SAINT ERYTHROS' HISTORY OF THE DARK KINGDOM
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PART FOUR: LAST OF THE RED-HOT SAKURAS
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[This is dedicated to Soylent Green, Sardonyx, and Sunstar, those tireless advocates of Zoisite whose worthy efforts to convert me to sakura-devotion have finally paid off. This one's for you, guys. It's all your own fault.]

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There is something to be said for conscious thought, ya know.

I mean, if you really think about it -- really, really bust yer brains tryin' to think about something -- you can nearly always find some way of persuading yourself to do the right thing.

If, f'rinstance, someone were to try and convince you to pick up a baby by its ankles and dash out its brains against a wall, you'd stop, and think, "Holy snot! Is this really the sort of thing that's going to look good on my rŽsumŽ?"

And of course then you would say, "Hell no! I'm not going to smack this poor kid against a wall! No future in it!"

And then everyone's happy.

Of course, then you always come across one or two individuals who have no real use for conscious thought.

You know the sort -- the quicksilver, mercurial beings who flit in and out of situations and think about 'em later, if at all. The sort who perceive the goings-on, and react to 'em almost entirely according to their mood at the moment.

I've told you a few stories about dai'Merolan al'Ledo, the Mer'Eliy Messiah, right? He's one of that sort. And judging by His life, this sort may not be all that admirable, but they do have a helluva lot of fun on the way.

Another of this sort is Zoisite Enoara, Prince of South America, castellan of the great city La Dorada.

The sakura, the copper-haired beauty, the king who queens it: Zoisite Enoara, lover of Kunzaito-shogunsama, Marshal of the South, fifth imperial viceroy of Endymion-mikadosama.

He has no use for thinking over a situation. He sees something, he gets his visceral reaction to it, and biggety-bam! He's gone.

I -- very reluctantly -- admire people like this.

And even more, I extremely reluctantly admire Zoisite -- because in addition to never thinking over something until it's too late, he pays no attention to morals (or scruples, if you like that better). Matter of fact, I ain't all that sure that he has morals. Nor a conscience. Nor yet any concrete ideas of right or wrong save as appertaining to his own comfort and safety.

In point o' fact, darlin', we can pretty much write off Zoisite Enoara as the most perfect of all beings: a perfectly self-centered person.

So why the fuck do I admire him? Because he does what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and he very rarely ever has to pay the piper, and I'm so goddam envious I can't think straight.

There are all sorts of great positions for a self-centered person to be in -- bricklayer, muralist, Microsoft magnate -- but a viceroyalty of Imperial Earth probably ain't one of them. The more people under you, the more you feel the certain urge to flex your power.

Granted, there are people who can handle this kind of power. Kunzaito-shogunsama, a man who was dedicated solely to the glory of Earth and to rendering his own name immortal as a result of Earth's glory, was one of them; he ain't the sort to let power go to his practical head.

Nor yet is Nefuraito-sama, the Third Prince of Earth and the astromancer of Ayers Rock. His mind is too absorbed with things astral and celestial than with anything so paltry as his own ego or stroking thereof. To put it bluntly, it's never really occurred to him that, compared with the eternally cold, brilliant stars, mere people might be important enough to be nasty to.

Mamoru Endymion, for all his lack of finesse in personal relationships, is a damn fine person to have in an administrative position; there's no avarice in all his body. And say what you will about his ego or his pansy-ass rose-throwing; the man's got a damn fine body, nice and tight and just right for wearing ceremonial black armor. Yummy.

Jadeite, the scholar of Coronado, is much the same; he views his subjects as a massive experiment in group dynamics, and it never occurs to him to ... tilt the experiment, to push them over the edge into anarchy and chaos. He does all of his paperwork and he hands out his fiats and he has never, not even once, considered doing anything more radical than his "bride tax," which was later stolen by Edward I of England. You know what I'm talking about, dontcha?

Oh, come on, I'll even give you a hint: it rhymes with "loose dreams knock tray."

Jus primis nocturne, the law of the first night. Get it, chummer? Occasionally if the groom's pretty too, Jadeite will take his first night with both of 'em. That's the thing about Jadeite, he just democratizes the socks off people.

Anyway.

As for Cassiterite of Africa -- man, the dude's boring; far too jazzed up over his goddam pyramid-building exploits to bother doing anything exciting.

Zoisite Enoara, though....

Say what you will about the sakura -- say that he's vain, malicious, devious, easily-bored, short-tempered, whatever -- I've heard 'em all.

But the three attributes of Zoisite of South America upon which everyone agrees are these:

He's pretty. Oh, is he ever lovely, with that hair like autumn and that skin like wintry cream, those eyes as green as poison and that delicate sulky mouth. Beautiful, utterly beautiful; he's as beautiful as a fallen angel and as gracefully quick as a serpent coiling to strike.

He's clever. Oh, is he ever clever, with that knack for knowing things unsaid and thoughts unspoken, that flair for finding out precisely what he wants to know and charming people into thinking that they give up their innermost secrets on their own initiative. As clever as he is, he attracts the notice of Senshi Mercury, the Soldier of the Mind; and their shared research leads to a great deal of hullabaloo with some of the more bloody-minded reactionaries around Silver Millennium.

The hell? you say. What, Zoisite work with that little blue-haired chit Sailormercury? you say. Who the fuck thought that one up, the bleedin' Mismatch Fairy? you say.

Shut the hell up; anyone who criticizes Sailormercury is gonna answer to me.

Lookit, it makes perfect sense if you think about it. Zoisite doesn't have the all-encompassing brilliance of Kunzite and Mamoru Endymion; nor yet does he have the, I dunno, the single-minded dedication to one discipline that characterizes the sociologist Jadeite or the astronomer-mathematician Nephrite.

We oughta thank and fervently praise all the gods that ever were that Zoisite doesn't have the goddam obsessive streak of Cassiterite of Africa; I swear that son of a bitch wasted seventeen years on his friggin' pyramid out in the goddam desert, and did anyone take any notice of it once Silver Millennium ended? Not the least fuckin' bit. Pyramids? you say -- what the fuck are those?

Jeez, I'm still irritated about that, all the manpower he wasted on it --

Er. Right. Zoisite.

Zoisite has boundless curiosity, a good if not superlative mind, and an absolutely amazing gift for extrapolations from very few bits of evidence. He has a penchant for thinking of things that no one has ever considered before --

"Why's this do this? Why doesn't it do that instead? If I modified it a little bit this way, or tweaked it a bit that way, would it do this, do that, or blow up and burn off my eyebrows?"

Naturally, he meshes perfectly with the Soldier of the Mind. Senshi Mercury is a patient plodder, steady as she is steadfast; the mercurial jabs of intelligence Zoisite displays are almost as upsetting to her as her diligent toils are to him. While Zoisite bubbles and zooms around the laboratory, talking a mile a minute and adding something here, adjusting something there, and bouncing around like Stephen Hawking out of a wheelchair and on crack -- while he's doing all of that, Sailormercury is sitting quietly at one bench in the lab and transcribing her calculations interspersed with some of Zoisite's muttered observations and some diagrams of the insane things that Zoisite can build out of a pipe cleaner and some rocks he'd put in his pocket earlier (Zoisite, y'see, is the original Macgyver). Occasionally she'll pipe up and quietly point out that something is going to explode, or that she would put that squiggly green thing in upside down; and Zoisite stops, looks annoyed, and makes her corrections with an air of martyrdom and suffering fools gladly; she'll smile at him, he'll look crossly at her, and then as soon as her attention goes back to her notes, he'll smile despite himself.

They get along famously; they never say a word to each other and are the greatest friends either has in all Silver Millennium.

The hell, you mutter. Still don't see how they can stand each other, you mumble. He's fire and she's ice, you whisper.

Speak up, honey -- or are you afraid that even now Zoisite'll hear you and kick your ass? I wouldn't be surprised, sugar; if Zoisite is loyal to someone, he's loyal.

Which, kind of, brings us to the third universally-remarked-upon trait of our sakura:

He has a temper. Hot damn but he has a temper; and when he holds a grudge, he holds it.

And one of the things that causes him to lose his temper are intimations about his friends -- which select group includes Kunzaito-sama, Second Prince of Earth; Sailormercury, the Soldier of the Mind; and Nefuraito-sama, Third Prince of Earth.

Yeah, riiiiiiight, you say. As if Zoisite'd ever give the time of day to the astromancer, you say. How dumb do you think I am? you say.

Well, honey, skirting around that last question -- which always gets me into trouble no matter how I answer -- I'll just go right on in and say that until that famous tantrum of Zoisite's around the spring of SiM 5520, Nephrite and Zoisite were close-on to being best friends, as close as Nephrite's aloof nature and Zoisite's abrasive tendencies would allow.

And about that tantrum...

If you know about that particular episode in the annals of Earth, as far as I'm concerned you know everything there is to know about Zoisite Enoara.

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Spring, Silver Millennium Year 5520: Zoisite Enoara is twenty years old, has been Prince of South America for about a year, has been pursuing a fascinatin' little love affair with Kunzaito-sama of Asia for roughly that same amount of time, has already published in tandem with Sailormercury about twenty-seven monographs and articles both popular and professional about various of their shared inventions, and is throwing a party.

And this li'l soiree (is it just me, or does everyone have the nigh-irresistible urge to spell that sucker "swaray"?) exists solely to herald the invention of what Zoisite and Sailormercury confidently expect to solve the leading crisis of most of Silver Millennium: source of power.

Well, some people call it "labor" (most notedly the governments of Venus, of Uranus, of Nemesis, and most damn definitely of Earth) and some call it "energy," they all mean the same thing: getting all their shit to work reliably. Whether you go the route of indentured servitude like Venus or go all mechanized like Mercury, you've gotta have a power source in order to service your grain mills and your personal computers and your CD players and whatnot; and whether that be nuclear fission or some little rodent running endless treadmills, you've got to have something to run it.

And, as mentioned, there's a lot of ways of combating this. On Venus, they have what they laughingly term "indentured servitude," which to my mind is goddam slavery with contracts. On Uranus, it's slightly better, the reason being that you might actually earn enough to buy yourself back from your "employer." Eventually. On Earth they've got that lovely old standby feudalism, by which they mean some dude with a tiara owns all the tiara-less peons below him and if they think they've got rights like liberty and the pursuit of happiness other than serving their lord, man alive have they got another think coming.

And then there's places like Mercury, where there are a lot of machines and hamsters on treadmills hooked up to really weird looking generators and batteries made out of copper wire and lemons. Whatever.

The point is, all the worlds have power-sources; and all the worlds have problems with their power-sources.

And Zoisite Enoara, mechanical genius, and Senshi Mercury, all-around smart chick, think they've found a solution.

Quantum crystals.

They're not sentient so they aren't slaves; they don't get tired or die like hamsters on wheels (by the way, doll, I was kinda kidding about that; no one uses hamsters on treadmills -- my dear, how gauche); and they most damn definitely don't start yammering about life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. What's a fucking rock want with Rousseau?

Anyway. Senshi Mercury came up with the math behind the enormous potential for a crystal's infinite facets and infinite storage capacity; Zoisite enthusiastically builds a few prototypes and finds out that if you dribble a little solar rays into a crystal's heart, biggety-bam! You have yourself the equivalent of ninety-seven Hoover Dams packed into one itty bitty carat.

It makes that old chestnut about cold fusion so much hooey; crystals are prettier and they don't get movies starring Val Kilmer made about them. What's not to like?

Yeah.

So our sweet lovely Zoisite, who to remind you is a mercurial sort (ha, so that's why he hangs out with Senshi Mercury --

Hey! Come back!

Jesus, make one stupid pun and your audience packs up. I said I was sorry, now get back here and listen to the friggin' story.

Zoisite throws a party to honor his new invention, and it happens to take place in his palace in the South American capital La Dorada.

La Dorada means "The Gilded One" and boy is the name ever appropriate -- the capital of South America could've been the original set for the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. Every surface shines green and gold; the streets are of pale green flagstones; the palace itself is an exotically minaretted construction of fluted malachite columns and delicate jadeite floors.

The throne in the great hall wherein the prince holds his court is carved of a single massive emerald from the mines in Peru.

Gorgeous city; I hear Endymion-mikadosama and his empress took their honeymoon there or something.

Anyway.

So Zoisite throws his party there so he can show off his little crystal; and man can Zoisite ever throw a swaray. You've never seen the like, probably not even in Rome of Nero's day.

The lights are bright, people are chattering amiably, there's a few couples dancing and even more sniggling in dim corners, and the drink is flowing freely.

That's probably a bad idea, as things turn out. Let it be noted that the Senshi Mercury drinks only water the whole evening; let it be noted that she's probably the only one in the whole damn crowd who doesn't have at least .06% alcohol runnin' through her bloodstream by the end of the night.

So anyone who wants to blame this thing on Sailormercury -- you're full of shit, dude.

As a matter of courtesy, all the other Princes of Earth have been invited and all the other Princes of Earth have graciously accepted the invite; invitations to the Senshi and monarchs have been extended, but only the Senshi of Mercury, Jupiter, and Uranus are in attendance. Jupiter hangs on the arm of her newly-wedded husband Nefuraito-sama all night long; Uranus has a corner of veterans to herself and is telling some highly off-color war stories with the best of 'em; and Mercury of course is co-hostess. Anyone who chooses to snigger about Mercury and Zoisite, however, are pretty swiftly shut down by the way Zoisaito-san clings more and more to the aloof and shining Shogun of Earth as the party goes on.

So right off the bat, we can blame Zoisite for having too much to drink and for being a jealous paranoiac; Kunzaito-sama for not prying his copper-tressed cling-on off his arm sooner; Nephrite for being zealous over his wife's honor; and Jupiter-sama for voicing her opinions in front of a jealous and rather insecure sakura.

If you like you can also blame Mamoru Endymion for laughing at precisely the wrong time. I sure as hell do; there's just never anything to be gained by snickering at someone's discomfiture. It's ruder than hell and it fucks up your karma something awful.

Regardless of whom you blame, this is what happens, that night when Zoisite throws his most ambitious tantrum, the last night he sees Kunzaito-sama alive and human, the last night he and Nephrite claim each other as friend, the last night that Zoisite Enoara sees his friend Sailormercury before the Battle of the Moon, where he slits her throat from ear to ear as she tries to ask him why he would have betrayed them all.

As I've said -- the drink was flowing, the food was fair-to-nummy, and people were movin' about and bein' chummy. The prototype quantum crystal, nicknamed Chrysogonus (that's Greek for "golden child," honey; it's strictly an in-joke on how much the sucker looks like the kinzuishou itself), is resting and gleaming away to itself on a pedestal below the great emerald throne in the Great Hall.

It's a damn pretty little bauble -- about five carats, cut into a small sphere about the size of a hummingbird's egg or a fair-to-big raisin. Its aura is golden and sunny, but the gem itself is clearest white touched with the merest whisper of yellow. Kinda like peed-on snow.

Earlier in the evening, when Zoisite and Sailormercury had presented it to the crowd, Mamoru Endymion was invited up to the throne dais to manifest the kinzuishou for them all, so that the crowd could see for itself that the smaller crystal Chrysogonus could shine nearly as brightly as the Golden Crystal itself, the Tear of the Sun.

This had pissed off Mamoru Endymion; and to give him some credit, I would've been a bit annoyed too. After all, the Golden Crystal is one of the Shimmering Triad, the Heart of Illusion and the heart of Earth, the Crystal of Creation and the very essence of light.

If I had a neat little trinket like this, I would've been plenty sore if someone showed up with a better toy than mine.

But Mamoru Endymion is a prince or anyway that's what the empress says, and that means he can't go around sulking because someone with coppery hair and a sweet wistful smile has come up with a clever little yellow gem that's cooler than Mamoru Endymion's clever little yellow gem; it ain't Manners. It's not Nice.

Plus it would just make Zoisite crow all the louder over his candy-ass invention anyway.

So Mamoru Endymion smiles politely, and congratulates both his fellow Prince and the shadowy-blue Sailormercury on their success; and his congratulations are at least half genuine.


But there's a brooding dissatisfaction in the storm-blue eyes of the First Prince; and he hovers unobtrusively close to both Zoisite and Chrysogonus all night long; and probably in case of a fire he would've remembered to grab Chrysogonus off its pedestal before he ran out of the building.

Probably. Even essentially decent people like Mamoru Endymion have flaws, you know.

And amoral, beautiful little bitches like Zoisite have hella flaws.

I've already listed some o' the more outstanding, but let's add one more, if I haven't already.

Zoisite is insecure.

Oh, sure he is, you say. Yeah, I'd be insecure too if I were beautiful, clever, and high-ranking, you say. He's about as insecure as the ocean's shallow, you say.

Think again, doll baby. Zoisite Enoara is constantly plagued by the fear that perhaps he isn't ... quite... good enough. Not good enough to be a Prince of Earth, not good enough at his various dilettantisms, not good enough at his defenses and policies as Marshal of the South.

Most of all, he fears that he isn't good enough for Kunzaito-sama.

Cut him a little slack on this last one: Kunzite is so aloof and awesome in himself that I bet even someone as massively self-assured as the Mikado himself feels a bit uneasy around the Shogun.

This one single fear, of proving unworthy of his beloved Kunzite, dominates his heart and mind and soul.

Even this, the joy and pride of creating something as damned cool as Chrysogonus, something that could revolutionize Silver Millennium --

Even this, Zoisite has only put in the perspective of Will Kunzaito-sama be pleased? Will he be proud of me? Will he still love me?

I can sympathize with this. I ain't so insecure as Zoisite, but I can totally see his point. When you're in love -- and who hasn't been? besides Josef Stalin? -- your only thought is pleasing your beloved, right?

And when your beloved is one of those annoyingly poker-faced blokes like Kunzite, you never know if you've pleased him or not, right?

And then you go into little frenzies of second-guessing yourself, right?

All in all, I think that Zoisite has a damn fine reason to be as high-strung as he is; after all, he had the misfortune of falling in love with a man who wore neither his heart nor his expectations on his sleeve.

Still, there's no call for him to have thrown the tantrum he did.

It started with Kunzite's customary aloof behavior. All through the night, Kunzite doesn't utter so much as one endearment to Zoisite, who craves Kunzaito-sama's infrequent compliments the way an otaku yearns for that signed copy of Evangelion manga number seven.

Consequently, Zoisite keeps draining every glass someone offers him, and keeps getting more and more unhappy.

People are complimenting him left and right -- for how elegant he looks in the shining green raiment of the Marshal of the South, for how swanky his soiree is, for how neat-oh his shiny little yellow gem is, for how great his palace is, and probably on everything else. People at parties are madmen for compliments, and Zoisite has a lot of compliment-able traits.

It doesn't really matter; none of it matters. Kunzaito-sama merely looks on with an air of detached reserve, and Zoisite feels wretchedly sure that at any moment he's going to burst out crying from disappointment. Doesn't Kunzaito-sama see how hard Zoisite worked for him? Doesn't Kunzaito-sama care at all, that all of this was done for his greater glory?

Jesus. Zoisite has it bad.

And through it all, Chrysogonus shines gently on.

His misery is compounded by seeing what a great time everyone else seems to be having, by every sweet little nothing that everyone else's lover is whispering into the beloved's ear, by every glimpse of everyone else sniggling in dark corners.

Doesn't Kunzite love him at all? Doesn't Kunzite appreciate his hard work at all?

Why do those other smug bastards get warm, open, demonstrative lovers, and he gets the sublime and aloof Lord of Distance?

It's, finally, the sight of Nefuraito-sama and his bride Jupiter-sama that sets Zoisite off.

Nephrite and Jupiter -- in her seiraa fuku, her ceremonial uniform -- draw close to Zoisite (who is, as he has been all evening, clinging to Kunzite's arm), both smiling, both radiating serenity.

Zoisite hates them both impartially -- how dare they come flaunt their happy romance at him? -- but listlessly greets them anyway. Never let it be said that he isn't polite in front of Kunzite.

They exchange courtesies, Jupiter smiling as she always does, and she's probably on the brink of bringing Zoisite out of his doldrums. Jupiter, a genuinely cheerful and warm soul, is one of those people who can bring a smile to any face merely by being herself; it's for this quality, as much for any other, that Nephrite adores her so much. He himself, being of an analytical nature, recognizes that in his wife is neither malice nor guile.

Zoisite, being full o' both malice and sneakiness, naturally judges all others by himself.

And when Jupiter, laughing, turns to Kunzite and plants a kiss on his cheek, saying with an arch smile, "Why not come down and mingle with the lesser mortals, Kunzaito-sama? People have been mistaking you for Mount Kilimanjaro all night long, why not make the mountain move and come dance with me?", pulling at his hands and drawing him out onto the dance floor --

Suddenly all is crystal clear, as clear as the light of Chrysogonus's rays, to the sakura.

No wonder Kunzaito-sama hasn't been paying attention to him all night long! No wonder every so often Kunzite's eye would go to Nephrite and his wife!

No wonder!

Kunzaito-sama, the light of Zoisite's life, the sun in his sky, is obviously having an affair with Jupiter.

Zoisite's fury knows no bounds. How dare Jupiter betray Nephrite? How dare she allure blameless Kunzite into her snares?

... Honey, don't laugh. You've got to remember that Zoisite has had far too much alcohol to safely fit into that slim little body of his. You remember that episode of The Simpsons, "Dancing Homer", where Mr. Burns drinks a 72-ounce bucket of beer, and he weighs only fifty pounds or so to begin with? That's about how much Zoisite's had to drink tonight. Plus, he's paranoid to begin with. I know, I know -- Jupiter and Kunzite? Right, and then we'll have Sailorpluto over for tea.

But that's the gods' own truth, what Zoisite believes that night; and that's the spark that sets off the tantrum nonpareil.

As the laughing Jupiter draws Kunzite (who, be it noted, has a decided air o' "suffering fools gladly" about him) onto the dance floor and whirls him into something that looks vaguely like a tango mated with a Charleston and a waltz, Zoisite's lovely face goes white.

His nostrils flare, his lips pinch tightly together, his emerald eyes go wide in rage and glitter as if he has a fever.

He's still beautiful -- there's no force capable of making Zoisite Enoara appear ugly -- but there's a savage edge to his beauty now, a viciousness that wasn't apparent a few minutes ago.

If it helps, think of him as a cobra with its hood up.

Nephrite is watching his wife dance with the Shougun, an affectionately bemused smile on his thin lips; when he turns to his young friend Zoisite, the smile stays in place for a few seconds, then disappears as Nephrite observes the change that's come over him.

The frown deepens, then disappears into a rictus of shock as Zoisite hisses through his white teeth, "I'll kill that bitch."

The words ring throughout a suddenly silent ballroom.

The musicians lay down their instruments; the dancers sway to a standstill. It doesn't occur to any of them to do anything else.

In a corner where she had been chatting with some visiting Nemesian noblemen, Senshi Mercury turns pale; it's entirely possible that she's the only one there who really understands what's going on. She knows Zoisite, y'see; she knows him perhaps better than Kunzite does, better than Zoisite himself does.

I repeat: if you think that you can pin this debacle on Sailormercury, you're full of shit.

"What did you just say?" Nephrite says, his face gone entirely white. The only color about him at all at that moment is his deep auburn hair -- even his eyes are the darkness of null-color, the darkness of emotion so pure it threatens to consume.

"You heard me," Zoisite cries out, and in his hand is a spear of ice, shimmering as green as poison, as green as the wide, hate-filled eyes of the sakura.

Some people have it all; Zoisite still manages to be beautiful when he's about to go on a killing rampage that'd make Jeffrey Dahmer look like Mister Rogers.

At roughly this point, several important things happen at once.

The first is that Nephrite, understandably sort of put out that Zoi-chan's referred to his beloved wife as a "bitch" (which Sailorjupiter most certainly ain't, nossir) and moreover pissed off that Zoisite could even think about killing Jupiter, reaches out without thinking and tags Zoisite with an full-armed, open-handed slap that knocks the sakura backwards a good five paces.

The second is that Jupiter's indignant "What?!" echoes loudly throughout the room, and that the lady in question drops Kunzite's hand and unconsciously reaches up to the cabochon emerald set into her tiara; a tiny spark of lightning leaps from emerald to questing fingers.

The third is that Zoisite's body slams full-force into the pedestal upon which Chrysogonus gently twinkles away, like a fallen star the size of a good-size raisin and the color of peed-on snow.

And the fourth is that both Sailormercury and Kunzite, at the same time, realize exactly what's going on.

The fifth thing that happens, unfortunately, is Zoisite lithely slinking to his feet, looking around wildly for a weapon. His spear of ice ended up across the room in a punchbowl (where it's slowly melting into some pretty interesting-looking chunks of ice); he needs something else with which to defend himself.

In his alcohol- and jealousy-fuzzed mind, everyone's gonna gang up on him. Let's everyone pick on Zoisite!

He fumbles for a weapon.

His hand closes around the tiny gem on the pedestal behind him.

His hand closes into a fist.

A light begins to shine through the flesh of his hand. He doesn't notice.

Nephrite, still infuriated (and really -- can you blame him? jeez), starts toward Zoisite, probably to demand an apology from his friend (even now, Nephrite's peaceable nature is starting to reassert itself), possibly to get in another good whap first, when Mamoru Endymion, who's been quietly watching everything with an air of morbid interest, steps in between 'em.

Nephrite stops short, bows his head respectfully to the First Prince.

Zoisite, however, is pissed off, he's mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore. He doesn't remember exactly why he's angry, but who cares -- he's got a weapon and he's not afraid to use it.

Even against this tall, dark-haired prince with the storm-blue eyes and the air of command that rivals Kunzite's?

Zoisite doesn't hesitate.

Sure. This bloke's in the way. Carve him aside. He's probably planning to steal away Kunzaito-sama too.

[KIDS! This is a friendly warning, not to drink to excess. In fact, probably one beer will do ya. Keep this in mind so's you don't get any paranoid delusions about someone stealing away your lover or getting kidnapped by any ArchDemons, dig? Right. On with the story.]

Zoisite brings up his hand, green eyes blazing as madly as does the gleaming yellow thing that is shining through the delicate skin of his hand.

Instinctively, Mamoru Endymion brings up his own hand, ablaze with golden light.

There is a huge flash of light in the great hall of the Palace of La Dorada.

There's an acrid smell of ozone in the air, and the air tastes like copper.

Mamoru Endymion stands upright, but his hand is empty.

Zoisite lies sprawled at the feet of the First Prince, and his hand is badly burned... and empty as well.

Sailormercury, pretty face white, quickly steps to the front of the room, says clearly that the party is over, thank y'all for coming, y'all come back now soon, y'hear?

The guests file out, puzzled but contented.

All in all, they decide, it was a damn good soiree, and they even got a fight between two (or maybe three) Princes of Earth thrown in. Neat-oh.

And inside, Sailormercury bites her lip, and adds her conclusions to those of Kunzite and Mamoru Endymion:

That both Chrysogonus and the Golden Crystal are gone, nowhere to be found.

Let this be a lesson to all of you: don't throw tantrums, and for heaven's sake, if you do, don't fucking mess with powerful crystals.

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As it happens, the Mikado isn't at all pleased about the events of the party, which is rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the most swinging swarays of all Silver Millennium. Senshi Uranus, in particular, is vastly amused by the whole thing.

True, everyone got a good laugh, but Kunzite was offended that Zoisite could be so damned possessive; Nephrite was offended on behalf of his wife; and Jupiter was offended on behalf of herself.

Mamoru Endymion is purely infuriated that the Golden Crystal has been hidden from him, and that not even Helios himself can make the kinzuishou reappear.

Zoisite has a lot to think about, in his loneliness before the demonization of Kunzite...

and after that, he's got a lot to think about as Silver Millennium begins to go on alert against the dark forces who have already taken two of the Six Princes of Earth.

This is probably why Zoisite doesn't hesitate a moment when Kunzite comes for him, comes to bear him away to the Dark Kingdom, comes to bear him away for a life of servitude to Beryl and her Dark Goddess.

La Dorada, and in fact all of South America, is netted over with spells so thick that, theoretically, not even a Senshi would be able to punch through.

Theoretically; but there's many a slip twixt knickers and dress, as Gytha Ogg points out.

A Senshi might not have been able to get through the spells, but Kunzite manages to get through just fine.

No one knows exactly what happened, when the demonlord Kunzite appeared to his one-time lover, but everyone knows the results: that when the La Doradan guard ran into the throne room where the pool of darkness had opened, they found neither demon nor their prince, Zoisite Enoara.

Both Kunzite and Zoisite had disappeared, gone into the Dark Kingdom, and there was no way to retrieve either of them.

Me, I have a pretty good working theory on why Zoisite gains so ready an admission to Beryl-hime's highest echelons, and it has a lot to do with Metallia's ever-ravenous hunger, the fact that the Golden Crystal disappeared under Zoisite's contrivance, and Zoisite's strong sense of loyalty.

This is just my theory. I didn't see any of this happening -- I had better things to do at the time, such as make sure the goddam youma didn't rip each other's throats out, or if they did, to make sure that the most talented youma stayed alive.

Anyway, Kunzite's brain had been pretty thoroughly sifted through by Metalllia and Its avatar Beryl; and one of the things which the energy-craving ArchDemon picked off straightaway (besides Nefuraito-san's daughter) was the Golden Crystal, and the simulucrum which Zoisite and Sailormercury made: Chrysogonus.

Metallia wants both of those crystals. Both of them together would give It enough energy to break fully into this plane, where It can devour all light and life until only It is left, engorged on everything.

... There's a reason that gluttony is a Deadly Sin.

I'm betting that the retrieval of those crystals was the condition of Zoisite's kingship. Gods know that he wasn't a good enough magician on his own to become a king the likes of Kunzite or Nephrite; nor was he a good enough warrior. Only the crystals could've vaulted him into kingship of the Dark Kingdom. Metallia only rewards the strong, and deserts the weak. It's a trait for which ArchDemons are noted.

I think that Zoisite managed to retrieve the simulacrum, Chrysogonus, and that Metallia took it greedily, devoured it as Ungoliant devoured the jewels of Formenos --

But Zoisite didn't get the kinzuishou itself. Had he managed to get the Golden Crystal, and Metallia had devoured it -- well, I wouldn't be sitting here and telling you this gruesome set o' tales, now would I?

If I'm right -- and I think I am, baby doll; I know a bit about the Dark Kingdom -- then there are two reasons why Zoisite didn't retrieve the Golden Crystal for Metallia's delectation.

Good for him. I bet that he didn't plan it out, though -- Zoisite's not like that.

He had just one split-second to evaluate his choices, I bet -- just one split second to choose: Do I give this ArchDemon the kinzuishou, the Crystal of Creation? Do I dash out this baby's brains against a wall, or not?

I admire Zoisite.

Thnk about it, honey -- because of him, the ArchDemon was partially satiated by Chrysogonus, and the kinzuishou was saved.

Because of Zoisite, Earth was not destroyed because it had Helios and the kinzuishou to look after it during the fall of Silver Millennium. It's because of Zoisite's decision to lose the Golden Crystal that Earth alone was left habitable after that li'l debacle anent Beryl, Serenity, and the Battle of the Moon.

I admire Zoisite.

Tha sakura made the right choice under pressure -- pressure the likes of which I pray I never have to see again, and that you never have to see at all.

On that note, honey, remember that Zoisite Enoara -- not Serenity (she had too much to worry about to bother with the fate of Earth) and not Mamoru Endymion (he was dead before he had time to cast the Golden Crystal's protection over Earth) -- to thank for the fact that Earth didn't frizzle like a fritter when Beryl fried the Moon.

So I ever catch you calling him a flake in my presence again, I'll whap you, and not just tell you a story.

Same time, next time, for the story of Jadeite and how he didn't live up to Zoisite's standards, okay?