` If That's What It Takes `

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Eudial sighed -- life was hardly something to be particularly happy about right at this very moment.

She was technically a graduate student of the so-called "mad professor" of Mugen Gakuen high school (and its related research facilities), but that was most definitely only her day job. Yes -- she had other things to attend to. Of course, Kaolinite was presently the one actually assigned to the job of locating -- and then retrieving -- the three talismans of the so-called pure hearts, but as the eldest -- and most responsible -- member of the Witches 5, Eudial was presently considering her own method of attack.

It wasn't that Eudial didn't think that the woman could do it. Kaolinite was not stupid -- far from it, actually. However, the red-haired woman was easily distracted; she tended to forget that the purpose of their grand mission was to awaken their messiah of silence, not procure Tomoe Souichi's favour.

Kaolinite often forgot these things.

Sighing, Eudial turned back to her busily whirring computer. The please wait a moment message was still flickering on the screen, so Eudial ignored it for a moment and pulled one of her many Post-It notes from the screen's frame. Humming tunelessly to herself, she read over her small, neat writing.

Taking a pen from the bomb site of her desk, she scribbled out several words to replace them with others, though this brought her no enlightenment. She knew Kaolinite's method of searching for the pure no kokoro -- and therefore, the talismans -- was to basically locate a person with a pure heart, extract it, and examine it for the properties of a talisman. Returning it was far from an option, though as the victims were human, they would probably die within an hour of having their pure crystal hearts taken.

Eudial thought this method time-consuming and all together too random; however, it was the only logical option any of them had at present. Her theories on locating the holders of the talismans through an exhaustive computer data-base search were proving inconclusive; even though it seemed entirely possible that it could be done, it was yet to be validated.

The phone at her side let out a shrill tone of warning; Eudial could only sigh. She dropped her pen from her long fingered grasp, moving one hand to attend the receiver. Her other hand removed her glasses, rubbing wearily at cerise eyes made blurred by constantly staring at the computer screen. "Hello, this is Eudial," she answered in a harassed tone.

"Eudial-kun."

The deep baritone, the solid authority, the underlying ambition -- all these properties of the familiar voice made her sit up all the straighter, her rectangular glasses clattering to the floor. "Kyouju!"

"Yes. Eudial-kun, I have something that I want you to do for me."

Her heart beat faster -- oh, she hadn't expected this so soon! Kaolinite had barely begun her real searching for the three talismans -- to be given this opportunity, and so soon --

"I have had a new undergraduate student come under my care," he said carefully, and Eudial's far-from-pure heart sank in sync with these words.

"Oh," she replied guardedly, trying desperately not to sound disappointed.

Professor Tomoe ignored this; he instead continued on with his own trail of thought. "He is a young prodigy who came to Mugen Gakuen seeking a place in our research laboratories. He is a biophysicist of the highest calibre, with a remarkable affinity for technology. I would like to speak with him further myself, but my other duties -- even with Kaolinite assisting me -- require all of my undivided attention. So -- I would like you to take Hirosada-san under your wing, so to speak. Introduce him to our facilities, our laboratories -- but only on the surface, of course. I would not have him involved in our endeavour." He paused for a second; it seemed as if he were pondering something very deeply. "However --"

"Kyouju?" Eudial was far from expectantly awaiting his answer. Instead, she went to retrieve her pen while still sitting in her office chair, almost losing the receiver in the process.

"I sense something very peculiar about this man."

"In what way?" asked Eudial, only mildly interested. She began to tap her rescued biro absently against the computer screen, still waiting for it to complete the input commands.

Professor Tomoe paused again; he sounded thoughtful as his deep baritone issued forth down the phone line. "He bears a peculiar energy, one that seems -- above our own."

"Maybe he just has a particularly pure heart," suggested Eudial, suddenly eager to continue this conversation. "You should have Kaolinite-san extract it, perhaps it is a talisman --"

She could hear the professor shaking his head at the other end of the line. "It is not the brilliant shine of a pure heart, Eudial-kun. It is something -- different." He then paused from this odd stream of thought for a moment; Eudial could clearly hear his breathing over the phone. After this, he became business-like and professional again, sounding as if he intended to be obeyed. "Eudial-kun, it would be most beneficial to us all if you were to keep an eye on this young man, understand? Now, I have already told him he is to meet you at the main reception desk of the upper research labs at around eight this morning --"

Eudial cocked her wrist; her deep red eyes widened. "Professor, it's four in the morning now! I've been working all night trying to find an operating system to support those data files you gave me, and I won't get any sleep at all!"

"We don't have anytime for such trivialities as sleep, Eudial-kun," Professor Tomoe remarked coldly. "He will be expecting you."

"But kyouju-"

Nothing more was said by Tomoe -- he had ended the connection by hanging up at his end.

Letting out a disgusted sigh, Eudial slammed the sleeping phone back into its cradle, standing as she did so. It was just past 4 a.m., which gave her only a few hours in which to catch some sleep. She snapped the computer's glaring screen off, silently cursing the professor's odd whims.

However -- for some reason, after what Professor Tomoe had implied about him, she was rather looking forward to meeting this Hirosada.

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The Tower of Nemesis, the central building of Demando's authority, seemed somewhat -- subdued.

All the people could feel it; their Prince, having reached a truce with the Neo-Queen through her former self, had called off the war, but he seemed less than happy about it.

Oh, it wasn't that they thought he wanted to continue that godforsaken war, it was more that he seemed -- restless. Word had it that Demando had actually argued with Prime Minister Rudra, a very rare occurrence indeed. It wasn't just because Demando had a remarkable amount of respect for the Siamese cat, it was also due to the fact that Rudra was hard to rile. Being as indifferent and unimaginative as he was, Rudra rarely indulged himself in such trivialities as petty arguments.

Demando had been ill; everyone knew that. It had been two weeks after the end of the war before he had been well enough to speak to the people again. He had spent the majority of this time in Crystal Tokyo; this was both for the healing powers of a certain Senshi as well as for stipulating the truce between Nemesis and Earth.

However, he seemed -- angry, frustrated, and slightly dispirited.

It didn't take long to figure out why; it was two days after his return to Nemesis that Prince Demando got up to declare Serpentine re'Carnelian as his successor, should something happen to him before he passed his genes on to a new generation.

He did it because his brother was dead.

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The research laboratories were right beside the campus of Mugen Gakuen, the Infinity Academy, owned and administrated by Tomoe Souichi, the well-known genetic engineer.

Saffir gazed upwards for a moment, slightly unused to the style of construction so favoured in twentieth century Tokyo. Concrete, utilitarian, but with a strange deal of welcomingness, it was a far cry from the dark, crystalline structures of the Nemesis he had called "home" for all of his thirtieth century life.

Squinting against the sun, he moved inside to the main reception area. He was immensely glad to be inside; the sun on Earth was proving to be more of a problem than the blessing he had always thought it would be. He was beginning to feel like a vampire, having to avoid prolonged periods out in direct sunlight.

The receptionist seemed to involved in some kind of argument over the desk with a woman possessing startling red hair of a shade that reminded him of Rubius. This made a stark contrast to her white lab coat. As she had her heated discussion with the lesser member of this hierarchy, she raised one alabaster-pale hand to arrogantly toss that mane of perfectly coiffed hair. In this motion, the light caught the gold of her watch -- Saffir found something very disturbing about that seemingly innocuous piece of jewellery, however.

The woman turned about to face him -- Saffir jolted as beautiful violet eyes immediately met his, piercing and penetrating.

"Ah, you must be Hirosada Saburo," she remarked, not unkindly, but it was far from being what could be described as being benevolent.

Ignoring her unfortunate cohort, the red-head more or less stalked over-to-him, red heels clicking loudly against the pale tile of the floor. She extended a hand to him; as he shook it, he noticed that while her nails were long and manicured, they were not garishly coloured as Esmeraude had liked her nails to be.

Her hands were as cool as the metal of a freezer; Saffir was well-used to it. His oniisan's hands had been cold to the touch, always. Demando had always been filled with the cool kaleidoscope fire of his soulstone, diamond, but Saffir had only loved him all the more for it.

"My name is Kaori," she added, slowly and distinctly. The dextrous fingers briefly tightened about his own, before she withdrew her pale hand, flicking a rogue strand of her hair back over her narrow shoulders.

"You are Professor Tomoe's assistant, right?" asked Saffir thoughtfully, belatedly recognising the woman who had hovered about the professor earlier. "I think I remember you from two days ago -- it is very nice to see you again."

Kaori's eyes raked over him again; the gesture slightly reminded him of Esmeraude's vaguely predatory way of looking people up and down. However, the similarities between the two women ended there. Kaori showed a good deal more outward intelligence, not to mention a tad more upper-class snobbery. Esmeraude had been more of a ostentatious warrior than a snobbish researcher like Kaori.

She was tall; when her eyes rose to meet his again, they were almost at exact eye level. "I remember you. Well, Hirosada-san, I suppose Eudial will be down soon to show you our facilities, introduce you to the team -- I think you will like it here."

Saffir bowed his head in respect, even though something about this woman and her demeanour made his skin crawl. "I feel that I will, Kaori-san."

Kaori -- not paying any attention to the fact that the secretary had vanished through an internal door behind the desk -- then flicked her long hair in her characteristic gesture again, giving him a brief, disconcerting smile. "Oh, and Professor Tomoe asked me to extend you an invitation to dinner with us one night. Tomoe-sama likes to get to know his research students well, and he's only met you very briefly."

By now slightly confused about Kaori's relationship to Tomoe Souichi -- she hadn't mentioned her own surname, either -- but decided not to ask her. From the way she had been screaming at the escapee secretary, he correctly guessed that she was under some degree of stress.

Saffir coughed slightly, causing Kaori to stop gazing blankly into space. "Gomen nasai," she apologised, though she sounded far from really sorry. "I have a project on with the professor, a rather large and important one, therefore I get distracted very easily. I am not going to work with you, Eudial will be doing that. She should be down presently; in the meantime, I'm going to have to take my leave of your company, I'm afraid."

Saffir nodded slightly, kind of relieved, but not really. The thought of working with Kaori had made him uneasy; however, if the rest of the workers here were like Kaori, with her odd aura, and Tomoe Souichi, with his strange eyes, he was beginning to think taking a position somewhere else would be a good career move around about now.

Kaori graced him with another smile, retrieving a clipboard stuffed with paper from the reception desk before them. "I really do have to go now, but I'll come and talk to you later, shall I? In regards to the dinner invitation. The professor is really quite interested in getting to know you a little better."

Saffir nodded, and though he was feeling slightly dazed, he managed to stay cool and collected on the outside. That was a knack he had picked up from his brother; the ability to hide one's emotions behind a cold outer facade.

Kaori then turned and vanished down a long corridor, leaving Saffir alone in the foyer. The receptionist had not returned, but it didn't really matter. In a matter of seconds, he heard the clattering of footsteps down a staircase, and from a door a metre or so down the hall spilled another red-haired woman.

She turned to look at Saffir, rectangular glasses askew on her narrow face. Her cerise eyes widened somewhat, before her hand moved to flick one of her three ponytails over her shoulder. She came towards Saffir with remarkable speed, her red heels clicking relentlessly, just as Kaori's had done.

Truthfully, with her long red hair, similar build, and white lab coat, this woman reminded him of Kaori in a superficial way. However, she had an air about her that was more like his own; she was obviously a physicist of some sort. Kaori appeared more of a chemist than anything else; he supposed that Kaori was probably a biochemist, given Professor Tomoe's inherent interest in genetics.

She stuck out one hand, the other occupied with a ream of paper barely captured in a ring binder folder. "I'm Eudial," she said, sharply and shortly. However, despite this tone, he got the impression that she was not trying to be rude; it was merely her way of speaking. "You had better be Hirosada Saburo -- if you're not, then you'd better leave."

Saffir was a little taken-aback by this, but he didn't react to it outwardly. Revealing such emotions to people you didn't know was foolhardy as well as dangerous.

Shaking his head slightly, Saffir blinked before answering Eudial calmly and concisely. He took her hand and shook it, allowing her to be the dominant one in the grip. "I am Hirosada Saburo, yes. You are Eudial --?"

"That's all you need to know, yes," she replied, almost tartly. "Right, we're going to have to move right along; things to do, people to see, monsters to create --"

She spun on one red heel, disappearing down the corridor quite easily. Saffir had to hurry to keep up with her; she was remarkably quick in those elevated shoes. "Monsters?" he asked conversationally as he caught up with her, trying to hide the slight tone of suspicion.

She cast him an amused look, clutching her folder tightly to her chest. "Oh, just a geneticist joke, you know the type. It's like chemistry humour; terribly sick, and funny only to those who have spent four years getting a degree in the damn subject."

Saffir laughed at that; he indeed knew the type. "Are you a chemist, Eudial-sempai?"

The woman nodded slightly, almost losing her glasses in the process. "Among other specialities, yes. I am mostly a computer hacker at the moment; I hope that you can give me some assistance with one of our supercomputers, actually. Professor Tomoe tells me that you are quite the statistician. That's quite helpful, given that I'm the only one at present who can use the stupid thing. No-one else -- especially not Mimete -- has the brains to actually DO anything with the computer nor the raw data."

Saffir smiled slightly. "I like mathematics in any of her strands, Eudial-sempai. I'd be happy to do it."

She nodded, looking pleased. "Good. I'm also going to have to get you to work the NMR machine, plus I hope you have some idea of organic chemistry. You see, our last nuclear imaging technician took off on us, so --"

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Usagi looked at Rei with continuing concern. Rei was currently discussing a problem of trig identities with Ami -- Minako looking more than a little lost in the background -- her brow furrowed in concentration. Usagi's pen clicked for the ten billionth time as she continued to ponder on the events of the day before. The appearance of this new "daimon" -- not to mention the fact that she was no longer able to transform, given the fact that this psycho tree had ripped her henshin brooch right off her fuku, rendering her a helpless civilian.

And the crystal -- the memory made her feel sick, even now. All of them had been incapacitated and forced to watch as this creature had torn Rei's pure crystal heart from her chest, making as if to take it away to some "Kaolinite-sama."

And then -- the mysterious double attack that had obliterated the daimon, orchestrated by two shadowy figures who had left as silently as they had appeared. Usagi -- nor any of the others -- had seen them leave, given that their concern had been for making sure their unconscious friend recovered from her little incident. She had seen them for a moment, though -- two females in what had seemed to be Sailor fukus.

And I thought that all this was over, now that we have gotten rid of that Death Phantom creature -- I thought that since we had brought about peace between Nemesis and Earth, we could finally be normal...even if being normal does mean that we have to study for the entrance exams of senior high school...

"Usagi, you're not studying, are you?"

The odango'd one jumped, her blue eyes blinking to focus in on two annoyed dark eyes. "Rei-chan!"

"Well? Are you?"

She acquired a sweatdrop; she giggled nervously at the look in Rei's eyes. "Gomen ne, Rei-chan, I was just thinking about those two mysterious soldiers who helped us yesterday --"

Rei's eyes flickered a little; her annoyance at Usagi's sloth seemed to dim a little bit. "Oh -- I see."

"There's also the small matter of my henshin brooch," she blurted out, her hand stealing to the pocket of her jacket, lying on the floor beside her as she knelt at the low table.

Makoto -- lying on Rei's futon for a break -- sat up slightly, disrupting Luna from her curled-up position on Makoto's stomach. "Has the light of the ginzuishou really gone out, Usagi-chan?"

The blonde-haired girl looked at it for a moment, and sighed. "Hai --"

There was silence in the room as the five girls and two cats stared at the locket. And they wondered.

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Eudial smiled slightly at Saffir's latest remark, reaching over to stab at the computer screen with the eraser end of her pencil. "You see that dip there?"

Saffir's fingers ceased their dance over the keyboards; he frowned slightly as he looked up to see what the red-head was indicating. "You mean that outlier, or this one?" Before she could reply, the blue-haired physicist drew his glasses from his lab coat pocket, slipping the rectangular frames onto his nose. He frowned as he contemplated the portion of the graph that so annoyed Eudial, and tapped his long fingers on the cluttered desk. He could feel Eudial's breathing almost on his neck as she leaned over his shoulder, but it didn't annoy him, not after a week of it. "Perhaps if we smooth the data, it won't be so prominent --" He opened several dialogue boxes to input the commands; the graph warped as it adhered to Saffir's whims.

Both frowned simultaneously; actually, they had discovered rather quickly that they often thought alike.

"That didn't help," remarked Saffir as Eudial commented "It doesn't seem to have made a difference."

"What are you two doing?" came a high pitched, curious voice from the door, earning herself a pointed glare from Eudial and a sigh from Saffir.

Eudial turned to stare at her with barely disguised venom. She was joined by Saffir's opaque look as he twisted the chair about to face the short-haired blonde woman who stood in the door of computer laboratory.

It was dark in the lab, but the hallway outside was lit in a typical fluorescent, utilitarian manner. It caused the slight woman's form to be outlined quite well; however, the darkness of the lab served to give the woman something of a fright. Both the occupants were staring at her in silence, both turned away from the glaring white screen of the computer. As all the other computers -- and the lights, for that matter -- were all turned off, the pair's glasses were the only things that caught and reflected the light, giving them both that patented mad-scientist look.

Saffir was the first to remove said glasses; he rubbed his eyes tiredly as he climbed to his feet, subconsciously tightening his lab coat about himself. "Mimete-san, how -- pleasant to see you again." It wouldn't have meant much to her, but the asbestos-glove tone he used with her was the same one he had used in his dealings with Esmeraude. He was trying to subtly give her the message to back off, and leave the two physicists to their mathematics.

Mimete, however, was not given to any kind of subtly. Bouncy and bubbly, the girl was constantly on a caffeine high. Now that she seemed to have gotten over her earlier apprehension, she bounced into the room, her short curly hair leaping about her narrow face. Hitting a panel on the wall as she skipped past flooded the room with immediate artificial light. Saffir squinted his eyes in protest; Eudial's response was a bit more verbal and a lot more vulgar. The blonde didn't seem to react to this, it appeared as if Eudial usually called her obscene names. She adjusted her circular glasses as she leant over Saffir to stare at the computer screen, blinking large golden eyes with incomprehension. "Obaasan, what's this?"

Eudial -- who had been spoiling for a fight ever since Mimete had stuck her snivelling face in the door -- instantly rose to the insult. "An old woman, am I?" she asked in a dangerously low voice, causing Saffir to wince. He had been here for a grand total of a week and a half, yet he had already come to dread these cat-fights between Mimete and Eudial.

Mimete didn't look at her, instead leaning further forward to stare at the screen. As she did so, she kicked up one slender leg behind her, almost whacking Saffir in the face with a purple heel. "Saburo-san, what are you doing?" she asked, deliberately coquettish. Eudial's eyes met Saffir's for a second before she rolled them and shook her head. Saffir understood the gesture; he had quickly learned that Mimete fell in love with anyone in trousers who was over twenty and under thirty.

Saffir gently pushed the woman in the lab coat out of the way, and when that didn't work, Eudial leant over to violently shove her. "Eudial-sempai!" cried Mimete, looking like a chastised puppy. "That hurt!"

"Don't you think it was supposed to?" asked Eudial unsympathetically, turning cerise eyes to Saffir. "Saburo-kun, do you think if we widen the range of the data, it would show a marked difference?"

"How long will that take?" asked Mimete innocently, blinking her wide eyes at the both of them.

"Not as long as it would take you to drown in a vat of nitric acid," replied Eudial sweetly, a vicious gleam in her eyes. "If you want to flirt with Saburo-san, you can do it on your own time, not the company's."

Mimete pouted, looking more than slightly put-out. "I wasn't going to flirt with him!"

Eudial seemed unconvinced; Saffir looked uncomfortable. It was not the first time he felt superfluous to the proceedings; it seemed to him that every time the two women began an argument, they managed to drown out the rest of the world. "Really, Mimete-kun? Why, I seem to remember-"

"I only came here to remind Saburo-san that if he was still here, he's going to be late for his dinner at Professor Tomoe-sama's!" complained Mimete. "Kaori-sama sent me over here to make sure he wouldn't be late-"

"Oh, damn!" swore Saffir, chucking in a couple of more creative swear words. It was odd; before he had begun working here, he had rarely swore. Now, however -- he swore quite a lot. He didn't think it was any accident that this bad habit had begun about ten seconds after being introduced to Mimete.

He stood up quite quickly, knocking over his chair in the process. "Gomen nasai, Eudial-sempai, but I really am going to be late," he said hurriedly, pushing his unruly bangs back from his eyes. "We'll continue this tomorrow, okay?"

Mimete pouted again, clutching a clipboard to her chest. "But Saburo-san, you promised that you'd help me with the molecular structure of the hallucinogenic side-chain of that-"

"Ask Kaori-san, she's the authority on organic chemistry around here," snapped Eudial, snatching at Saffir's sleeve as he made to leave the room without being noticed. "Bright and early here, tomorrow morning, right?" she asked brusquely. Saffir merely nodded and escaped; a Mimete and Eudial argument was one thing he didn't need this evening.

After all, he had this dinner to deal with -- however, it should prove to be a distraction from the thoughts that haunted his solitary evenings at the hotel. It was at the times when he had nothing to distract him that he thought of him -- and her. He had sworn that he would not try to find Petz in this world, but still...

Promises were made to be broken.