There was only one thing he particularly disliked about the Dark Kingdom. And it wasn't the fact that Nephrite made his unwelcome residence there.

No, what really annoyed Zoisite about the Dark Kingdom was the fact that nothing ever really happened there. The second most annoying thing about it was the fact that Kunzite didn't care. He liked his surroundings to be quiet and uneventful.

Zoisite had to wonder sometimes if he and his sensei actually did have anything in common. It certainly didn't seem that way some days.

Sighing, the effeminate young man went back to his books, feeling in precisely the mood to pick them up and hurl them at the wall.

It wasn't that Zoisite was against reading or books or any kind of literature. He was just in one of his infamously bad moods again. Books just didn't quite do anything to make his mood any better.

"Hellfire, I should have just INSISTED on going with Kunzite-sama," he muttered, more to himself than anybody else. Kunzite had left Zoisite's chambers some hours beforehand, saying that he had 'matters to attend to.' Zoisite had asked politely (more like WHINED and BEGGED) if he could join him, to be met with a cool "no."

Sometimes, life was really not fair.

The book hit the wall. Zoisite was more than slightly tetchy this afternoon.

Standing up, Zoisite moved away from the desk, conjuring himself a full length mirror. Scrutinising his appearance, he was more than a little shocked when the voice rocked into his head.

Zoisite dropped his brush, cursing the voice in his head as he did so. Queen Beryl-sama always knew the worst times to call. He wondered how many years she had spent perfecting that little harassment.

� � �

Saffir was most decidedly not pleased with the recent turn of events.

He was waiting in the outer rooms of the palace, while Nephrite told him he was going to 'tell the Queen they had arrived.'

Saffir honestly didn't know whether to be panicked about the whole thing, or whether he should just relax, and let things work themselves out.

Esmeraude stood several metres away from the brooding prince, absently waving her fan. She was extremely annoyed that she couldn't read Saffir's facial expression -- it was more than impossible to do so. Plus, she was really irritated with the jerk whom she and Saffir had just had the dubious pleasure of meeting. First of all, he had absolutely no sense of manners. Not only had he failed to introduce himself properly upon their arrival, he had creased her dress, disarrayed her hair and then -- she frowned at his chutzpah -- he had blunted her spiked heel with his huge clodhopper foot.

Esmeraude stroked her fan absently. At least he hadn't broken her fan. Rubius had done that once -- he hadn't the stupidity to do that twice. Then again, he hadn't the stupidity to ever suggest that Esmeraude was wrong again, either. That's how the fan had gotten broken in the first place. Rubius had called it self-defense -- after all, when someone was trying to shove a fan up your nose in retaliation for calling their plan half-baked, naturally you would have some kind of reaction. His had been to just take the damned thing and snap it in two.

Esmeraude brushed off the memory. It was pointless to dwell on such things now, but she discovered soon enough that she had nothing else to dwell on in its place. After all, what she knew about Time-warping related mostly to the strange twentieth-century film she had seen once in an archive in Breccia city. Something about a jump to the left, then-

"Esmeraude-san? Esmeraude? Dammit, are you even listening to me, you great peacock?"

Snapping out of her reverie, Esmeraude turned flashing eyes on the younger prince. "Well?"

Saffir appeared perplexed by the demand, his own anger melting in his confusion. "Well what?"

Sighing impatiently, Esmeraude resisted the temptation to laugh. It was a great stress-reliever, after all. "Have you formulated some plan to get us out of this dive? After all, as you keep telling me, you are the brains of this outfit."

Saffir rolled his shadowy blue eyes at this remark. "Esmeraude, in case you weren't listening to me earlier, let me tell you again. Sailor Pluto allowed us through the time gate as a punishment, most certainly not as a favour out of the goodness of her heart. To add even more to the fun, she locked the door behind her." Saffir didn't seem to be seeing this as being particularly funny, unlike Pluto, who would apparently be finding it very funny. "Therefore, Madame Useless, we are stuck here. Until I can find a way of either contacting Dimando-oniisan or making a new gate, that is."

Esmeraude rolled her eyes in reply to Saffir's. "Listen, Useless, I don't have the time for this! I need to get back to Nemesis, all right? I need to get this plan of mine started, so that-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know already," remarked Saffir dryly. "So you can marry your Prince Charming and control the power of the jakokuzuishou. Great. Good for you."

The green-haired woman opened her mouth to yell something back at the blue prince in return, but she was interrupted by a cold voice at her side.

"Esmeraude-san? Saffir-san?"

Saffir was already facing the king, it was Esmeraude who had to turn around, her features darkening as she recognised the new arrival. "Oh, it's just you."

"So happy to see you, too," remarked Nephrite dryly, obvious distaste for the pair showing up in his cool eyes. "The Queen will see you now." He turned to move from the room.

Esmeraude opened her mouth to declare "What Queen?" but changed her mind when Saffir's leg shot out and swiftly kicked her in the shins.

"You great jackass!" she shrieked, causing the auburn-haired king to turn back around, cocking an eyebrow.

"Excuse me?"

Esmeraude choked back a string of obscenities, biting her lip to do so. Nephrite didn't seem impressed by the silence of the duo, so Saffir smiled sweetly at him. "My foot slipped," he offered by way of explanation.

The tall woman forced a retort back down her throat and pasted a smile on her face. She wished she had a mirror -- if she was going before royalty, she should at least try to look respectable.

To her relief, Saffir said to the king; "Excuse me, Nephrite-sama? Could you give us a few more minutes, please? I need to speak with my companion further."

As always, Saffir's unerring politeness put the king off -- there was something not quite genuine about the way Saffir had addressed him, though there was no actual evidence pointing to the possibility that Saffir was being insincere.

"As you would, Saffir-san," he replied uneasily. "However, I remind you that you are essentially a trespasser in our realm, and that stepping cautiously around here would be much better for your health."

"I wasn't aware Tokyo was a domain of the Great Empress Metallia at this point in time," remarked Saffir, though the tone of his voice was unintelligible. "Allow me to inform my sources of their great blunder. Do give me at least five minutes to do so."

Nephrite hadn't the slightest idea of what the blue-haired freak was going on about, and upon reflection, he discovered he didn't really want to know, either.

"Five minutes," he warned them both coldly, disappearing in a transport.

Sighing, Saffir fiddled with the fingers of his blue gloves for a moment, causing a chuckle to escape Esmeraude's throat. "Stumped, Useless?" she taunted lightly, another giggle joining the first.

The prince shook his head slightly, and looked up. "Esmeraude, you have no idea of where we are, do you?"

She opened her mouth to declare she knew exactly where they were, but no sound left her lips. She realised that truthfully, she didn't have a clue.

Saffir smiled sarcastically to see this, then he laughed slightly. "It seems I am in charge, ne?"

Fighting back the urge to throttle the weedy little physicist, Esmeraude smiled darkly and said "So it would seem."

The blue-haired man began to pace slightly, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Esmeraude, I'm trying to remember all I can about the Dark Kingdom, and unfortunately, my recall isn't as great as it once was. I lost interest in the Dark Kingdom of the twentieth century when I was about fifteen. Actually, that was when Dimando-oniisama had the archives locked and barred against anybody. Including me." Esmeraude noted a flicker of resentment cross the young man's face, and she silently laughed. At least now she knew Saffir and Dimando weren't your cheesy kind of Full House brothers. They obviously had their differences, though their similarities seemed to outweigh those grossly.

"Tell me then, Saffir-kun, just how the Hell do you plan to get a hold of Dimando-sama?" Her eyes followed the younger prince as he paced backwards and forwards, his eyes dark as he thought to himself. "Excuse me? Are you listening to me?" she began harping, probably because she was just nervous. When Esmeraude was nervous, she typically annoyed the Hell out of everybody else, trying to get answers out of them to quell her panicky uprising.

Saffir ignored her, and kept pacing, muttering something about "eternal sleep" under his breath, ticking off things on his gloved fingers.

Esmeraude began tapping her high-heeled foot impatiently, hating the way Saffir was completely neglecting her. After all, she was the most beautiful woman in the Universe. How dare the baka physicist ignore her?!

Her fan was still waving absently as she glared at the pacing, obviously agitated, prince. He may have seemed in command when around Nephrite, but now he was touchy. And too preoccupied to pay any attention to Esmeraude, which frankly pissed her off.

She knew how to get on his nerves, though -- and getting on his nerves was sometimes the only way one could get Saffir's attention. Having spent far too much time around the blue-haired freak in recent times, Esmeraude knew just how to irritate him, too.

Esmeraude began to hum.

It was quiet at first, but as Saffir seemed oblivious to it at that point, it began to grow in volume, until Saffir suddenly whipped around and halted, his eyes staring daggers at the green-haired goddess.

Esmeraude noted that the blue-haired physicist was edging dangerously near nutbar status. It could have been his hands rapidly clenching and unclenching, or it could have been the faintly throbbing vein at his temple, or it could have been the way he regarded her with a fixed, slightly maniacal gaze. Regardless, Esmeraude reached the conclusion that she was seriously cheesing him off about five minutes after Saffir did.

"Esmeraude-san?"

The voice was low, dangerous. She began to wonder at that point if annoying Saffir to get his attention had been a particularly good plan of action. After all, Saffir was a solitary oddball, and upon reflection, she thought nervously, she didn't really have a clue what the young man was like.

"Saffir-san, can we please get back to some real business?" she snapped haughtily, trying desperately to ignore the Look he was still directing at her. "After all, that abnormality that is General Nephrite-sama will be back any time now."

Saffir sighed, his lousy mood suddenly vanishing like it had never been. His shadowy eyes were still troubled. "I know, I know... and I'm not sure what to do..."

Esmeraude was dumbstruck.

It was at this point she finally began to realise the Deep and Serious Smeg they were both in.

� � �

Staring at the liquid as it swirled in the glass, the violet eyes narrowed. The expression on the face of the one who owned these eyes was anything but pleased.

A strand of silver hair fell into these eyes, yet it was ignored as the stare grew in intensity, before one name escaped the man's lips.

"Saffir-otootochan..."

Prince Dimando re'Adamant, Patriarch of the Black Moon Family, Sovereign of Nemesis, was fairly irritated this evening.

It wasn't often that Saffir-kun would ignore his summons. It was even less often that Dimando would not be able to feel his younger brother's presence in the palace, or even on Nemesis. It was odd...

Suddenly, his facade of self-righteous anger faded as he turned from the view of the jakokuzuishou's indicator, and sat heavily in his throne. Burying his head in his hands, only one question loomed in his mind, even though two of his leading advisors were in fact untraceable.

� � �

Saffir shook his head at Esmeraude's suggestion, appalled at the idea. "No, Esmeraude-san, I shall do the talking."

She tossed her hair over one slender shoulder, and sniffed. "Really, Saffir-san, do you seriously believe any of them will actually listen to you when they've got a goddess like me to converse with?"

Choking back a gag, Saffir somehow managed a civil reply. "I know more about the situation than you do, Esmeraude. Let me speak for the both of us. Besides, they'll be expecting me to do it anyhow -- I am the aristocrat of us both, being brother to Dimando-oniisan. You're only a military flake."

There could have possibly been an interesting scene right then, involving Saffir, Esmeraude, and a large fan stuck in uncomfortable places, but the mild laughter from the previously unoccupied doorway startled them both from mutual thoughts of homicide.

"You're very funny," chortled the soft voice from the doorway, and Saffir's eyes narrowed as he instantly recognised the uninvited visitor. His place in the history of the Dark Kingdom had been hard to miss. Besides, since running into Nephrite, a lot of his knowledge of the Dark Kingdom had more-or-less come flooding back.

"Permit me to introduce myself," said the new company in a light, mellifluous voice. "My name is Zoisite, and I am the fourth -- well, third now, actually. Ever since Jadeite had his little... accident." A look of pure amusement crossed the beautiful man's face, and Saffir shifted uncomfortably. If there was one member of the Dark Kingdom hierarchy he had been hoping not to run into, it would have been the volatile "little sakura." "I am the third general of Queen Beryl-sama."

"All well and good," remarked Esmeraude, inclining her fan at the figure before her, "But honey, you really shouldn't wear grey out of season. Besides, a woman like you shouldn't really be dressing like that. Trust me, a girl's gotta show off what's she's got. I mean, look at me, I'm a perfect example."

While Esmeraude preened, Saffir had to choke back a laugh -- and a sense of panic. Certainly, Zoisite didn't seem to be seeing any humour in the situation. "Uh, Esmeraude-san... Zoisite..."

"Oh, shut up, dear Useless," she replied witheringly, turning away from Zoisite to direct the comment at her companion. Because of this movement, she failed to see Zoisite's glittering eyes, and the way a small ball of light was glowing in his hands. "You just don't have any sense of style -- I mean, really. That jacket is so last winter."

"You're about to get an early winter yourself," remarked Saffir calmly. "My dear Madame Idiot, you just called Zoisite, the most infamously bad-tempered member of the Dark Kingdom, a woman. He won't appreciate it."

"He...?!"

She might have continued the sentence if Zoisite hadn't thrown the ice crystal directly at her head at that moment. Certainly, she ducked rather smartly, hitting the ground to land in an ungainly heap.

"Oh, for Metallia's sake," growled Zoisite. "Hold still, dammit!"

"SAFFIR!" she suddenly wailed, while Saffir tried to hide a smug I-told-you-so smirk. He failed miserably.

Zoisite moved forward across the floor at remarkable speed, but before he reached Esmeraude, a severely pissed-off voice interrupted him.

"Zoisite, would you care to remove yourself from my guests?"

"Nephrite," he hissed between his teeth as he turned his not-inconsiderable glare on the new arrival, and Saffir winced. Esmeraude, looking up from the ground, caught it and frowned. Why did he seem almost... afraid of the two generals, all of a sudden?

A malicious smile suddenly crossed Zoisite's effeminate features, as he brushed off his uniform. "I was just seeing our new guests for myself, Nephrite-sama."

"Honing in on my territory is more like it, Zoisite," Nephrite snapped, his eyes angry.

"Well, who can blame me? After all, there IS the slight matter of the ginzuishou..."

Saffir knelt beside Esmeraude, offering her a hand. Surprised at the gesture, Esmeraude took it, allowing the prince to pull her up as he stood. Rearranging her short dress, she cast a look at the arguing generals. "Saffir-san, why do you look so nervous?" she hissed at him.

The prince sighed. "That's... that's because we have Nephrite and Zoisite in the same room, without any place to shelter from the fall-out."

Esmeraude opened her mouth to ask why that was of any concern, but Nephrite suddenly thundered "ENOUGH!"

Extraordinarily, it was actually a sufficient command. At least, it managed to shut Zoisite up, and that was a rare occurrence indeed.

Nephrite smiled tightly, turning pointedly from Zoisite to the silent legates of Prince Dimando. "The Queen will see you now."

"Oh great, and me without my autograph book," muttered Esmeraude.

Saffir elbowed her in the ribs. And cursed whatever gods had stuck him with this insufferable woman for a colleague. If this was a cosmic punishment, he was beginning to think it would have been more amusing to be stuck for eternity in a room with only a wailing Small Lady for company. At least then, there was still some hope for an intelligent conversation.

� � �

Beryl's throne room was so constructed that anyone entering the damn thing could tell that visitors were meant to either kneel before the throne dais, or be shortened some other way.

It was so gloomy that it made Nemesis look like Southern California. The actinic blue shadows that crawled over the walls were so disconcerting that even Esmeraude was forced to shut up through sheer lack of gumption. Every now and then, variously-colored drops of ichor would drip down on the polished onyx floor; the drops of blood from slowly-dying youma strung up in the shadowy nave of the room hit the floor, sizzled, and evaporated. All around the dark edges of the vasty chamber were whispering throngs of faceless, nameless youma, the sycophants, the hangers-on, the yesmen. Quite a huge crowd of them, too; evidently Beryl liked holding Court to a large audience.

All in all, it was a fairly impressive center of power, even by Nemesian standards. Saffir was certainly impressed; his oniisan's well-lit, airy Presence Chamber looked small and cheerful compared to this little hall of hell.

Nephrite led them through the silently-parted crowd of courtier youma to the edge of the dais itself. He bowed; from the cold blue glare he shot at the Black Moon pair, they were expected to make their own bows either equal or lower than his own.

Esmeraude made a sweeping royal curtsy, a princess to a queen; she gave Saffir a dazzlingly infuriating smile when he looked at her coldly. She was being presumptuous, assuming a rank far higher than her actual status, daring to curtsy like that before genuine royalty. Someday Esmeraude's social climbing was going to get her in serious trouble.

Saffir remained standing upright, looking directly into the eyes of the dark queen.

She was an odd mixture of beauty and hideousness: her hair was undeniably gorgeous, floating in soft, well-ordered waves of scarlet silk to form a hazy cloud around her form. Her body, sheathed in a long form-fitting gown of imperial purple, managed the dichotomy of voluptousness and lithe slimness at the same time. Her facial features were well-placed and lovely in an exotically triangular face.

But her skin was sallow, her full lips concealed fangs, and the spikes on her right wrist and both shoulders would have thrown off anyone.

Saffir found the combined effect so disconcerting that he refrained from looking at the queen's person too closely, and instead looked only at her eyes.

"Why aren't you kneeling?" the queen asked, waving a hand over her staff. Her voice sounded amused and curious rather than angry; Saffir saw Nephrite jerk with surprise out of the corner of his eye.

"Majesty," Saffir answered, "I had not been aware that royalty was required to abase itself before another of its own kind."

That got Beryl's attention.

"You pretend to be my equal?" she said sharply.

Saffir considered saying "yes," but remembered that this particular tyrant thought nothing of executing several hundred youma at once as an exercise in group dynamics.

He at last gave a stiff bow from the waist, straightening swiftly. "Certainly not, Majesty. I am Saffir re'Adamant, prince of Nemesis, envoy of His Serene Highness, Dimando re'Adamant, White Prince of Nemesis, Patriarch of the Black Moon Family, Lord of the Towers, and Sovereign of the Exiles." Might as well impress the dark queen with Dimando's million-and-a-half pretentious titles; Dimando wasn't here to turn purple with outraged estheticism. "My brother bids myself and my associate, Esmeraude re'Garnet, to pay Your Majesty his respects and to make a formal offer of Alliance and Friendship with the great realm of the Dark Kingdom."

Esmeraude opened her carmined mouth, probably to say something stupid; Saffir felt his calmness slip down a notch as he unobtrusively shoved his sharp elbow into her side. Out of the corner of his mouth, he hissed, "DON'T SAY A WORD."

The green-haired woman snapped her fan open, as she was always prone to do when she couldn't think of any other action to take.

Beryl smiled, displaying those chillingly pointed canines. "I do not know this White Prince," she parried.

Saffir had her gauged now; Beryl was, by historical allusions, purported to be both incredibly short-sighted and incredibly shrewd. She would never, never let on that she had never heard of a Black Moon or of Nemesis; her vanity wouldn't allow her to admit that she didn't know something. It wasn't that she cared for youma opinion, per se; it was that she preferred to present herself in the light of a superior being, and superior beings always knew everything. Saffir thought that this flaw of Beryl's was frankly fantastic: he could deal quite easily with ignorance. After all, he'd been forced to put up with Rubius and with Esmeraude for pretty much all his life.

"My brother only recently assumed the Throne of the Winds," Saffir said blandly. "He wished to make this offer of alliance to the Dark Kingdom as his first official act, so as to give honor to the great Throne Under Metallia."

Esmeraude regarded him with a certain admiration. She had never thought that the spineless little wimp could lie so well.

Saffir bowed again, kept his face composed as he resumed his place between Nephrite and Esmeraude. He truly wished that Beryl would just leave them alone; despite his cool exterior, he wasn't quite sure that he could keep making things up as he went along. That was more Dimando's department; he was not and never would be the consummate politician that his oniisan was.

The dark queen finally nodded. "Ah, yes," she all but purred. "How very thoughtful of His Serene Highness."

There was deafening silence in the throne room for a moment, then Beryl said, almost reflectively, "Kunzite. Report."

A dazzle of blue light: then a tall lean man, dark of face and light of eye, walked forward to the throne dais. He bowed. "Queen Beryl-sama."

Saffir almost choked. Kunzite? He could understand Nephrite's presence in the throne room, as the auburn-haired King was evidently their sponsor and host in the Dark Kingdom (by default, true, but still their host); he could even vaguely comprehend the reason behind Zoisite's silent aerial presence, perched in the air with one leg crossed at the knee just behind and to the left of Nephrite.

But Kunzite? Smeg, merde, and youma dung. Saffir did not like this at all. He couldn't account for why Kunzite-sama, the most powerful of the Four (now Three) Kings, had been summoned before the Queen.

Beryl said kindly, "Kunzite, I wish you to host these two envoys of the Black Moon. Saffir-sama is the brother of the White Prince; and Esmeraude-sama is an ambassador of His Serene Highness."

The silver-haired King turned and regarded the Nemesian pair with unreadable pale eyes. "Yes, my queen," he said, bowing with right fist clasped to left breast.

Esmeraude smiled brightly at the taciturn general, languidly waving her fan. It was entirely apparent to Saffir that either Esmeraude didn't know of Kunzite's current lover, or that Esmeraude was even more certain of her beauty and charm than he had thought.

The blue-haired physicist hid a smirk. Esmeraude had one hell of an epiphany lying in wait for her, if she seriously thought that she could attract Kunzite's favors.

Beryl turned her attention back to the soi-disant envoys. "Prince Saffir-sama, Esmeraude-sama," said the dark queen with careful precision, "Lord General Kunzite will be your patron and host while you stay in the Dark Kingdom. I hereby extend welcome to the subjects and to the person of Prince Dimando re'Adamant of Nemesis, in the Name of the Empress Metallia."

Saffir bowed, and glared at Esmeraude until she snicked her fan closed and swept another deep curtsy.

They followed Kunzite out of the throne room.

� � �

Prince Dimando looked down at the woman coldly.

He snapped at his two Guardsmen, "I said bring her to me, not to manhandle her!"

Which was quite unwarranted; the Lady had come willingly, and the Guards actually had not laid hands on her at all.

But Prince Dimando had been extraordinarily touchy for the last day or so; his temper was on a hair-trigger, and at any given moment those purple eyes would flash dangerously and the black moon on his brow might seem to twist and slip sideways as the Prince wrestled his temper back into control.

He got a grip on himself, and said to his Guards, "Leave us."

Dimando waited until the two men left the Presence Chamber, waited for the great crystal doors to close and fade into opacity. Then he spoke.

"Amethyst ja'Redran, where is my brother?"

� � �

Kunzite regarded the pair with little emotion and less interest; he KNEW that there was no such thing as the Black Moon, and understood that his queen wanted him to find out this pair's weakness so that they could be properly exploited and/or tortured for the High Crime and Misdemeanor of Lying To Beryl.

To have heard Nephrite tell it, these two were a pair of dangerous sorcerers, particularly the green-haired one, who seemed to have a temper just this side of "bitchy," and the blue-haired man was, according to Nephrite, "completely bleedin' nuts."

Kunzite would reserve his judgment on that, particularly given Nephrite's slight tendency to bend the facts when he thought the truth might get him in trouble; but he would follow the queen's orders and watch this pair closely.

Very, very closely.

________________________________________________________________________