Chapter 58: Like a Papa to Me

-VERTEX ONE: 15.556984-

Professor Tomoe's Lab

Three Kilometers Underground

Azabu-Juuban, Minato Ward, Tokyo

The Time Reaper said nothing. Behind the lab's transparent partition, it watched.

Chibi-Usa Tsukino, Sailor Chibi-Moon, stared appalled at the Hotaru that slept inside the tank. The... doppelgänger? Cyborg duplicate? Clone? Whatever it was, its outward appearance wasn't the least bit intimidating. Quite the opposite; were she in a purely logical state of mind, she might admire Professor Tomoe's handiwork. From what she could see, his attention to detail was flawless: the other Hotaru bore no outward sign at all of being artificial or altered in any way. It was perfect, it could have been the long-lost twin sister of the genuine article.

No, it was that it existed at all, the implications of its existence, and that said genuine article—the real Hotaru Tomoe, Sailor Saturn—was suspended not two meters meters away from her. Those things contributed to the other Hotaru being repellent on the level of basic conception. On that note, the implications of exactly how the other Hotaru was born—or grown, or built, or whatever—were dreadful too, but Chibi-Moon's brain couldn't begin to process those, focusing instead on the immediate problem.

Much as the sight made her sick, though, Chibi-Moon knew with a sinking heart that no matter how disturbed she was, no matter how much it felt like her brain was going to break just from looking at the other Hotaru... whatever Saturn was feeling right now had to be immeasurably worse.

Her face was proof of that: an expression of shellshock as if she had witnessed a five-way trainwreck. Saturn's skin was clammy, ashen pale, her color not helped by the lab's harsh fluorescent lighting. Her mouth hung open in a small "o", her eyes were wide and locked onto the other Hotaru. She dry heaved a few times, shuddered in her steel restraints, and croaked a sound of equal parts horror and anguish that barely coalesced into coherent words: "Papa, no..."

Professor Souichi Tomoe breathed a rueful sigh—one which sounded genuine, at least—and ran a hand through his snowy hair. "I suppose that reaction is only natural. Believe me, I regret that I must resort to this, but you have to understand: I did this in order to keep you safe, to give you the kind of ordinary, happy life that you deserve to have. She's your chance to be human."

"Bullshit." Chibi-Moon's thoughts on the matter came out in a croak that was only slightly less impressive than Saturn's. She got stronger as she carried on, and by the end of her tirade she shook like a leaf from the force of her anger. "You tried this once before, or one of you did. An artificial body to save her life? If I'm remembering right, that was just a front for making a nice, comfy vessel for Mistress 9 to mature in. Some life. Some freedom!"

Saturn barely suppressed a sob.

Tomoe fiddled with the whatever-it-was behind his ear, then glanced around the lab as if he was paranoid about being spotted. He lowered his voice. "As far as Joker and the rest of Dead End know, that is exactly what I've been doing. At every stage of this process, I've taken advantage of the trust and privacy Joker granted me to thoroughly falsify all data relating to this project. As we speak, Commander Eas is retrieving Mistress 9's Daimon Egg, plucked from out of the time stream... Eas believes that I will implant it into Hotaru's new body to revive Mistress 9, whereupon she will extract your Hostes—or Pure Heart Crystals, as the case may be—and deliver both them and your bodies to Dead End."

Chibi-Moon glared daggers at him, daring him to continue.

"Suffice to say," said Tomoe as he pushed up his glasses, "I have something different in mind."

Attempting to comprehend his motives made Chibi-Moon's head spin. Okay, so he was apparently willing to betray Joker. If it was true, and that was a big if, that was great. Wonderful, even. Bravo to him for that. But this Frankenstein stuff... there was no way he was on the level, and she wasn't about to let him off the hook so easily. Chibi-Moon went with her gut feeling and pressed on. "All right, fine. Assuming I believe you, and assuming you really are turning on Dead End... there's still the fact that you made a clone of your daughter. And you're talking about taking her soul and planting it in that clone, then wiping her brain of everything you think she shouldn't remember, all against her will! Come on, you're a genius! Can't you see how massively messed up that is?!"

Tomoe fixed her with his impassive stare. "It's for her own good. For her happiness."

"Enough of this crap about her happiness!" The words burst out of Chibi-Moon. She flexed against her bonds and imagined herself grabbing Tomoe by the lapels and shaking him. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe she's happy just the way she is?! Does she look happy to you right now?! How can you stand there and—"

"Chibi-Moon." Saturn spoke in a low, husky voice that cut off her tirade at the knees. Her eyes were hidden by the shade of her bangs, but there was an even flow of glistening tears down her one visible cheek. "That's enough. Thank you."

"But Saturn!"

"It's okay," she said, in a tone that suggested that she'd book no argument otherwise. "Papa..." Saturn paused to draw a few heaving breaths. "I understand what you're trying to do. I know you only want what's best for me." Shivers wracked her body as she risked a tiny glance in the direction of the other Hotaru. "But this? You can't do this. You can't, Papa. All that I've gone through, the joys and the tragedies, those experiences are what made me who I am. If you take any of that away... even if I'm happy, I won't be myself anymore. You understand that, don't you? Please, say you understand!"

And Professor Tomoe fell silent. Try as he might, even someone as stoic as he couldn't fully hide the harrowed cast to his eyes. There was something in him that wasn't there moments ago: a tiny seed of doubt. He stooped over the nearest console, gripping its edge for support. Despite her anger at him, Chibi-Moon couldn't help feeling a twinge of pity for how old the man seemed to be all of a sudden. It was as if twenty years or more had caught up with him in a few seconds time.

"Papa?" Saturn's voice was timid, but it trembled with longing. "Papa, it's okay. You can just let us go, and we'll take you with us and keep you safe. Whatever mistakes you've made—we've made—we'll all face them together. Won't we, Papa?"

Tomoe said something too quietly to make out.

"Papa?" Now there was a note of fear.

"You're stronger than I am, Hotaru," said Tomoe, low and hopeless. "Far stronger. Forgive me... Forgive this miserable old man his foolishness." He straightened and turned around, tears in his eyes...

Chibi-Moon's heart sank into a hollow so deep that sunlight was a distant memory.

The Time Reaper watched and said nothing.

There was an anesthesia mask clutched in Tomoe's hands, roughly cone-shaped and made of transparent silicone or some equivalent, with a streamlined gas canister attached to its orifice. "The procedure will be painless, I promise," he said. "You won't feel anything, and when you wake up, we can start over again. We can build new and better lives."

Chibi-Moon began to scream. Not even words, just subverbal bile spewed at the man about to take Saturn from her. She howled and thrashed against her restraints until her muscles burned from exertion, but the enormous metal cuffs were unfazed and unforgiving.

Saturn's own cries were inaudible; Chibi-Moon's drowned them out as she shook her head back and forth and made fruitless attempts to shy her face away from the mask.

Tomoe remained silent. With great care, he pressed the mask over Saturn's nose and mouth and tapped a control on its casing. Mist filled the cone, her eyelids flew open, then fluttered...

Chibi-Moon could hardly see through her tears and the red filter of her fury, but damn it, some selfish part of her wanted her face to be the last thing Saturn saw before... before...

"Ch... Chibi-Usa... chan..." Already half asleep, Saturn managed to turn her head. Beneath the mask, her lips spread into a wavering smile. "I'm sorry... I couldn't tell you before. In the Labyrinth... I used the Morendo to save you. But I don't regret anything... so please... don't cry. I love you... and w-we'll see each other... again... I promise. I know... this isn't the end... for us, but just... just in case..." Her amethyst eyes slid out of focus for a moment, then settled back on Chibi-Moon. "There is... no reason to... despair..." The last words floated from her lips with a shuddering sigh. "With every ending... there comes... hope... and rebirth..." Her eyelids drooped shut.

Only then did Chibi-Moon go limp. All her energy to struggle left her, she was hollowed out. Messiah had been unleashed once, and a year of Saturn's life was forfeit. Comprehending what that meant was beyond her at the moment, but what would her sacrifice even matter if Tomoe succeeded in taking her soul away? The flame inside her burned brighter than ever, refusing to be quenched. Her body was bound, but not her mouth... "She loves you," she hissed at Tomoe. "She begged you not to. And you... you're doing it anyway. How can you live with yourself? How can you stand to look in the mirror?"

"I can't," said Tomoe, brutal in his candor. His fingertips brushed against Saturn's cheek. Her breathing was slow and peaceful. "But how I feel about myself doesn't matter. I will bear any sin for her. She's all I have in the world, we are each other's only family—"

"Idiot." Saturn was asleep, so there was no more suppressing her anger. Chibi-Moon had run out of reasons to care. "You don't get it, do you? If you came with us and helped us put things back to normal, you'd have a family again, a great family, way bigger than before. Biology has nothing to do with it. Haruka-san, Michiru-san, and Setsuna all love Hotaru as much as any mother loves her daughter. Ikuko-mama, Usagi's mom, she dotes on Hotaru like she's one of her own kids. Kenji-papa always rushes to greet her when she comes over, all smiles, and Shingo? Shingo adores her. I'm pretty sure he has a crush, but I've got no idea how to break it to him." Chuckling seemed at the very least inappropriate, but she did it anyway. "Usagi, Ami-san, Rei-san, Makoto-san, and Minako-san, they're all like her sisters. Mamoru is her big brother. Naru-san and Umino-kun are like her cool rich aunt and uncle, and that makes little Akemi-chan her baby cousin. That's not even getting into all the magical girls from the other universes! All these people love Hotaru... yeah, maybe not the same way you do, but they love her.

"And I love her." How was it possible that she still had tears to shed? Chibi-Moon thought she was all cried out, but here came more. "I love her more than you can imagine," she said, forcing the words past the sudden lump in her throat. "We're gonna move in together when we're old enough, and get married. Both of us know that there's nobody else we want to spend our lives with. Small ceremony, n-nothing fancy. We're..." A violent sob. "We're g-gonna buy a house somewhere outside of Tokyo, suh-somewhere quiet. Maybe someday... we'll adopt kids."

Tomoe went back over to his console, his back to her. It was a while before he spoke next. "You know that that can't happen," he said as a compartment slid open in its pristine, flat surface. "I'm aware of the truth of who you are and where you come from. You hail from a thousand years in the future. You are the daughter of Neo Queen Serenity, and Princess of Crystal Tokyo. Even if I let both of you go, even if it was possible to win against Dead End, even if by some miracle you never have to fight again... you can't remain in the past forever. Someday, inevitably, you will need to return to your own time, to your duties as the future Sailor Moon and future queen. Through one way or another, you will part from my daughter. This idyllic future together that you imagine can't exist, and I think you know that."

An arrow pierced Chibi-Moon's chest... or perhaps it was merely the heartrending confirmation of what, deep down, she already knew was true. No matter what, Crystal Tokyo had to happen, it was destiny. Through whatever cosmic fluke, they had bought an extra five years time after Galaxia attacked Earth, but that time couldn't last forever. She had to go home, to become the new Sailor Moon and fight to defend Earth, along with—

-static-

—along with some very important people whose names and faces she couldn't quite place for some reason, but that was beside the point. When she grew up and her days as Sailor Moon were over, she would ascend to the throne, and that would mean the end of her freedom to do as she pleased. No quiet little life in a house in the countryside for you, Small Lady, you have a planet to rule over. The Neo Silver Millennium was supposed to be a paradise, it promised freedom for everyone... but would destiny and tradition allow Hotaru to stay together with her? Did they even have an option to adopt, or would she be expected to produce an heir through—gulp—traditional means, to continue the Serenity bloodline? What would happen if she refused?

Someday, somehow, she would have to say goodbye to Hotaru. The thought squeezed her heart in a freezing iron vise. No getting around it, no magic solution; this was something even the Silver Crystal couldn't fix. Chibi-Moon felt herself being sucked down into a bottomless, hungry, swamp...

But no, snarled a little voice inside her which refused to be silenced. If she gave up and did nothing, she would be saying goodbye to Hotaru today.

"In a sense, you should be thanking me for sparing her the pain of losing you," Tomoe was saying. "I was generous enough to give her the opportunity to say goodbye." Then, bitingly: "I never had that opportunity any of the times I lost her, nor did I have it when my wife died. No one should suffer that."

Not again. Chibi-Moon wasn't going to fall for it. It took arduous effort, but she began to claw her way up out of the swamp. "You are so full of shit," she said through clenched teeth, "that I'm surprised your eyes aren't brown. All you're doing is using your suffering as an excuse to manipulate people. And what makes you so sure you can get away with it, even if you do pull it off, huh? If you take Hotaru's soul, you'll have both the Morning Lights and Dead End after you. That's Joker and his army and two dozen-plus angry magical girls and counting. Some of whom are as strong and tough as Superman, and some of whom are actual goddesses. We've also got some kind of time entity... person... who can see everything and send anyone anywhere and anywhen. It'd be the last mistake you ever make. Frankly, I don't like your odds of lasting more than a couple hours. Or minutes." She took delicious pleasure in the nasty, smug grin she shot at him as she added, "Buddy, you're fucked."

Tomoe's brow furrowed. "I think I preferred you when you were a small child. Your vulgarities irritate me."

"Yeah, well, sorry. I'm a 907-year-old in the body of a teenager, so I'm more than qualified to swear as much as I want. You still haven't answered my question: just how do you think you're getting away with this?" As she asked that, Chibi-Moon's mind raced: Stall him. Give the others time to find us. Keep him talking, keep him angry, too angry to do what he wants to do... Hers and Saturn's AMPs both still hung suspended in the energy field on the other side of the lab, along with their signature weapons. Without the AMPs, there wasn't much hope of getting off a distress signal, assuming the lab wasn't shielded against outgoing transmissions. If that was the case, the AMPs' locator beacons were likely blocked too. Fantine, Fantine might be able to see where they were and send help... but wait, didn't Fantine tell her that her vision had grown clouded? Dammit!

Before Tomoe could open his mouth to speak again, someone tapped on the transparent partition separating the two parts of the lab. Eas was back, carrying a small vial filled with thick red fluid... and in that fluid floated a shape that froze the breath in Chibi-Moon's chest, a shape that still occasionally woke her up in a cold sweat when it appeared in her nightmares. It was an ivory, oblong shape, ten centimeters tall and divided into six equal parts that resembled the segments of an orange. Mistress 9's Daimon Egg. So they really had it...

That wasn't all they had. Flanking Eas to either side were two young women, their appearances too alike to be anything but twins. They shared the same slender builds and the same rosy hair styled into four long, thin spiraling ponytails each. Both wore thick, ugly metal collars clamped around their necks, inscribed with volcanic glowing lines. Their earrings were spires of Malefic Black Crystal, identical to the ones the Black Moon Clan used to wear. Their uniforms were near-identical save for their colors; one wore a dark turquoise summer dress with an attached sailor collar, the other's dress was pink. Their expressions differed too: the turquoise one with the purple eyes scowled with barely-contained loathing for everyone and everything around her, while the one all in pink wore a face of timid, wide-eyed terror directed at no one thing in particular... but as she was closest to the Time Reaper, it was easy to imagine that it was responsible for a good portion of her anxiety.

Sailor Lethe and Sailor Mnemosyne, the Senshi of the Desert Rivers of Oblivion and Memory, respectively. Chibi-Moon never met them personally; she only knew them from the rare times that Usagi talked about the battles against Shadow Galactica. Unlike Iron Mouse and her fellow Sailor Animamates, Lethe and Mnemosyne were true Senshi, representing two binary stars and an associated solar system which was locked in perpetual war with itself. They joined Galaxia's side after she destroyed the system during her rampage through the Milky Way, seeing her as the only one who brought "true peace" and allowed them to be together. Galaxia being Galaxia, she used the two as soldiers, only to have her right-hand psychopaths Sailor Phi and Sailor Chi slaughter them when they were of no more use to her.

Not that they were strangers to slaughter themselves. Chibi-Moon's skin prickled with gooseflesh at the sight of Lethe's glower... Back then, she murdered a defenseless Luna, Artemis, and Diana right in front of Usagi simply to prove a point. She would have killed Usagi, Princess Kakyuu, and the Starlights too, had Mnemosyne not intervened. From what Usagi described, she would cross any line in her crusade to bring an end to war, and only her sister could hope to sometimes keep her in check. Between the two of them, Lethe and Mnemosyne had absolute dominion over memories. God only knew what Joker had been using them for, but at least they weren't brainwashed, judging by their expressions.

Odd, but Eas didn't look all that thrilled to be present either. Prior to now, Chibi-Moon only saw her at the Merry-Go-Round, but the difference between that Eas and this Eas was night and day. Her crimson eyes didn't want to stay still, they wandered off every few seconds. Since when did evil generals fidget like that? Of course, she reminded herself, Eas wasn't actually evil, or wasn't supposed to be anymore, but—

She had it, she could almost see the lightbulb above her head turn itself on. The perfect way to buy time: sow dissension in the ranks. Chibi-Moon fought hard to keep herself from smirking as a doorway opened in the partition. Eas stepped through with the twin Senshi on her heels, leaving the Time Reaper to float where it was.

"Professor," said Eas. A sour note of glumness was evident, even in that single word of greeting. She pressed the vial into Tomoe's hands as if glad to be rid of it. "As you requested."

"Very good, Commander. Thank you." By contrast, Tomoe was back to being wall-like and emotionless. If he noticed Eas's reluctance, he elected not to care. Once the vial was in his hands, he set it down on the console with the open compartment.

"Let's just get this over with," said Lethe. Her voice was harsh with bitterness, like someone scraping with a file. "Where do you want us?"

"There," said Tomoe, indicating the tank that held the other Hotaru. His hands hovered over the open compartment on his console. "Stand by and await your orders."

Lethe's eyes blazed, but she grasped Mnemosyne's hand and took position by the tank, emanating hatred for all except her sister.

Chibi-Moon couldn't count on getting through to the twins; their first priority would always be each other, it was a crapshoot whether or not they'd offer help to other Senshi if given the opportunity. Best to ignore them for now and go after another target while she was vulnerable. She directed her gaze at Eas and took a breath. "Hey, Eas, do you even know what's really going on here? He's—"

"Reaper," Tomoe interrupted. "Silence her."

-static-

At once, a freezing aura washed over her, as if someone dunked her in a bath of ice water. A crackling half-crescent of bloody energy hovered millimeters from her neck. The Time Reaper had blinked from the partition to Chibi-Moon's side of the lab in an instant, and now its scythe was drawn on her. Every last centimeter of her skin prickled, she shed bullets of cold sweat. Fingers clutched her heart and squeezed it like someone juicing a ripe fruit, and under pressure it beat so rapidly that she thought it might burst. It wasn't Wiseman, she told herself over and over. It wasn't Wiseman, but she couldn't convince her brain, not when the Reaper looked so much like her old nightmare. Not when it hovered so close...

"I've been informed that the slightest wound from that scythe is fatal, so I suggest you still your tongue," said Tomoe. A sequence of buttons lit up beneath his fingertips, and a new interface appeared to the right of his hand.

"I don't understand," said Eas, now on guard. "What did she mean, Professor? Aren't you reviving Mistre—"

Tomoe pressed a single control, and Eas crumpled like paper to the floor, the question still on her lips, her hair pooled around her like a puddle of quicksilver.

Mnemosyne cringed and buried her face in her sister's shoulder.

Lethe only glared, devoid of sympathy.

From her position, Chibi-Moon could see Eas's wide, frantic eyes darting about in confusion, but she didn't move, apparently couldn't move. Her expression was a blank, perfectly neutral; her eyes were the only expression of her terror. "P-Professor...!"

"My apologies, Commander Eas," said Tomoe. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, the lenses flared in the lab's fluorescent light. "As you've no doubt surmised, I've paralyzed the majority of your voluntary motor functions. I can't allow you to interfere."

"N-no... How..?" Eas sputtered.

Tomoe's response was curt. Professional, almost. "Research. My studies revealed that denizens of Labyrinth manage and control all aspects of their physiology via manipulation of computer data. Moebius used to regulate your entire species, correct? Its systems controlled when and how long you slept, your nutritional cycles, even the precise span of your lives down to the yottasecond. As Viluy would have put it, it's all data... and anything controlled by data is vulnerable to being compromised and reprogrammed."

Upon that last word, Eas's pupils dilated wide. "Lethe, Mnemosyne!" she cried, shrill and at an odd pitch. "Stop him!"

The twins gave each other a fleeting glance out of the corners of their eyes, and nothing more.

"I believe you'll find that I've made my own arrangement with Lethe and Mnemosyne," said Tomoe. "Plead all you want, Commander, but you have no allies here. Nor will you reach anyone through your communicator node. This laboratory is heavily shielded."

"Reaper...!" Panic saturated Eas's tone like the waters of a flood, but her breathing was slow and regular, all wrong for someone in her state. "Reaper, please—" And that was all. Her lips went on moving, they even opened in a soundless scream, but her voice was gone.

The Time Reaper said nothing. It floated motionless, its scythe blade remained stone-still at Chibi-Moon's throat.

Tomoe withdrew his finger from one of the controls and shook his head. "Every aspect of your physiology, including your vocal cords, larynx, and glottis. Even if you could still beg it for help, you'd only waste your breath. From what little I understand of it, the Time Reaper is incapable of thought. It has no will of its own, no concept of empathy or any other emotion. It's a thing, not a person... 'alive' only in the barest, most technical sense. A soulless perversion that exists to follow orders, nothing more." A sigh. "Or I pray it to be so. I don't want to contemplate the kind of endless hell its existence would be otherwise."

On the floor, Eas mouthed the words please and no over and over.

"Lethe," said Tomoe, "it's time. Erase only Eas's memories of myself, Hotaru, and the project we've been working on. Nothing more than that."

Lethe's hands balled into fists, streams of turquoise power trickled from between her fingers. "And what happens to us once you have what you want? You still haven't said, but I know you won't take us with you. You can't just leave us alone, we know too much. So what is it? Are you going to kill us, or just abandon us here for Joker to find?"

Tomoe's features crinkled inward. "Please, Lethe. For your own sake, don't attempt to renege on our agreement. Do as I ask."

"You, Joker, Galaxia!" Lethe spat, and every dark thing festering in her soul seemed to erupt from her. All her pain, all her helplessness, all the frustration stemming from her and her sister's enslavement, all of it burst from her lips like a plume of lava from a volcano. Veins stood out on her neck as she bellowed, and Chibi-Moon could see a full circle of white around each of her irises. "You're all the same! You say or do anything to get us on your side, you use us as weapons in your goddamned wars, and you tell us to shut up and follow orders! Then once we're of no more use to you, you'll just discard us like trash! Don't even try to deny it!"

"Lethe...!" Mnemosyne cried, appalled. "Lethe, please—"

Trembling, Lethe let go of her sister's hand and took a step forward. "I've had enough. I've had enough. Stay back, Mnemosyne." A wooden oar materialized before her; she clutched it tight and funneled power through its shaft. "I'm not strong enough to kill Joker for what he's done to us. I'm not strong enough to fight any of his other servants. I wasn't strong enough to kill Sailor Moon, or resist Galaxia, or stop the wars between our worlds. But you? You're just a human. A regular, ordinary human." Naked desperation danced in her eyes as she brandished the oar's paddle end like a club. "You I can kill. Or I can just erase all your memories until you can't stop us from leaving. It'll be easy, it'll only take a second... and then we'll be free."

"Lethe, stop." said Tomoe, standing firm. "Joker told you that you would be punished if you disobey."

"I don't care!" She laughed a hollow, broken laugh with not even an inkling of mirth and raised the oar high above her head. "I won't let us be used again! I refuse! I won't—"

The collar around Mnemosyne's neck hummed at a pitch low enough to make bones tremble, its fiery lines shone with hellish light. A horrible rasping sound escaped her lips. Down she went, clawing at the collar's metal surface.

"Mnemosyne!" All the fight drained from Lethe at once. Her oar clattered as it dropped from her numb hands, she nearly twisted an ankle on it in her rush to scoop her sister into her arms. When she spoke, her voice was haunted with utter certainty that this was all her fault. "Mnemosyne, no! Please, no!"

Suddenly, Tomoe was at their sides, a cutting implement with a heated edge clutched in his fingers. "Listen to me, Lethe. You must try to remain calm."

Mnemosyne thrashed and heaved for air, but her fingers were unable to find a grip on the collar or any seam to pry it apart. Her face reddened, purpled, and paled in short sequence, her eyes bulged hideously from their sockets as they turned up to her sister, pleading.

The next few exchanges were a study in contrasts: Tomoe's responses were calm and measured, every inch the doctor, with no perceptible trace of worry. And Lethe was in throes of hysteria, alternately enraged and helpless...

"Faster! She can't breathe!"

"I'm aware, and I'm working as fast as I can. This isn't my technology, it's Joker's own magic... disengaging the collars must require his direct authorization. Failing that, I must rely on brute force. I thought you were warned from the start that any defiance from one of you would punish the other—"

"I didn't know this was what would happen! I didn't know! Mnemosyne, I'm sorry! Please, hold on!"

"Diagnostic scans confirm that her sats levels are nearing zero... The collar isn't strangling her, it's halting the oxygenation of her bloodstream altogether, meaning a ventilator would be useless. Lethe, your hand is blocking the plasma cutter. Move out of the way and let me work."

"No... no, I won't leave her!"

"Then hold her still."

All the while, Mnemosyne's breaths grew weaker and hoarser, her struggles petered out. Most of her skin was a clammy, ashen color, while her lips, earlobes, and fingertips were tinted sickly blue.

"It's not working... The cutter, it's not working!"

"There isn't much time before she suffers irreparable damage from hypoxia. If the collar won't open without Joker's command and it can't be removed by force, there's only one option."

"I'll do anything! Please, save her, I beg you!"

Tomoe's lenses turned white with glare from the fluorescent lights above. "Then follow your orders."

"I—"

"You don't have time to argue. Now, Lethe."

Weeping, Lethe collapsed atop her sister, her scream heart-rending: "I'll do it, I'll do it! I'm sorry I said no! Whatever you want, I'll obey, I swear!"

The collar's awful droning hum scaled down and faded, and Mnemosyne drew in a long, shuddering, healthy breath at last. Another breath, and another, until a regular if shaky rhythm returned.

Tomoe stood and heaved a bitter sigh of his own, brushing off his spotless lab coat. "Barbaric," he said. His calm and even tone was broken, now it dripped with disgust. "If Joker wants your loyalty, there are any number of ways to control your minds or corrupt you into willing servants. This? This is pointless, suffering for the sake of suffering. All the more reason Hotaru needs to escape this madness. Lethe, please... do as I ask, for your sake and ours."

Lethe offered no response other than a defeated sob. She gently eased Mnemosyne's head from where it lay in her lap and pushed herself upright. Half-stumbling, half-crawling, she made her way to the paralyzed Eas's side, closed her eyes, and cupped her hands. A pool of water filled her palms, so sparkling clear and still that it could have been glass, and with great care she brought it to Eas's lips.

Eas drank, and her pupils dilated so wide that her irises were eclipsed save for a whisper-thin ring of crimson. The frantic movement of her eyes halted the instant the water passed her lips... she continued staring, but anyone watching could tell that there was nothing she could see. It took a long time before her eyelids closed.

Throughout all this, Chibi-Moon barely registered a thing. Lethe's doomed attempt at rebellion, the activation of Mnemosyne's collar, Tomoe's attempt to help, Eas drinking the Water of Oblivion... all were background noise. Her mind was simultaneously there in the lab and light years away.

For despite the icy terror that coursed through her veins when in the Reaper's presence, despite her fear for her life as its scythe blade hovered a heartbeat above her neck, despite the maddening peril of this entire situation... she felt something. It was only from spending an extended amount of time so close to it, no doubt. What she felt was faint, barely there at all. It was twisted and deformed like something half-melted by acid. But it was familiar enough to spark a realization that hit her like a bullet to the soul. With that realization, her transformation broke... the magical ribbons that formed her Senshi fuku retreated back into her brooch, leaving her plain old Chibi-Usa again.

Chibi-Usa looked into the deep shadows of the Reaper's black hood, at the cracked and bleached skull grinning beneath its folds, barely visible. She wet her lips and whispered a name full of horror, pity, and hope: "Pluto...?"

The Time Reaper said nothing.

Despite its silence, she had never been more sure of anything in her life. "Oh God. It's really you... Puu, wh-what did they do to you?"

The Time Reaper said nothing.

There was no mistaking it. Deep in her heart, Chibi-Usa knew. Whatever had been done to it—to her—distorted Pluto's distinctive aura to such a degree that it was unrecognizable unless one sustained close contact with her. No wonder no one had been able to tell. Chibi-Usa was sure of it now, though: that power, that presence... it could be no one else, but it was like looking at her image through an entire funhouse's worth of mirrors at once. Only the tiniest flicker of her true self remained, but it couldn't be extinguished entirely.

All of a sudden, it was as if two live wires touched together in Chibi-Usa's brain to make a circuit. A memory surged to the forefront of her mind: when she was very small, she and Mercury went on an outing to Amishiro Park one warm and sunny spring afternoon, and as they basked beneath an ancient sugar maple, Mercury showed her a faceted glass crystal, a prism. She was so little that she didn't know what the word meant, only that it was in her mother's first transformation phrase, which was so famous that even toddlers could recite it. When Mercury held the prism up to the sunlight, it made rainbows on the grass, and she explained that light was actually made up of all the colors of the spectrum mixed together. Shining it through a prism refracted it back into its components.

What sparked inside her was like the reverse of what that prism did: the colors of her disparate memories recombined into one stream of white-hot light and perfect clarity. Though her throat was parched and tight with emotion, she spoke to the skull beneath the hood: "I understand now," she said in a husky whisper. "Back when it all started, you came after me and Hotaru first." A pause, as another connection was made. "Saturn even recognized you for a minute... but then you started turning us back into our dark forms. That must have messed with our memories, and that's why we both forgot it happened. Then in the p-palace, during the rescue mission, when I was frozen and you had me dead to rights... You swung at me with your scythe and wrecked the floor, but somehow you missed. You didn't kill me... you couldn't, could you? A-and today... I heard your voice while I was asleep, and somehow you knew Tellu was hurting us in the tunnels. That's why you finished her off. Some part of you has been in there all along, trying to fight back. Puu..."

The Time Reaper said nothing.

"You canceled your transformation?" Tomoe's voice made Chibi-Usa start; the turmoil of the last few minutes made her forget he was even there. "Is this some new strategy that—" He trailed off.

Mentally shaking herself back to reality, Chibi-Usa took stock of what had happened during her revelation. Behind Tomoe, Lethe and Mnemosyne now stood to either side of the other Hotaru, freed at last from her stasis tank. Power flowed through the fingertips of the twins' free hands, pressed tight to the duplicate's temples. The other hands were entwined with each other. Mnemosyne was pale and sickly, still faintly blue, but she was awake and on her feet, doing as she was told. All of Lethe's fire seemed to be gone, replaced by boundless guilt; she was like an animal that had just been subjected to a tamer's whip.

Like Mnemosyne, the other Hotaru was now on her feet... but whether she qualified as "awake" was unclear. She breathed evenly and she stood by herself without visible support, but her half-lidded eyes were dark and empty.

And lastly, Eas's limp form had been moved to stretch of floor between Chibi-Usa's restraint assembly and Saturn's. She was dead to the world, unconscious or worse. And if by some miracle she woke up, who knew what state her mind would be in?

All up to her. Chibi-Usa steeled herself and faced Tomoe, her primary tormentor. She couldn't bear to look directly at the Reaper any longer. "What?" she said. Only then did she feel the tears rolling down her cheeks like rain. No sniffling, she refused to sniffle in front of him. "Run out of creepy experiments to do already?"

The memory erasure—or transfer, or whatever—was happening right behind Tomoe, but he wasn't paying attention. Instead he looked right at Chibi-Usa, his visible eye awash in confusion. "I don't understand," he said. "Why are you crying? Why aren't you transformed? Did the Time Reaper—"

"It's Pluto." Stating it as a hard fact and confirming it as real made Chibi-Usa's stomach lurch; she fought to keep her expression set. "Pluto is the Time Reaper, and something of her is still in there. Oh, don't tell me, was she one of your pet projects too?" Once again, venom boiled up inside her, she dared him to admit it...

Instead, Tomoe was aghast. Aghast as he could be, anyway. He stared at the motionless Reaper as if seeing it for the first time, his already pale face drained of blood almost entirely. "That..." Words were slow to come to his lips, he wavered where he stood. "Yes, of course. That makes sense." Too soon, the spell was broken, and calm settled over him. He swallowed, straightened his tie, squared his shoulders... and went back to whatever was in the console's compartment.

Chibi-Usa felt her brain might explode from frustration at any moment. "That's it?!"

Not even bothering to face her, he slid something onto his arm. Soft, metallic clinking sounds followed. "Tell me, what else should I say? I didn't know Sailor Pluto. Apart from being enemies and sharing a mutual connection to Hotaru, I have no attachment to her whatsoever. I can never forgive her for taking Hotaru from me, but despite that, I wouldn't wish her current state on her or anyone else. I had nothing to do with it, and had I been asked, I would have refused... whatever has been done to her is monstrous and cruel. However, as things stand, there is absolutely nothing I can do. I cannot help her, or you, or anyone in this room apart from myself and Hotaru. Even so, the probability of both of us making a successful escape is vanishingly small... but not impossible.

"What would be impossible, my dear, is accommodating additional people into our plan. It's true, I could attempt to release you, Eas, or the twins. I could attempt to free Pluto from her suffering. I could attempt any number of things, but each new set of variables makes our escape that much more unlikely. Each additional person who remembers what happened here is one more person who can be used to follow us.

"I deeply regret that I'm unable to help you. Choose to believe me or not, but it's the truth. The only person I'm at all confident I can save is my daughter. For months, I've staked everything on making us both worthless to Joker. If he has what he wants right here, there will be no reason to waste resources pursuing us. It's simple logic; given the choice, he will leave us in peace." Tomoe didn't need to emote to make plain the desperate hope in the following words: "He will leave us in peace. He has to."

He turned, revealing something encasing his right hand and forearm: a glossy, jet-black gauntlet. Lines of deep blue light thrummed through the gaps in its paneling at regular intervals. Chibi-Usa followed the lines to their source... and was astonished to see a brilliant azure jewel housed in the back of the gauntlet's palm. She had never seen it for herself, only its picture in history books, for in her time this jewel didn't exist anymore. It was one-seventh of the Legendary Silver Crystal... a Rainbow Crystal, like the one inexplicably recovered from Mami's body in Uminari a month prior.

Tomoe flexed his armored fingers and rotated his wrist. Faintly pleased with the motion, he balled the gauntlet into a fist. The panel lines' light pulsed quicker, and Chibi-Usa shivered from the sensation of power radiating from the crystal... of course, each Rainbow Crystal only held a fraction of the Silver Crystal's limitless energy, but it only made sense that they made potent batteries by themselves. But what was he intending to do with it? As he raised his arm high and the azure glow bathed his body, the look in his eye made Chibi-Usa shrink into her restraints... Maybe he was serious about wanting to help and maybe he wasn't, but in that moment, it didn't matter: she was dead certain he was about to kill her. With a Rainbow Crystal-powered weapon and herself in civilian form, it would barely take any effort at all.

And Tomoe roared, a terrible, primal sound that was the sum of all the grief and loss and rage of who knew how many years. That sound made Lethe and Mnemosyne scatter, they dove past Eas's body and behind Chibi-Usa's assembly, holding each other tight and making themselves as small as possible. The Crystal's glow dyed the lab in shades of shimmering blue as Tomoe brought it screaming down like a meteor from the heavens. Chibi-Usa's heart leaped into her throat. This was the end...

No pain, no crushing impact, only a thunderous noise. Chibi-Usa stared.

There was now a crater in the console. Beneath Tomoe's closed and smoking fist, a puddle of thick red fluid dribbled rivulets of itself over the edge of the workspace and onto the floor. Shards of broken glass—or something near enough to glass—lay all around, the largest about the size of Chibi-Usa's thumbnail. Those shards and the fluid were all that was left of the vial containing Mistress 9's Daimon Egg... and as Tomoe relaxed and lifted his arm once more, she saw what little remained of the egg itself, pulverized and ground near-flat into the console's broken surface. Wisps of black smoke oozed from the egg's remnants and briefly coalesced into the faint pattern of a demonic face. Its mouth opened wide, and Chibi-Usa thought she heard a tiny, enraged scream before it melted into ether. The rest of the egg sizzled and vaporized on the spot.

"Excessive, perhaps," said Tomoe, grim and pleased. "But nevertheless. Now you can sleep in peace, Hotaru... Mistress 9 will never plague our family again. May she rot."

Stunned, Chibi-Usa gaped at him. Every time she thought she had this version of Souichi Tomoe figured out, some new wrinkle complicated things. What she had just seen couldn't be the evil and sociopathic Tomoe from one timeline, and the raw rage and hatred wasn't the kind and loving father from the other. Her eyes and ears and brain all said that his claims of being both of them at once were true, but her heart couldn't accept it. He was a Bad Guy, a villain set on taking Saturn away from her in the most horrible way possible. It would be so much easier, she thought, to simply hate the man, to unilaterally despise him for all he had done to them. So why was she hesitating? Why persist in believing that there was something in him that could be reasoned with?

Because that's what the real Sailor Moon would do.

But you're not the real Sailor Moon, are you, Small Lady? And you probably never will be.

And all thoughts of reasoning with him left her as she saw him walk to Saturn's side and lower that terrible gauntlet over her heart. "No," she croaked. "Please."

Tomoe ignored her. Millimeters before contact with Saturn's body, his fingertips rippled and vanished, as if sinking into a pool of water. The Rainbow Crystal pulsed, the gauntlet's lines glowed.

Uncaring of the Reaper's crackling scythe blade at her neck, Chibi-Usa thrashed in her restraints. Useless. Untransformed, trying to break them was like trying to topple a concrete wall with one finger. "You can't!" she cried. "You have to stop!"

Tomoe's gauntlet sank in up to the wrist and halted. A small tremor passed up his arm, and gradually, he began to retract it back.

"M-Moon Prism Power, Make Up!" Maybe, maybe if she transformed again, the burst of energy would break her free. "Moon Prism Power, Make Up!" But her brooch remained still. "Come on, dammit, not now! Moon Prism Power, MAKE UP!" Nothing.

Saturn let out a long, slow breath. Her chest failed to rise again.

The gauntlet's fingers emerged, and clutched between the forefinger and thumb was a tiny piece of darkness. Despite it all, despite everything, Chibi-Usa had to marvel at it. Most of the time, darkness was talked about as a scary thing, threatening and hostile. This, though? It was gentle and comforting, the warm darkness of the sky on a perfect summer night, the safe darkness that surrounded a baby sleeping soundly inside a mother's womb. Quiet darkness, peaceful darkness that promised rest and renewal for the world. It was achingly beautiful... and it was Hotaru. Had she been blindfolded, she would still be able to tell.

Even Tomoe seemed stricken; he brought the Chaos Seed to eye level and simply gazed at it for a while. What emotions churned behind his glasses, Chibi-Usa couldn't begin to tell.

"P... Professor?" The tremulous, hoarse voice was Mnemosyne's; Chibi-Usa couldn't see, but she guessed that she was peeking out from behind the restraint assembly... again, on the opposite side of the Time Reaper. "Professor, i-it's almost done, i-isn't it? Please, before you go... You told us you'd help us. You c-can't just abandon us here, you know what Joker will do if he gets us back. You p-promised..."

Tomoe closed his eyes and turned his back. "There is but one more thing I can do for the two of you, Mnemosyne. In a few moments, the two of you, Eas, and the Sailor Senshi will be shunted into an alternate dimension via a temporal force field... I don't want Hotaru to see anything that would upset or confuse her. Before we depart, I will initiate a full purge of all of this facility's databanks. Every storage drive will be thoroughly destroyed, and every last bit of code and data expunged save for one final program, isolated from the rest of the network.

"Ten minutes after the completion of the purge, the two of you will erase Chibi-Usa's memories of both of us, then use your earrings to escape the field. The final program will then release a sedative into the lab's ventilation systems, an airborne compound of nitrous oxide and sodium thipental. A second compound of carbon monoxide, potassium chloride, and pancuronium bromide will follow shortly thereafter. In effect, the two of you will die swiftly and painlessly in your sleep."

A long, long pause. "A-all right," said Mnemosyne at last, and the relief in those two words would have brought most soft-hearted souls to tears. "Th-thank you, Professor."

Lethe mumbled something impossible to make out. Gratitude, maybe, or weary resignation, or a half-hearted curse.

"So me and Eas, you're just going to leave us here for Joker to find?" If she allowed the horror of the twins' acceptance into her thoughts, she would lose herself to despair... so Chibi-Usa forced herself to focus only on the professor and Hotaru. Every moment, every word had to count. "Or are you going to gas us to death too? And what about Pluto? Even if you mind-wipe me, she'll remember what you did, right?"

The Time Reaper said nothing.

Tomoe ran his free hand through his hair. "I leave it to the twins to decide what to do with you and the commander. Perhaps they'll release you when we're gone, perhaps not. And Pluto? As she is, she has no memories to erase, nor a life to end. If you survive, you are welcome to try to save her or put her out of her misery, but it's out of my hands." He brought Saturn's Chaos Seed to the other Hotaru's chest as he spoke, no longer deigning to even look at Chibi-Usa. The other Hotaru was bathed in a wash of cobalt blue light from the Rainbow Crystal as the stolen Seed sank inside her...

"You're wrong," Chibi-Usa all but spat. "Some part of her is still there, I've seen it... and she still loves Hotaru as much as you do."

"I tire of arguing." Tomoe heaved a sigh. "As I suspected, you and I will never understand each other. Time grows short, so finish saying your piece."

"Heh." Chibi-Usa's lip curled. "You were never gonna take me with you, were you? Even if Saturn agreed to go."

At that, Tomoe fell silent and turned his back on her. His fingers danced over another holo-interface.

"Thought so," said Chibi-Usa. "Guess we never will understand each other, Germatoid."

That, at least, drew a visible response: Tomoe staggered as if he had been stabbed. "My name... is Souichi Tomoe."

"Really?" Chibi-Usa raised an eyebrow. "Because right now, it's kinda hard to tell you apart." Maybe it wasn't a Sailor Senshi thing to do. It was a cruel remark, and she had seen firsthand evidence that it wasn't true, but at this point it didn't matter. Stripped of her transformation, her weapons, and any other way to fight back, all Chibi-Usa could do was lash out in a way she knew would hurt him... and in the darkness of her soul, she hoped that hurt would linger, festering over time.

Beneath her feet, a circle of cyan runes appeared and expanded... her heart stung, for the runic pattern was the same as Alphs. The circle swept under Saturn, Eas, the Reaper, and the twins, its borders cast a wall of light to the lab's ceiling... and everything before her, Tomoe and the other Hotaru and the rest of the lab, became like an image on an old black-and-white CRT screen. Through snow and static, she watched as the greyscale Tomoe removed his gauntlet and set it back in its compartment, pressed more controls, slipped his glasses into the pocket of his lab coat, and knelt down before the other Hotaru.

She stirred, drawing in a deep breath.

"Hotaru?" Though Chibi-Usa was less than a meter from them, the sound through the greyscale wall was distant and garbled. Tomoe reached for her as if to pick up a priceless, fragile artifact. "Hotaru, can you hear me?"

The other Hotaru yawned and rubbed her face. "Did... did I fall asleep?"

Tomoe nodded. "You've been asleep for a while, Hotaru, but it's finally time to wake up." The next words were choked with emotion: "I... I'm so happy to see you again..."

"Papa...!" She giggled and embraced him, and he embraced her back, holding her tightly to his chest. "I'm happy to see you too, Papa."

And Chibi-Usa's stomach plunged as she got her first clear look at the other Hotaru's eyes. In almost every way, she was flawless. The contours of her smile, the soft and musical timber of her laugh, that very specific way that her brows leaped up into her hairline when she was happy... all of that was so perfectly accurate as to tear at her heart, but something in her eyes was wrong. It was nothing she could put into words and nothing that most people would notice, but they struck Chibi-Usa as lifeless and doll-like, fake. They weren't nearly as empty as when the twins were altering her memories; it was a frightfully subtle imperfection, but like hearing one wrong note in a song she knew by heart, it was enough to plunge everything else into skin-crawling horror. This wasn't her Hotaru.

And yet, and yet she howled anyway: "Hotaru, it's me! It's Chibi-Usa! I'm right here, can you hear me?"

The other Hotaru looked around the lab, bewildered. "This... this doesn't look like your usual lab, Papa. Where are we? What happened?"

"It doesn't matter," said Tomoe, as if he couldn't wait to be rid of it. "From now on, things will be different. We'll be together, and I'll do all I can to make you happy."

That smile again, so familiar and yet so alien. "Don't be silly. Just being with you is all I need to be happy, you know that."

"It's me!" Chibi-Usa screamed, her throat raw. "Hotaru, you have to remember! I know you're still in there, please answer—"

Lethe's voice drifted up from behind the restraint assembly. "It's pointless. We're in an alternate dimension, she can't see or hear us."

The urge to belt Lethe one made Chibi-Usa's fingers curl inside the cuff. "Lethe, Mnemosyne, I know we've had our differences, but I need you two to help! Tomoe gave you open orders, right? 'Perhaps they'll release you,' that's what he said. You can still do something to stop him! You can still let me go!"

Again came Lethe's voice, like a deflating balloon: "All I want is to die with my sister. Maybe we'll be brought back again, maybe not... but at least this time, dying won't hurt. At least we can rest for a little while. Just let us die. Please, let us die." She said nothing more.

Useless. One other option, one last desperate hope. Chibi-Usa pivoted her gaze to the Time Reaper so fast that she felt muscles twinge in her neck. "Pluto... Pluto, listen to me. I know you're in there, Pluto! Please, help me..."

The Time Reaper said nothing.

"Come on, Pluto, answer me! He's about to take Hotaru away from us, you can't let that happen!"

The Time Reaper said nothing.

Helpless tears sprung to Chibi-Usa's eyes. "Dammit, this isn't you! You're not the Time Reaper! Y-you're a Sailor Senshi, like us! Your name is Setsuna—"

And a response came... not from the Reaper, but from Eas. The Labyrinth commander shot bolt upright, her eyes like saucers, choking back a scream. Hyperventilating and staring at nothing, she doubled over and clutched at her chest.

The outburst scared the daylights out of Chibi-Usa, her own heart nearly exploded from shock. "E-Eas?" she said for lack of anything else to say, gaping at her.

Eas turned to face her. Sweaty silver hair framed her face, her skin was slick and clammy. Her eyes were haunted, pleading for something, but it was plain that she had no idea what it was. All she said was a single word: "No." Then she disappeared, dissolving into a streak of crimson.

Flummoxed, Chibi-Usa swallowed a few times to get her voice back. "Pluto," she said. "Your name is Setsuna Meioh. You're the Guardian of the Space-Time Door, and you work as a physicist on Earth." Her voice quavered more and more the more she went on. "Y-you hate eggplants, and you're scared to death of cockroaches... you love green tea, a-a-and that's your favorite ice cream flavor... and... and you were my very first friend... Pluto, please. Help me..."

The Time Reaper said nothing.

Dimly through the greyscale wall, she could hear Tomoe talking to the other Hotaru, who was laughing. This might be the last time she ever heard that laugh, the musical laugh she so adored. "Hotaru," she sobbed. "Don't... don't leave me..."

"—my biology teacher got all huffy and said, 'Well, if you insist on correcting me based on what 'Papa' says, he's welcome to come teach my class instead," she was saying.

"Rude and uncalled for," said Tomoe. "But you won't have to worry about him any longer, Hotaru. Soon, we'll be leaving for a better life, someplace far from here."

"That's what you keep saying, Papa, but where are we going? And how will we get there? By ship, or are we taking a plane?"

"So full of questions you are, and as well you should be. We can leave right from this room, in fact... I have access to new technology that will take us there in an instant."

"That's amazing!"

"There are just a few more minutes until the system calibrates, so prepare yourself to—"

A new voice interrupted: "That will not be necessary."

Chibi-Usa stared in complete disbelief.

The other Hotaru let out a horrified gasp and retreated behind her father's back.

And Tomoe gave the new arrival his deadliest stare...

Homura Akemi emerged from an elevator cab at the far side of the room, bringing a vicious-looking handgun to bear on Tomoe's forehead. Her uniform was torn, bloodstained, and encrusted with subway tunnel dust and grime, but her body bore no signs of injury. Her cold violet eyes narrowed as she took a few cautious steps forward. "Souichi Tomoe. Move away from her, slowly."

Terrified, the other Hotaru clutched at Tomoe's lab coat. "Papa? Who is that? Why does she have a gun...?"

Chibi-Usa thought she saw Akemi's eyes flick over to her, just for an instant. It could have been a trick of the light, or a side effect of the field.

"Don't worry. Find a place to hide and cover your eyes and ears," said Tomoe. "I'll protect you, I promise."

The other Hotaru looked from her father to Akemi and back, her confusion evident. Releasing her death grip on his coat, she inched forward as if to shield him with herself... but the moment she did so, a spell of fear seemed to descend on her. Without another word, she bolted behind a nearby console and out of sight.

Akemi didn't move. "What have you done to her?"

"I'm giving her what she deserves," said Tomoe. "A life free of suffering. A release from millions of painful memories. An escape from the insanity of this war. And why do you care, Akemi? Yes, I know who you are... you were the Devil."

"In some respects, I still am," said Akemi, calm and sure. "I'm here because I owe her a debt."

All of this was baffling to Chibi-Usa. As far as she could tell, Akemi only grudgingly tolerated Hotaru and their makeshift therapy sessions. Hadn't she said to Hotaru earlier tonight that Akemi had been scowling at her when she wasn't looking? It didn't make sense; why would she put herself in danger to come after Hotaru alone? What debt was she talking about?

Could it be that...

Could she possibly...

No. That was a ridiculous idea. Chibi-Usa shook her head and put it out of her mind. Whatever her reasons were, she was here to help—allegedly—and if there was anyone who could save Saturn... She couldn't believe she was saying it, but the words came to her lips anyway: "Come on, Akemi," she said in a whisper. "You can do it!"

"I'm afraid I can't allow you to interfere," Tomoe was saying. "I will save my daughter. I will make her happy, no matter the cost."

Akemi's face remained neutral as ever, but Chibi-Moon heard something shift in her voice, there was no mistaking it. "That... isn't your daughter. What you're doing isn't love. By taking her pain and her memories away... you've reduced her to a doll. A puppet to dance at your will."

Tomoe's icy façade cracked; he slammed his hand into a console, drawing blood and fracturing its smooth surface. "Shut up! You would never understand!"

The ghost of a rueful smile floated across Akemi's face, there and gone in less than a second.

Clutching his injured hand, Tomoe stared her down, unafraid. "My own life doesn't matter. It's all for her. Everything I've done for all this time... I won't let it be for nothing. Leave here, and you won't be harmed."

She didn't budge. "No," said Akemi.

"Then so be it. Reaper, come. Kill the intruder."

With those two words, the Time Reaper finally moved...

The scythe blade was no longer at her neck, but Chibi-Usa's heart began to pound anew as the hooded specter turned from her and floated for the edge of the field. "Pluto, no! Come back!"

The Time Reaper said nothing. It phased through the field without even a ripple of distortion and took position in front of Tomoe.

"No, Pluto, no!" And the true horror of the situation began to dawn. "Akemi, we're in here!" Chibi-Usa screamed. "Saturn and I are here! Don't fight the Time Reaper, it's Pluto! It's Sailor Pluto!"

On the other side of the field, Akemi took a step back and raised the barrel of her handgun. She couldn't hear, she didn't know the Reaper's identity. To her, it was just another monster to be cut down.

The Reaper brandished its scythe. Its half-crescent blade blazed with renewed energy.

Once more, Chibi-Usa broke into cold sweat, caught between two nightmarish outcomes...

If Akemi was defeated, Tomoe would have nothing left to stop him from completing his plan, and she would lose Hotaru forever.

And if Akemi somehow won, she would lose Pluto.

END OF CHAPTER 58

NEXT:

A LITTLE FALL OF RAIN

[Author's Note: This chapter was delayed for two reasons: I cut the original, eleven-page opening scene to save it for a future chapter, and then I had to cut this chapter in half so that it wouldn't feel overstuffed (or, you know, be delayed any longer). That's also the reason for the title change. Hang tight, the end of Act III is fast approaching, and I'm making every effort to finish it off by the end of this year.

Remember, comments and detailed feedback are an author's food pellets, so leave plenty! - BHS]