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The silence was so overwhelming that it was fast approaching the status of Sailor Saturn's particular brand of absolute quiet.

However, none of the beings present here realised that; they had never had the pleasure -- or was it misfortune? -- of dealing with the Soldier of Death and Rebirth. Some might call them lucky; others might call them not important enough to trouble the sleeping soldier, but whichever it was, they did not know her.

"I think I see a flaw in your reasoning," the ancient Queen remarked finally, her long nails tapping the arms of her throne with an insistent, painful clicking.

Zoisite continued to stare at the unconscious prince with his dangerous brand of fascination; it was Kunzite who had to hastily formulate a reply to this. "Majesty, don't allow this... incident to cloud your judgement -- I am sure that Saffir will be perfectly suited to a life of soldiering under our great goddess Metallia."

"Yeah, I know plenty of ways to keep a person in constant pain -- I mean, conscious," Zoisite corrected himself, his tone sweet as usual. However, those poisonous green eyes belied exactly what kind of training Saffir would suffer under this beautiful serpent.

"I'm not talking about Saffir's obvious mental frailty or your ability to train him," she snapped sharply, sending a jolt of unease through her remaining nitennou.

As she stared at them with those irritated amber eyes, both ducked their own eyes, unable to meet hers for very long. Kunzite broke the silence after a pause; he was unsure of how annoyed his queen really was, but he had little choice. It was obvious she was waiting for one of them to ask her why. "Then what is the flaw, majesty?"

Queen Beryl's lips curved into a twisted little smile as she regarded the fallen prince. "There's something about him that tells me he'll never be loyal to the Empress or me," she sneered at the pair, scorning their apparent blindness. "If you watch this prince for even a moment, you can see he thinks of someone else constantly. His gaze is always so distant, his intellectual mind is so involved in his concern for another. But that is not all -- let us probe deeper. What is the only word this articulate, detached little savant-like creature will stumble over? What word puts a flicker in eyes that otherwise remain dead and lifeless?

"Oniisan," she answered herself disdainfully. "I have heard this little prince mutter that would over and over in his sleep as if it were a mantra, an incantation to repel evil spirits that threaten his sanity. Yes, this little prince, he thinks only of this White Prince... he would never join us."

Zoisite looked decidedly irritated. It was hardly surprising; the little sakura despised having his plans tossed aside, even if the idea had originally been Kunzite's. "Are you saying that we could not brainwash-"

The red-headed demoness interrupted Zoisite's protest with a derisive, loud laugh, sharp enough to scratch glass. "Haven't you been listening? This little prince is an intellectual; the centre of his very being is his mind... and if we destroy that, we are left only with his heart, and what is his heart occupied by?"

"If you were to fill him with the Dark Energy of Metallia-"

Kunzite's hurried suggestion only served to bitterly amuse the Queen ever further. "You only have to look at him to see his aura is already tainted by a dark power... and you can see that even this brushing of negative energy eats away at his personal mana like a cancer. It is no wonder he is no magician; the power of the attached darkness corrupts his own. Metallia's power could quite honestly kill him."

"Then why don't we just do it?" asked Zoisite petulantly, before Kunzite could put a large hand over that motormouth. "What use is he to us if he can't even play warrior for our great sleeping Empress?"

Yes... thought Beryl to herself as she observed the forlorn blue-haired prince stirring beside the tall, stalwart form of her leading nitennou. There is something about this little intellectual that tells me that he is no mage, that he is of no use to me, and there would be a great liability -- and yes, a great danger -- that would stem from keeping him alive... yes, what use is he but as danger to our cause? Endymion's image he may be, but when that Prince is mine, as he will be, what do I need with this mathematician?

What indeed?

The unfortunate time-warping quartet found themselves thrown into a disorganised heap on the cold stone floor. Well, the three Nemesians did; Sailor Pluto, long accustomed to such travel, remained on her feet, her expression cold and distant. Even though she was a solider at heart, she had not appreciated being shoved about by some great purple-haired lout, or playing target to some insane woman with a ridiculous looking fan. Actually, it had sent her frayed temper into the realms of seething fury.

Sighing impatiently, she extended her slender gloved hand to the White Prince who lay sprawled on the cold stone floor with his two idiotic compatriots. "Give me your hand, Dimando. Now."

The command in her voice was enough to make Esmeraude and Serpentine sit up and pay attention, quietly observing the quietly furious Senshi with uneasy respect. Dimando, however, had never taken such orders in his entire life. Ignoring the proffered hand, he climbed to his feet and turned to glare at Serpentine momentarily. He seemed on the verge of complaining about his interference -- Esmeraude shuddered as his frigid gaze momentarily passed over her with cool contempt -- when he whipped back around to face the Senshi who alone guarded the timestream. "Tell me Senshi, now that we are here -- where is my brother?"

"I am a soldier, not a compass," she remarked in an acidic voice, unusually angry. This particular Senshi was not well-known for losing her temper or raising her voice in anger, frustration... or even pleasure. The fact that she looked very obviously ticked off should have triggered warning bells in the brain of the White Prince.

However. His temper was just as severely frayed as hers was, with one noticeable difference; his grip on his temper was decidedly less potent than Pluto's iron hand.

"He is here, is he not?" he asked testily, purposely moving so that they were level with one another. Violet eyes, so cold and so furious, met with the cerise that were so distant yet so unusually malicious.

Pluto's demeanour was both decorous and silently angry. "He is your brother. Canât you feel his presence?" A small smirk crossed her face, very uncharacteristic for the melancholic soldier. She rarely took pleasure in goading people, but Dimando and his ridiculous relations were on the verge of driving her completely insane. "You must be able to sense your beloved brother. After all, you are willing to give up your campaign for the privilege of having your younger brother returned to you, are you not?"

"What?!" gasped Esmeraude and Serpentine in perfect synchronisation from the floor -- Esmeraude rather uncomfortably seated in the Lord Marshal's lap -- their wide eyes honestly resembling four very large dinner plates.

However, Dimando's attention was on the Senshi alone. "How dare you," he hissed, his eyes going very narrow. "How dare you. You speak as if it were not you who separated us in the first place! You did this to me -- and then you have the gall to come and act as if you are some great and divine philanthropist in returning him to me!"

Sailor Pluto's eyes narrowed in sync with his, her playful anger becoming full-fledged rage. "How dare you?! You speak to me as if you truly mean to give up your attack on our great city if I return your beloved blood to you -- but how deeply do you mean that? You are blinded by your desperation... but with your brother returned to your possession, will you really withdraw?" That odd sneering smile -- so alien on that beautiful, virtuous face -- returned as Sailor Pluto stared furiously at the Prince, scorn evident. "When you have your brother, your lust for all that you desire will be far from sated. You'll continue on with your idiotic plans to destroy all those who oppose you only in your meglomaniacal imagination!"

Dimando's aura flared about him violently, his long fingers tightening into balled fists as he levelled his gaze with hers. "You have no right to speak to me in such a tone," he hissed venomously. "I am Dimando re'Adamant, White Prince of Nemesis, Holder of the Throne of the Winds, Lord of the Tow-"

"And the blindest person in existence even though you have one more eye than the rest of us are blessed with," Pluto snapped back. To the surprise of the watching pair, her until-now absent Time Key appeared in her hands, Pluto's grip on the Time Staff then tightening violently. Her own maroon aura was beginning to glow quite sharply as she glared at the Prince, the Garnet Orb beginning to pulse in rhythm with her racing heart. "I have no idea why I wanted to help you in the first place; you are a vain, selfish fascist with all the innate loveability of a terminal and disfiguring disease. The very sight of you makes me sick."

Serpentine felt he had to stand at this outburst, tossing the green-haired former field marshal to the cold floor in the process. Ignoring her shriek of protest, he almost reluctantly approached the sparring pair, decidedly nervous. The pair now stood nose to nose, flaming auras foretelling an imminent exchange of magics... and from the screaming already heard, Serpentine could see that Dimando and Sailor Pluto, through magical exhaustion and mental fatigue, were both quite out of their minds.

Both of them had essentially, quite honestly, gone completely bonkers.

And as he bit his lip, observing the pair, he wondered what chaos an insane monarch and crazed Guardian of Time could create in a kingdom that was home to neither.

The Queen stilled.

Kunzite followed her lead but a second later; for a moment, Zoisite was left in the dark, quite unable to see the revelation that had so clearly presented itself to the higher pair. It downright frustrated the little sakura, for there was nothing that irritated him more than having it proved to him that he was not quite as good as he thought he was.

However, as he was not listening to the whispering of the walls that so enthralled both his beloved Kunzite and his not-so-revered Queen, he saw the reaction of the stirring prince to the magical susurration.

His clouded, dusky blue eyes widened; a single hiss of air escaped a constricted throat through clenched teeth. Even though it was low and almost slurred into incoherency, Zoisite picked up on its meaning easily enough. The tone of amazement and absolute adoration was enough to prove it.

"Oniisan..."

Zoisite was left with only one plan of attack when he saw Saffir leap to his feet, obviously planning on taking his unwarranted leave of his company. The Queen and his lover were far too engrossed in the foreign magical energy they sensed to be paying much attention to the prince both had denounced as "harmless and useless."

He swept across the room and threw himself at the prince, knocking them both to the floor in a heap. As he had landed on top, Zoisite found it relatively easy to pin Saffir to the floor while sitting on his back, one knee comfortably poised for action over his left kidney. "Going somewhere, sweetheart?" he asked in a sugar tone, dripping with sarcasm. "Oh, I don't think so."

"LET ME GO!" Saffir shouted furiously, desperately trying to climb back onto his feet. However, Zoisite was remarkably unmoveable for someone of his slight height and build. Saffir belatedly realised that he was using his not inconsiderable magical abilities to hold him there, but before he could react to this disclosure, he felt himself hauled to his feet by one wrist. He had to resist the temptation to scream in agony as Kunzite did this; it was obvious that he either did not know his strength, or he was honestly trying to snap Saffir's wrist in two.

"I think that's quite enough," the silver king said coldly, but he soon discovered his frigid tones -- fraught with the underlying resonance of unmistakable malice -- were not enough to subdue the prince. Saffir instantly fought to free himself from his grasp, even though Kunzite tightened the grip on his wrist so that he heard the sound of the bones in the prince's wrist grating together.

Saffir was oblivious to all pain; in his frenzied panic he continued to struggle to pull himself from the grasp of the king, struggling like a trapped fish hooked on a line. "Dammit, let me go!" he screamed in a strangled, frenetic voice, growing ever more frantic as he battled Kunzite's unyielding fingers.

Oniisan, oniisan! You have come for me! Oniisan, I'm coming, I'm coming!

Zoisite -- sensing the fact that even though the tall King was physically much stronger than Saffir, Kunzite was struggling with the little prince -- leapt to take Saffir's other side, wrapping both arms about that of the physicist and refusing to let go. Kunzite mirrored this action, the pair actually lifting the prince an inch off the ground.

"So -- this alien power we sense, it is related to this Nemesian fool," Beryl said in a hostile tone, leaving her throne -- a rare occurrence altogether -- to step right up to the struggling prince. "Little prince -- will you just SHUT UP?" Without further ado, she reached forward and soundly slapped him.

In the following silence, Saffir ceased his struggling, bowing his head to avert his eyes from those of this demon queen. All his will and gumption to fight was gone as he fought his tears back; would he never be allowed to see his brother again? That familiar aura was so tantalisingly close, so infuriatingly near, it was driving the mathematician insane.

The rough, long nailed fingers of this queen moved forward again, this time to rudely grasp his chin and force the silent Saffir to look into the furious eyes of Queen Beryl. Even though he had ceased his former struggling, the hands of Zoisite and Kunzite grew tighter as she spoke, almost cutting off his circulation.

"Tell me something, little prince," she hissed, a malignant smile growing on her paradoxically hideous and beautiful features. "How is it that your comrades are here, and what is their purpose?" Her face took on an ugly look of triumph as she sneered at the prince. "Have no illusions, Saffir -- if they are here to challenge us, then you will die. You are ours now; it is we alone who decide your fate." She allowed one long finger to trace a path down his face, her smile dark and cruel. "Yes, little prince, what a marvellous bargaining chip you make!"

He merely stared mutinously at the Queen, unable to comprehend the fact that he could be so close to his brother, and yet so far. Truthfully, Saffir was going into shock; her last words had hit him hard. Was he forever destined to be the political tool of all crazed fascist dictators?!

Quietly he spoke, his voice level and dead, masking his largely-internal horror and fear. "My brother will never see me hurt, dark majesty. Yes... if you hurt me, then you seal your own fate."

She merely chuckled, her eyes fiery and mocking. "Little prince, I once thought you would be useful to me. It appears that even I can be wrong... but no matter." She turned to her remaining nitennou, her gown swirling about her feet like a purple ocean. "Bring him with us -- we go to pay a visit to our latest 'diplomatic' visitors. Let us welcome them to our territory in true Dark Kingdom fashion."

Dimando's flaming aura was so bright that Serpentine had to shield his violet eyes against the glaring glow. This wasn't helped in the slightest by the fact that Sailor Pluto's Garnet Orb seemed to be glowing white hot with the seething fury the Senshi obviously felt. The Lord Field Marshal was temporarily convinced he was in a dream; the cold Prince and unflappable Senshi at each others throats? Impossible! Both were too decorous, too calm and collected to become involved in such childish -- and such dangerous -- games.

"You brought me here to give me back my brother -- and now you declare that I don't deserve to have him back?" shouted Dimando incredulously, his hands flashing with the beginnings of his destructive white energy. Serpentine winced at the thought of this, but Sailor Pluto seemed unimpressed by his failing grip on his control.

"You may think that you are honestly going to withdraw, Dimando... but I don't believe you are strong enough to promise me that you will withdraw your damnable forces from our world! You are without honour, Dimando re'Adamant, you are a coward-"

"You want proof?" he screamed wildly in interruption, those remarkable eyes wide and feral in his frenzied state. "I have taken off the source of my external power, is that not proof that I only want my brother, not the ridiculous power that the Wiseman promised would be mine to control?"

Esmeraude and Serpentine both gasped when they saw what it was Dimando was shaking in the face of the Senshi. It was a pair of earrings constructed from the jakokuzuishou, they were Dimando's earrings, the medium through which he drew the power of the jakokuzuishou.

"You throw away the source of the power that threatens to destroy my world?" Pluto asked, her fury becoming to calm, like the eye of a hurricane. However, the glint in her eyes suggested that should Dimando press any more of her buttons, she would lose it again, just as she had done once already.

Dimando's voice rose into a painful shout, his heart in his throat. He raised the earrings above his head, the dark crystal glittering wildly and maliciously in the incandescent rose-glow of his aura. "I cast them down, Senshi, even as you watch!"

Serpentine and Esmeraude both shrieked and covered their heads as Dimando purposely threw his earrings at the cold floor with so much force they bounced without breaking. If there was one thing you didn't do, it was throw bits of the jakokuzuishou around. They had a nasty habit of exploding on impact, like tiny nuclear bombs.

However, they merely lay spitefully on the floor, seeming to wink like tiny eyes as Dimando turned back to the silent soldier who regarded him with a mixture of anger and resentment, amusement and pity. "There," he said raggedly, his breathing heavy. His voice was low; his eyes were filled with the cold, insane fire that could only be attributed to the White Prince of Nemesis. "I have thrown down my greatest weapon against your people..." His voice broke on his next words, scaring the virtual Hell out of his watching subjects. Neither of them had ever seen their Prince even remotely close to weeping; to see him with bright tears shining in his eyes was devastating. "Now... now will you please return my brother to me?"

Pluto cast her suddenly weary eyes down on the offending crystal, abruptly appearing very old, and oh so tired. "I will not stop you from reclaiming him," she murmured, her own voice breaking on the words. Her own tears were at the back of her eyes, tears for this peculiar and extreme love demonstrated by a man whom they had denounced long ago as "dangerous and a madman." There were also tears for the people whose lives still hung in the balance, for the decisions that she had made that had gone so hideously wrong, for the little girl she loved who still remained in the twentieth century, frightened and alone, and tears for her own love gone awry, the love she held for Endymion that threatened to both consume and destroy her...

Dimando straightened his posture, his anger leaving him in his disbelief and relief. "My brother...?"

"He lies that way," she replied quietly, quite unable to look at the Prince as she wondered if she were doing what was right for the people. Internally, this soldier was in agony, the agony of knowing that she held the well-being of millions of people in her hand... and if she was wrong, they would pay the price.

However, things changed as Dimando made to leave, about to invoke a power to see if he could sense the familiar presence of his brother. It was at that moment a powerful transport manifested itself before the quartet, revealing another four individuals. Dimando's heart coiled up in a knot as he saw a familiar figure. Even though the dark head was bowed, he would have recognised his brother anywhere. However, this agonising, overwhelming joy was fleeting; he belatedly realised that he was being restrained between two grey-uniformed... well, he assumed they were both men. The smaller one had a decidedly feminine slant to his looks, but it was the red-haired woman who garnered the brunt of Dimando's glare.

"Who are you -- and just what do you think youâre doing with my brother?!"

And beside Dimando, Pluto buried her face in one gloved hand and shook her head. She hadn't counted on this.

The thing with being the Wiseman was that his name was a constant reassurance. He knew that whatever he desired to transpire, he had the ability to make it happen. There was really little to it in the end -- a little bit of simple planning, that was all it took to take down a kingdom. In this case, it was a simple brew of far too much ambition and a power that was unable to be controlled, no matter how this victims believed it would conform to their thoughts...

Oh, Dimando, what a perfect puppet this influential orator had been! How filled with the passion of his dreams and his desperation for vengeance this Prince forever was... oh, and how his foolish hopes and ambitions had worked for the Wiseman's dark intentions!

Yes... and it always would have been simple, this utilisation of the heir to the Nemesian throne, if not for the second in line.

Paranoid, suspicious Saffir re'Adamant, beloved brother to this otherwise exquisite puppet. Saffir, so difficult to sway in his uneasy Savant's mind, so impossible to manipulate, a thread so unworkable that he had never fitted into the tapestry of the Wiseman's plan to silence this ridiculous world with its obnoxious living creatures.

He watched for a second as the soldiers of the Black Moon swarmed through the great Crystal Place, looking so forlorn without her mighty shield, which had held so valiantly for so long. If the Wiseman had had any sense at all for aesthetic beauty, he would have seen the tragic splendour of this fallen palace, so knocked down from grace and hope. All he felt, however, was the sense of victory in that the Senshi and their Queen would be much less of a problem now, without this great centre of power and sanctuary.

For a second, he dwelt on the new arrivals, who had tried so desperately to hold the shield up under Serpentine's renewed attack. In his mind, he could picture the dark-haired, dark-eyed messiah who held the scythe of the goddess of death... oh, she was really the living end. He would really like to meet this beautiful carrier of the protection of the planet of death... for she desired for silence to end everything, just as he did... and even though she fought it, oh, she couldn't hold out forever, now could she?

The Wiseman chuckled to himself at this delicious thought -- he could destroy them all with more power than he ever thought possible, by turning this Senshi on this Earth. He realised well enough that she would only do it if the planet was already at death's door, but...

"Well, let's go and open it for her, shall we?" he chuckled slightly. "To Hell with Dimando, to Hell with that snivelling little coward Saffir... to Hell with them all! Let them come back -- and let them join the rest of the world in the perfect, beautiful moment before death... and then the Silence. Oh, everything is on the march toward ruin... and I love it. This is the true end... for who can stop me now?"

There was this to be said for him: he knew whom he loved and he would do anything for his beloved one's safety.

This is not an admirable trait in someone who has no morals.

Let us say that our current example is named Zoisite, and let us further suppose that he saw his lover in immediate and direct danger from the tall, splendidly white man whose purple eyes blazed with rage.

Having gone that far, let's just give up the whole hypothesis idea and head-on announce that Zoisite took the offensive immediately and launched a bevy of frozen shuriken in the direction of the White Prince.

Dimando didnât even spare a glance at the blonde King; it was Serpentine who snapped a shield around Zoisite and watched coldly as the shuriken rebounded off the inside of the shield and zoomed back at Zoisite himself, snickered at Zoisite's squeak when he didn't dodge quickly enough and one of the shuriken clipped off a snippet of golden hair.

Sailor Pluto stood quietly in the background, debating with herself whether or not to just pluck Saffir out of Kunzite's grasp and scram. After all, there was nothing could be gained from a skirmish with the Dark Kingdom right now; what mattered was getting both of the Black Moon brothers back to thirtieth-century Nemesis so Dimando could be 'reminded' of his oath and Crystal Tokyo could be saved.

Kunzite matched cool, challenging stares with Esmeraude, whose fan was closed and held closely diagonal to her body, with a supple wrist. She was, in fact, unconsciously treating the beloved object as a dagger. In Kunzite's hand Saffir squirmed, eyes only for his silent oniisan.

Dimando and Beryl stood facing each other: the dark queen with her staff in the classic imperial position, tucked into the crook of her elbow; the white prince with no weapon save his own inherent power, already rising into his distinctive roseate aura.

Beryl spoke first, immediately freezing all the dueling pairs. "Who are you?" the dark queen said coolly.

Dimando spared a moment to appreciate that she had seized the initiative; royalty always speaks first, as the superior to an inferior. In one sentence, she had reduced him to a suppliant.

Well, she would not get a second chance: Dimando knew more politics than she could ever dream of, had grown up in a world where his father's one wrong word had cost him his life and his throne, where one mistimed gesture could cause a clan to fall for generations.

"Madam," he said coldly, lifting his chin, "We are Dimando re'Adamant Black Moon, White Prince of Nemesis." He breathed slowly. "And your minion holds Our beloved brother in an attitude unbecoming the dignity of a prince of the blood royal. It would be well to release him."

Beryl, disconcertingly, began to smile. "Oh would it," she said. Her cheekbones were brought charmingly into prominence when she smiled, as were the tips of her chillingly pointed canines. It was not precisely a lovely picture, but it was indubitably an arresting one.

"Yes, madam, it would," Dimando said calmly. He held her gaze for a moment, deliberately snapped the connection between their eyes, turned his gaze to his brother.

And this was the act for which Serpentine would always revere his lord: Dimando dropped his aura. Stood proud and unafraid before the dark queen and her two legates. Walked coolly to his brother and took Saffir out of Kunzite's grip with one seemingly-insignificant spell applied to the Dark King's wrist.

Dimando pulled his brother into a brief embrace, then adroitly pulled Saffir's unresisting body to the side as Kunzite brought a pair of midnight-purple kinetites into the space where Saffir's neck had been.

The paralysis was broken; Zoisite rather neatly knocked Serpentine's legs from underneath him and very nearly pinned him to the ground with an icy pilum. The purple-haired soldier swung the halberd still in his hand and swept Zoisite to the side while avoiding the frozen spear with which the blonde king kept trying to skewer him.

"Run along, little girl," Serpentine said, levering himself to his feet and pinking Zoisite's wrist with a quick swipe of the halberd's blade. "I've got better things to do than spar with a squirt like you."

Zoisite grinned at him. "Won't it be amusing when I gut you? I know I'll be laughing my head off."

"Uh-huh," Serpentine said, flowing around a quick stop-thrust, slapping Zoisite's cheek with the flat of the blade. "And then cats will fly. I'll give you one more chance, lass; run along now and I won't bother to follow you and make you eat your kidneys, hmm?"

"I don't have any kidneys," Zoisite informed him haughtily. The jagged edge of the ice-crystal scored Serpentine's shoulder; the purple-haired soldier bit his lip and tightened his guard. "In point of fact I'm built much differently, this time around; Metallia took the liberty of reshaping my body for maximum efficiency whilst the Dark Kingdom slept for a thousand years."

"Riiiiight," Serpentine said. "So you're not going to take up my amnesty, girl? Pity; I don't like killing women."

Zoisite almost managed to finish him off there; Serpentine's shoulder was bleeding profusely and the blood was making him lose his grip on the haft of the halberd. Luckily for Serpentine, the smaller King was unused to dueling opponents so much bigger; Zoisite miscalculated the blow and delivered what would have been a killing blow to Serpentine's shoulder again.

"I'm really getting tired of that," Serpentine said. He reached out with his weak arm, grabbed Zoisite's free hand while bringing a sharp CRACK! down on the hand that held the ice-crystal. Zoisite cried out, dropped his weapon; and Serpentine twisted Zoisite's arm up behind him in an exquisitely painful hold.

"Oh," Serpentine said in surprise. "So you're not a woman. I must say that makes me feel better about this." With that, he drove the blade of the halberd into Zoisite's body.

The blonde King did not yell in pain; he screamed, a high thin sound of agony. Serpentine yanked the halberd free; Zoisite turned, blood gurgling from his lips, tried to say something, vanished in a swirl of cherry blossoms. Serpentine shook his head in irritation, headed over to see what he could do about helping his Prince.

Kunzite's head snapped up when he heard his sakura's scream. This proved to be just the opening that Esmeraude had needed; she drove the point of the poniard she'd yanked out of midair into Kunzite's gut.

Or at least that's what she thought she was doing; instead she found to her dismay that the knife shattered when it touched the king's uniform. Kunzite smiled mirthlessly at her.

"It takes more than a knife to touch the first of the Shitennou," Kunzite said coldly. He slapped her once across the face with her own fan, then bound her in a shield and left her on the floor.

He went to his queen's aid.

Everyone should see master magicians duel each other, at least once in his or her lifetime; it's a grand spectacle, one that should not be turned down. For sheer showiness and deadly beauty, a sorcerer's duel is worth Austerlitz, Waterloo, Castiglione, and Alesia all rolled into one, honest it is, and when it's compounded by being a duel between royalty as well, you may as well die after it's concluded because you'll never witness a spectacle its like again.

Dimando re'Adamant, his aura blazing a rose so brilliant it was almost white, was holding off every levin-bolt that Beryl could throw at him. The dark queen herself, wreathed by a penumbra as dark as the formless master she served, bathed in the glory of Metallia, sent ribbon after ribbon of deadly shadow in Dimando's direction, laughing every time Dimando's shield fluctuated.

Had it been personal power against personal power, with no outside sources, Dimando would have had Beryl rolled into knots in thirty seconds flat. As magicians went, Dimando was possibly one of the greatest who had ever lived; power drove him so completely that he devoured spells and matrices in the same way his small brother had ingested textbook after textbook of beloved numbers and arithmetic tricks. As Saffir was a mathematical and scientific Savant, Dimando was a sorcerous Savant, and there were few in the histories of Nemesis or Earth that could resist him.

However, there was one small detail that put a very real cramp in the shiroi oujisama's style.

He had thrown away his earrings, the channels of the jakokuzuishou.

Beryl was in the mana-soaked environment of her own familiar kingdom, her own power boosted and resonating with the influence of Metallia.

The battle was not going well for Dimando; even his own strength could not stand for long against both Beryl and her shadowy master at once. His normally pale face was positively white with strain. Two spots of color burned high in his cheeks.

Occasionally he would raise a long slender hand to his earlobe, distractedly; he would let it drop when his questing fingers met no black crystal, when he recalled his vow to Senshi Pluto.

"Give up," Beryl commanded, effortlessly throwing the shadow of a rose straight at Dimando's heart.

The White Prince barely managed to deflect it. "No," he said, tight-lipped but still polite as only true royalty is. "But thank you for the offer, madam, you are most kind."

Serpentine, aware that there was nothing he could do, gently touched Saffir on the shoulder. "Highness," he said, "come away." He glanced around, swore as he saw the white-haired King about to throw a glowing purple kinetite into Dimando's unshielded back. "Prince Saffir-sama, please, go free Esmeraude."

Saffir jerked away from Serpentine's hand; the purple-haired soldier had never been one of Saffir's favorite people. Of course it wasn't Serpentine's fault that his father had been one of the lords supporting the Usurper who had murdered Saffir's father... but all the same, Saffir had never quite... liked Serpentine re'Carnelian all that much.

The sounds of Kunzite and Serpentine meeting drifted into Saffir's ears as he worked calmly at freeing his cousin's sorcerous bonds. It was not easy, not at all; Kunzite was a strong magician -- not as strong as Dimando, but far stronger than Saffir -- and he was skilled in tying knots in his weaves.

"Remind me, I shall never refer to you as Useless again," Esmeraude said grumpily as Saffir worked.

"That's what you said last time," Saffir said mechanically. His thoughts were going slower than a turtle running uphill on a pane of slick glass; Dimando-oniisan had come for him. He had never doubted that... Well, actually, he had, but Dimando-oniisan had come. Dimando-oniisan had received his letter, had rescued Esmeraude, was now rescuing him... Dimando-oniisan had come, oniisan, oniisan, oniisan...

Serpentine was truly not having a good day. His shoulder hurt like seven hells and the blood was highly inconvenient; he wished vaguely that he hadn't left his gloves back in the Darksnake's command room. They would've been useful in keeping his grip on the halberd.

Besides which, damn it all but this white-haired jackass was good. Serpentine was very strong, even for a Nemesian magician; but this jerk matched him blow for blow. About the only advantage that Serpentine had was that the white-haired man was unarmed, but it didn't seem to matter; Serpentine's left hand was numbed and almost useless now, his shoulder having been substantially shredded by that annoying little femme-man a while ago.

"Why don't you go tend to that friend of yours?" Serpentine said conversationally, trying for the opening the white-haired man left on his right side. "Of course he's most likely dead already, but at least you can hold his hand and send his soul off wherever it is that evil prince-napping bastards like you go."

The silver eyes of his opponent never even wavered. The white-haired man fought with a single-minded ferocity that was beginning to sincerely annoy Serpentine. He hadn't asked for this, for Rudra's sake; he'd been a commander for too long, not a fighter. At least if he died fighting this white-haired fury, which prospect was beginning to look more and more likely as Serpentine's arm got weaker and weaker, he'd go down defending his prince. Not a bad way to die, actually...

One half-minute later, Serpentine fell, with one of Kunzite's distinctive purple boomerangs digging deep into his thigh. He hit the ground and did not rise. Kunzite paid him no more attention as soon as he ascertained that the purple-haired man was no longer a threat -- Kunzite was nothing if not intensely practical -- and went to aid his queen.

"Two on one, madam?" Dimando said, almost panting, as Kunzite's icy white aura joined the queen's shadowy halo. "You cheat."

"If you're not cheating, youâre not trying," Beryl replied. She and Kunzite sent forth sizzling dark lightnings at the same time. Dimando's shields held, but a tiny fringe of Beryl's bolt singed his cheek, almost blinding him.

"I am Dimando re'Adamant," he murmured coldly. "White Prince of Nemesis, Patriarch of the Black Moon Family, Lord of the Towers, Holder of the Throne of the Winds, Sovereign of the Exiles -- kill me if you can!"

He prepared to empty himself, calling forth all of his power. He would manage to at least cripple the dark queen, if he did not kill her outright; he would buy himself and his brother time enough to get back to Nemesis. He would be substantially weak afterwards, but it did not matter; he would have his brother back.

He loosed the bolt, straight at Beryl.

And collapsed, which was rather undignified of him, but he was unable to help it.

As the bolt entered the dark queen's shield, prepared to reach for her and her loyal King both, it stopped dead, held its position and defied the laws of gravity and physics simultaneously and impartially.

In point of fact, everything had stopped.

Senshi Pluto lowered her staff, sighed over her handiwork.

She detested breaking the Rules, but she had no other choice, not if she did not want the Timestream to go haywire. Or, rather, more haywire than it was already.

She could have merely allowed Dimando and Beryl to destroy each other, as might have easily happened -- but Sailor Moon needed to defeat Beryl herself, in order to be strong enough to face down her other enemies; and Dimando, at least, must return to the Nemesis of the future to stop the attack on the Palace.

A timewarp opened over in the corner of the room. The Senshi pointed at first the dying Serpentine, lying in a pool of his own blood; his body vanished through the vortex, to appear in thirtieth century Nemesis. Saffir and Esmeraude were next, Saffir's arms wrapped around his cousin as he tried to release her bonds.

The Angel of Time paused before she pointed her staff at the White Prince. The young idiot had misjudged his own strength without the jakokuzuishou to bolster him; he had utterly drained himself. If she transported him now, with that fool spell of his still in effect, he would die the instant he came into contact with a stronger source of magic, such as the jakokuzuishou or the mana-soaked environment of Nemesis itself. Senshi Pluto muttered to herself irritably about young idiots who needlessly complicated things, and flowed over to the frozen dark queen.

She studied Dimando's spell for a moment. Yes... All right, a thread reversed there, and perhaps a small nudge there -- she glared hard at the black bolt. A smell of ozone went up, and in her black-gloved hand the Time Key flashed a brilliant garnet.

The bolt retracted, flowed back into Dimando's still form. Satisfied that at least he was not utterly devoid of energy, she gestured peremptorily. The White Prince vanished; the timewarp began to close.

Sailor Pluto cast one long look at Beryl, the enemy who had destroyed the Silver Millennium and killed so many of her friends and colleagues. She leaned forward until she was only an inch away from the frozen queen's face.

"Beryl," she said at last, whispering, "may you get exactly what you deserve."

The Angel of Time vanished.

And the Dark Kingdom resumed its activities.

Sailor Saturn awoke, her eyes huge and wide.

*Silence...* The voice called her, coaxingly, temptingly. *Silence... Wouldn't it be beautiful, all the midnight-purple quiet, the heavenly peace of no sound of any living being for millennia to come... The Silence... The Silence... Waken, Silent Messiah... Waken to your destiny...*

Sailor Saturn leaned her cheek against the Glaive, unaware of just when she'd summoned it. She was glad of its support anyway; she was extremely weak. She remembered Uranus screaming as the shield's control ripped away from her; she remembered Neptune's tears as she refused to leave her section of the shield to aid her lover.

Most of all, she remembered hearing four other voices suddenly shrieking in agony -- the Inner Senshi's trance had finally been broken, apparently -- and the deep sad voice of King Endymion: "We have fallen..."

"I am not the Silent Messiah," Sailor Saturn said out loud. She glanced around, seeing only darkness. "My destiny is not silence, not yet. The Golden Millennium has not yet fallen, and I will not raise the scythe until then."

*It has fallen,* the voice pointed out smugly. *Your comrades have failed; the Nemesian ships even now destroy the Palace. The Neo-Queen is dead, the ginzuishou has been shattered into so many pieces that its light will never rekindle. The Senshi have failed; the Earth belongs to Nemesis; and night has fallen. The Silence will be the next thing to fall. Raise your scythe, pretty child. Raise the Glaive. Let it fall again. Silence will cover the world, and true beauty and serenity will last forever.*

Sailor Saturn said nothing. She wondered, not for the first time, why the hell all insane Silence-obsessed strange voices always chose *her* to talk to. Why couldn't she have been someone as blithely happy as Sailor Venus? Was that too much to ask?

"The Silence will not yet fall," Sailor Saturn said clearly. "Not until I have seen the ginzuishou shattered with my own eyes; not until I see the body of the dead Queen, as I saw her in the Silver Millennium. I waited for proof then; Iâll wait for the sign of my duty now."

*You can't waste time,* the voice warned coldly. *You can't let this opportunity go. If you act now, swing up the Glaive and call out the words, then you will catch all of the evil spirits who caused the fall of Golden Millennium. If you let it slide... they would be reborn, and then your princess will never be free of them.*

Sailor Saturn's hands trembled. "No," she said, and slammed down her mental shields as far as she could. Head high, she held her Glaive and waited for the sign to use it. The *proper* sign, not any unnamed, too-eager voices. She would not let that fool her again, not after Mistress Nine.

Somewhere far away, the Wiseman snarled to himself, and made another plan.

As soon as Dimando felt that he could justify standing up without falling over again, he did so, only to fall down again anyway because Saffir threw himself into Dimando's arms, weeping almost hysterically.

"Oniisan oniisan oniisan... Oh oniisan never let me leave you again please oniisan, never again, I can't bear it oniisan...." Saffir sobbed, then buried his face in Dimando's shirt, his body shuddering as if he fully intended to fly apart at the seams.

Dimando sat up, cradling Saffir against him gently, stroking his brother's hair and soothing him. "Saffir, it's all right," he said quietly, "you're home and you will never leave again, save to walk on Earth. Shh, Saffir, you will never leave me again, except when you're in your fields of flowers."

Then Dimando pulled away -- he was always the first to pull out of the embrace -- and shook Saffir slightly. "Don't you ever do something as stupid as that ever again," he said icily, his mood changing like lightning. Something in his purple eyes made Saffir stop weeping and pull himself together instantly. "Do. Not. Dare. Never never never again muck around with something like that. I thought you were dead, Saffir --" He pulled Saffir to him again in a quick embrace, then gently put Saffir to the side and stood up, offering his hand to his brother to help him rise as well.

"Senshi Pluto," Dimando said quietly, "I assume youâre still here to make sure I keep my promise, correct?"

The tall Angel of Time looked at him opaquely. "If you don't keep your promise," she said shortly, "I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised. You have what you wanted, and now you're going to go after what else you wanted, too."

Dimando bowed to her. "Madam, your lack of faith wounds me -- Rudra's eyes, what in blazes...?"

He had caught sight of Serpentine; Esmeraude was kneeling by the dying soldier's side. She was careful to keep her distance from him, however, since she all too plainly didn't relish the idea of all that blood over her nice clean outfit.

Dimando impatiently shooed her to the side, looked down at Serpentine. The purple-haired soldier's eyes were closed; his left shoulder and thigh gushed blood. He was going to die, obviously; he'd lost so much blood that only a genuine miracle could save him.

Dimando looked down thoughtfully at him. He did not love Serpentine as he loved his brother -- he didn't love anyone as much as that; Dimando was, for all intents and purposes, a man of only three passions: Saffir, the Children of Nemesis, and Serenity -- but Serpentine had been the first lord to swear loyalty to him, always his loyal and true servant, a great commander, one of the few truly honest men Dimando knew.

He sighed. "Esmeraude, give me your earrings."

The green-haired woman looked startled, but obediently handed them over. Dimando did not slide them into his own earlobes, merely held them in one hand as he lightly placed his other hand over Serpentine's heart.

The roseate aura flooded over both of them.

Senshi Pluto bowed her head, and disappeared. Her words rang throughout the room: "You've reaccepted the jakokuzuishou's influence, Dimando-sama. What next?"

Dimando never looked up to meet her cerise, accusatory gaze; or perhaps it was his own brother's eyes that he could not face.

Lord Savant Lychnite re'Serojin Seven Stars gazed out over the vanquished Palace impatiently. It had been nearly three hours since the Crystal Palace had fallen, and there had been no other defenders to take care of. By all rights the Nemesian forces should be inside right now, taking prisoners and inventorying loot. The men deserved it; this siege had been long and exhausting, not to mention highly demoralizing. After what had happened to the Nemesian and the Lady Amber, there had almost been a mutiny aboard no fewer than nineteen other warships. It had taken all of Lychnite's logic and Prince Serpentine's (Lychnite never could be broken of the habit of addressing his clan's lord as a prince) personal popularity with the soldiery to put things right again.

Yes, they should definitely be down at the Palace, cleaning up various trifles and making certain that the Senshi could never rise again.

"Lord Savant..." came the unfamiliar, instantly recognizable voice.

Lychnite turned and bowed. "Wiseman," he said neutrally. "Do you bear orders from His Serene Highness?"

The dark magician's eyes burned under that all-encompassing hood. "I bring orders," he seemed to confirm. "Utterly destroy the Palace."

This, naturally, caught Lychnite off guard. "What?"

"Utterly destroy the Palace," the Wiseman repeated. "Raze it to the ground."

"That is not advisable," Lychnite began, only to be cut off by a peremptory gesture from a darkly glowing hand.

"Yet I advised such, and had it accepted," the Wiseman said coldly. "Destroy the Palace. Those are your orders. Don't stop until the last crystal shard is so much dust."

"Moondust," Lychnite muttered to himself. He couldn't remember where he'd heard the phrase. No matter. It seemed to fit. He said aloud, "Those are my only orders, then? Direct from Prince Serpentine and Prince Dimando?"

"Those are your orders," the Wiseman said impatiently. "Carry them out. I will remember you."

With that, the cowled man sank below the floor again. Lychnite watched him, stood there and pondered a few things, among them was he really that fond of his own skin and was there any way to ask Prince Serpentine to rescind his order.

To his way of thinking, the answers were yes and no respectively.

Serpentine would probably be a bit weak in his shoulder for a few weeks, and would definitely limp for at least half a year, but he was alive.

Dimando wished that he himself were dead; the headaches stemming from overuse of the jakokuzuishou's vibrant power made migraines look like paradise.

"Thank you, Dimando-sama," Serpentine said calmly. He sat up, propped himself back against a pillar, wrapped his bloody cloak around him and almost immediately committed lŽse majestŽ by falling asleep.

Dimando didn't get upset over this; he had far bigger things to be upset over. He'd broken his promise to Senshi Pluto, he had his brother back but he was momentarily out a commander, and his headache was probably going to cripple him if he stayed upright with his eyes opened for very much longer.

But he had duties to perform; the Children of Nemesis were depending on him.

Dimando genuinely loved his people; when the war had started, he had had no idea that Neo-Queen Serenity even existed, other than as the legendary tyrant who'd thrown his ancestors off their beautiful Homeworld. He had begun the war for fields of flowers and for the light and warmth of Terra, for a place for his people that was better than the hellworld Nemesis.

He could not let them down. He admitted that now. He had been momentarily weak, desperate for anything that would return his brother to him, when he had rashly promised the Angel of Time that he would back off.

He would be a fool to do that now. He had the advantage; the Crystal Palace's shield had been destroyed, and presumably even now the soldiers had the situation well in hand.

He could not withdraw now; Nemesis already owned all of Earth other than Crystal Tokyo, and had since April Fools Day last year. The Bloodstorm Clan was so firmly entrenched in Canada that nothing would ever budge them out; the Redstar Clan had claimed the United Kingdom and most of Europe; Omega Family and Serpentine's clan of Seven Stars Sept had divided South America and most of Oceania between them. He would never force them back to Nemesis; bad enough that he would have to return there, in order to look after the Children of Nemesis who still chose to remain.

Plus, the ginzuishou had to be taken or destroyed. The Senshi could not be allowed to rise again; they were far, far too dangerous. He had his doubts about Sailor Pluto; perhaps she was as impartial as all the legends claimed that she was, but now that he'd met the Angel of Time in the flesh, he had more than a few misgivings about her much-vaunted neutrality. Ha. Would a neutral person have gone through so much rigamarole about stranding his brother back a thousand years, then finally relenting after it was nearly too late? Perhaps in Backwards Land... but not in Dimando's world.

Yes. He had his duties to attend to. Neo-Queen Serenity, the execution of Endymion, the capture of that damned Small Lady...

Dimando rose. "Saffir, Esmeraude," he said tranquilly, "come with me. Esmeraude, find someone to take care of Serpentine, please. We have things to do."

"Saturn, you and I must go put the Inner Senshi back in their trance."

"What?"

"I've managed to get everyone back in their regular places -- " A pause and a frown. "Although I keep getting the feeling that I did miss someone... But that will pass. The timeline must be fully on track again. The Inner Senshi must put the shield back up; the enemy won't be expecting that, and I do believe that some of the ships have strayed inside the shield's boundary. When the Inner Senshi put it back up, those ships and the ones close to them will go up in flames -- a repeat of April Fools' Day."

"I understand, Pluto. The Silence hasn't come yet, not yet." The Angel of Silence raised midnight-purple eyes to the taller Senshi. "The timeline must be back on track? Then Chibi-Usa and the others will arrive soon."

"Yes. They must find the barrier up and the Black Moon Family frustrated in their attempt to penetrate the Palace."

"Hai. But... Pluto..."

"Yes?"

"You'll be in charge of putting Venus under the trance. I want no truck with Miss Bubbly right now."

The barrier sprang up again. Ships burst into flames... including the Darksnake, Serpentine's flagship, which had just transmitted the order to resume fire.

The standoff had been reached again, and the timeline had been restored.

One week later, Esmeraude made her final trip back through time with Kiral and Akiral, the only male droids that Saffir ever built. As purely a joke, he modeled them after a meld of Serpentine and Kunzite.

Dimando broke his promise. It was necessary, much as Pontius Pilate was required to officiate over the trial of a certain Nazarene.

Of course Senshi Pluto knew the necessity of it, that if he hadn't been willing to resume his war for Serenity, the timeline would have been irrevocably altered...

But she never forgave him the sin of not even waiting until she was out of sight to break it.

To Epilogue