----------

	The dream started like it always did, with the laughter and
silibant whispers of her classmates. Ami had long ago learned to
display no outward reaction to the derision of her peers. If she
did, the abuse only became worse. The best of the names they called
her was 'Curve-breaker'. Some of the worse ones were 'Ice-bitch',
'Stuck-up Cunt', and 'Teacher's Whore'.

	Ami didn't dignify the allegations that she traded sexual
favors for grades with any kind of response.

	The one who started such horrible nick-names, the bane of
Ami's existence, was Miyama Takamura. She was beautiful and had long
blonde hair where Ami's was short and boyish. She had friends and
could summon her little impenetrable clique at the drop of a hat. If
she decided she wanted to make Ami's life miserable on any given
day, Miyama could summon a small army of her lackeys and toadies to
do her dirty deeds for her.

	One day, it all came to a head. Ami was sitting in science
class at the workstation nearest the front of the room so she could
better hear the teacher over the whispered insults and veiled
threats.

	It wasn't until the teacher was well into his discussion on
the nature of acidic chemical reactions that Ami felt the first spit
wad hit the back of her head.

	Clenching her teeth, she brushed the disgusting wad of
saliva soaked paper out of her hair and continued to try to
concentrate on the lesson. It wasn't important that she had already
covered this material and done the experiment on her own time. The
teacher was taking time to impart important information unto his
students. That was all that mattered.

	The second and third spitballs were met with much the same
reaction. The stinging impact of a paperclip shot across the room
from a rubber band brought tears to her eyes, but Ami said nothing.

	Then, when the beaker on the teacher's desk began to boil,
making enough noise to mask them, the whispers began.

	"Did you hear that Mizuno went down on Kurosawa-sensei in
the teacher's lounge?"

	"Anything for a grade, I guess. Maybe she just likes the
taste of crusty old dick."

	"Dick? She's not limiting herself to that. She ate out fat
old Sawana last year in the girl's bathroom."

	"I hate her. She always ruins it for everyone else."

	"She's horrible. I guess when she finally has to abort this
old freak's baby, she'll slow down a little."

	"She's too much of a freak to have a baby. The bitch is
barely human."

	"I wish she'd die."

	"I wish she'd commit suicide."

	"I hate her."

	"Ugly."

	"Slut."

	"Snob."

	"Bitch."

	"Whore."

	"I hate her," Miyama's quiet voice echoed in Ami's brain.

	She didn't realize that the teacher had left the room until
she was roaring at the top of her lungs.

	One of the other students tried to approach her to calm her
down, but Ami lashed out with strength she didn't know she had and
blackened the boy's eye with a brutal backhand.

	She grabbed a coil of rubber tubing off the teacher's desk
and leapt for Miyama. The blonde girl didn't even have a chance to
dodge before Ami was on her.

	Before even Ami knew what was happening she had used a short
length of the tubing to tie Miyama's wrists to the water faucet at
her workstation. Then, somehow, she broke the rest of the tubing off
and recoiled it. She tore Miyama's skirt and panties away with a
single motion and brought the coiled tubing down on her naked ass
just as hard as she could.

	Miyama Takamura's scream of agony was a sweet sound to Ami's
ears. She swung again and again, exulting in the girl's cries of
pain and her begging.

	She began to lecture the girl in a loud, high-pitched voice
on proper classroom behavior even as the rubber flail she was using
began to freeze over. It's newly freezing hard surface did even
worse than raise welts on Miyama's legs and backside. It began to
cut her, sending splatters of blood in all directions.

	Amy distinctly remembered the taste of Miyama's blood when
it splattered on her face. She remembered licking it off the icy
flail and the shivers of pleasure the act sent through her body. She
remembered vividly the cry of ultimate agony that came from Miyama's
throat just before she passed out.

	Afterwards... after three members of the baseball team
tackled her to the ground, after the ambulance came to take Miyama
to the emergency room, after several teachers literally dragged Ami
into the principal's office by her arms, the girl remembered how
much it seemed like she had been watching some kind of movie.

	Even as her mother screamed at her for her violent actions
and the principal demanded to know where she had gotten liquid
nitrogen from, a voice inside Ami's head told her that this was the
second time that this had happened.

	That same voice, a kind, soft, but terrible voice
nonetheless, scolded her.

	"We do not strike the servants," the voice told her, "no
matter how insolent or rude they may act. We do not torture. We do
not glory in pain. We are benevolent. We are kind. We are not
monsters."

	When Ami broke down and cried, it was not because she was
being expelled, as her teachers and her mother thought. It was
because she had failed that voice... that person... for a second
time.

----------------------------------------
Hidden in Darkness

A Bishojou Senshi Sailor Moon fanstory

by Chris Jones

Chapter 3: The Surgeon
----------------------------------------

	"Doctor Mizuno?"

	Ami started awake, wiping a sticky trail of saliva off of
her cheek. She quickly saw that she must have fallen asleep at her
desk again. Disgustedly, she realized she had drooled all over her
notebook. It must have been the smell of wet paper that started her
off on that dream again.

	"I'm sorry, I must have dozed off," Ami told the night
watchman who was shining a flashlight at her.

	"Sorry, Doctor Mizuno," the man said. "There's a lady down
in the lobby waiting for you."

	"It's okay. I didn't mean to stay this late. What time is
it?"

	She glanced at her own watch, even as the watchman told her,
"Three in the morning, Ma'am."

	Ami shook her head. It was almost certainly Minako down in
the parking lot. The two were supposed to have met for a late
dinner, but Minako was delayed on the set of her show and Ami fell
asleep while working.

	She shut her computer workstation down, checked to make sure
she had all her possessions, and followed the night watchman out of
the office.

	"Try to get some sleep, Doctor," he told her as she stepped
out of the elevator and into the lobby.

	"I'll try," she said graciously, even as Minako ran up to
her, apologizing for forgetting their dinner.

	She and Minako decided to find a twenty-four hour coffee
shop. In the car, Ami allowed herself to finish the chain of
memories the dream had brought about.

	She had never told the others the reason why she had
transferred to Juuban. Indeed, the 'violent Ami' never resurfaced
after than one horrible incident... unless she was Sailor Mercury at
the time.

	Her mother's money and connections had done a lot to keep
any record of her daughter's violence from following her, despite
the fact that Miyama Takamura very nearly had a finger amputated due
to the frostbite that covered her hands. It was only years later
that Ami understood why Miyama's hands had been frostbitten or the
rubber tubing she used to whip her had frozen over.

	Afterwards, even before she enrolled in Juuban, Ami had been
horrified by her actions. She wrote a letter of apology to Miyama
and her family. Her mother covered the girl's medical expenses, a
fee that came out of Ami's allowance. Ami's mother had been
similarly disturbed, even after Ami explained about the abuse she
had been enduring. Other than that, Ami made no excuse for her
actions and said she would quietly accept any punishment her mother
had for her. Her mother, incredibly busy with her own work as a
pediatric surgeon, never quite got around to determining a
punishment for her daughter's crimes, but any punishment would have
been better than the occasional looks of disappointment or
uncertainty she had for her daughter for years after the event.

	The worst punishment came from inside Ami's own head. Every
time she thought back to the event, she heard the voice. The
difference between now and then was that now she knew who the voice
really belonged to.

	Shuddering, Ami brought herself out of her reverie and
glanced up as Minako's car pulled up into a parking lot.

	"You okay, Ami-chan?" Minako asked. "You've been really
quiet. You're not mad I was so late, are you?"

	"No! Not at all. I'm just a little sleepy."

* * *

	"Let me get this straight," Cobalt asked as she and several
of her closest acquaintances sat in the back room of her
delicatessen. "In the last week and a half we've just mysteriously
*lost* five people?"

	"Graphite was the first," Achorite replied. "Then Silicon,
Germanium and Lead. Tin disappeared just this morning when she was
supposed to be watching Marcasite and Opal."

	"Dammit."

	"Do you think it was the Sailor Senshi?" one of her youma
asked.

	"Two weeks ago I would be sure of it," Cobalt replied,
biting her lip.

	All those present did their best not to shudder at the
implication. Ten days previously, the Sailor Senshi had a fight
amongst themselves that almost killed one of the children... one of
the children Graphite was supposed to be watching. Sailor Moon had
inexplicably let the little girl go rather than let her be killed
and then... to everyone's surprise, did not destroy the energy
draining delicatessen Cobalt had built.

	"I don't think it was the Sailor Senshi," Achorite
volunteered. "I think if it was the Sailor Senshi, there would have
been a big fight and lots of light and explosions."

	"We don't know that, Akie" Cobalt said. "There are more than
just the five Sailors now. It could have been one of the ones we
don't know about, like Pluto or Saturn."

	Brookite, who was still working at the deli, tried her best
to add to the conversation. "Kelly was convinced that Sailor Uranus
looked like Graphite. Maybe Uranus did something to her and took her
appearance."

	"Kelly sees in the radio spectrum, Brookite," Cobalt
reminded her, thinking back to that horrible night in the park when
Sailor Venus had threatened her with her life. In between the Sailor
Senshi, a blonde woman lay on the ground, crying in distress. That
woman was no doubt Sailor Uranus and for some reason,
incomprehensible to Cobalt, the others had stopped her from crushing
Kaliborite like a bug. "No, the resemblance between Graphite and
Sailor Uranus is merely superficial. Both are tall and thin, but
they weren't even wearing the same color hair."

	"Is it possible that they went back into the Dark Kingdom?"
Achorite asked.

	"Don't think I haven't asked myself that," Cobalt replied.
"But with what teleporter? Can anyone here but me teleport?" she
asked. "Anybody keeping it a secret, just in case?"

	She was met with shaking heads and vacant stares.

	"The old generals could 'port," Cobalt continued. "And I've
learned, but it's one of the hardest things I can do. Unless someone
has hijacked one of our teleporter devices--"

	*BOOM*

	The room shook. Some of the youma inside screamed in terror,
but Cobalt bolted to her feet.

	Achorite gulped. "That was--"

	"The teleporter near the arcade," Cobalt finished for her.
"Shut down the restaurant," she told Brookite. "And go home and make
sure that the kids are okay. Everyone else, don't come back unless I
call you."

	"Wait!" Achorite yelled just before Cobalt dematerialized.

	Cobalt nodded and took her hand. As youma scrambled all
around them, the two faded from sight.

* * *

	Across town, Ami was woken by a loud beeping. She blinked
blearily at the afternoon sun steaming in through her bedroom
window. She and Minako hadn't gotten in until after sunrise.
Thankfully, being a weekend, Ami could afford to sleep in a few
hours. It wasn't often that she got to stay out ridiculously late or
act so wildly.

	Shaking her head, she sat up in bed and checked the Mercury
computer, which was sitting open on her nightstand. Its screen was
blinking furiously, displaying a map of the Juuban area with a red
circle drawn near the Crown Arcade.

	The meaning was clear. A massive amount of dark energy had
just flared up.

	Not wasting any time, Ami threw on a sundress and a pair of
sandals and raced downstairs to her townhouse's garage. Grabbing her
keys off the pegboard in her garage, she dove into her car, a late
model convertible.

	It was frivolous, especially since she was never on call as
anything other than a Sailor Senshi, but having a car meant that she
could cross town in a matter of minutes. She was in Azabun Juuban in
under a minute.

	"...Near the arcade," she spoke into her wrist over the wind
whipping through her hair as she drove. "I'll meet the rest of you
there!" she promised.

	Usagi would be first to arrive, either in her own car, a car
owned by the television station, or on the back of Mamoru's
unlicensed motorcycle. Makoto would be next, simply because she
lived so close to the Crown, and then Minako and Rei. It would give
Ami time to transform and observe the situation before they had to
charge into battle.

	She didn't transform in the car, but very near by, in the
narrow alley between the arcade and the shop next to it. When she
emerged from the other side, as Sailor Mercury, she could smell
smoke.

	Mercury didn't even have to look at her computer to trace
the disturbance to its source. All she had to do was follow the
screams. After a second, a young woman brushed past her. Her eyes
were wide with horror and her face--

	Recognizing the youma for what she was, Sailor Mercury
grabbed her by the arm. "The delicatessen is that way," she pointed.
"Your friends are probably still there."

	Still terrified, the youma nodded and ran.

	Mercury advanced further on her destination, an aging
storage building with flames starting to lick through the rotting
wooden roof.

	She climbed in through a low window and began to look
around. Inside was a large, strange-looking device made of plastic,
gemstone, and steel. It was burning, and rapidly deforming as did
so, but it looked like it was supposed to be circular, like a portal
of some kind. Indeed, several dead youma were lying around it,
looking significantly less human that the girl Mercury had seen
running from the scene. They looked as if they had been killed
either in the process of coming through the portal, or immediately
after.

	Who could have done this? Sailor Mercury shook her head in
disgust and horror. Also, some little part of her mind asked, why
didn't the dead youma crumble into dust like those she was familiar
with?

	Her eyes focused on a strange shape near the disaster.
Against the glare of the flames, it took her a second to realize
that it was a person. Standing right in front of the damaged device,
stalking back and forth menacingly, was a tall, dark-haired woman in
a grey uniform.

	Sailor Mercury's computer chimed quietly to let her know
that there was another energy build-up nearby. She looked up from
the display just in time to see a spray of confetti rain down. Some
of the pieces were whipped up by the spreading flames and became
fiery motes.

	General Cobalt appeared, her glittering eyes reflecting the
inferno all around her.

	"Graphite!" she shouted. "What have you done?!"

	"Titanite! Sylvite!" Achorite cried out, materializing just
behind her boss and seeing the dead bodies in front of her. "No!"

	"I've done what you've always been too cowardly to do,
Cobalt. I'm getting rid of the defective half breeds before they can
ruin it for the rest of us!"

	"What are you talking about? You are a half-breed, Graphite!
We all are!"

	For a second, as the dark-haired woman was stalking angrily
towards Cobalt, Amy saw her freeze with indecision. Dark emotions
flickered across her face before her lips finally settled into a
killing sneer.

	"You can die too," Graphite growled before leaping at
Cobalt. Her human semblance fell away, leaving a tall, slender youma
with dark green hair and long, ripping claws. She had no nose and
only a fang-filled slash for a mouth.

	Cobalt raised her fist to defend herself. "Don't do it,
Graphite! METASPIKE!"

	Cobalt's crystalline bomb hit the floor in front of the
youma, but the monster ignored her and the dozens of crystalline
shards that embedded into the front of its uniform.

	It raised its claws to slash at Cobalt, who was about to
dodge back out the way.

	"No," Achorite cried, stepping in front of Cobalt, her arms
spread wide. "I won't let you hurt her, Graphite!"

	"Akie, move!" Cobalt yelled.

	It was too late. The youma Graphite slashed Achorite across
the abdomen with an underhand strike. She was thrown back, red blood
spraying from her stomach.

	"AKIE! NO!" Cobalt screamed.

	Sailor Mercury had seen enough.	"MERCURY ICE PACIFICATION!"
she cried, crossing her arms against her chest. She flung them
outwards and raised her fingers toward the ceiling.

	Graphite never knew what hit her. An icy spike grew out of
floor directly underneath her. It hit the youma in the leg, but kept
going. Another spiky crystal grew from the top of her thigh where
the first one exited. It hit Graphite in the gut and protruded from
her back. Two more spikes grew, then four, then eight, then
sixteen...

	After just a few seconds, the ice shattered.

	This youma, unlike those lying dead on the floor, crumbled
to dust.

	Tears running down her face, Cobalt hovered protectively
over Achorite's injured body, her hands pressed to the girl's
bleeding wound.

	"I'll attack!" she threatened as Sailor Mercury ran over to
her from her hiding spot.

	"I'm a doctor," Mercury explained, throwing her hands in the
air. "Give me your jacket."

	"Don't touch her!" Cobalt screamed.

	"GIVE ME YOUR JACKET!!" Sailor Mercury repeated. "She's
bleeding to death!"

	Stunned, Cobalt nodded and pulled her uniform jacket off
over her head and handed it to the Sailor. Kneeling down next to
Achorite, Mercury used it first to wipe the blood and ichor away
from the wound, and then to apply pressure to the damage, doing her
best to stem the bleeding.

	Unconscious, Achorite looked a lot less normal than she
usually did. Her blond hair had turned very slightly green and her
face had gained several diamond-shaped marks. Her ears had points
and her fingers ended in tiny claws. She didn't look nearly as
strange as Graphite had, or even the dead youma nearby.

	"How human is she?" Mercury asked, packing Cobalt's jacket
as tightly as she could against the wound.

	"I don't know," Cobalt admitted.

	"Human enough to take a blood transfusion?" Mercury
clarified.

	"Maybe. I don't know. It takes a lot to injure us."

	"She's going to die unless she gets help immediately,"
Sailor Mercury said. "I know a place near here where I can get
surgical tools, but she won't live long enough to get her there.
She's losing blood too rapidly. Can you teleport us there?"

	Cobalt nodded. "I can try."

	"It's two blocks over. The Juuban Children's Memorial
Hospital. You've seen it?"

	"A big blue building?" Cobalt asked.

	"Try to put us down just inside the ER," Mercury instructed
her.

	Cobalt clenched her teeth and closed her eyes, grabbing
Mercury's wrist and Achorite's limp hand. Confetti began to swirl a
few seconds later.

	There were screams of shock and horror as the group
materialized in the floor in the middle of the emergency treatment
ward of the children's hospital.

	"Help us!" Mercury commanded as most of the doctors and
nurses ran away. "Help us, please! This person is injured."

	Cobalt gulped as several of the people who did not run away
screaming descended upon them.

	"What is this?" An older woman with short, dark hair said in
shock. "This person isn't human!"

	"No, she's not," Sailor Mercury admitted. "But she needs
help. I believe she has a lacerated bowel and a severed mesenteric
artery."

	The woman, Doctor Mizuno from her name tag, looked
underneath Cobalt's bloody jacket. "That artery is much too close to
the cavity wall."

	"Like you said," Sailor Mercury noted, "This person is not
human."

	 Doctor Mizuno stood and began to issue orders. "Setup OR 3
for trauma," she told several nurses who were standing by. "Any clue
as to blood type?" she asked.

	"None. She may not even accept normal blood. I recommend
plasma to maintain blood pressure."

	"You heard her," the doctor announced. "I want three units
of plasma waiting for us. Here's the gurney..." she noted as an
rushing orderly ran into the hallway with a rolling bed. "Okay, you
there," she pointed at Cobalt. "Help us lift on three. One...
Two..."

	Cobalt boggled. Besides their ages, the two women in front
of her spoke in a suspiciously similar tone. They could be sister...
or mother and...

	Cobalt was frozen as Mercury glanced at her.

	"You're a physician?" Doctor Mizuno asked. "Do you
understand anything at all about the physiology we're working with
here?"

	"Yes, mo... ma'am," Mercury replied. "A little, but probably
not as much as we need."

	"Get her scrubbed and into a mask," Doctor Mizuno ordered
one of her nurses.

	Cobalt watched in stupefaction as Sailor Mercury and the
doctor wheeled Achorite away, hopefully to save her life.

	Swallowing, blinking back tears, she turned to run. There
was no telling what had happening back at the teleporter.

	She only made it as far as the reception area before a tall
man with dark hair grabbed her arm. She turned to twist out of his
grip, but a blonde woman with long pigtails put her hand on Cobalt's
other arm.

	Cobalt suddenly realized that she was surrounded by no fewer
than five absolutely normal-looking women that seemed to know who
she was. Two of them she recognized from her ill-fated tenure at the
health-club. Another she recognized as the crying woman in the park
who had attacked Kaliborite.

	"You--" she hissed.

	"I think we should talk, Cobalt," the blonde woman with
pigtails said. "There's a lot going on that we don't understand. Can
you help us understand what's happening?"

	"But--"

	"Mercury-san will do her best to help the doctors heal your
friend," the woman who Cobalt suddenly knew was Sailor Moon said.

	"And the building where your device was has already burned
down," a woman with long, dark hair informed her. "There's no help
for anyone who was inside."

	"Please talk with me," the blonde woman asked again.

* * *

	"What is this organ?" Doctor Mizuno asked.

	"Spleen?" Sailor Mercury guessed, looking rather strange in
a surgical mask and a smock over her costume. "Pancreas? No, look at
it this way and the way its attached. I think it's an appendix. It's
just much higher in her abdomen than ours."

	"It's rather large to be an appendix. I hope she doesn't
need it," Doctor Mizuno replied. "She'll lose it when we resection."

	"Good news, Doctor," one of then nurses said. "She types as
'O positive'."

	"Wonderful. Set up two units. She's bleeding like a stuck
pig over here."

	Mercury began to grumble under her breath, her mouth hidden
by the surgical mask.

	"Excuse me?" Doctor Mizuno asked.

	"I'm sorry. I said that she's much more human that I thought
she was."

	"Is she a monster?" the doctor asked. "Like the kind I've
read about in the paper?"

	"She is similar... but not a monster," Sailor Mercury
replied. "I don't think so at any rate." After all, she thought,
monsters didn't sacrifice themselves for those they loved.

* * *

	Cobalt sat nervously in the hospital's tiny chapel. The dark
haired man was standing guard by the door and the woman who was
Sailor Moon sat in front of her, her hands folded in her lap. The
taller woman, whom Cobalt knew was Sailor Uranus sat next to her
ready, she assumed, to attack if Cobalt acted threateningly. Her
face alternated between rage, loathing, and utter depression. Cobalt
hated to admit it, even to herself, but the woman terrified her.

	"I'm Usagi," the blonde woman introduced herself. "I think
we may have gotten off to a bad start?"

	"You call being mortal enemies a 'bad start'?!" Cobalt
replied derisively.

	"Your friend is going to be okay," Usagi continued. "Ami is
a very good doctor and this is her mother's hospital," she
explained, confirming Cobalt's suspicion.

	"Yeah, she'll be fine, as long as you and your little army
doesn't vaporize her," Cobalt accused. "Or she isn't put in prison
by the authorities because she's not human, or--"

	"We'll get her back out once she's better," Usagi assured
her in a mollifying tone. "You can always teleport her, right?"

	"Why are you even bothering talking to me?!" Cobalt asked,
at the end of her nerves. "Why don't you just kill us and be done
with it?"

	"Because... Because you haven't really done anything to hurt
anybody," Usagi replied. "You're not an invader, are you? You're a
refugee. You're all refugees."

	Next to her, the woman who was secretly Sailor Uranus gasped
out loud and stiffened.

	"Like it matters to you, Sailor Moon!" Cobalt accused. "All
you do is slaughter our kind!"

	"Why do you hate me so badly?" Usagi asked, a pained
expression on her face.

	"Because you destroyed my world!"

	Finally, unable to take it any longer, tears began to roll
down Cobalt's face. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jacket
and put her face in her hands. "You sit here in the sun and light,
with peace and justice and plenty of food to eat, and you never
considered those who you doomed to slow starvation."

	"I thought all the youma died at D-point," the tall, blonde
woman said.

	"I only fought Beryl and Metallia at D-point, Haruka," Usagi
explained. "The only youma I saw were those who... who... fought
with... the other Sailors."

	"They had youma slaves when I was there," the man guarding
the door said in a agonized tone. Cobalt realized that he was Prince
Endymion, the fifth general Beryl had introduced... just before the
end. "Most of them were part human, descended from one of the
generals or the human soldiers who survived the war at the end of
the Silver Millenium.They weren't fighters like those we saw. I
assumed that Kunzite and Zoicite killed them all for their energy in
order to revive Metallia. I had no clue that any of them survived."

	"Survived?" Cobalt choked out. "Hardly. Without the constant
flow of energy from the outside world, we starved. Most of us-- the
children-- were meals for the olders. Only the ones that could hide
or change their appearance survived. Do you know what it's like,
Sailor Moon, to have nothing? I was twelve years old before I tasted
food for the first time! Do you have any idea how desperate we
were?"

	"I was fourteen," Usagi said. "The first time I saw a youma,
it was trying to murder one of my best friends. Over the next few
months, youma and other agents of the Dark Kingdom tried to kill me
over and over again. I was a lazy crybaby. I had no ambitions and no
real future. Your hardship has reforged you into a leader, didn't
it? At the end, all my hardship did was kill all my friends. It took
the man I loved away."

	"Usagi, no," the tall woman said. "Don't--"

	"Please, Haruka," the shorter woman shushed her. "This is
important. In the end," she said to Cobalt, "I had nothing to live
for. I had no hope and no love. All of that had been taken away from
me by 'your kind'. It was only by the chance of a miracle that I got
back everyone I loved. When that happened I was determined never to
fail them again. When I first saw you, I wanted to hate you. I
wanted to kill you so that you couldn't hurt me or the ones I loved
any more. When I really looked at you, though, I kept seeing
myself."

	"No. I'm nothing like you!"

	"I'm sorry, Cobalt," Usagi said. "I'm so sorry. If I had
known that you had been left behind I would have stayed to save you
and everyone you love. I'm so sorry that I walked away with all my
friends and you had to suffer because of something I did."

	Cobalt clenched her teeth, unable to reply. She was too busy
wiping the tears away.

	"You love them," Usagi continued. "And you'll do what ever
it takes to save them, won't you? Even if you're up against odds you
can't possibly win against, you'll sacrifice anything. You're part
human, right? I don't know if people who are fully youma can love. I
don't know how much of a youma you are or how much of a human you
are, but you *do* love them, don't you?"

	"Yes," Cobalt replied, bawling.

	"Then I will help you, if you'll accept it. You're
evacuating the Dark Kingdom and coming here, right? That's what
you're using the energy you've been draining for."

	"Those of us who can eat," Cobalt admitted in a calmer tone
after several seconds. Some of us can't digest food. We have to have
life energy."

	Usagi nodded. "Does it have to be from people?" she asked,
getting up and sitting down next to Cobalt.

	"We collect the energy the only way we know how," Cobalt
explained, not really answering the question. "Most of it goes to
run the teleporters. We send some of it back so those who can't eat
food don't suffer. By Metallia, I've betrayed them all."

	"No," Usagi said. "You haven't. Now that we know what's
going on, we can help. Haruka is very sensitive about protecting
this planet from people who want to hurt others. What do you think,
Haruka?" Usagi asked. "Is Cobalt someone who came here to hurt us,
or is she someone who needs our help."

	Haruka, trembling, not able to meet Usagi or Cobalt's eyes,
nodded. "She needs help," she said hesitantly in a gruff voice. "We
need to help her."

	"I think Mamoru agrees with me too."

	"Mamoru thinks that it's a bloody crime that we ever had to
fight in the first place," the man said in an amused tone. "I'm in
the same boat with Usako. I thought you were all dead. If I had an
*inkling* that any of you had been left behind..."

	"How will you help us?!" Cobalt demanded angrily. "What can
you do?"

	"Well, if what Ami told me over the communicator after you
got here is true, you have someone who doesn't want you to leave the
Dark Kingdom, right?"

	"I don't know what's going on," Cobalt admitted. "Graphite--
one of my friends-- just went missing a few days ago. The next time
I saw her, she tried to kill me and attacked Akie. Others are
missing, too. I don't know what to do, or how to defend myself
against them if they attack like Graphite did."

	"We'll try to help you find out what happened to your
friends," Sailor Moon offered. "And we'll try to help you get as
much energy as we can."

	Cobalt blinked, not believing what she was hearing. "You
what?"

	"We'll help," Usagi said. "You can drain me as much as you
need to help all your friends come to this world. I don't know how
the others feel, but I bet would could find others willing to help.
People donate blood all the time, after all. Why not donate energy?"

	"Uhm..."

	"I'll help," Haruka choked out. It was very clearly a
difficult thing for her to say.

	Mamoru raised one hand in agreement.

	"You can't be serious. I'm your greatest enemy," Cobalt
said.

	Usagi had the decency not to laugh. "My only enemies are
people who think they have to hurt others to help themselves. As
long as you're not in that category, you're no enemy of mine.

* * *

	"Miss... Miss Mercury?"

	Sailor Mercury looked up into the face of one of the nurses
that had followed her and Achorite into the recovery ward. The
pretty, blonde woman looked familiar for some reason. Mercury
thought that she must have seen her before during other visits to
the hospital during less hectic circumstances.

	"I've already discussed payment for services with Doctor
Mizuno," Mercury said. "We'll try to leave just as soon as the
patient is stable enough to move."

	"Oh, that's not what I wanted," the nurse said, laying one
hand on Achorite's strangely colored forehead. "I just wanted to
tell you how kind I thought you were for what you did today. She's
your enemy and you saved her life."

	Mercury noticed that the nurse's hands were scarred, as if
they'd been burned or scalded... or severely frostbitten. Suddenly
her stomach knotted up, realizing how very much the nurse's face
looked like one she had been dreaming about.

	"I just did what I thought was right," she replied. "Maybe,
in a previous life, I had the capability to be a cruel person to my
enemies. Now, I try to always to the right thing, even if it means
helping someone who may not like me very much."

	"That sounds a lot like me, when I was in school," the nurse
said. "I was a horror. I always picked on all the other girls and
started nasty rumors about them. I drove one poor girl to attack me.
She got kicked out of school and had to transfer because of what I
did to her. After I... after I went back to school, I realized how
jealous of her I was. She was so pretty and so smart that I couldn't
bear it. She's a doctor now. I think she works at a medical research
company of some kind.  It was really because of her that I became a
nurse."

	Sailor Mercury bit her lip, trying to keep her face from
showing any trace of emotion.

	"I'm certain," she said after several seconds of silence,
"that girl regretted attacking you."

	The nurse nodded. "She sent me a letter a few weeks after it
happened. I was still too upset to care at the time, but I wish I'd
been able to keep her from getting expelled."

	"Maybe being expelled was for the best," Mercury said.
"Maybe she got a clean start and made new friends at her new
school."

	"Maybe. I wish that I could have been her friend," the nurse
laughed quietly. "She's so far above me now that she'd never notice
me. She'd probably remember me and hate me for the things I did to
her. Even if she didn't, she'd probably be too busy to even
recognize me."

	"I think you'd be surprised," Sailor Mercury told her. "I
think you should give her a chance."

	"Maybe I'll try some day," the nurse said.

	"Soon," Mercury urged her. "I bet she's been wanting to
apologize to you for a long time."

* * *

	That night, Cobalt was quite surprised to find seven Sailor
Senshi and Tuxedo Mask in the alley behind her closed delicatessen,
waiting for her, just like Usagi had promised that they would. She
noticed that Sailor Uranus was holding hands with the aqua-haired
Senshi and almost leaning on her for support.

	In Cobalt's hand was a small bag of diamonds and rubies
taken from the dark kingdom, the same source of funds she'd used to
help supply the delicatessen and the health club before it. In
Sailor Mercury's arms was the box of medical supplies.

	"Lets put these inside," she said.

	"I'm not sure I can teleport us all there," Cobalt admitted.
"I've already teleported twice today. That's almost more than I can
manage."

	"I'll help you," Sailor Moon said, holding her hand out to
the youma. "Take as much energy as you need."

	"I'll try not to take too much," Cobalt replied, swallowing.

	A few minutes later, all nine of them materialized in the
darkened hospital corridor where she had first appeared earlier in
the day.

	"Confetti?" Sailor Venus noted curiously. "I've been meaning
to ask."

	"When I was very young, I saw General Zoicite phase out with
a puff of rose petals," Cobalt explained. "I thought it was really
pretty. I was trying for flowers of any kind but I got confetti
instead."

	"Don't be fooled. Zoicite carried a bag of rose petals
around with him," Tuxedo Kamen said in amusement. "Spontaneous
confetti is probably a major achievement."

	Cobalt grimaced in chagrin.

	"This way," Sailor Mercury instructed.

	Indeed, after passing a few vacant nurses stations, and
detouring around a few late-night staff, the group made it into the
intensive care ward.

	"Did everyone have to come?" Cobalt whispered in irritation,
noting that the group was noisier than it had to be, merely because
of its size.

	"We all want to make sure we can trust you," Sailor Mars
said. "Sailor Moon thinks your okay, but we're all *very* protective
of her and don't want to see her hurt," she indicated menacingly.

	Gulping, Cobalt nodded and pushed open a door. Inside,
Doctor Mizuno was waiting with Achorite, whose eyes were just barely
open. Conscious again, she looked quite a bit more human. The
markings were gone from her face, but her ears were still pointed.

	"Callie," she whispered weakly. "You came back for me."

	"Of course I did," Cobalt said, kneeling down over
Achorite's bed, her blue hair swirling all around the injured youma.
"Did you think I'd leave you here?"

	"I would feel much better about this situation if you would
let me transfer her to another hospital," Doctor Mizuno interjected.

	"Can you guarantee her safety if anyone talks about what
they saw today?" Sailor Mercury asked in a knowing tone.

	Sadly, Doctor Mizuno shook her head.

	"I've contacted another doctor who's going to be looking
after her," Mercury volunteered after a little bit. "She's also
'Doctor Mizuno'. Perhaps the two of you are related?"

	The doctor's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

	"Please use this to pay for Akie's treatment," Cobalt said,
handing the bag of gemstones to the Doctor.

	"Normally, in such an extraordinary scenario, I would waive
payment, but having fees on record may help to smooth... Oh dear!
These aren't real, are they?!" she exclaimed, her eyes widening in
shock. "I can't possibly accept this much!"

	"Take them as a donation to the hospital," Tuxedo Kamen
suggested. "From the Dark Kingdom."

	He looked around at all the odd expressions he was
receiving. "What? It can't hurt, can it?"

- - -

~to be continued...

If you couldn't tell, I'm playing pretty fast and loose with the
Sailor Moon backstory, taking elements from both the Manga and the
Anime where it suits me, mostly for the sake of fleshing out the
horror that the Dark Kingdom has become out of the horror that it
was when Beryl and the Generals were alive. Some of the backstory
elements I've manufactured whole cloth for the sake of the story.
I hope they're not too distracting.


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