The four Lords of the Dark Kingdom stood before their Queen in a dark, cavernous hall, as they had a thousand years before. This time, the hall was the ruined throne room of the Crystal Palace, and Beryl was a twisted, burning spirit, an unnatural fusion of the soul of Queen Beryl and her demonic mistress Metallia. It pleased the being to call herself the Lady of Eternal Night, or simply the Lady. Her vaguely human-shaped body was a tall, dark, shifting column of ether. Her red eyes were like two cold fires burning in the smoke of her face.

The Lady looked at her four servants with satisfaction. Before, she had left them their minds and their free will; it had been a sweet victory to turn four men of unwavering fidelity and unimpeachable honor into traitors. But servants who possessed minds and free will could be weak, foolish, unreliable, and - worst of all - treasonous. This time, she hadn't repeated her mistake. The Lords still had their intelligence, their knowledge, and their skills, which were what made them so valuable to her in the first place, but she had twisted these qualities into what she wanted them to be. The four who stood before her were the perfect servants: obedient, unquestioning, and absolutely loyal, incapable of saying, doing, or thinking anything which she did not wish them to say, do, or think.

This time, she would not fail.

But first, there was one small matter that needed to be dealt with. "You still haven't found the crystals?" she asked her servants, her metallic whisper echoing through the ruined chamber. The five missing crystals were essential. The oblivion to which she had been damned had a strong pull on her, and she was expending a great deal of energy to resist it. She needed the power of the five crystals to bind her to this dimension, so that she could start putting her energy to better use. She was going to conquer this miserable planet once and for all. She no longer cared about Endymion, or about killing that annoying twit he had married. All the Lady wanted now was to bring the Earth, this planet that represented all her failures and everything she couldn't have, into eternal darkness.

"No, Lady." Kunzite, the senior of the four, spoke for them, answering her question. "We've found no trace of them."

"You are certain that the Royal Family do not have them?" The Royal Family, along with the cursed Senshi and a handful of soldiers, were trapped in one of the towers of the Palace.

"With all due respect, Lady," Nephrite said, "if they did have the crystals, we would likely no longer be here."

"Hmm." The Lady stared down at Nephrite. Even now, when he was no more than her puppet, when Nephrite said "with all due respect" it somehow managed to sound tremendously disrespectful. She supposed that his arrogance was too deeply ingrained in his character to ever be completely erased without destroying his more useful qualities.

The Lady turned her eyes to her new advisor, who sat beside her, on King Endymion's ruined throne. It had been a triumph, turning the despised Serenity's brother against her. Though the effort to reach him from her banishment had been almost too much for her, she had still managed to feed his insecurity and envy. He had loved his sister, and had been trying very hard to overcome his negative feelings towards her, but the Lady had been able to manipulate him and finally tip the balance towards hatred and betrayal. Of course, he was also twisted now, as the Lords were, and very little of the original Shingo remained, but she had enjoyed making him take the first steps of his own free will. "Well, Lord Shingo?" the Lady asked. "Have you thought of anything that might be helpful?"

"Yes, Lady," Shingo replied. "Three years ago, during the Dark Moon War, Sailor Pluto sent Princess Rini to the Past to locate the Imperium Silver Crystal. I would imagine it's possible that she could have sent the Princess to the Past again, this time in possession of the Silver Crystal and the others."

"Is Princess Rini accounted for?" the Lady demanded of Zoisite, who was in charge of intelligence-gathering. His secretive, cunning nature made him perfectly-suited for the position.

"She is, Lady," Zoisite replied. "She's trapped with the others, in the Tower. I've seen her myself, most recently only a few hours ago, on my regular surveillance."

"I see. That would not be our answer, then, Lord Shingo, would it?"

"No, Lady." The advisor squirmed under her burning gaze.

"We may be on the right track, though, my Lady," Nephrite said.

The Lady's first instinct was to destroy him for speaking without permission. But this was important. She restrained herself. "Yes, Nephrite?"

"Shortly before we built the bridge which allowed you to return to Earth, I sent my wife and children to our country home, along with the children of the other Guardians. Zoisite's information indicates that Sailor Pluto was able to leave the Palace at least once during the initial battles, and I know that my three oldest sons are now in the Tower with the Royal Family. I would suggest we find out if any of the other children are not where they ought to be."

The Lady listened with satisfaction to Nephrite's perfectly indifferent voice as he spoke of his family. That had been one of her biggest mistakes before, leaving that one with a heart. He was cold, calculating, manipulative, and arrogant, even before she lured him to her service, but when he did love he loved with his whole soul and being, and everything else was of secondary importance. It seemed that, this time, she had eradicated that annoying and dangerous weakness. "Very well, Nephrite," she said. "You may send a youma to investigate the matter." That had been another mistake, letting the Lords have their own youma. It had given them an inflated sense of their own importance and their ability to make their own decisions. Also, with so much energy going to maintain the Lady's existence in the Earth dimension, youma were too scarce to allow the Lords to throw them away on stupid, wasteful plans. It annoyed the Lady to have to be so careful with her resources, but it was necessary. For now.

Nephrite bowed, his right fist against his heart. "It will be done right away, Lady."

* * * * * * * *

Since the children were going to be with her for a while, Naru took them to the mall the next day to buy clothes. Minako and Usagi came with, for protection and because they couldn't resist a trip to the mall. Besides, Mina said, as Toshiro's future mother she ought to share the responsibility for him. "I still don't think I should have him over at my house, though," she told Naru. "I don't know how I'd explain him to my parents."

Ami was enrolling the children in the private school she had mentioned, so Naru would get their school uniforms when that was taken care of. But the kids also needed regular clothing. At one of the large department stores in the mall, she and Minako bought jeans and shirts for the boys, and Mitsu chose some short skirts and character-printed t-shirts. For Jasmine, Naru headed to the short skirts in the older girls' department, but Jasmine hung back. "I'd rather have jeans," she explained shyly when Naru asked what was wrong. "My dads always make me wear dresses. They want me to be really girly, I guess to make up for having two dads and no mom. Or maybe it's because..." She trailed off, looking embarrassed.

"Because what?" Naru asked. She glanced back to make sure Mina and Usagi still had the other three children under control, then turned her attention back to Jasmine.

"Well, I'm weird. See, when they make a baby from two men, they can get XX, which is a girl, or XY or YX, which is a boy, or YY. Which isn't supposed to work. But it's so hard to get a baby started this way, that instead of wasting the YY they use chemicals to change the early cells to XX, which makes a girl. They don't know how to just change one of the Ys to an X for a boy. Anyway, I started out as a YY. So maybe my dads are afraid I'm not a boy or a girl. Even though I get, you know, my periods and the doctors say I'll be able to have babies." The girl blushed. "But I'd still rather wear jeans than dresses. So maybe my chromosomes really are messed up."

"Your dads told you all of that? About your chromosomes?"

"Yeah. They believe in being open and honest about all that stuff, about how I was born and stuff."

Naru thought for a moment. Her Adolescent Psychology class hadn't covered anything close to this, at least not so far. Openness and honesty were good, she supposed, but there was such a thing as too much of a good thing. Poor girl; being twelve was bad enough, without all this confusion over what you were really supposed to be. She smiled at Jasmine. "Or maybe you just like to wear jeans. Plenty of girls born the ordinary way do." She glanced around at the displays in the teen department. "Come here."

Jasmine followed, and Naru took a pair of jeans from a display rack. They were embroidered with flowers down the outsides of the flared legs, which ended in a beaded fringe. "How about something like this?" Naru asked. "It's just girly enough, I think."

Jasmine's oddly pale eyes lit up. "Cute! I love them! Thanks, Naru-oneesan. It always makes me feel better when I talk to you." She hurried off to the changing room to try on the pants.

Naru started looking for more jeans and some shirts for Jasmine to try on. It was amazing, she thought. Here she was, shopping at the mall with the daughter of Nephrite's murderer. Who would have thought that that horrible, spiteful creature could be the father of such a sweet daughter? Strange.

Jasmine ended up choosing five different pairs of embellished jeans, a dozen tops, and a pair of purple high-top sneakers with gold laces. Then the whole group headed back out into the mall in search of snacks. At the table where they sat down with their ice cream, cookies, and sodas, Naru and Jasmine showed off the jeans and sneakers they had bought.

"Naru-chan!"

Naru turned her head at the sound of the familiar voice calling her from across the food court. Umino was waving at her. She looked at Usagi and Mina and made a face. "What do I do?"

"Go on," Usagi said. "You can't just ignore him. Besides, he's leaving in a few more days, so what's the harm?"

"You're right." Naru sighed. "Be right back." She hurried across the food court, aware of her future children staring at her as they sucked on their soda straws.

Umino was wearing a fully-loaded hiking backpack that was almost as tall as he was. Naru bit her lip to keep from laughing. "Hi, Umino. Are you taking that thing to Brazil?"

"Yeah." He shrugged, trying to adjust the backpack more comfortably on his narrow shoulders. "I have to build up endurance to carry it. Even though we have porters, we're each supposed to carry our own personal pack. So I'm walking laps around the mall with it."

"Don't you think that walking in a park would be better practice?" Naru asked.

"I know. I'm working up to it. Right now I'm just trying to get my balance. Aren't those the same kids that we found the other day?"

"Yeah. It's the weirdest thing. The red-headed twins, it turns out they really are the children of long-lost relatives of my mom's." The lie Naru had practiced came smoothly. She supposed that sometime she would have to clue Midori in on what was going on, even though it wasn't going to be easy to get her mother to believe her. "Their parents are close friends with the parents of the other two kids, and they all work together. Right now there's some major stuff going on, so they sent the kids to stay with my mom and me until it's over."

Umino's eyes went wide behind his thick glasses. "Wow. Are their parents, like, mobsters or secret agents or something?"

"If they were, do you think I'd tell you?"

"I suppose not." Umino looked at his watch. "Well, time for another lap. If you come across an enormous backpack on the floor, pick it up because I'm probably squashed underneath it. I'm leaving the day after tomorrow, Naru-chan, so I don't know if I'll see you again before I leave. Take care."

Naru felt just a small twinge of sadness. He was a good friend, even though their romance, such as it was, was over. She would miss him. "You take care too, Umino." On impulse, she leaned over and kissed his cheek quickly. "I hope you have a great time in the Amazon."

"Thanks, Naru-chan." Umino smiled once more, then trudged off on another journey around the mall.

Naru returned to the table. "Are you sure you aren't going to marry him?" Mitsu asked.

"Of course I'm sure. I'm going to marry your dad, and have you and your brothers and sisters." Naru felt the delicious shiver that went up her spine every time she thought about her future with Nephrite. She didn't know how she could stand waiting for him to come back.

"Good," Meiko said. "Because it would be a bummer if I didn't get to be born after all."

* * * * * * * *

A sound, the light tread of a footstep, an arm brushing against the wall, awoke Lady Naru. She lay still, thinking at first that it was one of the children coming into her room to seek refuge from a bad dream. Seiji, Nariko, and Renjiro had been haunted by nightmares ever since the strange, frightening night when Sailor Pluto had whisked the older children away. Naru would try to comfort them, but she felt like she had so little to offer them. She was just barely coping with her own living nightmare. There had been no news of Nephrite or her oldest sons. She could remember caring for the children who had been sent back in time; at least they were safe, for the moment. But it was so hard, wondering if everything would turn out all right and her family would be together again.

The footsteps paused. Not one of the children, then. A frightened child would have run into the bedroom and straight into Naru's arms, burrowing against her for safety from the terrors of the night. Another possibility suddenly occurred to her. "Nephrite?" she called softly. It could be him. He could have escaped from wherever he had been taken to, and was looking in on the children before coming to her.... She held her breath, waiting.

No answer. No further footsteps, no one came into the room. She may well have imagined the slight sounds; they had been so faint, after all, and there was a light breeze outside, as there usually was at night by the lake. It might only have been the wind she heard. "Nephrite," she whispered again, without hope. She rolled onto her side and wept silently, afraid to wake the children with her tears.

* * * * * * * *

Once again, the four Lords stood before Beryl-Metallia, the Lady of Eternal Night, in the ruined throne room of the Crystal Palace. "Tell me what you've learned, Nephrite," her nearly soundless voice hissed and grated.

Nephrite bowed, knowing that his news would likely please the Lady. "The youma I sent to my lakeside residence spent a full day observing the activities there, then searched through the house itself that night. She found that Zoisite and Kunzite's daughter Jasmine, Jadeite's son Toshiro, and my twins Mitsu and Meiko are all missing. I think it very likely that those four have been sent back in time with the crystals." As Nephrite spoke, he wondered why he had spawned so many offspring. It had seemed terribly important at the time, he remembered, but he couldn't imagine why. They were simply a drain on one's energy and resources, unless one were able to use them for one's own purposes once they were old enough. It hardly seemed worth the effort, when youma were so much more readily available and easily trained. He recalled that Zoisite and Kunzite had spent over a quarter million Crystal Yen to procure their single offspring, and mentally shook his head at the idiocy of their human selves.

"It's possible..." the Lady murmured to herself. "...hidden inside the bodies of those who carry the same blood as the crystals' masters..." She addressed the Lords again. "I think it very likely that you are correct, Nephrite. Which leaves us with the problem of figuring out how to go back to the past and recapture the crystals. How did these Dark Moon warriors travel to the past?"

"I was never able to learn that, Lady," Lord Shingo said from his throne next to the Lady. "I believe they had some technology which we were never able to discover or duplicate."

"Hmm." A distinct note of displeasure entered the Lady's slithery, metallic voice. "If we had the crystals, we could use their power to build a bridge to the past, just as we built a bridge between the Earth dimension and the Chaos."

"But if we had the crystals, there would be no need to go back in time," Nephrite pointed out.

The Lady directed the cold fire of her gaze towards him. "I don't need you to tell me that, Nephrite," she said, a little too vehemently, Nephrite thought. If he were a weak-minded, passive worm he wouldn't be of much use to her, and she knew it. "Does anyone have anything useful to say?" the Lady asked.

"It's obvious that Pluto used her Timestaff to take the children back in time," Jadeite said. "If we could -"

Kunzite interrupted him. "Leave it to us, my Lady." He and Zoisite bowed to the Lady of Eternal Night, then teleported away in a swirl of cherry blossoms and silver light.

* * * * * * * *

Kunzite, Zoisite, and the half-dozen youma burst through the door to the stairwell of the tower where the Royal Family and their retinue were holed up. The door itself was guarded by more youma, to keep the occupants of the tower from escaping. But the stairs were guarded by Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Mars, and three of the soldiers the Royal Family had managed to take with them when they retreated to the tower. The invasion took the stairwell's guardians by surprise. With an aggressive, relentless assault, firing blasts of magic in a rainbow of colors, the Lady's servants quickly forced their way up the stairs. They didn't even stop to see if the crumpled, bleeding bodies they left behind were alive or dead.

At the top of the stairwell, Zoisite tested the door to the tower suite for guard spells, which he quickly and easily disabled. He had a peculiar talent for this, and in his life as a servant of the mortal Queen Beryl, had enjoyed using his gift to annoy the hell out of Nephrite, who was never able to construct a guard spell that would keep Zoisite out. As he worked now, Zoisite wondered why he had wasted so much time and energy needling Nephrite. Foolishness. It was time and energy he could have used in serving his Queen more effectively.

Zoisite unlocked the last guard spell, then stepped back while Kunzite blasted the door open with a burst of silvery fire. In the antechamber, Sailor Venus, Sailor Pluto, Sailor Uranus, and one of Nephrite's sons met the invasion with powerful defensive attacks. Zoisite, Kunzite, and the youma countered the defense with an unrestrained onslaught of power. Quickly, the remaining Senshi, Nephrite's other two sons, and three more soldiers joined the battle, followed by the King, Queen, and Princess in their nightclothes.

"Get back upstairs!" Sailor Uranus shouted at the Royal Family. A blast of energy from Kunzite's hands sent her flying across the room. She crashed into a crystal wall and slid, unconscious, to the floor. Another round of attacks took out Venus, Pluto, two of the soldiers, and Nephrite's sons.

"No!" Serenity cried. She raised her hands and began her transformation spell, but Zoisite said, "No need to trouble yourself, Your Majesty." While Kunzite and the youma kept the remaining defenders at bay with a volley of explosive attacks, Zoisite stepped delicately over the bodies on the floor to where Sailor Pluto lay face-down, the edges of her uniform smoking slightly. "We'll just take this." The golden-haired Lord plucked Pluto's Timestaff from her limp hand and turned back to the door.

"Stop!" One of Nephrite's spawn, bleeding heavily from a cut on his head, got to his knees, then lunged at Zoisite. The Lord casually flung a shower of razor-sharp cherry blossoms at the boy's face. The boy screamed and tried to cover his head with his arms while the flowers sliced his dark blue uniform to shreds.

With a huge but justifiable expenditure of energy, Zoisite, Kunzite and the six youma teleported from the suite. At the entrance to the tower stairwell, Zoisite locked the door with a guard spell he had designed just now based on the weaknesses he had detected in the Senshi's spells. The tower was now an inescapable prison.

"Well, my dear," Kunzite said as the two Lords walked back to the throne room, the youma trailing obediently behind them. "That was easier than I expected it to be."

"I know my intelligence is reliable," Zoisite said, "even if you aren't quite convinced." He was jittery with exhilaration from the fight; he began planning how he and Kunzite would go about burning up the extra adrenaline later on. After, of course, presenting their prize to the Lady and receiving her praise for a job well done.

In the hall, Kunzite and Zoisite knelt before their queen and offered Pluto's staff to her. The Lady gestured, and the staff floated into her shadowy, shifting hand. "Excellent," she said in her scraping, hissing voice. "You didn't lose any youma, either. Until we have those crystals in our possession, we cannot easily replace any youma we lose. You have done well, Zoisite and Kunzite. I am pleased. You may be excused now."

The Lady watched the lovers leave the throne room. Unlike before, when her suspicions of their affair had infuriated her, she knew that this time their first loyalty was to her. She had enough confidence in her power over them to let them have their fun together. Unlike before, it didn't really mean anything. The Lady turned her attention to the other two Lords. "Jadeite, see that the youma are fed, then question them. Find out what you can about our foes' techniques and strengths, and adjust their training if necessary."

"Yes, Lady." Right fist pressed against his heart, Jadeite bowed, then left the room.

"Now, Nephrite." The Lady fixed her burning gaze on the remaining Lord. "I'm putting you in charge of the task of regaining the crystals. You may proceed with making your plans."

Nephrite bowed, then straightened up, smiling coldly. "I will not fail you, Lady."

* * * * * * * *