There was enough time to see the ruined palace grow and heal into a version of itself that might, or might not, have been familiar. There was enough time to see the rose hedges dissolve away into nothing as Usagi caught her wand. There was enough time to see the symbol, the one that Rei talked about a vision of, the one that Makoto drew in lightning that somehow pushed a General's attack away from the Senshi and toward a stranger. And then there was memory -- and the details of those memories are things that may be a while sorting out; for now there is only the confirmation that their lives are indeed larger and richer than they first remembered.
And then Zoisite --
That General flickered in Mercury's visor's analysis between a thing that looked every bit as malign as Kunzite's dark-energy body and a thing like plasma, bright and shiting and mutable. Not that that was easy to see. Because the interconnections between him and the section of subspace they're in, the castle, were so closely woven as to make it a little difficult to tell which was which; and besides, for most of the time her focus was on finding the wand. But that the castle reacted to him was patently obvious to Mercury.
Even before he walled her and Jupiter both in with a glance, and sent that sudden little chamber sinking down through the floor.
The most obvious thing, however, was the striking lack of followup. Jupiter's seen Zoisite in a murderous rage. Mostly at her. And yet the walls of the place they share do not try to collapse on them, do not start driving inward, do not manifest spikes or poison gas. The chamber (or perhaps, better, cell) they're momentarily trapped in is barren, but pleasantly warm. There is ambient light from no apparent source. It is not dark, or cold, or damp, or lethal.
Not yet, anyway.
Mars and Venus and Moon are presumably still above. Their captor might be distracted for a minute or two.
Makoto's blood is roaring in her ears; she's dizzy with the vertigo that comes from the sudden vivid memory of another time, a different life, another person who she used to be. She was still paralyzed by it and unable to react when the ground opened up beneath her, and she still can't begin to make sense of it - instead, she grasps onto the now, pushing the rest aside to focus on much more immediate problems.
She's trapped, she and Ami separated from the others. Zoisite is still out there. At best, it'll be a little while before Rei and Usagi and Minako will have their hands free to come looking.
They'll have to save themselves somehow.
First things first; reassured that she's on her feet and as steady as she can expect to be, Sailor Jupiter looks to her friend. "Mercury? Are you okay?"
Those memories are certainly interesting, but Ami doesn't have time to figure them out, right now. So she doesn't. She puts them aside, wholecloth, and studies the situation at hand. The sensation of sinking is not lost on her, but the room that Zoicite has placed them in seems, for the moment, non-threatening.
Makoto's words draw her out of her inspection, and she looks ot her friend with a grimace. "Yes, but I'm not sure whether fresh air is entering this room or not. I ... can probably get us out of here if need be, but it will be a risk. If you start to feel dizzy or light-headed, say so immediately and I'll take action. Until then, I'd like to see what comes next."
Jupiter nods in answer, but her forehead creases faintly with worry. "It might not be a good idea to wait," she says, looking around her at the cell they've been enclosed in as though she thinks there might be other options. Zoisite's doing, she guesses - she doesn't have the detailed information from Ami's visor to go by, but she saw enough to understand that Zoisite has at least some control over this place they've ended up in - but what for?
'It's a place you put people to forget about them.' She's seen the movie, dubbed in Japanese - did he oubliette them? It doesn't really seem quite Zoisite's style though.
One way or another, there's at least one thing that Makoto thinks she ought to be able to figure out. Settling the flat of her hand against the cool stone of the wall next to her, she closes her eyes and steadies her breathing, feeling for some faint stirring of air against her skin.
Mercury's scans detect, down here, no trace of dark energy. This part of the place has only its brighter nature; the corruption still seems to have been confined to Zoisite himself. It's the nature of space that's still more tangled than before - as if they were not, quite, in a single defined location. As if 'where' they are might depend from what angle they were viewed, or what direction they were going. Annoying; physical laws shouldn't, as a rule, vary according to things like that.
Makoto's touch against the wall is oddly steadying; it feels more like laying her hand against a person, and a sympathetic one at that.
The air is almost still. Almost. There is just the faintest hint of it moving; it's difficult to narrow down from where.
But when she settles on a direction, and turns her head to look that way --
There is an archway opened in that wall that she and Mercury know was not there before. It leads into a darkened stretch of hallway; at the far end of it, a good forty feet away, a single light burns. A little ball of flame cradled in Zoisite's right hand, tossed once or twice as if out of boredom.
He's disheveled, the tail of his hair in the process of becoming undone, a good bit of it pulled loose and hanging about his face now. His jacket is rumpled. Scratches welt red on his face, though the skin isn't broken. There's a spot of blood or two in his hair. But his eyes are focused on them, watching them, uncannily intent.
"You may as well come out," he says, lazy-sweet. "I can reach you anyway."
... and Mercury's scans still show that change back and forth. But slower now, less frantic. The darker side is less dark, the brighter side less intense. Less energy altogether; some of it simply burned away, damage that doesn't show outwardly but is nonetheless real. And more of the dark gone than the light.
Mercury starts to reach up and put her visor away... just as that portal opens. She turns her head a half-second after Jupiter, then blinks in surprise at what she sees. "He's diminished," she murmurs to Jupiter quietly. "But I'll follow your lead. If you want out, I'll get us out. Still ... I think it's worth a conversation."
Makoto is instantly on her guard, hand leaving the support of the wall as she shifts instinctively into a more defensive stance. Her eyes flick toward Ami at the sound of her friend's quiet voice, but only momentarily, and her wary stance doesn't change.
"Assuming he plans on talking," she murmurs back, just as quietly. But Zoisite isn't attacking - yet - and after another second Sailor Jupiter makes up her mind and steps forward without further hesitation, through the archway ahead of Mercury and into the hallway towards the point of light that flickers in Zoisite's hand.
"What do you want, Zoisite?"
The laugh is soft and bright, and almost not pained at all. "I want to set you both on fire and compose a sonata to remind me of the screaming," Zoisite says affectionately. "But I don't have to get everything I want. Not all at once, anyhow. So tell me, instead. What are you doing here? What brought you here, and what did you hope to get out of it?"
Mercury follows Jupiter at a distance, allowing the less fragile senshi to take the lead with room to spare. She's ready with her water spray at any moment, but for the time being she doesn't seem to need it.
Zoicite's question piques Mercury's curiosity. "We are here to learn," she says thoughtfully. "I came on a hunch, in part because of the actions of a TV personality, and in part because I believed there was something here to learn. As for what we hoped to gain ..." Ami trails off a moment, then asks, "What would you say if I told you that Queen Beryl is controlling you? You and your brothers. What if I told you that she, herself, was being controlled by a creature more powerful, and more greedy, than she is?"
As for Sailor Jupiter, for the moment, she says nothing. Words have never really been her best tool, especially not when it comes to walking the tightrope that is knowing what should or shouldn't be shared with an enemy. She lets Mercury answer instead, while she herself watches Zoisite carefully, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet and her hands curled loosely at her sides - poised to step between Zoisite and Ami, ready to move if she needs to.
The General, in turn, is watching both of them; his manner is casually dismissive, but the flicker of his eyes is just as careful. Studying the distribution of Jupiter's weight, watching for the little shift that might herald another incoming encounter with her fist. Studying Mercury as if trying to take apart the patterns of her words in the same way, to look for hidden knives. For all that he looks bored and petulant, he's taking both of them absolutely seriously. Jupiter because she hit him in the face. Mercury because - because -
Endymion's guards are by and large younger than Mercury's Princess. And the one trying not to be caught watching her is the youngest of them. This is the first time she's seen the Earth boy in the flesh, but she has data on him, as she does on them all. Mischief and skittishness and arrogance, always getting in places he doesn't belonged. Often getting his fingers burned in the process. But more often finding things that are - interesting. Once or twice, things that have even been interesting to her. He seems to have a knack for finding problems, even if it's face-first. Still. That he's watching her is presumptuous, and -
- hm. No. He's not watching her the way she'd expect a teenaged boy to watch, particularly not one so very pretty and so very aware of it. He's not avoiding being caught because he's self-conscious. He's avoiding being caught because he doesn't want anyone to know he's studying her. And he is; she's sure of that. Watching how she moves. Watching what her eyes are doing, and her hands. Watching what she chooses to show and to whom. Looking for things he can dissect, understand, emulate.
Not looking at her. Looking up to her.
- because once, she stood as the counterpart to the position that (-- someone? he doesn't remember --) had him slated to take over. He doesn't remember ever stepping up. But he remembers that he knew her. Once. For a while.
He doesn't so much as blink at the comment about the TV personality. He does roll his eyes, once. "You found my garden on a hunch." 'You expect me to believe that' is left to be conveyed entirely in his tone. He drops that, though, to move on to the rest; and it's something he considers, fingers curling about the flames in his hand, pressing into them, molding the base of them like clay. "Hypothetically. I'd laugh at you. Then I'd ask what evidence you could possibly expect I'd believe."
"Yes," Mercury replies to Zoicite's question. "On a hunch," she reiterates, not backing down from the challenge implicit in his tone. "You don't know me," she says quietly, "but I am Sailor Mercury, the Soldier of Intellect and Wisdom. I don't second guess my hunches; I dig into them, without cease, until they are proven one way or the other. Today, my hunch played out well. Tomorrow, another may not. But I will learn from every hunch I persue, until the wealth of knowledge I possess is equal to the sum of all knowledge."
"As for evidence to your possession, I can give you plenty," Mercury replies. "I can show you your own dual nature, if you are willing to agree to a truce. You are possessed by dark energies, consumed by Beryl's greed and desire. I can show you, too, that your brother Jadeite was this same way, until he came to us in grief. Sailor Moon has cured him, removing the dark influence on his thoughts, and he is safe and happy, now. You can be that way, too. If you wish it. If you dare to believe me."
Makoto holds her ground under Zoisite's careful eyes, not offering violence - so far - but clearly and unapologetically ready for it. For now, however, this is very much Ami's show, and Sailor Jupiter lets her do the talking.
Mostly.
"You're beginning to remember, aren't you?" Her voice in the wake of Mercury's is quite but clear, her green eyes steady on Zoisite. "All of us are. Not everything, not yet... but something. Bits and pieces of another life."
The part that might be hardest to believe is: the Dark General listens. The mask of amused ennui remains the basis of his expression, but his eyes are clear and focused, and fragments of less-guarded reaction chase one another across his face like falling petals. Only fragments, and not always properly connected one to another. A bright note of amusement at Mercury's description of him as possessed. A tiny frown at her explanation of what's become of Jadeite. A hint of alarm at Jupiter's suggestion that he's beginning to remember, and a wariness that he regards her with after, green eyes narrowing in a way that makes their pupils reflect the light of his pet fire with the golden, uncanny gleam of a cat's.
But when Mercury says Jadeite is safe and happy, and he could be that way, too... at the word happy, something closes behind Zoisite's eyes. And there is no hint of whether the possibility she suggests reaches him at all.
His tone remains light when he speaks, smooth as honey. "Don't be ridiculous. Why would I give up something I've studied so hard and so long to become?" Laughter, light and warm. "Jadeite was always the weakest of us. And a fool. If you've managed to brainwash him, it's no great achievement for you, and no great matter for me. One more target and a little less competition; I win both ways.
"And your Sailor Moon? She tried. It was cute." He smiles, and it's meant to be that beautiful and malicious thing. He would've done better to leave it alone, because he can only almost make it reach his eyes. He can bring his rage into them, yes. But the malice, the fervent glee in pain and mayhem and destruction? He can't draw that up, not quite. Only one of the things behind it. Only a consuming, maddening, undirected drive to do something -- with no idea in the world what that something is supposed to be.
"She still thinks love matters. She still thinks love stays. You still think happiness is a reward, instead of a lie. You're all very cute." He glances to Jupiter again. (He can't look at Mercury now. He can't quite make himself stop remembering not, quite, being able to make himself look at her then, when all his certainties were dissolving around him, when everything he held was sliding out of his control.) "Even when you're trying to convince me we're anything alike."
Mercury listens to Zoicite's words with a growing disappointment, then reaches up a hand gently towards the man. A glowing ball of green energy forms there, before she declares, "Hyperspatial Sphere: Generate."
The sphere generates outwards swiftly, impressively, engulfing Zoicite, Makoto, and Ami all at once in a space devoid of features. A bubble within a bubble? A portable hole within a bag of holding!? Ami clearly never played D&D.
"If you mean that," Sailor Mercury challenges Zoisite, "Then you are sorely mistaken. Beryl cannot reach you here. It is only us. And we do wish to save you. *I* wish to save you. Will you turn us away because of her lies?"
Sailor Jupiter can't entirely keep herself from bristling a little, shoulders hitching tensely upwards, when Zoisite mocks Sailor Moon and the things that she stands for. Her mouth tightens, eyes narrowed and hard.
Mercury's hyperspatial sphere encloses them and Makoto's eyes flick back towards her friend briefly as Ami speaks. Then back to Zoisite, studying his smile, the reflection in his eyes, while Mercury's question hangs in the air within the sphere.
"Happiness isn't a lie," she says, and as she speaks she carefully and deliberately adjusts her stance to put her weight back on her heels and minutely unwind some of the tension in her shoulders. "It's not a reward, either. It's a choice. You have a choice, too." It's a subtle change, something many people probably wouldn't even notice, but she's pretty sure both of the people here to see it will recognize it for what it is.
"It's not too late," Makoto says quietly, still steadily watching Zoisite and hoping she doesn't end up regretting this gamble.
There was a dream that Makoto had once, not so long ago, that was not entirely a dream. Here and there, fragments of it exist in her memory now; and one of them drifts to the surface. The answer to a question she had, about the relation between Endymion and his guard. "...when he needs to deal with a problem directly, we serve as his hands and his eyes, and sometimes his voice. We act on and with his authority, and he knows us well enough to be certain that we will not abuse it."
They stood in a palace that bore the symbol that featured in that dream, and Zoisite held fire in his hand, but only talked about using it to burn them.
Mercury just took them out of that palace, into a space of her own.
It's like flipping a switch. The envenomed sweetness burns away in an instant, replaced by the murderous rage Jupiter's seen before, the fury that doesn't care that he's outnumbered, or how badly Moon injured him. That wants to burn Jupiter down for hurting him, and Mercury just for breathing. His hands come together, and when he pulls them apart fire blossoms in both --
But Jupiter's weight has shifted. And that buys just an instant. Long enough for him to realize she's speaking. Long enough for him, despite himself, to listen.
"Why do you get all the choices," he hisses, physically trembling, and whatever it is running under the anger and hatred almost has a chance to surface. Almost. Before his fists close on the fire, and he calls on flowers instead; sakura petals twine and spiral into existence inside Mercury's not-place, and within their protective arcs the General vanishes.
Mercury's eyes widen at the sudden rage and aggression from Zoisite. That was exceptionally uncalculated. She starts to raise her hand, ready to draw forth a wall of water to defend herself and Jupiter, if need be.
But the need doesn't arise. Ami's heart is racing when Zoisite disappears, and she swallows nervously, stumbles back a step, and reaches up to clutch at the bow on her chest. "Ohgod," she mumbles. "That was terrifying. I thought he was going to firestorm us."
Swearing fiercely in her thoughts, Makoto snaps back into a full defensive stance knowing that she's already at a disadvantage--
--except the violence she's expecting doesn't quite come. Zoisite snarls, but the fire doesn't explode toward them. Instead, in a matter of moments, she and Ami are alone in the safety of the bubble.
Letting out a breath, Jupiter turns to her friend, moving forward to put a reassuring hand on Mercury's shoulder. "Me too," she admits with a lopsided half-smile. "I'm sorry we didn't get through to him. It's not over yet, though."
Ami reaches up to rub at her arms, willing the fear to recede. "It's okay," she says to Jupiter honestly. "There's a lot of interesting information I've gleaned, today. It's going to take me hours to go over it all, but we learned some very important things. This place, whatever it is, is special to whomever Zoisite was before Beryl took him. It's a calming influence." The hyperspatials phere disappates, putting them once more in that place. "This is hiis realm. And knowing that, I wish to study it just a little more before we leave."
And that mutable, debatable where plays tricks with them again, when the sphere dissipates. It doesn't leave them in the underground hallway that they departed from. Instead, they're set down in the atrium they were stolen away from, at one edge of the mosaic circle. It's empty; the other three girls are no longer there.
Whatever happened, there's no sign of a fight. But that, of course, means absolutely nothing.
The sphere depositing them in the atrium rather than that long stone hallway was not expected, and Makoto takes a surprised moment or two to look around them before she confirms for herself that a) there's no sign of Zoisite or any other immediate dangers and b) the other Sailors are nowhere to be seen.
Ami saying she wants to study things is rather less of a surprise. The look that Jupiter turns back toward Mercury after her look around is wry, but fond: of course you do, her face says. "Sailor Moon and the others are probably worried," she notes.
Ami blinks at Makoto's reminder, then glances at the time display in the corner of her visor. "It's only been four minutes," she notes thoughtfully. "Uh ... well can you contact them? I need ... more time. We've barely scratched the surface of what's here, Jupiter. I need to know what this place is. How it impacts Zoisite. How it responds to us. Why ..." she trails off. There's so much and she really can't explain it all. "Please? Just give me four hours."
No Zoisite. No other immediate dangers. Not even a raven. There might be faint echoes of movement, somewhere, or voices; but the other girls have had a little time to start trying to find ... well. The two girls who are now looking for them.
Ami's plaintive request does not get an immediate response from Makoto other than, let's be real, a faintly dismayed look. Four hours?
Soon enough, though, she cracks a smile. "We should've had lunch before we came, huh?" she says, voice hitching with laughter, and nods. "Okay, I'll try and get hold of them. Let's just make sure not to get separated, all right?"
And while Ami begins analyzing and studying, Makoto sets about trying to reach the other girls on her communicator.