` If That's What It Takes `

a a a

a a a

a a a

Time passed, as it always had.

Demando found himself watching clocks more often these days. Time did indeed pass as it always had, and probably always would, but it seemed to go a lot slower than usual.

Of course, it didn't help that he constantly shirked his duties. It wasn't that Demando didn't want to work; he loved his job, and he himself was at a loss to explain why he simply couldn't throw himself into it the way he had used to. Demando had been a workaholic his entire life, but now, his world of politics no longer held the same allure and fascination for him that it once had possessed.

Something inside the Prince was terribly, terribly wrong. Demando himself knew this, and recognised the imminent danger this presented just as well. He could sense the unease of his people and his court, and most especially, he could feel the disapproval of the Prime Minister. Demando had not spoken to Rudra in some time, but the Mooncat was obviously beyond irritated.

Demando just couldn't understand it.

He had thought that putting his brother somewhere safe, a place that offered him the chance to be normal, and earthen beauty he had always wanted, would make them both happy. Saffir, because it was a dream came true -- long had he desired to live on Earth -- and Demando, because it would make his beloved brother happy, so Demando could continue on with his work, safe in the knowledge that Saffir was at last contented.

But this choice had brought him nothing but agony and regret... and he couldn't pull himself together long enough to deal with the crumbling society that fell down about his ears even now.

Forlornly, he whispered to himself the mantra that he comforted himself with constantly, trying desperately to turn his attention to the hundreds of files of official documents on the screens before him.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time..."

a a a

Minako sighed softly as she made her way home. She couldn't really believe what a day they had all just had. She more-or-less ignored the little cat trotting along at her side, staring off into space. Today -- June 30^th -- had been Usagi's birthday, and this had prompted a final showdown between Kaolinite and the Senshi... not to mention Uranus and Neptune had finally done something remotely nice for them.

She sighed, finally talking to the cat at her side. "What do you think is going to happen now, Artemis? I mean, if we've really kicked Kaolinite's butt, who's going to do whatever it was she was doing? We know she wasn't the leader, and she seemed to screech 'kyouju' rather loudly..."

Artemis looked up at her, eyes concerned. "Try to not to worry about it too much, Mina... if there are more of her cohorts about, they'll show themselves soon enough."

"You know, Artemis, I thought I saw Demando again the other day," she remarked suddenly, turning to give him an odd look. The cat merely sighed.

"Mina, you seem to see Demando everywhere these days... you should really stop it. Perhaps he has some valid reason to be here, perhaps he doesn't, but we have no right to say whether or not he can be here. I've said it once, and I'll say it again... that is Sailor Pluto's responsibility."

"She must get so lonely," Minako mused thoughtfully, finally coming upon her own house. "But still, Artemis... I'm worried."

The cat nodded. This whole thing had them all on edge. As if it wasn't enough that they had to deal with this new enemy, they had this weird Senshi and the activities of a Nemesian Prince as well. There was also the fact the girls had to study for the high school entrance exam, as well as try and appear completely normal to everyone they ever met...

Artemis really did feel for them sometimes... and looking at Minako, he felt a strange sadness. It was too bad Minako couldn't be a normal girl again...

Yes, her life had been forever changed the day she had discovered she was a super-heroine named Sailor V.

a a a

Several days later, Ami danced her fingers over the keys of the computer again, checking over her shoulder to see if any of her tutors were paying any attention to what it was that she was actually doing. Upon discovering that they weren't, Ami connected the computer to the international network, chewing on her lip impatiently as she waited for it to actually come up with something.

The whole situation of the talismans was, quite simply, driving her mad. She couldn't even study properly, which explained why she was investigating the talismans during cram school. She had tried desperately to concentrate on advanced physics, then on English literature, and then on modern Japanese, but she found quickly that she couldn't.

She frowned as the search engine came up with a billion and one references to magical talismans of one sort or another. It was going to take her hours to sort through this little mess...

She allowed her thoughts to drift back to the new enemy Rei and Usagi had described -- a red-head, like Kaolinite, but apparently, she was named Eudial, and was "one of the Witches 5." According to the only two Senshi to have met her -- besides Uranus and Neptune, but they really didn't count for much -- that was all she had said. She had shot the heart crystal out of Tono Maya with what Usagi described as "a HUGE bazooka!" and upon discovering it wasn't one of these elusive talismans, had taken off in a white hatchback.

ChibiMoon hadn't made her appearance until after she had vanished into obscurity. Ami didn't know whether to be annoyed or relieved; ChibiUsa's observations were typically like Usagi's garbled descriptions. Useless on more than one occasion.

Going back to the search engine, she looked up briefly to see a small group of eight or nine people walking into the room. All except two were dressed in either senior or junior Mugen High School uniforms. The woman and man not dressed as such -- one a blonde with huge round glasses, the other a man with short blue hair -- instead, they were clad in white lab coats. She noticed that the man seemed to be surreptitiously inching himself away from the loud blonde woman, but she disregarded this, turning her attention back to the computer screen. As a consequence, she neither saw nor heard the presence come up behind her, not until the person leaned over her shoulder and said, "You have an interest in talismans, do you?"

Ami jumped a mile as the husky voice filled her ear, suppressing a shriek as she turned to face the laughing visage of the "bishounen" Ten'ou Haruka.

Haruka danced backward, raising her long-fingered hands in mock defence. "Oh, you are easily frightened, aren't you?" She then squinted her eyes slightly, looking at her more closely. "You're a friend of that girl Usagi, aren't you? Odango atama?"

"Yes... you must be Ten'ou Haruka?" she asked uneasily, noting the way Haruka's eyes narrowed as she looked at her computer screen. It seemed she did not like what she saw there. "I remember you from that time I raced with your friend, Michiru... you must be here on the Mugen visit, yes?"

"Yes," Haruka replied, seemingly fascinated by Ami's computer. "We were asked if we wanted to help out students down here occasionally, so I'd thought I'd come along and see if it would be worth my time."

Ami nodded, wondering why Haruka was so fascinated by what she had been using her computer for. "We would love to have people of your calibre here, Haruka-san."

"You're interested in talismans, then?" Haruka asked, brushing aside Ami's sycophancy. She leant over the computer for a second, taking the mouse into one hand and moving the pointer about the screen in what looked like meaningless circles.

Ami swallowed, not taking her eyes from Haruka's handsome face. "Not really. It's just part of a mythology paper I'm working on... you know? Talismans of different peoples and cultures and their symbolic meanings."

"Interesting," Haruka muttered, releasing the mouse and turning away. "Say hello to your friends for me, won't you?" Without waiting for a goodbye or affirmative reply, Haruka turned and sauntered off, leaving Ami staring after her.

With a sigh, Ami resumed her chair and noted with annoyance that Haruka had closed the browser window. Muttering a mild expletive under her breath, she opened a new window, typing "TALISMAN" into the search engine's dialog box.

Ami frowned, typing in the same word and pressing enter. The same message came up again -- and the next seventeen times after that. She gasped as a realisation finally hit her -- Haruka had messed with the computer. For some reason, Haruka had not liked the thought of Ami looking up the talismans, even if it were only for an innocent school assignment.

"Damn it!" she muttered, lightly slamming her fist onto the table.

"Is there a problem?" asked a male voice at her side, causing Ami to jump another mile -- what was it with people sneaking up on her today?

He smiled apologetically as she climbed to her feet, having fallen off her chair. She gratefully accepted his hand in order to get up, looking more than a little embarrassed. "Gomen nasai, I didn't mean to startle you. It was just that you looked so annoyed with your computer..."

Ami brushed her hair back from her forehead, chuckling slightly. "That's all right. I am annoyed with my computer, actually -- the search parameters have been narrowed somehow, and I can't fix it." She smiled tiredly at the man, one of the lab-coated pair from the Mugen laboratories.

The blue-haired man leant over the computer, taking the mouse into his knowing fingers. He frowned slightly as he looked at the screen, beginning to sift through various files and directories. It wasn't until several minutes later that he finally spoke. "Seems fine to me..."

"Try typing 'talisman,'" she said carefully. He gave her an odd look, but once he had done it, she pointed and said "See? And it was working fine before."

"It must have been obliterated from the databank -- I can't see how," the man frowned. "There's no way you could do that from this computer alone, unless you knew how to hack into the search engine..."

"That's all right," Ami sighed, taking the mouse back from him. "I'll just have to use a different engine, that's all. Thank you anyway...?"

"Hirosada Saburo," he said absently, still staring at the screen. "That's certainly odd..."

"What's odd, Saburo-sama?" came a young, sweet voice from beside them both. Ami noted with some amusement the way his eyes flickered with genuine adoration when he turned to look at his younger companion.

"Nothing, Hota-chan," he replied, taking her small hand in his own, giving Ami a fleeting smile. "Good luck with your studies."

Ami watched the man and the young girl disappear, slightly confused. Both of them were possessed of the most peculiar auras... and she couldn't say that she really liked the feel of either of them. Both obviously had some degree of good in them, but still...

Ami banished these thoughts and went back to working on the whole talisman mystery.

a a a

As Saffir and Hotaru wandered back to the Tomoe mansion, Hotaru looked up at him and smiled beatifically. "That was interesting, wasn't it?" she asked thoughtfully, swinging his hand as she said it.

Saffir smiled affectionately at the girl he now regarded as a little sister, chuckling slightly in the movement. "Yes, I suppose so... I think several of the students there would really thrive at Mugen Gakuen..."

Hotaru shrugged, in a curiously light-hearted mood. "I wouldn't know, that's more poppa's field of expertise than mine."

The thought of Hotaru's slightly eccentric father made Saffir frown. "You know, Hotaru-chan, I haven't seen your father about the laboratories in a while."

"That's because he has his own personal laboratories beneath the house," Hotaru remarked, giving him a slightly confused look. "Didn't you know that?"

Saffir had to wonder why this thought disturbed him so. "No, I didn't."

Hotaru's own expression became slightly troubled as she thought about it. "You know, it's actually sort of scary to know that they're there... they make my nightmares worse."

The former prince's head snapped up from staring at the ground, turning to look at Hotaru curiously. "You have nightmares?"

Hotaru nodded, a look of genuine confusion -- and dislike -- crossing her lovely young face. "Yes, I have the strangest nightmares... sometimes, they're so real, they don't feel like nightmares." Abruptly, she stopped staring into space and whipped her eyes around to stare at Saffir with those haunted orbs. "Do you know what I mean?"

Saffir shuddered, images of his own half-remembered nightmares leaping to the fore of his mind. "Yes, I think I do..."

Hotaru's grasp on the Savant's hand tightened somewhat as she turned her eyes to stare at the sky once more. "They're awful things... but it's not what I see that frightens me, it's the reality of what I hear and see... and the fact that it is me doing these things..."

Saffir could feel her small hand trembling in his own; his heart twisted painfully as he looked to see the miserable expression on the young girl's face. Saffir had grown very fond of Hotaru as the days had passed. From the beginning, he had been inexplicably attracted to her aura, to her sweet and gentle ways as much as the mystery of her hidden darkness. There was also the small matter of her familiarity -- he felt that he had seen her somewhere before. Never met, no -- he knew he had never met her before their long ago encounter in a bookstore on one of his random journeys to the Earth he loved so much. But he was sure he had seen her fragile yet powerful beauty somewhere else -- it was the same feeling he got around the lovely Kaiou Michiru and the handsome Ten'ou Haruka. He was positive had actually encountered them somewhere else as well, though for the life of him, he couldn't remember where. Not in the slightest...

But it was Hotaru that he smiled at wistfully, wishing that he could somehow calm her agony over these nightmares. She really was like the little sister he had never had... or the child he knew he now would never have.

Hotaru gave him a concerned look as she noticed the grief on her only friend's face. She tightened her small hand about his, willing his pain away. "Is there something wrong, Saburo-chan?"

He smiled at the affectionate name, brushing at his eyes tiredly with his other hand. "No, no, it's all right."

The young girl was unconvinced. "I don't think everything is all right," she said softly, stopping them both in the middle of the pavement. Bemused, Saffir could only watch as Hotaru leaned upwards on her toes, gently pressing one small hand over his chest. "You're hurting... right here."

Surprised, Saffir could only stare at her without moving. "You mean, in my heart...?"

She nodded, her eyes narrowing in slight confusion. "Yes. I can feel pain in you, Saburo-oniisama..."

He jolted, immediately taking two steps backward from the girl. His face -- already unearthly pale to begin with -- was now deathly white, his dark eyes standing out against this anaemic skin. "What did you call me?" he asked softly, his anguish evident.

Hotaru was only half-surprised by his reaction. As a healer, she could sense the pain of those around her, whether mental, emotional or physical. The sorrow of Saburo had been most evident to her; it had been ever since she had met him for the second time. It wasn't until she mentioned his brother just after the dinner that she had realised it was due to this brother he had spoken of with such love the first time that they had met.

"I called you oniisama -- you are like the elder brother I never had," she replied carefully, not blinking once as she regarded him with those beautiful, haunted eyes. "Did I offend you...?"

"No," he whispered, swallowing painfully as he fought to hold back bitter and angry tears. "No, it was just... you reminded me of someone else."

"Why are you so angry at your brother?"

The innocent question startled him quite badly -- he turned dusky blue eyes on her and looked decidedly confused. "How did you know..."

The girl sighed, taking her hand as she began to walk towards her home again. "Even though I can see you love your brother, I can see your pain... he did something to you, did he not?"

Saffir could feel his heart hardening in his chest as he pushed aside his hurt and confusion at his older brother's abandonment.

Yes, Saffir... Demando saw no need for you, so he decided to get rid of you. Of course, killing you would have been a mistake -- the people never would have forgiven him for killing an innocent like yourself, one who had never hurt anyone. They would have called him mad, insane... so, he simply put you somewhere distant enough so that you could never interfere with him again. Your warnings and paranoid complaints have finally gotten the better of you, Saffir re'Adamant....

Pushing aside that irritating, mocking inner voice, he looked back to Hotaru. "My brother did something to me that hurt me. I can't forgive him for that... but somehow..." His anger vanished in his confusion as he looked away, almost unable to speak. "But... I can't help but go on loving him... and I can't help but wonder why..."

Hotaru nodded, her eyes sympathetic. "I know, Saburo-oniisama... I understand how you feel."

He looked back at her, startled. He could never get used to the wise and articulate voice that came forth from this thirteen-year-old's lips. She seemed so much wiser than she had any right to be, and even though it frightened him, it enticed him, too.

"Your nightmares... what are they about?" he asked slowly, purposely changing the subject.

She seemed to realise this, and accepted this offer of an unrelated topic. "Silence." She said it simply, bluntly. "I dream of complete and total Silence."

Saffir frowned slightly. "And you bring this silence...?"

"I don't know," Hotaru said softly, her confusion surfacing. "Sometimes, I think it is me... but other times, it's as if I'm watching my body move through the motions, but I'm not really in it... do you know what I mean?"

Nodding, Saffir shuddered internally at the memories this invoked. Many was a time when he had gone through the motions of his own duties, but his heart had not been in it. The feeling had been akin to being on the outside, only acting as a watcher rather than being a part of reality. It was as if the threads of reality had no longer held him; his spirit was no longer fully embedded in his body.

He had only felt this way when he thought his brother was being rash, illogical, but he had to agree with him anyway... yes, that phenomena had only occurred when Demando had done things Saffir could not condone, but could not condemn... because Demando was his brother, and he loved and trusted him...

Hotaru looked downwards, her voice low and sad. "I knew you'd understand... you're the only one who does."

Saffir blinked; he looked down at her with a mixture of surprise and sensitive affection. "How is that, Hotaru-chan?"

She smiled sadly as she looked up at him, eyes so wide and expressive in their quiet unease. "Because we're so alike, are we not?" She looked away for a second, then her eyes snapped back, questioning. "Do you have a girlfriend, Saburo-oniisama?"

Startled, Saffir's hand once again tightened about the young girl's. "No..."

"But you do have someone that you love?"

To say Saffir was shocked by her insight would be an understatement. In fact, Saffir was staggered by Hotaru's perception -- every minute with her was a peculiar epiphany.

"Yes, I do," he replied finally, his voice almost trembling with the thought of Ayakashi Petz. "But it's a love that can go nowhere, because I hurt her a long time ago... and we both decided it would be better if we just tried to forget about each other..."

The look on Hotaru's face was mildly outraged. "But you still love her, don't you?"

Saffir nodded miserably, but he then shook his head and looked away from her piercing dark purple eyes. "It doesn't matter," he muttered, half under his breath. "We decided, and that's basically it."

"That's rarely it," Hotaru replied quietly as they came to the gate of her house. She looked up at him as they stood before one of the tall brick pillars that supported the wrought iron gates, expression weary. "Do you want to come in now, or do you have some business to attend to at the laboratories?"

Saffir shook his head tiredly. "No, I'll come in now... even though Eudial's been off on her little missions an awful lot lately, I've managed to get myself ahead. Besides, your father won't be home yet, will he?"

"He'll be downstairs somewhere." Hotaru's voice sounded more than slightly odd, strained. Saffir recognised it as a tone he had often used back on Nemesis. It was a tone one used to state facts that hurt the speaker in ways that one wouldn't speak of aloud. "But Kaori-san will be somewhere upstairs..."

In Saffir's mind, that statement settled it. For some reason, he just despised the woman now.... at first, he had found her to be intelligent, polite and somehow quite intriguing; now, he found her to be quietly malicious and sometimes downright nasty... though it was only ever to Hotaru. She was always unerring polite in her dealings with him, but somehow... that only infuriated him more.

"I'm coming inside," he said decisively, taking her hand. Somehow, the thought of spending the afternoon in the company of this child made him feel so much... happier.

Even if he still missed his brother and his former lover so much it felt as if his heart were falling apart in his chest... but Hotaru, she could make the pain go away... couldn't she?