look, that was an early midterm, so I'm pretty sure your math grade is finished. But if we bring up your world history, composition, and P.E. scores when you take those midterm exams next week, we can at least save your enrollment in this school, right?"
Usagi frowned, but nodded, her arms crossed over her chest.
Makoto sighed in relief, then sat down on the arm of Usagi's chair. "I have to admit though, I'm a little impressed. Not only did you get over Mamoru's rejection way better than I thought, but after this whole cyborg thing you're still worried about your studies. A lot of people would... well... their education wouldn't be a top priority."
Usagi nodded, much of her earlier panic and frustration evaporating. "Yeah, well... I talked it over with someone, and I realized that none of my problems are all that bad."
Makoto blinked repeatedly, flabbergasted. "They're not?"
"Well... no, not really," Usagi allowed, lowering her head slightly and twiddling her thumbs. "I mean, sure, I'm really confused right now, and I'm not sure what's what, and what Mamo-chan said really hurt too, but..." She looked up, suddenly determined. "But none of that is really stopping me from getting back up and living my life, right? Things could be worse. Much worse! But I still have my education and my friends my family and a talking cat and my... uh... a body! My future hasn't changed, just the path I'm taking!"
Makoto stared for a long moment, hardly able to believe that this was the same girl who turned into a sobbing wreck whenever somebody insulted her or when all the snacks were eaten before she could get to them. 'But then again, I guess Usagi's strength has always shined brightest when the chips were down. I shouldn't really be surprised that she'd manage to pull through a serious crisis.' She finally smiled. "Well... uhm... what can I say? You go, girl!"
Usagi nodded, finally smiling again, and she gave the taller girl a thumbs-up. "Right!" Then she turned around. "Hey, we should really get Rei-chan off the floor. She landed in my soda spill."
Makoto sweatdropped. "Oh. Right. Here, I'll get Mina-chan."
Usagi grabbed Rei under the shoulders and lifted her up, surprising herself with how easy it was; she felt even stronger than she was as Sailor Moon!
Makoto, though being much stronger than Usagi had been before her limb bones had been been replaced by pistons, still only possessed human strength, and grunted a bit as she positioned Minako in her arms. "Hey Ami-chan, can you give me a hand here?"
Then she froze. Usagi too froze, at the exact same time.
"Hey, where is Ami-chan?" They both asked, facing each other.

Thunk! Their question was answered as the genius in question suddenly stumbled out of the kitchen, falling against the wall and striking it with a mostly-empty bottle of spiced rum.
"Goddam dragonsh an' their freakin' shtupid lamer shtupid tricksh... that're shtupid...," the bluette slurred, pushing herself off the wall and swaying drunkenly from side to side. "Shtupid bashtard! I hate yah! I hate yah an' yur campin' an' yah rocketsh an' yah kill meh on purpish an' hide near da damn item shpawnsh! Yooh shuck!" Shaking a fist uncertainly at the PC sitting on her desk, she then dove for it, snarling as she began to batter the monitor with her bottle of rum.
Whomp! Whomp! Crash! Clunk! Crunch!

Usagi and Makoto stared at the scene with eyes the size of dinner plates, their hands tightening around their unconscious friends as they watched Ami break the bottle against the monitor screen before trying to stab the keyboard viciously with the jagged remains in her hand.
Makoto's head snapped to the side to address Usagi. "Let's go let these two rest up in my room."
"Uh..." Usagi couldn't manage to take her eyes off the horrifying spectacle before her, so she didn't turn toward Makoto when she replied, "Don't you have roommates that'll be home right now?"
"We'll kick them out."
"Then let's get the hell outta here."
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Vrrrmmmm...
Garo sat down cross-legged in the middle of the warded vault, facing away from the gigantic mechanized door as its engine moved it in and then slowly opened it.
He had not moved much since he had been placed in the vault. This was partially because there was nothing to do were he to get up - the room was a totally bare steel box - but also because he had been trying to conserve energy in order to regenerate his arms and legs, which had all been torn off and eaten by the DAPC's pet monster.
The vampire's limbs had come back, but as expected, his clothes had not. While the ponytailed man's former outfit had been a clean, well-pressed outfit with long slacks, a long-sleeve shirt and a jacket, that outfit was now missing those lengths of cloth that had contained his lost limbs at the time at which he was being eaten. Thus instead, he was seated in the middle of a huge, dried bloodstain, wearing what appeared to be ragged shorts and a T-shirt that had been torn in half.
Despite this, the midian commanded a certain strength and dignity as he faced the barren wall of his cell, unmoving as he felt a rush of air and greater circulation with the giant vault door opened.
"So. You've come again. Do you seek to waste more of my time asking for answers?" The vampire said stonily, his stare burning into the flat steel of his prison. Garo was a bulwark, solid and unyielding even in his enemy's clutches, and would reveal no secrets, no matter what the cost to himself.
His misplaced defiance and quiet dignity was completely lost on the three individuals outside the vault entrance, standing behind the secondary gate of vertical bars made of solid silver that was unique to vampire and lycanthrope cells.
"Now remember, there's no reason to conserve ammo here, but out in the field, you can bet it's important," Snake explained. "You can only carry so much gear with you when you go into combat, and the time it takes to reload is all these freaks need to gut you like fish."
"Did you HAVE to keep me here in HQ for this?" Junko asked irritably as she loaded her submachine gun.
"Don't snap at ME because you haven't had time to find a new boy-toy," Snake said sharply at the redhead. "You're on the clock, so you should spend it training, not combing the city for your next piece of meat."
Tiro tried to smile smoothly as he loaded his own weapon, though it emerged as his usual stupid grin. "You know babe, if you're just looking for a good time, I'm always available..."
"Oh, yeah, desperation. Real turn-on, Yamazaki," Junko groused.
"Pardon me..."

The three officers diverted their attention from each other, and regarded the undead man on the other side of the bars like one would regard a particularly annoying insect. "WHAT?"
Garo's voice remained perfectly calm and reasoned as he approached with his arms clasped behind his back. "What, exactly, is the meaning of this?"
Snake rolled his eyes. "Oh, it's just that Red here hasn't gotten any in a while... well, hasn't gotten any recently. Very recently, anyway. She's a bit of a you-know-what. But that isn't important." Junko turned away and frowned darkly at the wall, but did not contradict her superior.
"I agree; that's not important at all," Garo said. "I was referring to why you opened my cell. I can only assume, since you're armed, that either someone's coming in or I'm coming out. Am I being transferred?"
"No," Snake deadpanned. "Now shut up. I'm trying to teach these people." He turned back to his subordinates. "Now, it's important to know that vampires don't like to run; there's a physical limit to how fast two legs can move you, even if they're unusually strong. Thus, your stronger vampires don't usually attack out in the open, but will attempt to fight indoors or in close quarters, where they can jump and rebound off of the walls to add speed to their attack. It's in your best interest then, as less-than-spectacular marksmen, to aim for the wall where you expect the vampire to transfer its energy into the lunge, rather than trying to shoot it out of the air in mid-leap."
"Pardon me..."
Snake rolled his eyes. "What now?"
"Excuse my impatience, but was it really necessary to disturb me in order to give a lecture as to the physical capabilities of vampires?" Garo asked. "Is there anything I'm supposed to do?"
Snake shrugged in response. "Well, you could run around a bit, if you want. Which you probably do. We just need a live target, that's all."
Garo blinked. "You mean a live specimen, right?" It made sense to have an actual vampire present while explaining a midian's capabilities, but it did not explain why they were all heavily armed.
In his defense, the only members of the DAPC he had met so far were Asuka and Ranma, who were generally considered the most sane and rational members of the organization.
"Sure, whatever." Snake stepped back behind the other two officers. "Now remember, fire in bursts, try not to waste ammo, aim for his landing points. Don't worry about where you hit him, though you should know that ideal targets are the head, arms, or legs. Bullets in the torso won't do anything. Got it?"
Garo's eyes slowly widened as the two shorter officers nodded. "W-Wait... hold on! What's going on here?"
"If you haven't figure that out by now, then this is going to be a short practice," Tiro muttered as he stuck his weapon between the openings in the bars. It restricted his aim a bit, sure, but nobody was willing to risk a ricochet off the silver gate.
"It's all Snake's fault," Junko mumbled as she too aimed her weapon. "Every time we build a training facility, he blows it up!"
"Not my fault," the Texan declared as he watched his subordinate's aim. "I only used those facilities for training, and they fell apart. I'm not responsible for shoddy construction on the part of the contractors."
"You're not supposed to use rocket launchers in the firing range!" Junko snapped, turning her head away from her target.
Snake immediately moved forward to correct her, nudging her head forward. "Keep your eye on the target. Aim low."
Garo twitched, his hands clenching into fists. "So now Tokyo's finest use their prisoners for target practice? Is this the state of human justice now?"
"Tokyo's finest? Where?" Junko turned around, wondering if there were any normal police officers or Core soldiers that had been through the facility (hopefully, male ones). Snake grabbed the sides of her head and forced her to face forward once again.
"FOCUS, Chikiko!" Snake growled. "You're going to have plenty of problems keeping your eyes on these freaks when you're not distracted! Now AIM!"
"Wait a minute! This is all wrong!" Garo protested. "After one interrogation session you're ready to execute me?"
Tiro looked surprised. "No. We're shooting you because we can use you for practice and you'll get better."
"And because you're not on payroll; Asuka gets mad when I shoot people who work for us, even if they get better afterward. Yamazaki, when I said aim low, I didn't mean aim at the floor. That's better. Safeties off!" Snake shouted.
The vampire took several nervous steps back, his mind awhirl with questions and quite a few complaints. "Stop this! This is ridic-"
"Fire!"
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Ranma sighed as he rubbed his eyes wearily, looking slightly haggard.
Asuka glanced up and noticed this, but said nothing, instead returning to the report he had filed.
"Hmmm... so, you really don't think this 'Usagi' cyborg is an immediate threat?"
Ranma shook his head as he brought his focus back onto the matter at hand. "No, I don't think so. She doesn't seem to be involved with the Freedom's Angels at all. She has no criminal past or any suspicious records. She DOES seem to be involved with those Sailor Senshi girls you told me about, but I don't know anything about that. She seems like a completely normal, everyday girl who just happened to get kidnapped and turned into a cyborg."
Asuka nodded reluctantly. "Though it doesn't make much sense that they'd use some random woman as a subject, there's a lot to be said about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And mad scientists aren't known for being big on details." She recalled easily the first time she had forced Seras to sober up; the medical officer had captured most of the DAPC and made robot copies of all of them... including those officers who were more trouble than they were worth. "Of course, there's the concern that she'll be involved with the FAs from this point on, too. We managed to get her out of their hands, but they'll probably want her back. Which could mean either activating some sort of mind-control device in her head, or sending a small army to capture her." She sighed. "The problem is, of course, that we don't have the staff to institute any sort of observation program. There's the option of assigning you or Kyle as a bodyguard, but again, that kind of leaves us short-handed when we're in the middle of investigating a vampire infestation."
"Mm-huh," Ranma mumbled as he stifled another yawn.
Asuka once again noticed, but merely frowned. Finally, she put down the report and shrugged. "Well, if you don't think she'll be causing any trouble, all we can do is wait until she proves you wrong. I'll have you meet with her later for a registration and see if we can hammer out a few more details, but for the most part we'll leave her to her own devices." Then she leaned back in her chair and raised an eyebrow. "Moving on, have the late-night missions been getting to you? You look a little drowsy."
Ranma blinked in surprise, and then shook his head. "N-No! Nothing like that! I've been getting plenty of sleep... well..." He frowned. "Normally it's not a big deal; being around Snake keeps me awake and on my toes, you know? But yeah, I haven't been very well rested lately. Not that I haven't gotten much sleep, but there's this weird dream I keep having..."
Asuka nodded silently. 'Snake HAS been gone a while... and I know I didn't send him out on patrol... hmmm.'
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Thud! Garo hit the metal floor like a wet sponge, blood streaked all over an entire corner of his cell. All around him lay warped, flattened pieces of lead, in stark contrast to the vault's entrance, which was littered with the gleaming discarded shell casings.
Snake shook his head as both his subordinates detached their empty clips. "That was pitiful. Chikiko, you were five seconds behind Dracula-boy the whole time. You were on your third clip before you even tagged him. Yamazaki, you were just as bad, but you COMPLETELY ignored what I said about preserving ammo! You used seven clips to Chikiko's four; do you think you're going to be carrying that much ammo out in the field?"
"That's not fair! I was shooting way better than she was!" The lecher insisted. Junko grunted noncomittally.
"What you did was not 'shooting'. That was called 'pointing the gun in the right direction and hoping really hard.'"
"Well, it worked, didn't it? He fell down!"
Snake's shoulders slumped. "This is going to be harder than I thought." He looked up, and crossed his arms over his chest. "All right, you two, that's enough. I'm requiring that both of you put in three hours of training on House of the Dead 4 every day so long as we're still hunting midians. Our current practice dummy looks a little worn out."
Junko groaned, seeing more of her precious "fun time" go up in smoke. Tiro said nothing, not entirely opposed to playing video games for training instead of being yelled at by the squad gun nut.

As the two officers left, Snake turned back toward the cell, looking thoughtfully at the twitching bullet-ridden body on the floor.
Then he entered a code on the keypad terminal next to him.
A loud creaking noise alerted the dazed and wounded vampire on the floor that the secondary gate was opening, removing the final barrier between his armored metal cell and the network of hallways that eventually led to the surface.
Garo tensed as he considered the possibilities. Though he had lost track of time, his body felt generally sluggish, meaning that it was daylight outside, even if no sunlight could touch him in the basement vaults. This would greatly impede his ability to escape the HQ, even assuming he could make it out of the containment area while weakened. Still, a slim chance was better than no chance...

Snake calmly walked up to the fallen vampire, noting that he had stopped twitching. 'Hmm... he also doesn't seem to be bleeding very profusely... then again, he doesn't have much in the way of blood pressure.'
"You can get up now. I KNOW that wasn't enough to put you down; those bullets were way too small, and hit all the wrong places."
In a blur of motion, Garo twisted around, his arm clawing for the American's neck. He had learned from last time; aim for the vital areas and go for the quick kill.
Blam! Snake's pistol shot ripped through the midian's elbow joint, robbing that arm of the leverage necessary to follow through with the strike as Snake grabbed the offending wrist with his free hand.
Tossing the spasming limb away, Snake turned slightly and stepped on the limp hand, smirking as the vampire winced.
"Not looking so high-and-mighty now. Feel free to try with your other arm too; I've got plenty of bullets."
Garo looked up into the casual, smiling face of the American, and his body began to tremble involutarily.
'Wh... What is this? Something is very wrong, here!' The feeling of terror that overwhelmed him felt quite different from his experience with the emotion as a human, since his heart didn't pound at all and there was no adrenaline surge, but the general feeling was unmistakable. The feeling of helplessness, the unconscious paralysis of his muscles as his sense of self-preservation burned itself out and robbed him of his strength to resist... Garo could remember with crystal clarity the last time he had felt this way.
It was three years ago, when an older blonde woman had seduced him into her car before revealing her long, inhuman fangs.
Vampires were not supposed to feel terror. They knew general fear, insofar as they had a healthy respect for those with the power or knowledge to hurt and/or destroy them, but the suffocating dread he experienced as the human smirked down at him was nothing that an undead man should experience. The ability to inspire this terror in others was the undead's greatest advantage, and the only thing that truly kept them from being fully exterminated by the living populace that was aware of them.
'I've made a very, very grave mistake,' Garo thought as Snake twisted his foot on his hand. The pain was little more than an irritation, and hardly a distraction from the true source of his fear. 'This one... is different from the girl, or that assassin. Just who ARE these people?'
"Now, I just have one teensy little question for you. It's nothing big or really important. Just sort of a personal curiosity." Snake kept grinning as he leaned down, his pistol hanging loosely in his grip.
Garo whimpered. Snake's neck was exposed, lined up perfectly within biting range. His pistol wasn't aimed at any sort of key point on the vampire's body, and the midian's other arm was still completely functional.
"What... What is it?" Garo squeaked out, helpless, and knowing that he would have been releasing his bowels had his body retained such nervous reactions with its conversion to undeath. 'He came in here and did this to satisfy 'personal curiosity'?'
The American cocked his head to the side. "Tell me... where does a vampire find suitable virgins in this day and age?"
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Asuka nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, that is pretty weird. And these have been keeping you up?"
Ranma shook his head. "Naw, I'm still asleep, but it's like I wasn't. I'm still tired when I wake up."
The blue-haired woman crossed her legs as she leaned back, descending deep into thought. "Have you talked to Chikiko about this?"
Ranma flushed slightly and looked back and forth quickly, as if Asuka's mentioning the name would summon the redhead. "Well, I've tried, but..." He lowered his voice. "Every time I ask if we can talk, she takes my hand and says that we should talk things over in the broom closet. 'For privacy,' she says. And then she tries to take my pants off. It makes it hard to talk like this, you know?"
The captain's face fell. 'I'm going to have to figure out what's wrong with her soon. She's been getting worse, and it's getting on my nerves.' "Okay, fine. We'll do this without her. I've taken my share of psychology courses." She steepled her fingers under her chin as she leaned forward again. "What seems odd to me is that the dream is so completely clear to you after you wake up. That's not normal."
She nodded to herself. "You see, sleep is your brain's way of recovering its energy by shutting off most of its functions for a time. If you're conscious enough to remember these images in high detail, then your brain's probably more active than it should be, and the fatigue is starting to catch up."
"Well, that's just peachy," Ranma grimaced. "So, any ideas about this weird queen lady? This is probably her fault."
"I can't tell you how to approach that," Asuka muttered dryly. "Though it's my policy that when dead people start talking to you, it's best not to listen to them."
"So you don't think I'm going crazy?" Ranma asked, mildly surprised.
The police captain snorted. "Ranma, please, have some faith in your leader. I've seen more shades of crazy than any pychiatric doctor. A few strange dreams, coupled with your ability to discuss them rationally, isn't enough to make me bat an eye."
"That's great, but if I'm not crazy, then that means that this stupid queen lady is really in my head trying to get my attention. That doesn't sound much better than being crazy to me," Ranma admitted.
"Well, as long as she has no leverage over your free will, I'm not worried about much other than your general health," Asuka admitted, rubbing her chin. "I don't really have any advice for dealing with her... although you can try killing her instead of just knocking her out."
Ranma blinked. He hadn't been expecting that from Asuka. "Isn't that kind of... well... wrong?"
"Why? This is a dead woman harrassing you while you sleep to complete some secret agenda of her own. Not only has she invaded your mind, but also your privacy, if she's appearing during the course of your dreams. As if that wasn't enough, her actions are beginning to affect your waking hours when you happen to have a very dangerous job that requires your full concentration and ability," by the end of her explanation, Asuka was scowling. "If the bitch wasn't already a ghost, I'd kill her myself. I can't afford to lose you to ancient spirits or fatigue, Saotome."
The pigtailed cop couldn't help but blush slightly; it was rare for Asuka to give any indication that she considered her subordinates more than a good reason for alcohol and other mind-altering substances, and though he'd be hesitant to admit it, he highly valued the woman's praise.
Not that he really thought he got enough of it, all things considered. But he respected Asuka enough that it meant something to him.
"Well... she seems nice enough to me," Ranma admitted.
Asuka decided not to remind the martial artist that he had already assaulted the specter repeatedly. "Nice or not, you shouldn't do what she says, so we should get rid of her if we can. In the meantime, I'm cutting your hours. I want you to get some extra sleep and see if it can compensate for this. We should probably elimate our practice time, since those have the least impact on our operations."
Ranma sighed. "Right, right. Anything else?"
"Actually, yes. I'll let you have the rest of the day off to start getting some extra sleep," Asuka said, rubbing her chin again. "But first, you're going to replace the broom closet doors." Her eyes narrowed. "I was wondering what happened to those."

The pigtailed man winced and then nodded before he stood up to leave Asuka's office. 'Man, the girls are always getting me into trouble. I'm starting to miss Sakura.' He frowned as he remembered that Sakura got him into trouble too, usually of the more painful and deadly kind. 'Man, I miss her. It was annoying at times, but still, I kinda like taking care of cute, timid girls constantly in need of rescue. Not that there are many of those around HERE.'
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Achoo! Pain lanced through Hotaru's skull as a sudden sneeze startled her into consciousness.
She started to raised a hand to her head and mumble about how much it hurt, when her body trembled in agony and she let her arm fall back down. Her whole damn BODY hurt. A lot.
She whimpered slightly as she tried to relax herself, and then moaned as she felt some of the pain seep away from the hot water caressing her muscles.
'Wait, hot water?'
Hotaru blinked her eyes several times, but that didn't result in much besides tiny twinges of pain as her body protested the use of all non-essential muscles. Wherever she was, it was wet, it was warm, and it was dark. The water was relatively shallow, and only covered her body up to her breasts. On that point, she was currently laying on an incline with her head near the top, and could feel a strong current tugging her backward against the slope.
She frowned as she felt the surface of the incline. Slightly grainy, but hard and smooth. Eroded rock.
Laying still once again, she went back over the sequence of events that had brought her here.
'I... I must have fallen into a cavern,' she deduced, trying her best not to panic and to think about her situation rationally. 'It makes sense that there's hot water here; this mountain has some hot springs inns. So...'
She shivered despite the warmth of the water. 'What do I do now?'

An hour later, the purple-haired girl was steady rising to her feet, glancing about at the cavern interior she found herself in.
With an hour to adjust to the lack of light, Hotaru's view of the cave had gone from pitch black to pitch black with some water in it. Apparenly there was light coming from somewhere in the cavern, because the turbulent waters below had tiny, gleaming slivers of illumination from the wildly refracted light rays that barely allowed her to determine where the water ended and everything else began.
She shuddered as she stood up, feeling several kinks in her back and a number of points in her body that were all but throbbing masses of agony. She didn't know the full extent of her injuries, since it was clear she had lost a lot of blood and her Senshi healing powers were having her drift in and out of shock, but she was weak, her head felt disturbingly light, and her left arm wasn't moving the way it was supposed to.

'I guess this is one of those times it pays to be a magical girl,' she thought to herself, pulling her henshin rod out of stuff-space and holding it up with her right hand.
One long and flashy transformation sequence later, Sailor Saturn was wobbling unsteadily in the rushing water, her left eye twitching as she tried to get the weird circles and lines that had been burned into her vision to fade. As with her mountaineering experience, Hotaru didn't do much spelunking either, or she might have known that following a long adjustment to darkness with a quick exposure to high light wouldn't have given her a good view of the cave instead of, say, temporarily blinding her.
Still, with her transformation complete, she could already feel the pain lessen from "mind-numbing" to "Damn it, why do I always have to take point," due to several sensory inhibitors installed in her Senshi form. After all, the Moon Kingdom's finest couldn't be allowed to take naps due to a little headache every now and then when fighting evil, and such conditions had been carefully accounted for.
The fact that the Senshi 'armor' protected less of her body than any of the outfits she normally wore was an oddity that she would be forever putting aside for another day; it just never seemed like the right time to question the twisted priorities of the Senshis' creators any time those priorities became relevant.
Using her glaive as a support, Saturn straightened out her back, wincing at the cracking noises that resulted. Then she gently tested her left arm, and found that whatever was wrong with it before seemed to have been corrected, for the most part.
Having faith that whatever her injuries were, her transformation would fix them without complication in time, Sailor Saturn started poking her surroundings with her polearm to try and figure out a way to the surface.
She felt a deep chill pass through her back, and chalked it up to being out of the warm water... although really, the stuffy air within the cavern was nearly as warm due to the underground springs.
'Hmmm... Okay, I can hear some sort of waterfall nearby... so is it running further downward or am I hearing the current that brought me here?'
She inadvertently found her answer as she jabbed the ground a little too hard with the Silence Glaive, trying to ascertain how far the rock extended out from her pool of water.
Apparently it wasn't far enough, as her glaive found no rock to strike as Saturn drove it downward.
Stupid rock.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" Thwack! SPLOOSH!
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"Put me down this instant! You don't know what you're doing!" Serenity screamed, struggling against the ropes that bound her.
Ranma ignored the noisy woman, and continued to carry her over his shoulder as he approached a long brick wall that stood out in the middle of the snow-covered streets. There was a single metal pole sticking up in front of it, and the wall itself was covered with bullet-holes.
"Please! You've got to listen to me! The fate of the future as we know it is at stake!"
Ranma stopped, and then rubbed his chin as he considered this. "The 'future as we know it'? What future is that?"
"The one where a scarce fraction of the Earth's population survives to establish an eternal empire of everlasting peace and harmony!" The blonde spirit said desperately.
"Pass." With that, Ranma shifted the woman slightly so that she couldn't gain as much leverage to thrash about, and continued walking toward the ominous stretch of wall.
"You can't pass! It's your destiny!" The woman insisted, struggling with even less success than before.
"If it's already fated to happen, then why do you have to come bug me about it while I'm trying to sleep?" Ranma asked, scratching his head.
"So that the other things that are equally fated to happen don't happen instead!"
Ranma was not amused as he dropped the woman down in front of the post. "That makes very little sense."
Serenity sighed in frustration. "It makes perfect sense if you've studied inverse temporal mechanics. Or even third-stage mana field theory, if you can work through the technobabble. It was a standard class for all nobles and imperial officers during the Silver Millennium."
Ranma's left eye twitched. "Lady, you're making it REAL easy to decide between listening to you and killing you off."
"You don't understand," the queen growled. "If you don't accept your destiny, the future may not come to pass!"
"Now that's just silly," Ranma said condescendingly, moving behind the woman as he tied her bonds to the post. "I may not know about temporal or mana... whatevers, but I'm pretty sure the future will definitely come to pass."
"That's not what I meant!" Serenity shouted, her patience snapping.
"Whatever. Crazy dead chick," Ranma mumbled, tightening the knot and then walking away from the wall as he waved to something far away in the haze of fog that seemed to obscure most of the city.

The ponytailed blonde struggled unsuccessfully against her bonds, noting ruefully that Ranma had such control over the dreamscape that he had unconsciously solidified her spiritual presence and forced it to obey the physical laws he had set in place. "If you would just hear me out, then..." she stopped talking as half a dozen soldiers walked up to her through the fog... or at least, she was guessing they were soldiers. Several things about them made the prospect doubtful.
For one thing, they were all curvy, voluptuous women. Even for a queen who held a special elite guard consisting of magical female super-soldiers, this was fairly odd. For another thing, rather than fatigues or any kind of full-body uniform, they all wore form-fitting leotards with green camouflage patterns over them, along with simple boots.
Again, considering the outfits she forced her aforementioned warriors to wear, it wasn't unbelievable, but entirely noteworthy.
However, the women all moved in a standard military block formation, and they were all armed with M-16 assault rifles, so Serenity pushed aside any concerns about who they were for the more important matter of why they were here.
Ranma shook his head as one of the girls marched up to him and handed him a small silver case.
He hadn't noticed until recently, when he started remembering his dreams perfectly, but for some reason his nighttime fantasies involved far less heroic fighting and far more relaxing with unusually attractive women than he would've thought. He really couldn't imagine why this might be. It wasn't like he was some kind of sick pervert who liked being surrounded by gorgeous, affectionate girls, after all.
Ah, the wonders of a viciously suppressed libido. Sadly, Junko never did stop trying to get into his pants long enough to really listen to any of those particular stories about his adolescent years.
Stepping up to the bound woman, Ranma opened the silver case and removed a cigarette. "Here ya go. Your last smoke."
Serenity stared at the paper cylinder in disgust. "I don't smoke."
"I don't really see what that has to do with anything," he said, poking the cigarette into her lips and holding it as he lit the end with a spark of ki, "this is how they always do it in the movies."
"The lives of the Senshi are at stake, here," the spirit insisted around the cigarette. "Without your help, Crystal Tokyo may never come to be!"
"I'll keep that in mind," Ranma replied lazily, turning his head away to keep from inhaling the tobacco smoke.
"You're not even listening!" Serenity shouted angrily. She would have spit out the lit cigarette in the process of her yelling, but Ranma was holding it firmly. "You have no idea what's Cough! at stake Cough! here! It's Cough! Hack!"
Ranma nodded as she finally tore her head away and began coughing her lungs out. "Well, she's done smoking. Aim!" He walked away as the squadron of women soldiers raised their rifles.
"Wait! Cough! Usagi's counting on you! Hack!" Serenity grimaced; she had been hoping not to have to reveal too many details and expose the full extent of her knowledge. Not that it would affect anything either way, but as a spirit, she was supposed to be aloof and mysterious.
Ranma had his hand up in the air, ready to release the signal that would result in the queen's demise. "Huh? Usagi? I thought you said this was about the Sailor Senshi."
'Oh, what the hell. He's going to find out soon anyway.' "Usagi is Sailor Moon. If you help her, then you can help Usagi!"
Ranma blinked, his arm still held in the air. Helping Usagi sounded fine to him, despite Asuka's reservations about following commands from the deceased. In fact, he had been planning on doing that anyway, seeing how the girl's recent introduction to wonderful world of cybernetic enhancement probably meant she was entangled with high-tech terrorist schemes. "Sure, no problem." Then he lowered his arm. "FIRE!!"
"WAIT! THAT'S NOT ALL I-" Blam! Blam! Ratta-tatta-tatta-tat!

Ranma turned away from the brutal scene behind him, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as the apparent leader of the all-female firing squad approached him.
"If Usagi is Sailor Moon... and the Freedom's Angels turned Usagi into a cyborg... then that means..."
His eyes widened, and the woman at his side grew concerned. "What does it mean, Commander?"
"I have no idea," Ranma admitted, shrugging. "I didn't even know who Sailor Moon was, though I guess she must be one of these Senshi chicks that Asuka was telling me about."
Behind him, the various female soldiers all finished reloading their weapons, and then turned and stood at attention.
Ranma nodded to them and then gripped one hand into a fist. "All right, we're all done here. Now let's go out there and win this war!"
The woman at his side blinked. "What war, Commander?"
"Isn't there some kind of huge battle going on outside the city?" Ranma asked, frowning when the squad leader shook her head. "Then there must be some kind of rebellion in progress, right?" Again she shook her head. "A terrorist attack?" Another shake. "A random mugging?"
The scantily clad soldier turned around, looked left, and then looked right. Turning back to Ranma, she shrugged apologetically.
"Well, then what the hell am I supposed to do until I wake up?" Ranma complained, looking quite upset that there would be no violence in the near future.
"Ooh! I know! There's a mixed bath house still open down the street!" One of the soldiers said happily, causing the other gun-toting women to squeal girlishly in excitement.
"YAY!! Bath house party! Bath house party!"
Ranma sighed in frustration, reluctantly accepting that he'd spend his night surrounded by naked girls instead of beating up strangers. 'What a gyp. I hope that stupid queen lady's gone for good, I wanna go back to my normal dreams.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Usagi carried Luna in her arms, humming a tune happily to herself, the moon cat silently (for once) reflected upon her charge.
She could appreciate the fact that Usagi had recovered from her heartbreak and humiliation, she really could. After all, Luna gave her almost as little credit as Rei. She was pleasantly surprised to see the ponytailed girl rebound so completely, get over her issues - which were actually quite serious, for a change - and accept being a cyborg until they could find a way to reverse the process.
But it was just too damn weird to see her enjoy it as well.
"Usagi, we need to talk," Luna murmured as she checked the street around them. The sidewalks were pretty bare of people at this time in the afternoon, but extra caution never hurt.
Usagi nodded her head.
Luna was about to launch into her spiel, but a moment of hesitation allowed her to notice that Usagi was still nodding her head repeatedly, and without making eye contact with her.
Frowning, Luna extended her claws and raked Usagi's arm a bit.
There was no response, as the cat's feeble claws failed to cut Usagi's polymer dermal armor to aggravate the pain nerves below.

Usagi felt Luna rub up against her arm as she walked along the street, and started to pet her as she continued to hum the same annoying tune she had been humming ever since she left her dorm room.

Luna growled and suddenly jumped onto Usagi's face, forgoing any further measures of subtlety as the girl shouted in surprise and pried her talking pet off of her. "Ack! Stop it! Okay, hold on already!"
Inserting her finger into her ear, Usagi twisted it clockwise, causing the tiny satellite dish sticking out of her left hair bun to fold itself flat and then vanish into the odango.
A few of the pedestrians that had noticed the girl being attacked by her cat shook their head at the weird direction technology was taking nowadays, what with portable devices so small they couldn't even make it out from a distance, yet still needed bulky antennaes and receivers to function.
"What's wrong?" Usagi asked, mildly annoyed that her song was interrupted.
Luna bristled as her charge held her by the scruff of her neck, as the position made it very difficult to look properly authoritative. "Usagi, it's not that I'm not happy you've taken this utter calamity so well, but... uh..." she frowned. "You're taking it... too well, really," she mumbled quietly.
"Huh? What does that mean?" The blonde cyborg asked, putting Luna back in her previous position so that it wouldn't look like she were having a conversation with her cat to the few other people on the streets.
"Well, for ONE THING, you are entirely too comfortable with it already," Luna hissed. "Don't you think walking around with a dish on your head might raise suspicions?"
Usagi blinked. "Walking around with a WHAT on my head?" She had no idea what her body did in order to process and grant her requests - Ami's explanations weren't much help - all she knew was that when she thought it would be nice to listen to some music, music started playing.
"This is exactly what I'm talking about! You're losing focus!" Luna snapped. "Have you and the others made any progress on finding a way to reverse this?"
Usagi shrugged helplessly. "What can we do? Rei-chan can't find any hint to where these Angel people might be now, and every time Ami-chan suggests we ask her cousin, everyone else freaks out." This wasn't entirely true, as Minako had started wavering on the issue, and her vote would have made the majority pro-DAPC, but none of the Inner Senshi were willing to humor the girl's creepy infatuation with that American cop.
"Still, I don't think you're giving this situation the concern it deserves!" The black moon cat chided.
Usagi sighed. It was annoying when Luna was like this, criticizing her behavior without providing any constructive support. "Well, then what should I do? Cry about it?"
Luna desperately resisted the sarcastic urges that followed that statement, lest her charge do as suggested and break down into a state of bawling. The advisor had worked so hard and for so long, after all, and she'd never forgive herself if she ruined everything right when it appeared that Usagi was making some progress against her whiny nature.
"Well... YOU don't have any problem with that DCPS or whatever, right?" Luna asked carefully, nodding when Usagi shook her head. "Then go down there yourself and find out where the terrorists are."
"Without the others?" The ponytailed girl asked. "Rei really doesn't want to get involved with those people."
Luna forwent biting Usagi for her stupidity, since it seemed like Usagi was now tough enough to suffer such minor discomfort without noticing.
"You're the leader! And the one who has a stake in this mission besides! You don't need the others' permission!" The moon cat snapped.
Usagi stopped and scratched her head as she considered that.
This freaked Luna out quite a bit, since both her arms were currently helping support the feline advisor.
"Hey, yeah! You're right!" Usagi said cheerfully as the mechanical servo arm used to scratch her head contemplatively retracted itself and settled back alongside her shoulderblade.
Pedestrians who had frozen in place at the sight of a schoolgirl with a robot arm coming out of her back shook their heads to dispel the strange and sudden hallucination, and were rewarded by the sight of that same girl possessing only two arms, both of them very human in appearance. They moved on in a hurry, eager to get out of the area while things remained theoretically normal.
"Stop that! Stop it with the gadgets!" Luna hissed as Usagi began to walk faster.
"What are you talking about?" Usagi said, obviously annoyed. "I'm not using any gadgets. Now hush, I'm trying to think." Idly flicking her wrist and popping a Pez into her mouth, Usagi continued to walk down the street, not noticing as the few other pedestrians on her side of the street quickly crossed to the other side in order to give her a suitable berth.

'Hmmm... okay... the problem is, I don't know where the DAPC station is,' Usagi decided in her head. Sure, she had been there before, but on the way there she had been transported in the rear of a police vehicle, and on the way out she had been led through the streets by Sailor Pluto.
'Wait, Ami-chan went there a last week! I can-' her train of thought hit a penny and tumbled over the side of the rails as the bright green text she was becoming so familiar with scrolled across her field of vision.
[Scanning mode engaged. Search query engaged. Accessing local databanks...]
The blonde cyborg blinked in surprise, and then grinned as she realized that yet again her new gadgets were proving more useful than they were problematic.
Luna stared in horror before whipping her head around at the few other people wandering the streets, seeing them all hurry away while trying very hard not to look at the girl who had just sprouted metal fins atop her head.
Whimpering slightly, the moon cat turned back toward her charge, staring at the elongated silver and blue-edged oval fins that stuck almost straight out of Usagi's head with a slight backwards tilt.
'Bunny ears. She has robot bunny ears,' Luna thought to herself as her face darkened. 'Why? Why me? I try so hard, and do so much, and yet this crap always happens to my Senshi. It's not fair.' She decided then and there that she was going to have a serious talk to Artemis about trading girls; Minako had gone from a super-hormonal ditz to a respectable warrior of love and justice (though Luna admitted that she hadn't lost the hormones or the foolishness) so easily, and without the childish tantrums, to say nothing of the abductions of her male interests and recently herself. It just wasn't fair, and damn it, it was time her male counterpart had to put up with this sort of thing.
Usagi, who was totally unaware that her appearance had taken a step closer to her namesake, watched patiently as various text indicators floated before her eyes.
[Resources located... contacting http server...]
[Information databank identified: Internet. Altering primary and secondary resource protocols to facilitate live data stream.]
"I have wireless internet?" Usagi mumbled, causing Luna to wince again. "Coooool..."
[Polling local databank archives. Search query = DAPC.]
Usagi frowned as she finally moved off the street to sit down on a bench next to the sidewalk, having noticed that she was just standing still out in the open as she stared off into space. 'Probably best to use the full name... what was it?'
[Search query expanded = Department of Abominable... -error- Albino -error- Abnormal Phe... -error- Phenomenal -error- Pheremone -not even close- Phenol -error- Phenomenae Containment.]
Usagi sighed as she finally got it right, and awaited results.
[Please select relevant data links: Property claims against DAPC. Public damage caused by DAPC. DAPC implicated in murder of Senator's son. DAPC claims Senator's son will not be missed. DAPC proven right; Sgt. Yujikata forgotten within twenty-four-hour period. DAPC tactical analysis. DAPC staff and history. DAPC claims responsibility for sentient glue-based life-form. DAPC operations...]
Quickly getting tired of seeing random articles concerning her search topic, she squinted her eyes shut in concentration as she focused on the DAPC building in particular.
Her cortex implants quickly picked up her request and narrowed the search.
[DAPC headquarters facility located. Triangulating ground-level urban trajectory... complete. Proceed west 0.4 kilometers and turn left.]

"Which way is west?" Usagi said suddenly as she opened her eyes and stood up, startling the nerve-wracked feline in her arms.
It didn't help Luna any when she saw her charge nod immediately after asking the question, and then turn in the proper direction before proceeding at a fast walk.
"Usagi," Luna said shakily, truly afraid at this point that the ponytailed girl was beyond the point at which she could help, "please do something about your ears."
Seeing the girl tug on her earlobes uncertainly only darkened Luna's spirits further; indeed, Usagi was way too comfortable and way too ignorant of her new cybernetic body.
"What's wrong with my ears?" The blonde cyborg asked, frowning. "Robot voice in my head, do you know what she's talking about?"
This was quite enough for Luna, who twisted out of Usagi's arms and leapt onto the sidewalk, causing the blonde to stumble to a halt in surprise, and then fall over as a result, proving that even the most technologically advanced tools and regulators of the period couldn't save Usagi's sense of balance.
While Luna found it familiar and oddly comforting to see the cybernetic girl fall flat on her face and moan pitifully, it wasn't nearly enough to encourage her to continue subjecting her mind to this new madness. "The hell with this, you don't need ME to go with you. I'm getting out of here," she mumbled as she took off down the sidewalk at full kitty speed, eventually jumping atop a fence and dashing out of sight.
"Luna! Hey! You meanie!" Usagi shouted, feeling quite miffed that she was left all alone again, and wondering what had prompted the feline's departure.
Rubbing her head, the blonde cyborg started to pick herself up off the ground.
Thud! She fell over again from the surprise as her hand hit something that definitely didn't belong there, and as she shifted into a sitting position, she slowly pieced together what Luna was talking about.
"Oops. I guess she was talking about these. I wonder why she called them ears, though?" Without being able to see them, she really couldn't fathom the idea, given that they weren't shaped anything like her ears.
She gave a quick look around, blushing as she realized that there were still a few other people around. Those people inevitably gave her strange looks when they walked across the opposite sidewalk, and seemed to be avoiding her side of the street.

'I should probably get rid of these-' Usagi thought to herself when the text reappeared, this time a glaring red instead of a soft green.
[Warning! Chronometric particle burst detected! Phasic teleport in progress!]
Usagi blinked, totally confused by the explanation. "Huh? What does that mean?" Her assistant text quickly returned in its former color.
[Searching databanks... "Chronometric particle," a unique phasic energy spark created by rapid revolutions of tachyon particles within a high-energy accelerator. First discovered by professor Albert Einstein in his lesser-known experiments with phase theory.]
"Well, that's just great. Now I've gone from confused to migraine," Usagi mumbled bitterly.
[These particles are not naturally occurring, and indicative of activation of a chronosphere device.]
Usagi sighed. "Okay, I'll bite. What's a 'chronosphere'?" At this point people were actually turning around and going back where they came from in their efforts to avoid the obviously crazy girl with the metal bunny ears on her head.
[The chronosphere is a temporal agitator that functions as a teleportation device. First designed by Albert Einstein, the device's schematics were perfected and the device constructed by General Igov Yutchzky and Professor Yoshi Konta.]
"Okay..." Usagi mumbled irritably as she massaged her head. "So basically what you're saying... is that somebody teleported somewhere. Using some machine. Rather than, say, magical powers."
[Scanning for fluctuations in local mana wavelengths...... negative. Running full-range local scan over chronometric dispersion area.........]
As Usagi's metal sensor fins began to twitch, the man whose shop she had been kneeling in front of for a good three minutes decided that discretion was the better part of economics and flipped over the "Open" sign on his window before he began closing the blinds.
[Scans complete. Tight-beam emission sensors and several Friend-or-Foe detection keys indicate the presence of self-motivated artificial combatants. Heat scans indicate heavy weapons usage. Awaiting target registration.]
"RRRRRRGH!" Usagi suddenly gripped the sides of her head in frustration as the wordy explanations flew right over her head. "Can't you speak normal Japanese?!" She growled out.
There was a long pause as a long sequence of green dots scrolled across her field of vision.
[Robots detected. They are opening fire. Friend/Foe?]
Usagi blinked in surprise, and then frowned deeply as she thought about what she had found out. 'Minako said that they fought a bunch of robots in that junk yard where they found me... could it be the same people? If so, then we have to find them!'
Out loud, and still forgetting that she could issue these types of commands in her head, she said, "Let's say they're foe, for now. Where are they?"
[Scans indicate that enemy units are gathering around the Tokyo Center for Technology and the Arts. Scans also indicate that the center is under attack. Local forces are mobilizing a counter-attack. Estimated time until those forces arrive is twenty-two minutes.]
Without wasting any more time, Usagi pulled her communicator out of her purse and flipped it open (Luna had possessed the foresight to pack it, since it appeared the Senshi would be seeing more action).
'I'm glad I didn't get very far from the dorms. We've got to hurry!'
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Gurgle! Gulp! Groaning miserably, Sailor Pluto downed her eighth Aspirin in as many minutes as another of the myserious time-headaches struck her like a mining pick.
The guardian of time seriously considered going back to a period in which the morons who designed the Senshi transformation templates were alive such that she could give the bastards a piece of her mind; while her Senshi powers granted her incredible healing ability and pain reduction, it only helped with entirely physical wounds. In the case of her current agony, common medicine was actually the best bet.
Unfortunately, as Aspirin was a foreign chemical that had an unnatural effect upon her body, her Senshi healing powers thought it would be a great idea to flush the medicine out of her body as soon as possible, as well as "correcting" said unnatural effects posthaste.
Another spike of temporal-based agony brought the Senshi of Pluto stumbling onto the floor, and sent the bottle of pills onto the floor, spilling its precious and desperately needed contents onto the gleaming tiles of Pluto's personal bathroom.
"Forget yelling at them," Pluto mumbled in a miserable daze, "if I ever get my hands on those bastards, I'll break their damn legs."
Dragging herself back up to her feet, Pluto walked back to the Gates of Time to continue searching for the damnable cause of her twinges of agony that she just couldn't pinpoint. She just couldn't take it anymore! She had to find the cause, no matter how hard and how long she had to look! Even if it took her until the birth of Crystal f---ing Tokyo itself!
After all, in regards to the Senshis' fate and the establishment of Crystal Tokyo, all the major battles were over, and the important issues had been resolved. It wasn't like there was anything going on with any of the Senshi that she needed to know about or take care of.
Of course not. Really, at this point, what's the worst kind of trouble they could get into?
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Far away in a cavern nobody knew about, Sailor Saturn groaned in her sleep, the giant lump on her head from having brained herself during her fall having finally receded.
Turning over, she started to snore.
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"Okay, we're all here!" Sailor Mars announced as she and the four other Inners leapt down into the alley where Usagi was waiting for them.
They all immediately stopped and stared.
Usagi nodded in determination, wondering why the others were looking at her like she had grown a pair of horns, and completely forgetting that she had sprouted a pair of sensor fins. "Okay! We have to hurry; the police and Core will be there in about seventeen minutes!"
Sailor Mercury shook her head, wondering off-hand if maybe the Senshi tranformation didn't do as good a job in sobering her up as she had earlier theorized. "Uh... okay, but... how do you know?"
The blonde cyborg suddenly frowned. "I was hoping you could help me figure that out."
Sailor Jupiter was the second fastest to shake off her leader's new peripherals, though she had to viciously crush her urge to laugh. "Hurry up and transform! If we catch them off-guard, maybe we can capture their leader and squeeze him for information!"
Usagi nodded seriously, raising her brooch in the air. "Moon Eternal power, make up!"
"........." There was a certain amount of dread and tension in the air as Usagi continued to hold up her transformation item in the air above her... to absolutely no effect.
"This is very, very bad, isn't it?" Sailor Venus asked nervously.
Just as everyone was about to round on Mercury and start bombarding the team's new alcoholic with unanswerable questions, Usagi let out a sudden squeak, keeping their attention on her for another moment.
[Combat mode initialized. Tactical level Alpha engaged.]
FSSSSSSHOOOOOOOM! A glowing circle of light flickered into existence over Usagi's head, and then slowly moved downward around her body as it rotated. Strange, precise patterns of energy weaved through the air around her as the circle swept over the cyborg's skin, and once it had dropped below her neck, the point at which the circle bisected her body flared brilliantly, leaving behind a dull black bodysuit in leiu of the girl's street clothes.
After approximately fifteen seconds, the circle of light reached the bottom of Usagi's feet, and flickered out of existence.
The others gaped, though their surprise stemmed far more from the fact that Usagi's transformation was different than from the transformation itself.
Usagi was now dressed in a slight variation from the simple bodysuit she was in when she awoke in Konta's lab; it looked very much like a diving wetsuit, except that there was no zipper and that there were small, angular plastic pads over her shoulders and elbows. The only other clothes she wore was a pair of jet black boots without laces and some fingerless gloves with padded knuckles.
"Uhm... wow... doesn't quite feel the same..." Usagi mumbled abashedly as she rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment.
Sailor Venus was the first to regain speech, and she scowled. "No fair! Her costume's sexier than ours!"
Crash! Mars, Jupiter, and Mercury all tasted asphalt, which didn't seem nearly as bad after their last Senshi endeavor in the junk yard.
Usagi looked down and considered Venus' statement. "You really think so? This one doesn't show off my legs, though."
Sailor Venus just fumed silently. It had been a silent gripe for a while, but ever since she had passed her sixteenth birthday, she had really thought much less of the questionable Senshi attire, which was notable not only for the short skirt, but the incredibly girly ribbons and bows, the sparkling gems, and the long, knee-high boots. Which was fine and (kind of) appropriate when she was an adolescent, but as she got older and her body matured, she had wished for an outfit that was sexy rather than cute, and frankly, Usagi's new battle suit had the curve-hugging thing in spades, while retaining an unmistakable simplicity that made her look more like a superheroine and less like jailbait.
Of course, there WAS a significant sector of their fan base who found their outfits to have plenty of sex appeal, but then, those people were all disgusting pedophiles who deserve a Love Me Chain across the neck.
You know who you are.
"Uh... now really isn't the time to be concerned with that," Mercury began uncertainly, before Mars cut her off.
"Yeah, who cares what's sexier? How come she gets combat boots when the rest of us have to fight evil in heels?" The raven-haired Senshi complained, divulging her own beef with the traditional Senshi dress code.
"I believe Mercury was referring to the fact that, apparently, we're on a time limit here?" Jupiter said pointedly.

Reluctantly, the Senshi of Venus and Mars nodded and sprinted with the others toward their destination, although the two continued casting jealous glares at their leader.
"Say, Jupiter?" Mercury said hesitantly, putting on some extra steam as she leapt up to the rooftops alongside the Thunder Senshi. "Did we ever decide on that thing? You know, about how we handle it if humans start shooting at us?"
Sailor Jupiter frowned, then grimaced. "Nope. We sure didn't."
"Huh. We really should have," Mercury said noncommitally, which sure as hell didn't describe her feelings on the matter. "This is going to end badly, huh?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure it will," Jupiter admitted. "Of course, it's just as likely to be from Sailor Moon screwing up her new abilities than from us getting shot."
The genius Senshi sighed. Some days it just didn't pay to sober up.
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The head researcher at the Tokyo Center for Technology and the Arts had been in very high spirits when he had come into work that morning.
And why not? As it had turned out, a few days previous some of his workers had been given permission to peruse some scrap heap around a Freedom's Angels military lab, and search the massive piles of garbage for anything interesting.
Naturally, they had jumped at the chance to root around in trash to find FA equipment; the terrorist scourge that plagued Japan had access to unbelievable technologies, most of which was hoarded by Core's own private military research division before any of it could be analyzed by "lesser" organizations. Even in the case of the military lab, the lab itself was completely ransacked by the military scientists, and they had probably only let the Tokyo Center's men in on the remains because they didn't feel like digging through the scrap.
Despite this, they had found numerous amazing pieces of combat technology in that scrap heap, many of them only partially obliterated. While some of the robots and androids they found were obviously disabled during the course of the battle that took place there, others appeared to have been decommissioned for other reasons, and sent to the scrap heap more or less intact.
The real find, however, the GEM that had made his entire career of being stepped over and disregarded worth it - up until this very moment, at least - was finding an entirely new type of robotic defense drone that had been, against all odds considering those involved, almost entirely undamaged.
He could still remember the feeling of elation when he saw the device, which appeared to be some sort of tentacle-armed defense drone with a baffling number of energy weapons.
He could remember a much stronger feeling of dread and foreboding when the terrorist general arrived, who appeared to be some sort of Russian cyborg with a an electric claw for a hand. Then again, that had been two minutes ago.

Shwak! A fan of blood sprayed over a nearby display case as Igov slashed the last of the security guards across the chest, sending the man flying into the side before he hit the wall and crumpled to the floor.
The general snorted, feeling some small regret at killing the foolish men. They weren't even armed; that last one had actually tried to spray Igov in the face with pepper spray.
"There is reason why most devices of this nature brought to military complex," the cyborg mumbled conversationally as he stomped toward the researchers huddled together at the end of the hall, his heavy footfalls echoing loudly and making his presence even more intimidating.
The head researcher trembled as he stepped forward slightly. "Y-Yes... it was, well, actually a bit of a fluke. I'm sure it would have been taken to Core's special facilities h-had they known about it..." he trailed off with a whimper as the Russian reached him, stopping just a foot away as he glared down through the blood-red lens of his sensor eye. "Uhm... so, do you need any help carrying it out, or...?"
Igov snorted, causing the scientist to flinch back. "No. Igov come prepared," he said firmly in his slightly broken Japanese, gesturing forward with his hand.
Back near the entrance of the building, a small squad of hulking cyborgs stepped forward at the command, heading toward the back of the room with their rifles mounted on their hips. Behind them, a single muscular, tattooed man with goggles and a machine gun stepped up beside the Russian.
"What're we gonna do about these scum?" The terrorist asked while grinning, his weapon at the ready.
Igov frowned. "We do nothing. To kill these people is waste of ammunition." He idly removed an oily cloth from the pocket of his trench coat, and began to wipe the blood off of the Tesla claw on his right arm. "We take defense droid and go. Defensive perimeter will not hold long once the authorities arrive. Igov does not intend be here when they do."
He turned toward the researchers, who were just trying to look unobtrusive and harmless now that they knew they would not be harmed. "Know that Angel of Freedom know mercy, and know compassion, friends!"
With a grim smile, he whipped a cigarette out of his pocket and poked it in-between his lips. "Is simply not our strong point."
Bzrt! Lighting the end of the cigarette with a strand of electricity, Igov turned on his heel and walked back toward the entrance, moving only slightly to avoid the scattered corpses of the security guards and the puddles of spilled blood.
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Igov blew out a thick plume of smoke as he exited the building, and immediately began scanning the communication channels.
"Hmmm... Core will arrive in ten minute," the Russian mumbled, watching as his cyborg soldiers formed a loose perimeter around the building entrance, while they were a bit more clustered next to the eighteen-wheeler that had parked on the center's front steps and was awaiting its cargo. "Very fortunate droid not taken to Core facility; this has been good day for Igov."
The terrorist at his side nodded as kept careful watch over the streets. There were no pedestrians about, as they had opened fire on the surrounding area immediately after disembarking, and caused enough damage right away to get their point across. Smoldering wreckage that had once been cars littered the streets around the center, pouring streams of smoke into the air and warning from a considerable distance that those who wished to live should mind their own business and turn away.
"And what about the DAPC?" The man asked, suddenly sounding far more subdued.
Igov shook his head. "They have not been contacted. Is unlikely they will be. Lightning strike on government building is not jurisdiction of DA officers. All goes according to plan."
Of course, he should have known better than to utter that last sentence. For if there was one thing that the universe despised more than a vaccuum, it was a simple, effective plan that seemed to be working flawlessly.

"Hold it right there!" Usagi yelled as she pointed at the two men near the building's entrance from the roof of the storage facility opposite.
Immediately the terrorist and various cyborgs all looked up to stare at her, and she continued with her usual evil-fighting routine.
"Laboratories are places for inventing the material conveniences of tomorrow! For your heartless attack upon these helpless scientists, you will not be forgiven! I am the pretty soldier Sailor Moon, and in the name of the moon, I will punish you!"
As the other four Senshi began to name themselves, the man standing next to Igov scratched his head. "Is that really Sailor Moon? Doesn't look like her outfit... doesn't even match the others... and... when'd she get rabbit ears?" That wasn't the only thing wrong with the current scenario, either. For one thing, it was extremely rare, especially in recent times, for the Sailor Senshi to attack human criminals rather than be seen fighting inhuman monsters (he conveniently forgot that the bulk of his attack force was in fact reanimated cyborgs). For another thing, the second blonde who actually was wearing the traditional seifuku wasn't moving along with her part of their introduction, instead holding a large sign above her head mentioning advertising space.

Igov didn't really know what his subordinate was mumbling about; he had not heard of Sailor Moon, nor was he aware that parts of Tokyo were subject to patrol by demon hunters.
Whatever else he thought of the strange women yelling at him from high above, he thought it was very nice of them to announce their presence to him and then remain absolutely still atop an area with absolutely no cover while talking instead of attacking or taking up some sort of tactical position. It was a nice change from his usual enemies, who had the irritating tendency to appear before him with guns already blazing, loved to hide so that they wouldn't get shot, and sometimes didn't announce their presence at all until they had already placed explosives in key areas.
That really sucked. Those bombs hurt.
Igov decided that he could definitely get used to fighting these kinds of battles as he finished triangulating the ballistic arc of his artillery units and sent the necessary commands. It was rare he ever faced people that valued style over strategy. Of course, that was because those people rarely lived long.
He sighed somewhat regretfully as the Senshis' speeches wound down. He was going to miss these girls.

Usagi frowned impatiently as she waited for Sailor Venus to say her part, and then spared a glance at the other blonde Senshi.
She blinked in surprise once she saw the sign. 'Oh. Minako's STILL looking for a sponsor? Oh well.'
Turning back to the matter at hand, she was about to begin her attack sequence, when suddenly a large, bright red exclamation mark flashed repeatedly on the right side of her field of vision.
'Huh? I wonder what that's all about... and what's that whistling noise?'
KRA-KROOOOM!! BOOM! KABOOM!!
The Senshi screamed in surprise as the building they were standing on suddenly burst outward, billowing jets of flame and hurling chunks of fiery debris outward onto the street as a result of the sudden barrage it was subjected to.
This was very bad news for the demon hunters perched on top of the building, who didn't have any time to jump clear before the floor underneath them shattered and buckled.

The terrorist backed away and waved a hand in front of his face as a wave of dust and debris billowed out from the trembling wreckage that used to be the east storage facility. "Man... that was pretty easy." He was slightly disppointed at the prospect; he had been quite a bit of a Sailor Senshi fan back when he had dropped out of college, though he certainly hadn't been nearly so big on the "justice" thing.
Igov's artificial eye flared brightly. "They are still alive. And Igov suspect they still fight, as well." He turned toward the non-cyborg. "Seven minutes left before reinforcements come. Take droid and escape with truck. Igov will take care of this."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Owwww..." Usagi whined as pushed away a huge section of concrete that was pinning her legs down, causing the massive chunk of rubbled to bounce up on one edge, and then slowly tip away from her.
"AAUGH!" Crash!
Usagi blanched. "Oops! Sorry Mercury!"
Sailor Mars groaned as she got up unsteadily, digging her legs out of the rubble that had partially buried her. "Maybe we should be more careful about letting the enemy get the first shot..."
As Usagi watched Jupiter attempt to pull Mercury free from under the slate of concrete that had been dropped on her, the familiar green text appeared, supplying her damage report.
[Trauma classification: medium-level concussive damage incurred. Minor structural damage indicated. Total systems down: 0. Kinetic dampeners functioning at 61%. Total damage: negligible.] All along her body, small gashes and tears in her combat suit glowed yellow and then shrank. Within seconds, her uniform was completely repaired.
Usagi disregarded the damage report, being unable to understand most of it. Looking around, she felt certain that she should be coughing as she realized that a thick cloud of dust and ash was sitting over the wreckage of the building, obscuring the surroundings from view. The dust was settling quickly, however, and the blonde cyborg was wondering if perhaps they should be moving away before this area spontaneously combusted again.
BRZZAAAK! "EAAAYAAAH!!" Mars suddenly screamed in pain a bolt of lightning struck her in the chest from beyond the dissipating wall of dust, curling around her form and sending the raven-haired Senshi to her knees.

"Mars! Are you okay?" Usagi grit her teeth as she tried to figure out where the energy bolt had come from, and felt her heart pound faster as she realized that their current situation had slipped completely out of their control.
As she squinted to try and see better into the cloud, Usagi's vision suddenly went black, only to return a moment later.
She blinked in surprise at this, and then whirled around in confusion as she figured out that her sense of sight had changed. Rather than seeing a map of colors and lights, instead she perceived the world around her as a splash of red blobs on a field of blue. Orienting on her friends, she saw rough, female-shaped red outlines of women picking up Rei's similarly shaped and colored outline, though that particular one had flares of white that seemed to be lashing around her as she twitched.
'I... I have heat vision...' Usagi thought, looking around the area and noticing that most of the surroundings were almost indistinguishable blue blobs. 'This is SO COOL!'
BRZZAAAK! Unfortunately, she was distracted enough that she didn't remember the most immediate usage for her new trick until Ami was blasted away by a second lightning attack.
"You monster!" Usagi shouted as she oriented on the large, man-shaped red splotch that was standing on the edge of the rubble she was standing on. "Take this! SPOON TWISTY... uh... wait..."
Sailors Mars and Mercury would have slapped themselves in the forehead at hearing the exclamation and offered helpful/insulting rationale for the mistake, had they not been already reduced to spasming heaps.
Usagi frowned as she stopped her usual attack/dance moves. Or at least, she thought it was her normal attack movement. She remembered it being the same, but then, she had never really had to do the move from memory before. It just sort of came to her. "Okay, okay, wait... that's all wrong, isn't it? It should be 'Moon something something,' right? All my attacks start with moon..."
Venus and Jupiter were gaping in shock at the sight, too stunned to react even as the dust dissipated to the point where they could make out a tall, man-sized shadow through the dust.
BRZZAAAK! Igov didn't know what the girl in the wetsuit was yelling about, but decided it really didn't matter as he zapped the other blonde and sent her to the ground, twitching in pain.
"It was 'Moon something Heart Attack'! Dang it! What was that other word?" Usagi asked, scratching her head.
Sailor Jupiter couldn't believe it. 'She forgot her attack? We can forget our attacks? How? That doesn't even make sense!' Actually, upon further thought that would happen much later, it did make a degree of sense, but then, nobody among them knew how the hell their magic worked in the first place.

BRZZAAAK! Igov was starting to get seriously bored by now. The only one of these girls who was reacting at all to his assault was the blonde one with the metal rabbit ears, and so far she had done nothing other than embarrass herself. The others seemed to be less scatter-brained, but the last two had remained firmly preoccupied by the ponytailed blonde's antics. He had no idea why they would freeze up like that in the middle of a battle zone, and it irritated him slightly.
Sure, he may have been tired of getting his ass handed to him by martial artist cops and enraged zerglings, but blasting defenseless women was quite beneath him. That those seemingly defenseless women had confronted him in stupid-looking outfits and declared from the rooftops that they were going to punish him was a small comfort.
It WAS a comfort, however small, but he was still going to be quite upset if these women didn't get their skirted asses in gear and throw a punch or two.

Sailor Jupiter grit her teeth and stumbled as the Tesla bolt slammed into her, lashing across her body and searing her skin with energy levels that would have killed normal humans.
Strangely enough, that was all that happened, and the Thunder Senshi blinked in surprise as she found herself still able to move, rather than collapsing like the others.
'Wait... Thunder Senshi! Duh! I probably have lightning resistance or something!' Which wasn't quite correct, but close enough. Due to the inevitable interference caused by one having high-energy electric fields exploding all around her, some adjustments had to be made to keep the Senshi of Jupiter from being paralyzed by her own attacks.
"Don't think so, creep!" Jupiter growled, dashing forward toward the man in the billowing trench coat while charging her attack in her hand. "Sparkling wide pressure!"
Igov smirked as he watched a ball of agitated electrical energies leave her hands, spiralling toward him. 'So, these fools can fight back.'
Leaping backward with a height and distance that left Jupiter grudgingly impressed, Igov landed heavily on top of an overhang that sat over the Technology Center's entrance as her magic attack drilled into the ground, creating a thick, ashen trench through the street.
Then Igov jump forward off the overhang at the same time he began to glow a bright, gleaming white.

Usagi blinked as her vision turned back to normal, and oriented to the relatively dust-free surroundings just in time to see Igov appear in a loud, brilliant cacophany of bright lights before slamming into the surprised Jupiter with all the momentum he had possessed before his teleportation.
[Warning! Chronometric tracers indicate that primary target has chronoshift abilities!]
Usagi scowled, not really knowing what that analysis meant or why she should care. She was getting quite frustrated now, as she was coming to suspect that somehow becoming a cyborg had cut her off from her Senshi abilities.
"Oh, the heck with it! Moon tiara action!" She shouted, grabbing for the tiara around her head...
... And getting only a fistful of her own hair. She scowled even further as Sailor Mars and Mercury finally rose to their feet to try and help Jupiter, who had been engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Igov and appeared to be losing.
'Damn it! Why aren't my powers working?' She realized that if she didn't get some kind of attack off soon, the others were liable to forget about her entirely; the bad guy had already blasted every Senshi except her, and teleported right by her to get to Jupiter, so by now the ponytailed cyborg was beginning to feel the lack of (negative) attention. 'Hey! Computer in my head! Attack that guy already!'
[Cannot authorize command. AI is not permitted direct access to weapons systems.]
'What does that mean?'
[......... I cannot shoot him. You'll have to do it.]
Usagi fumed, her eye twitching as Sailor Mercury went flying over her head to land in a mess of twisted pipes. 'How do I do that?'
[AI is not configured to provide tactical solutions.]
Feeling her hands clench, Usagi's subtle control over the situation snapped. "Just give me some sort of weapon, already!"

Hearing their leader shout out suddenly, the battered Senshi all stopped and once again directed their full attention to the ponytailed blonde, despite the fact that it was probably a bad thing to do right then.
Luckily for them, Igov also stopped to see what the loud girl was doing now. This was especially lucky for Sailor Jupiter, whom the Russian had grasped by the midriff, and had been slamming repeatedly into the wall of the adjacent building when he froze.
Along Usagi's forearms, her combat suit seemed to melt away as two large, thick gray bracers bulged outward.
A moment later, the point of the bracers behind her wrists sparked brilliantly, heralding the emergence of two foot-long, triangle-shaped blue energy blades.
Igov raised an eyebrow.
Jupiter decided that this new development was more important than her own immediate peril, and finally voiced her own personal complaint with the Senshi tranformation. "Hey! How come she gets weapons and we don't?" It was something she wondered and secretly griped about ever since the Outer Senshi team had been completed, as they all got functional weapons (or in Michiru's case, a useful item).
At her outburst, the cyborg general remembered what he had just been doing.
SMASH!!
As she groaned pitifully and slid down onto the ground alongside little chunks of the wall behind her, Jupiter couldn't help but feel this wouldn't have happened to her if someone would just give HER a damn sword.
The other Senshi winced as they saw the Russian dispatch their team powerhouse; despite Jupiter's training, she hadn't been in real combat for a while, and the cybernetic man seemed to shrug off her blows while crushing her with his.
Quickly regrouping around their leader, Mars, Mercury, and Venus all took a moment to dust themselves off while desperately hoping that Usagi had gotten her act together.
"All right, fiend!" The blonde cyborg said happily, jabbing her left energy blade in the Russian's direction and grinning at hearing it snap and sizzle in the air. "Now I'm serious! Prepare yourself!"
Igov again raised an eyebrow, and decided to humor the poor girl that was yet again giving him every opening in the world to destroy her now. "Is very nice to allow Igov time to prepare," he said with a bemused smile. "Authorities will arrive less than two minutes. Igov retreat for now."
Usagi blinked in surprise, forgetting that they had been on a time limit. "Hey! Wait! We can't let you go! We have questions for you!" She waved her arms in the air threateningly, which actually ended up looking quite comical as the energy blades hisses and crackled against the air friction.
"Questions... hmmm..." The Russian smirked. "Igov cannot stay. If you want... questions answered, meet Igov in Yosumatsu city park immediately." Seeing the girls behind the bunny-eared one begin to charge up energy attacks, Igov set the coordinates for his personal chronosphere and sent a silent command to his nearby cyborg corps. "Hurry."
SSSSHOOOOOOM!
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Usagi growled in irritation as their target vanished in a flash of blue and white light, and moved her hand to scratch behind her head.
A moment later she was on the ground shouting in pain as the sizzling scar on her cheek slowly cooled off; she had been quick to forget that her new weapons were actually attached to her arms.
As Mars and Venus tried to calm down their flailing leader in order to keep her from injuring herself further, Mercury staggered up to where Jupiter was trying to haul herself up off the ground.
"Are you all right? We have to get out of here as soon as possible." Mercury could already hear the incoming police sirens, and had no desire to be surrounded while stuck in a pile of rubble. Recent events had proven that even the Senshi weren't above common law, and she had no desire to find herself on the inside of a jail cell once again.
Jupiter shook her head as she allowed the genius Senshi to hoist her up. "Yeah, I'll be okay. Nothing broken that won't grow back..." 'DAMN that guy was strong! Felt like a freight train hit me...'
Mercury took one of Jupiter's arms and pulled it over her shoulders, helping the taller girl up the side of the wreckage where the others were.

"OW!! GODDAMN IT, MOON!!" Sailor Mars screamed as she grabbed her thigh in pain, a new, searing black stripe decorating her fair, creamy skin.
Realizing that she had inadvertently slashed her friend, Usagi immediately "eeped" and started to cry, her wrist blades suddenly deactivating. "WAAAAAH! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to! I promise! Please don't hurt me!"
Mars growled and grabbed the cyborg by one of her bunny ears/sensor arrays, hauling her to her feet as the blonde yelped timidly. "We've gotta get outta here! Get your metal ass in gear already!" Without waiting for their leader to regain her balance, Mars took off, quickly reaching the peak of the rubble and then leaping to the adjacent building (weakened though it was from the sudden addition of Sailor Jupiter to its superstructure).
Usagi was about to follow as Venus took off after the fire Senshi, when she noticed Mercury dragging a weary-looking Jupiter up to her.
"Jupiter, are you going to be able to keep up?" Usagi asked seriously, doubting they had much of a chance if they had to drop their best fighter off before meeting this new villain.
The ponytailed girl began to nod, but then Mercury shook her head as her visor completed its hasty scans. "She can't jump anywhere; her left leg has been fractured. Her Senshi healing powers are all that's keeping the bones set right now."
Usagi frowned deeply, and her sensor fins twitched. Besides taking to the rooftops, there was no other way to get away that didn't involve barreling through the authorities. She wouldn't have minded so much if it was the DAPC, since they had parted on fairly good terms, but the computer in her head was telling her it was some group called Core instead, and she had a feeling she didn't want to deal with them. "Well, I can carry her, then."
Both Mercury and Jupiter were quite surprised when Usagi, their frail and lazy leader, stepped up next to Jupiter, hooked one arm under her knees, and then swung the taller girl up into her arms bridal style.
Mercury was simply stunned that Usagi had managed it so easily. Jupiter was too, but this was compounded by the fact that she was quite embarrassed to have a smaller woman holding her like this.
"Well... okay. That's good... but can you jump like that?" Sailor Mercury asked, looking over Usagi's shoulders and wincing at the sight of armed men in heavy armor slowly advancing on the Technology Center.
Usagi seemed to consider this seriously for a moment.
Ker-chunk! In response, two fins burst out from under her shoulderblades, and then each one split as a small cylinder with an engine nozzle on the end poked out between the plates of each fin.
"Oh. Right. The rocket boosters," Mercury mumbled, having forgotten that she alone had any kind of grasp on the kinds of devices Usagi possessed.
This fully explained the look of surprise on Usagi's face, and the look of dread and dismay on Makoto's.
"I have ROCKET BOOSTERS?!"
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Mars frowned pensively as she looked back toward the thin streams of smoke that marked the Senshis' last battlefield. "What's taking them so long? Meatball head wasn't having any trouble keeping up when we were headed down there in the first place!"
Sailor Venus wrung her hands nervously. "You don't think Jupiter was injured, do you? That tall guy creamed her pretty good."
"Aw, crap," the Fire Senshi mumbled. She hadn't thought of that. "Next time the city votes on police funding, I'm voting no. I don't like this whole 'quick response' B.S. they have going on now," the raven-haired girl complained.
Venus sweatdropped, then blinked in surprise as she saw a flare of light shoot up from below the rooftops, spiralling around the plumes of smoke. "Hey, what's that?"
Mars crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head to one side as she watched the small, glimmering light zip back and forth uncertainly before taking off in their direction.
A distant blue spot jumped onto the roof a moment later, and began making its own way toward them.
The blue dot was Sailor Mercury, Mars quickly figured out. But what was that bright light?
Venus winced, and began to step back, as if preparing to flee. "Uh... is someone shooting a missile at us?"
Mars squinted her eyes as she stared harder at the light, which had stopped its random zig-zagging and was now heading straight for them.
Her eyebrow twitched. "No, that's not a missile."
"Oh. That's good!" The Senshi of Love said, having come under heavy fire during their endeavor in the junk yard, and having no desire to deal with modern explosives ever again (and THIS is the woman who wants to date Snake? Oi).
Mars twitched again. "No. No, it's not."
Venus stared at the raven-haired Senshi, waiting for her to elaborate, and growing more confused when she did not.
She was about to question Sailor Mars, when a pair of loud, howling voices reached her ears, and she quickly figured it out on her own.
"WHOOOOOAAAAAAH!!"
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!"
WOOOSH! Venus and Mar's hair billowed out behind them as Usagi and Jupiter flew by much faster and much closer to the ground than anyone in their right mind would deem safe.
"I kind of imagined that things would get BETTER as Usagi learned more about being half robot," Mars mumbled, more to herself than to the blonde next to her trying to keep her skirt down against the wind (Rei recognized such an attempt as futile, and as such didn't even bother; it wasn't like the skirt covered much when it was down, anyway).
WHAM!!
Venus winced and immediatley ran toward the cloud of settling dust that had appeared behind them.
Mars stayed put and faced straight forward, lost in a sudden, delightful fantasy about how wonderful it would be if the founding of Crystal Tokyo purged the blonde gene as well as evil and darkness. 'I'll have to ask Ami about the possibilities later.'

"This hurts..." Usagi whined, lying on her back at the end of a ten-foot trench that her body had dug through the ground.
Opposite the stretch of damaged ground, Sailor Jupiter hung from a tree branch. Luckily for her, Usagi had hit the ground on her back, which resulted in the Thunder Senshi being thrown from the "landing" rather than being pasted between the cyborg and the ground. Despite this, the process in which she had come to a complete stop had been rather harsh on her already damaged body, and as such the ponytailed girl was spending her time contemplating her life flashing before her eyes rather than trying to get down.
'My old sempai could SO kick Mamoru's ass,' she decided.
Venus quickly rushed up to the pair, and stopped as she looked between Usagi and Sailor Jupiter, wondering which one she should help first. She eventually settled on Jupiter since she wasn't even lying down.
"Usagi, are you okay?" Venus asked her fellow blonde as she gently pulled Jupiter down from the tree.
The cyborg groaned. "Hold on. Lemme check."
[Trauma classification: high-level concussive damage incurred. Significant structural damage indicated. Total systems down: Kinetic absorbtion field, ion jets, auxiliary boosters offline. Kinetic dampeners offline. Total damage: significant. Activating secondary repair units.]
"I still have no idea!" Usagi whined, slowly pushing herself into the sitting position.
As soon as she was upright, a pair of hatches on her shoulders popped open, and two small silver spheres emerged on thin, spindly legs.
Sailor Venus and Jupiter, who was leaning on the blonde for support, both froze and gaped as they watched the pair of tiny, spider-like robots crawl over onto Usagi's back.
"Gack! Spiders! You have spiders crawling on you!" Venus shouted in shock, waving her arms and consequently dropping Jupiter painfully on the ground.
The Thunder Senshi let out a strangled cry as she fell, and her thoughts immediately began to mirror Rei's along the lines of magically enforced eugenics.
"I have what crawling on me?" Usagi asked, twitching as she suddenly felt a warm, scratchy sensation on her back.
Jupiter groaned. "Would you knock it off Venus?" she mumbled into the dirt. "They're obviously some sort of repair robot... things..." At least, that was her best guess, seeing how they congregated along the scars and abrasions on Usagi's back, and the way that little showers of sparks erupted from under them.

When Sailor Mars and Mercury finally arrived at the end of Yosumatsu park, where Usagi had "landed", they both took in the sight of two robot spiders crawling on her back and poking her with tiny welding tips in stride.
Seeing how Usagi seemed to be literally trying to turn her head around backwards to see down her own back, they were just thankful that she wasn't capable of that, too.
"Mars! Do I really have spiders on my back?" Usagi asked, trembling slightly and freezing absolutely still. Hearing what Jupiter had said helped her keep from panicking, but she was still obviously nervous.
The Senshi of Fire frowned and walked up to Usagi, observing one of the repair drones closely. With a better view, she could see that the body of the drone had a single circular red sensor on one side, and that several tiny articulated arms were poking out of the bottom, assisting in the reconstruction of Usagi's shredded rocket boosters.
"Gotcha!" She shouted, snatching one of the drones up and grasping it around its body.
Grinning, she held up her prize for Usagi and the others to see as its legs flailed about wildly.
Usagi frowned. "Uh... Mars, I think you're scaring it..."
The raven-haired woman snorted. "It's just a dumb robot, meatball head. You know, like you, but apparently useful."
Just as Usagi was about to burst into tears and make several unflattering edits to Rei's scan profile, the repair drone stopped its struggling, and activated its welding torch instead.
Fsht! "SONUVABITCH!!"
Usagi blinked, startled, as the spider droid dropped onto the ground and quickly skittered onto her leg. Then it stopped, turned its sensor eye toward the seething Fire Senshi, and released a number of agitated clicking noises as it waved two of its legs threateningly at its tormentor.
"Little metal bastard!" Mars growled as she shook her hand. "I'll get you for that!"
At this point, Usagi naturally decided that she liked the tiny spider droids, and immediately scooped up the one on her leg before holding it against her chest protectively. "Leave him alone! It's your own fault for being mean!"
"What, so you want the disgusting little things crawling all over you?"
"It's not disgusting! I think it's cute!"

"I really don't think we have time for this," Mercury mumbled as she typed away on the Mercury Computer. "We have to find that... thing... and capture him."
Usagi stopped arguing with Mars, and frowned as drone in her hand jumped up onto her shoulder and continued its work. "Igov isn't a 'thing' Mercury. He's just a cyborg, like me."
Mars snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. "Told you. He's the same guy from that article I showed you, remember?"
The Senshi of Ice shook her head. "We can't make assumptions. I didn't get a chance to scan him before when we fought."
"Oh, don't worry about it. I scanned him!" Usagi said, raising her hand.
The others blinked at her in tandem, clearly surprised.
"Well, at least she did SOMETHING useful during that fight," Mars groused.
Usagi ignored her and recalled Igov's file. "Designation: General Yutchzky, Igov. Codename: Red Death. Classification: Cyborg unit type A, class B. Species: Human. Weapons: Modified XM-320 minigun, LS-99 Tesla Battle Claw, concussion grenade launcher. Special equipment: Personal chronosphere, tight-beam control node, optical sensor suite, laser marker."
At this point the other Senshi stopped staring at Usagi and started staring at Ami, having long passed the point where the torrent of data made sense to them.
"Special skills: Expert field commander and master tactician. World-class engineer and expert in cybernetics, robotics, and weapons. Miscellaneous: General in the Freedom's Angels terrorist organization. Commander of the cyborg corps and direct subordinate to General Tokima. An experienced Russian military officer with decades of expertise and a cache of lost technology. Hates the DAPC."
Mercury nodded slowly, taking the data in and analyzing each note. "Wait... how does your scanning computer know about his rank and who he serves under?" The bluette mumbled in confusion.
Usagi shrugged. "I dunno. It gets pretty wordy and detailed like that sometimes."
Sailor Mars sighed. "Did it say anything about a weak point?"
Usagi frowned. "Hold on a minute..." Asking the question in her head, the usual text soon appeared.
[Records indicate that Igov's central control nodes are vulnerable to concentrated electro-magnetic pulses. In addition, the presence of a chronosphere suggests that minor damage to the device may cause temporal disturbances that would likely result in either a system shutdown or target termination.]
Mars tapped her foot impatiently as Usagi kept sitting in place with her left eyebrow twitching. "Well?"
"Uhhhhhhhhh..." Usagi shook her head and then began to massage it tenderly. "No. No weaknesses," she lied. 'Forget trying to explain that to them. I couldn't even read half those words!'
"Well, that's just great," Venus said, glancing at Jupiter who was still leaning on her. "So here we are, wounded, tired, and without Sailor Moon's powers, and we're supposed to find and capture a robot man who can teleport at will?"
"More to the point, the 'robot man' is apparently an expert strategist," Mercury noted, closing her computer. "Which perfectly explains why he was willing to let us escape from the authorities on our own and then chase after him to an area of his choosing with one of us barely able to walk. Has anyone else noticed that despite being a public park in the middle of the day, this place is completely deserted?"
Apparently it hadn't, and the others looked around in surprise.
"So, you're saying he's leading us into a trap?" Jupiter asked, unsteadily pushing herself away from Sailor Venus to stand on her own.
"I'm positive," Mercury asserted. "And keep in mind, I still can't track him since he doesn't-"
"Try looking for chronometric particles," Usagi said suddenly, interrupted the team genius.
The blue-skirted Senshi blinked. "Looking for WHAT?"
"Chronometric particles," Usagi repeated, stretching suddenly. The fins on her back flexed up and down experimentally, and then retracted themselves into her back. "That's how I found him in the first place." Their job completed, Usagi's repair drones scampered back up to her shoulders and slipped into their repository bays.
Mercury stared hard at the ponytailed cyborg, trying to detect signs of deceit. "Did you just make that up? Sailor Moon, there's no such thing as 'chronometric particles'."
Usagi blinked in surprise, then scowled as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, someone should tell the stupid computer in my head that. It keeps finding them everywhere, and won't stop bugging me about it. It just says 'chronoshift in progress!' over and over again." It didn't even occur to Usagi that perhaps the particles actually did exist and Ami didn't know of them; Ami was the smartest person Usagi knew, and as far as she was concerned, anything that came out of the bluette's mouth was absolute fact.
Such a thing did occur to said bluette, however, and Mercury frowned as she considered the possibility that Usagi was geared to detect energy forms that she hadn't even heard of. "Hmmm... Well, can you tell me where the last concentration of these... 'chronometric particles' supposedly appeared?"
Usagi nodded, finally standing up.
Fingering her chin, the blonde's rabbit ears twitched for a moment, and then she pointed toward a brick utility building several meters away. "There!"

Sailor Venus wasted no time once their leader gave them a target. "Venus Crescent Beam Shower!"
A thick beam of light emerged from her hand before splitting apart into several smaller beams, each of them curling around to strike the lonely building. BLAM!
Usagi blinked in surprise, though she wasn't even watching as the utility closet was ground into so much dust. "Wait, he moved! He's over-" she was about to point behind them, when suddenly a bright red exclamation mark began flashing in her face repeatedly.
'Wait, what does that mean again?' The cyborg wondered, stopping to scratch her head as her teammates frantically asked where their target had teleported.
A distant whistling noise jump-started her memory, and her eyes widened.
"RUN!! NOW!!"
KA-KROOM!! KROOM!! KROOM!!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuxedo Kamen winced as he landed on the next roof, feeling tiny tendrils of pain seep up his legs.
Gritting his teeth, he bore it and started running again, clearing the length of rooftop before jumping again to land on the next one, and idly wondering why this kind of thing always happened to him.
He had actually left his hospital bed when he'd transformed, and wasn't looking forward to explaining his departure once he made it back. Nor did he want to have doctors fussing over why his bullet wounds - which had already been healing at a surprising rate - had vanished while he had been out and about.
As for the constant pain, it wasn't actually that bad, as his Kamen form accelerated the healing, but it was a discouraging way to be reminded that the Senshi had suddenly become active again after so long. Which in turn reminded him that his girlfriend had as much in common with a toaster oven as with her fated lover nowadays.
Still, he had his duty, and since the alternative was lying in a hospital bed and watching Tokyo Mew Mew reruns...
Well, it still wasn't an easy decision for him to make, really, but he decided that the Senshi needed him more than the television station needed ratings.
'I wonder what Rei would look like as a catgirl,' the tuxedo-clad man wondered, leaping off the next roof. He'd always regretted that his relationship with the Fire Senshi had never gone anywhere before he went with Usagi; it would've been nice to have options in a situation like the one he was in now.
Stopping in the middle of the next roof, he stopped and turned, frowning as he sensed Usagi's position shift rapidly.
"Gyah!" As a result, he came face to face with a pigtailed man in a blue police uniform, and flinched back.
Ranma smiled and waved in a completely non-threatening manner. "Hey there! Whatcha up to?"
Tuxedo Kamen blinked, and he quickly composed himself. 'Where the hell did he come from?' "Sorry, I have no time to chat. Farewell!" Grabbing the edge of his cape as he turned, the garment billowed out behind him in a heroic manner as he turned toward the park where Usagi had stopped, and leapt to the next building.

Ranma shrugged and then followed, allowing the masked man to get a bid of a lead on him.
At first when he'd seen somebody hopping over rooftops and wearing formal evening wear, he'd immediately considered that the man might be a vampire out for a run; he'd heard that the more powerful nosferatu were creatures of nobility and class, so they'd be the type to be wearing that sort of thing. It wasn't until he had gained on the figure significantly that he realized that outside, in the middle of the day, even the most powerful vampire would be incapable of bounding across rooftops as this man was.
The man was suspicious though, and seemed to be going somewhere in a hurry, so Ranma had followed. He had been on his way to see Usagi, but anything important that required the attention of roof-hopping masked men seemed like the sort of thing that should have priority.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Usagi quickly scrambled to her feet, ignoring the short rain of dirt that fell over her as a result of the sudden artillery strike.
Luckily, solid ground didn't generate as much dust and debris as a collapsing building, so her view of the area was fairly unobscured. On her left, Mercury and Mars were pushing themselves off the ground in a daze. On her right, Venus groaned painfully with Jupiter lying on top of her.
She frowned as she realized the two flirtatious Senshi wouldn't be getting up any time soon. Though they hadn't taken a direct hit, it was clear the force of blast had knocked the fight out of them.
As the sparse clouds of dust and thin tendrils of smoke began to clear, the blonde cyborg blanched, seeing a single glowing point of red light through the settling ash.
'You can do this!' She said to herself after a moment, steeling herself. 'He's just a cyborg, like you. He's just more used to this sort of thing! You can take him, Sailor Moon! Oh, well, he also has artillery backup. I forgot about that. And a teleportation device. Plus he's even stronger than Sailor Jupiter.'
Usagi choked back a sob. What on Earth had possessed them to actually chase after this man?
"Mars Flame Sniper!" The Senshi of Fire shouted, pulling back one arm as the lance of flame flickered into view.
Igov had already set his transport coordinates as the red-skirted one took aim, quite grateful that the girls had to make wasteful gestures and take time to charge their attacks before discharging them. He was quite certain that the energy blasts themselves were strong enough to destroy him with a single good hit; thus, his only recourse was to not get hit.
SSSSSHOOOOOOM!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Far away on the planet Pluto, a woman with long green hair collapsed onto her rear and screamed to the heavens, declaring that the rules put in place forbidding alcohol on the job in her place of work were discriminatory and unfair.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Igov phased into being behind Sailor Mars, as usual having to stop for a moment to get oriented as all his scanners recalibrated.
This was just long enough for the raven-haired woman to realize that he was there, and she ducked as a lightning-charged claw tore through the air where her head had been a moment previous.
Twisting around, Sailor Mars balled her left hand into a fist, and let loose a vicious haymaker into the cyborg's stomach.
CLANG! "OW!! My hand!"
To her credit, Igov stumbled back a moment before he recovered from the blow; that part of his body was heavy and well-armored enough to take shotgun blasts at point-blank without difficulty. Bringing his right arm down from the missed slash, he slammed his elbow into the Fire Senshi's head, knocking her to the side and nearly cracking her skull right open.
Darting backward, he barely avoided getting slashed as the blonde in the black bodysuit dove at him, her wrist blades activated once again.
Igov was about to counter the attack, but after she missed the ponytailed girl teetered forward and started waving her arms about frantically. Then she fell forward flat on her face, accidentally stabbing both of her energy blades down into the ground.
Having paused at the unexpected reaction, Igov didn't realize that the blue-skirted Senshi had completed one of her attacks until she was ready to release it.

"Shabon Spray!" Mercury called out, shooting the mist forward and enveloping the Russian and her friends in a cool, obscuring fog. She would have preferred launching something more... offensive, but the cyborg's tendency toward close combat made it unwise to risk friendly fire.
Darting forward, she grabbed Usagi by the shoulder, trying to help her up. After the ponytailed girl merely stumbled forward again, the genius Senshi quickly realized what was wrong: Usagi was trying to stabilize herself with her hands. Her hands had twenty-inch energy blades situated above them, and these same blades were digging into the ground, disrupting and loosening the dirt and rock such that her hands just sunk down into it wherever she placed them.
Grabbing her leader by the shoulders, Mercury hoisted Usagi up fully, nearly getting slashed across the face for her trouble as the blonde cyborg windmilled her arms suddenly in surprise.
"Moon, get up! We have to ge-" Thwomp!
Usagi's eyes widened as she watched the Senshi of Ice sail away from Igov's kick, skidding on the ground and eventually slamming into the trunk of a tree.
Igov snorted as he deactivated his thermal vision, and then firmly slammed his foot onto Usagi's back, crushing her against the ground. "'Pretty soldier' indeed. Igov will end this charade." BZRT! Electricity started to curl around the extended claws on his right hand as the mist around them began to dissipate, and although Usagi couldn't see what was happening above her, she could guess that it was going to hurt.
Thwip!

Igov held the charge in his Tesla claw as he glanced at the rose that had suddenly pierced his right forearm.
Behind him, a male voice started shouting a monologue.
Guessing that, like the girls, he would be at it long enough to finish an attack, and seeing how the rose hadn't caused any critical damage, 'Why didn't he aim at my head or neck, if he had a free shot and possesses a weapon that can pierce my armor?' Igov continued to charge his Tesla claw to full power, causing a ball of writhing blue energy to gather between the gleaming, razor-sharp talons.

"Fear not, Sailor Moon," Tuxedo Kamen shouted from his rooftop, not noticing that for once his enemy hadn't been distracted by the attack, "for no matter what kind of foe-"
THWACK!

Sailor Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter, all of whom had been giving the masked interloper their full attention from their prone positions on the ground, all blinked in surprise and tore their eyes away from Tuxedo Kamen at the sudden noise.
Igov flew backwards and hit the ground hard, kicking up dust, with a noticeable dent in his cheek.
Ranma completed his roundhouse kick, returning his foot to the ground gingerly as pain shot up and down his leg. "Hmph. Skull's as thick as ever, tin can," the pigtailed man spat, sparing a glance at Usagi to make sure she wasn't visibly maimed. "What the hell are you doing here? The Angels want their new toy back?"
Igov didn't really know what the police officer was talking about, so thought it more useful to launch the ball of electric energy he was holding at his assailant rather than try and start a conversation.
Ranma jumped over the screaming orb of lightning, then twisted into a kick as he came down on top of the cyborg general.
Said cyborg general snarled and began to glow.
SSSSSSHOOOOOOM!

Up on an adjacent rooftop, Tuxedo Kamen trailed off mumbling as he finally realized that nobody was paying attention to him.
'Wait a minute. That's the cop who was following me! How'd he make it all the way here?' As the masked man had not imagined that anyone other than a Senshi could bound across rooftops like he could, and was completely focused on his destination, he never did figure out that he had been followed.
He frowned as he watched the pigtailed man dart across the crater-ridden field as the Russian man appeared again, and dodged two sudden explosions before striking the enemy again in the head with his other leg.
This man was fighting the bad guy. Face-to-face. One-on-one. He was totally in the thick of it, narrowly escaping being blown to pieces while launching a sustained assault on the enemy.
"What is he, a woman?" Tuxedo Mask scoffed.
After all, male heroes were supposed to be mysterious and aloof, only helping enough to get the women out of a tight spot and giving them the encouragement they needed to succeed for themselves.
Weren't they?

Crack! Ranma winced as he felt pain shoot up his left arm, and grimaced as he realized he only had one more limb that wasn't in danger of breaking against Igov's metal body.
'Damn it, I need to remember to carry my weapons around with me all the time,' he thought as he ducked under another slash, feeling his hair stand on end as electricity crackled above him. 'I just thought I was gonna be talking to some college student, not fighting this jerk!'
Igov wasn't feeling much better. 'Damnation! My forces are too far away to make it here in time! I just thought I was going to be crushing these foolish women, not fighting this peon!' Small sparks sputtered out of his optical peripheral, which he had shut off once Ranma introduced his heel to the lens.
SSSSSSSHOOOOOOOM!
Ranma clicked his tongue as the cyborg vanished, keeping alert for the Russian on the edge of his senses.
He had just picked Igov's presence up, when Usagi's voice distracted him.
"It's the artillery! Run!" Usagi herself had finally figured out how to turn off her energy blades at will, and had scrambled to her feet as soon as the exclamation marks started flashing. 'Oh no! I'm too close! I think... Gah!' She managed to spot the incoming shots this time, making out several tiny black dots sailing down into the park from above.
Vwom!
KRAKOOM!! KROOM!! KROOM!!

The blonde cyborg winced with her eyes squeezed shut as she felt waves of heat rake her sides, followed by the familiar sensation of ravaged dirt and rock raining down on top of her head.
'Wait, why isn't anything touching my front?' She thought, realizing that she had been facing the explosion.
Once she cracked her eyes open, she was pleasntly surprised to see that there was a glowing, five-foot long "plate" of soft blue energy attached to the back of her combat bracer. It was was perfectly flat, and covered by a hex-grid pattern that Usagi could only assume was functional rather than ornamental as bits of rock bounced off the surface, causing the particular hex that it touched to flare briefly.
Sailor Mercury slowly pushed herself to her feet, glad that the newcomer had taken the fight far enough away from the rest of them that none of the incapacitated Senshi were struck by the barrage.
"Okay, yeah. Now I'm jealous too," the Senshi of Ice muttered as she stared at the energy shield. 'It's not fair! Usagi's new powers are so cool! And she doesn't even know how to use them!'

Igov growled as he watched the dust and ash settle from the dubious safety of a cluster of trees, seeing no sign of the pigtailed officer.
Of course, had the attack struck perfectly, this would be the expected result; not even Ranma could survive a direct hit from an artillery shell. But Igov knew better. No way was it that easy.
Krk! Feeling a tugging sensation on his right arm, and once again cursing that his foe had disabled his sensors, Igov whirled around, swiping his left hand through the air blindly.
Ranma ducked under the clumsy attack easy, and then flipped over Tuxedo Kamen's rose in his hand, which he had yanked free from the Russian's arm.
Skrak! Viciously driving it upward into the underside of Igov's chin, Ranma was rewarded by a sudden shower of sparks and a burst of steam as the armor-piercing flower penetrated the thin layer of armor there and dug into vital components.
Bwack! Igov's retaliatory strike hit home, but Ranma was grinning despite the pain as he tucked into a roll, eventually bouncing to his feet.
'Graah! This is... NO! I can't go on...' The cyborg thought as his vision suddenly went gray, still feeling something akin to pain as damage reports started flooding his brain.
Stumbling to one side in his attempt to steady himself, he felt another jet of pressurized gases burst from the wound, and immediately began setting the coordinates for a chronoshift.
'No matter... in the end, today's mission was a success...' He thought bitterly, failing to cheer himself up as the temporal energies surrounded him and made good his retreat.
SSSSSSHOOOOOOM!
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"Heh. That'll teach the jerk," Ranma said as he massaged his bruised ribs, marveling at how lightly he had gotten off in his latest battle against the Communist general. 'Well, we were both unprepared. I guess I just improvise better than he does.'
Smirking at that thought, he turned to see the Sailor Senshi picking themselves up off the ground, and Usagi staring at him with wide eyes.
"Hey Usagi-chan! You all right?" He asked, waving a hand at her as he jogged forward.
To his confusion, she gasped in surprise.

Sailor Mars winced, though it was as much from her throbbing head as from this newest complication concerning their leader. "Well, that's just great. No disguise field. But her new transformation is still running four-to-one against ours."
Mercury sighed as she limped up to the raven-haired woman. "Well, apparently she can't use her magic powers; doesn't that count against it?"
"It would, if we could actually hit that metal freak with ours," Mars said bitterly, rocking back and forth a bit as the ground seemed to tilt underneath her. "Speaking of which, didn't you say that she had all of her magic powers?"
The genius Senshi lowered her head abashedly. "Well... she does, actually. How was I supposed to know that she'd forget how to use them?"
"That's our princess: phenomenal cosmic power... itty-bitty brain," Mars groused as her world finally decided on an angle and stuck with it. Then she glanced over at the cyborg in question talking with the pigtailed man, and her aggravated expression lessened. 'That's the guy who saved Usagi before, isn't it? She was right; he IS dreamy...'

"No, no, no! I'm not Usagi! I'm Sailor Moon!" Usagi insisted stubbornly, not realizing that she was missing one of the Senshi transformation's important energy fields.
"Yeah, so I've heard," Ranma said conversationally, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Look, if you wanna play superhero, that's fine, but that's not even a disguise. Your face is completely exposed and everything. You think adding a pair of robot bunny ears is going to keep people from recognizing you?"
Usagi was about to make an argument as to how magical forces that didn't make any sense to her in the first place kept people from recognizing her, but Ranma's question stopped her short. "Wait, bunny ears? Is THAT what they look like?" She immediately grabbed one of the sensor fins atop her head and ran her hand over it, trying to visualize its shape.
"What, you mean you didn't know?" Venus asked, staggering up to the pair with Jupiter in tow.
"I knew they were there, but I didn't know they were shaped like rabbit ears," Usagi mumbled, finally letting her hand down. "Do they look good on me?"
Ranma and the other Senshi sweatdropped.
"Uh... yes! They look really cute! Honest!" Sailor Venus said, elbowing Sailor Jupiter lightly in the stomach. "Jupiter! Tell her how good she looks!"
"Hm? Oh, yeah. Great," the ponytailed girl mumbled distractedly, staring at Ranma appraisingly.
"Senshi! Are you unharmed?"

Tuxedo Kamen smiled slightly as he alighted upon the ground, seeing everyone's attention shift to him again. "I came as quickly as I could. I'm glad you're all safe."
Usagi immediately lowered her head and seemed to shrink in on herself, which was an unfortunate, but expected reaction from her after their last meeting. What was unexpected was that Sailors Mars and Jupiter were actually glaring at him openly.
'Since when were they so ungrateful?' He thought to himself, stopping in his tracks. Even Mercury and Venus had waved him off by now and were now paying attention to the cop again.
"Hey, thanks for your help!" That same police officer said cheerfully; another unexpected result. "That rose you threw slowed Igov down just enough for me to get to him. And it came in handy later, too. They must be really sharp!"
Sharp or not, Ranma would have much rather had his kodachi or even his combat knife instead of having to try and impale the cyborg on a magic plant, but one had to work with what one could get his hands on.
This masked guy obviously did.
Sailor Mars snorted derisively. "They're sharper than the wielder, that's for sure." Then she turned toward Ranma, suddenly smiling. "You were VERY impressive. But where's the rest of you pysc-er-officers?"
"Oh, well, they all have patrol and stuff elsewhere," Ranma explained as he pointed to Tuxedo Kamen, "I was just following this guy and happened to see you fighting Yutchzky." Then he frowned. "Why were you doing that anyway? He's a pretty dangerous guy."
Usagi sighed. "We were trying to capture him for information."
Ranma looked alarmed. "Capture Igov? That IS dangerous... and it looks like it didn't go over very well."
"Yes, well, you DID let him escape," Kamen pointed out, feeling a bit miffed that this new guy had stolen the spotlight right out from under him. He wasn't even a superhero!
Ranma shook his head. "Couldn't be helped. I wasn't about to try and disable his teleporter and try and take him down here." Then he gestured to the empty streets beyond the park. "Igov controls a small army of cyborgs and boomers. If he felt he was cornered, he might bring the whole damn force down on this place. They'd probably wipe out a couple of city blocks in the process, too." He nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. "You really shouldn't be trying to mess with someone like him; I don't know if you're a better model cyborg or about the same or whatever, but Igov's pretty crafty, and he has loads of experience and troops. Best to steer clear of him."
At this point, everybody but Usagi joined Kamen in feeling miffed; true, the Russian general had caught them badly off-guard, but who did this cop think he was talking to? They were the Sailor Senshi, saviors of the entire planet!
Usagi, for whatever reasons, was feeling more humble, and bowed to the police officer. "Okay Ranma-san. Thank you for saving us!"
"Eh, just doing my job," Ranma mumbled, waving her off as he fumbled around in his jacket pocket. "I'm glad I ran into you, though." Glancing around at the other girls, he gestured off to the side. "Can I speak to you in private for a minute?"
"Oh, uh, sure!" Usagi said uncertainly, following the pigtailed man as he led her away.

"I don't like him," Tuxedo Kamen growled once the pair was out of earshot, "just who is that guy?"
"He's a member of the Department of Abnormal Phenomenae Containment," Sailor Mercury explained.
"You've run into them before," Mars said, smirking at the masked man. "Remember that guy with the bandanna?"
Kamen stiffened, and his frown became a scowl. "What's Usagi doing associating with THEM?"
"I have no idea," Mars said honestly, shrugging. "Looks like it paid off, though. I wonder what they're talking about..."
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"So we just need ya to fill out some forms and drop 'em off later," Ranma explained as Usagi scanned the registration pamphlet. "If you don't know the answer to any of the questions there, you can just leave it blank. We don't need to know everything about you. We just need to be able to get in contact with you if necessary."
Usagi nodded slowly. "Okay... but why would you need to contact me?"
Ranma shrugged. "Well, if something big happens around here, we know you're probably in a position to know what's going on. Also, since you've been fighting the Freedom's Angels, they might attack you, and this information will help us get to you quicker. Also, we sometimes ask the registered aliens and robots and stuff for help."
"Hmmm... that does make sense," Usagi decided, looking up. "And why wouldn't the police want to enlist the warriors of love and justice?"
"Uh..." Ranma sweatdropped. "Right. Just what I was thinking." Then he pointed to a spot on the pamphlet. "That lists the responsibilities you have as a registered cyborg. We're not going to keep tabs on you or bug your room or anything, but if you start blowing people's cars up again, we need to know how to find you, or we're the ones in trouble."
The ponytailed cyborg has the decency to blush, remembering the circumstances of their last meeting. "Okay, that's fair. Was there anything else?"
"Just the registration cards," Ranma said, taking out an envelope from his pocket. Opening it up, he flipped through the stack of ten plastic cards and picked out the one marked Sailor Moon.
He blinked as he looked at the picture on the front. "Whoa. You wear one of those nutty outfits too?"
Usagi sighed. "That's my old crime-fighting costume. It looks like it doesn't work now that I'm a cyborg."
Ranma raised an eyebrow and looked up at the ponytailed girl, holding the card in front of him for comparison. "I like your new suit better."
Usagi blushed again and stuttered out a thank you. 'Huh. Everybody seems to think that I'm better off like this than as Sailor Moon... I wonder...'
"Anyway, this card isn't up-to-date anymore, so you won't be needing it." Ranma crushed the plastic item in his hand, and handed her the rest. "Just give these out to your friends, and then they can blow up whatever they want when fighting evil, and we won't have to hear about it. If Core or the local police try and stop you or question you, just flash the card at them. They'll leave you alone at that point. In fact, sometimes they literally run away."
Usagi nodded, looking at each card. 'Hmm... there's one for each of the outers, too, plus Tuxedo Kamen.' Still feeling an uncomfortable coldness every time she saw or thought of the masked man, she looked up again. "So is that all they do? Prove we're clear with you guys?"
"Not quite; they give you free membership to some of the local circles that usually try and stay under the radar, as it were. I don't know much about them, though, other than the fact that they're terrified of the DAPC or anything associated with us." He shrugged. "They're also valid entry keycards to the Fat Man Contractor's armory uptown."
The blonde cyborg blinked in surprise. "An armory? Why would they let us into there?"
"It's sort of a holdover from the first guy we had to register," Ranma explained.
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Achoo!
As he wiped his nose, Rayden frowned, realizing that he was smearing blood over his face.
Ignoring the minor discomfort, he immediately went back to slaughtering the den of Yakuza thugs, idly wondering when the hell he was going to get a proper introduction in this series.
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"I wonder whatever happened to him?" Ranma asked aloud, rubbing his chin. "Huh. We should probably change that feature."
Shaking his head, he waved to Usagi as he started to leave. "Well, I'm glad I found you again, but I've gotta go make some dead people much deader. See ya later, Usagi-chan!"
"Oh! Uh..." Not sure what to make of his declared task, she waved back hesitantly. "Okay Ranma-san! Goodbye!"

As the police officer jogged away from the scene Usagi began to walk back to her friends, staring at Rei's registration I.D.
'I wonder if I really do look better in this outfit. I always thought black wasn't my color.'
When she looked up from the cards, she was surprised to see the other Senshi staring at her intently. Sailor Mars was even tapping her foot.
"What? What is it?" The blonde cyborg asked nervously.
"You work pretty fast, don't you?" Mars said with a tone that wavered between irritation and respect. "No wonder you got over your precious 'Mamo-chan' so quick!"
Usagi blinked, not noticing as Tuxedo Kamen twitched. "Huh?"
"Normally I'd say you should be careful about picking up guys on the rebound, but I have to admit this one is a pretty good call," Jupiter said enviously, rubbing her chin. "So, are you going steady yet, or do I still have a shot? Ooh! What are your thoughts on a three-way?"
Psht! A few sparks blasted out of Usagi's ear. "Huh?"
Tuxedo Kamen growled, clutching the sides of his head. 'Damn! I didn't know they did that sort of thing! Why didn't anyone ever mention that to me?'
Sailor Venus nodded in approval. "Not only is he a stud, but he's really strong, too! He's even better than Mamoru!"
Usagi understood this sentence, but was fairly sure it was following the conversational path she had yet to grasp, so saw no need to change her response. "Huh?"
"Hey! I'm standing right here, you know!" Tuxedo Kamen shouted angrily.
From the way the Senshi jumped and then turned around, he was guessing they had not been aware.
"Why are you still around? Aren't you supposed to mysteriously flee the scene after a battle?" Mars asked irritably, crossing her arms over her chest.
The masked man frowned. "I just wanted to make sure you were all okay."
"We were blasted by two artillery strikes and beaten half to death by a tin man with an electric claw," Jupiter deadpanned. "Do we look okay to you?" As she was still leaning on Venus for support in order to stand up, the answer was obvious.
"Ah... well... no..." he stuttered out. "But that's why I was concerned!"
"How nice of you," Mars said neutrally. "So what are you going to do now, since we're not okay?"
Tuxedo Kamen looked back and forth between the Fire and Thunder Senshi, desperately groping for something to say.
'Now I remember why I always leave early,' he thought bitterly to himself. Outwardly, he grabbed his cape and swept it in front of him dramatically. "I take my leave of you now. Fare thee well, pretty soldiers!"

As he turned around and quickly jumped onto the building behind him, he missed it when Usagi berated her two teammates for being unnecessarily harsh with him. Perhaps had he heard such a defense, he would've felt a bit better about his actions during this last encounter.
As it was, the masked man was fuming as his mind took firm grasp of the one thing that had gone differently in the last battle, as opposed to all the other ones they had fought.
Well, the one thing other than Usagi being a cyborg.
And him being ignored like he was. What was up with that? Senshi and enemy alike were supposed to be entranced by his very presence!
Speaking of which, the enemy had been pretty different too. He couldn't remember the last time someone fought them using modern weapons and simple tactics, instead of throwing powerful monsters at them.
Maybe the fact that he was a cyborg instead of a monster bore some looking into also. That was a bit different.
Tuxedo Kamen shook his head furiously, nearly knocking his top hat off. 'No! The only real variable was that man! I don't trust him!' After all, what kind of human could throw punches and kicks that could dent steel, or whatever metal composed the Russian's skeleton?
Besides himself and all the Senshi, of course.
'I'll be watching you, Ranma.' He swore.
TOOM! "GYAH!! MY LEG!! WHAT THE HELL?!"
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Snake frowned as he lowered his sniper rifle. "Oh. Wait. It's broad daylight. That can't be a vampire."
Then he shrugged and turned around. "I'm thirsty."

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Innocent guards and bystanders killed: 14
Cyborgs sent packing: 1 (but he was doozy!)
Masked superheroes shot... again: 1 (do I sense a running gag?)
Critical objectives acquired by bad guys: 1

End Chapter 4