pwinram@coastnet.com

Claire de Lune

Enter Star Navigators

Chapter Three
The Chaos Conspiracy

	In a bleak military training camp, the strange man from the college is
kneeling before another man.  Both are wearing uniforms the brownish-red
colour of dried blood.
	"What have you to report?" asked the leader.
	"Energy collection is not going according to plan, Lord Anord." the lackey
admitted, "It seems that we were misinformed by our spies.  The Sailor
Scouts are no longer in Japan, they're now in British Columbia, and at least
two of the Star Navigators have joined them.  It's likely that they are the
reason none of our drones returned."
	"The Sailor Scouts are no real concern," scoffed Lord Anord, "They are
simply annoyances to be crushed.  You underestimate my power, Colg."
	"Still, my Lord, the Sailor Scouts did manage to defeat queen Beryl, it may
be dangerous to underestimate them; and the Star Navigators have always been
a problem."
	"You dare to question me?!  Queen Beryl was NOTHING!  And her minions were
LESS than nothing!  They were a waste of  PRECIOUS ENERGY!  Queen Beryl was
useful as a cover for our activities for awhile, but that's all she was, a
cover, no substance.  As for the Star Navigators, we dealt with them before,
we can deal with them again."
	"Yes, my Lord." agreed Colg, mollified.
	"Now tell me," inquired Lord Anord, "you said you found someone who had
memories of the Moon Kingdom?"
	"Yes, but it was only a dead end, my Lord.  She had a vision of Sailor
Polaris, and he saved her, so it seems that they're somehow connected, but
apart from that, it revealed little."
	"Well, if there's one person with memories, there must be more." speculated
Lord Anord, "Your new mission is to find me one.  When you have found
someone with these memories, bring them to me, they could help trigger those
parts of our memories which were made inaccessible by that wretched Silver
Crystal."
	"Yes, my Lord."affirmed Colg.
=09
	Ailine walked up the stairs to her apartment.  "Triese!" she called as she
opened the door, "I brought dinner!"
	"What is it?" her roommate yelled from the bedroom cum study cum living
room, "It'd better not be Chinese takeout again!"
	"Of course not!" said Ailine, "I'm insulted you would malign my taste so!
It's homemade chicken curry from a friend of mine, sent with apologies for
having made me late these last few days."
	"Well, bring it into the kitchen and lets eat it before it gets cold!" said
Triese, coming out of the study.  She was a young woman who, although not
especially tall, exuded an air of strength and confidence.  Her long brown
braid swung with a life of her own at her back, and her green eyes were hard
as agates when anything angered her.  She was one to whom it could be
honestly said, "you're beautiful when you're angry" for her beauty was one
of a lioness or a rushing river, the beauty which accompanies danger.  Her
appearance was not misleading, Triese had a black belt in Karate, and could
take on a man twice her weight and win.  "Where have you been, anyway?" she
asked Ailine as they sat down at their tiny table to eat.
	"I was studying with Elwing and Treyor." she explained, "I told you about
them."
	"Did Elwing make this curry?" asked Triese, "If she did, she should be
going into chef's training!"
	"No," Ailine answered, "a friend of hers named Lita made it."
	"So, when am I going to get to meet these friends of yours anyway?" asked
Triese.
	"Probably sometime next week," answered Ailine, "Maybe sooner.  They want
to meet you, and I promised them they would meet you before the end of next
week; it's a little difficult for them to arrange free time, though."  'Now
there's an understatement!' she thought to herself, 'We've been lucky so far
that they haven't been seen "disappearing", we have to be more careful!'
	"So, tell me about this 'Treyor', is he good looking?" Triese joked.
	"I told you, he's taken!" remonstrated Ailine, "He and Elwing are a couple.
But yes, he is good looking, if you like red hair and dark eyes."
	"Hmm... How taken is 'taken'?" asked Triese
	"Triese!" objected Ailine.
	"I'm not going to try to take him." Triese said, trying to placate her
roommate, "I'm just trying to prepare myself for meeting them."
	"Oh." Ailine breathed a sigh of relief, "That's good, because he's really
'taken', in both senses of the term.  In fact, they're engaged."
	"So it's that ever-so-faintly nauseating kind of 'taken'." grimaced Triese,
"Well, thanks for warning me."
	Ailine laughed, "You're so unromantic!" she teased Triese, "I can't wait to
see what happens when you fall in love with some poor guy, you'll probably
knock him right off his feet!"she started laughing.
	"No," said Triese, "but I will knock you right off that chair if you don't
shut up!"
	Ailine knew it was no idle threat, so she stopped laughing and swallowed
her grin.  She had learned early on that Triese, although she liked making
the odd joke as much as the next person, had a distinct disliking of being
the butt of them, and although she always gave her friends fair warning, it
was only common sense to avoid making a karate master angry.
	"Completely off topic," offered Triese, changing the subject, "I've been
having the strangest dreams lately."
	"Really?" asked Ailine, alarm bells ringing, "What are they about?"
	"I start to meditate," explained Triese, "I'm just about to have a vision
about my childhood, and some guy sneaks up behind me, grabs me, and carries
me off to a little cage in a dark cavern."
	"Carries YOU off against your will?!" said Ailine incredulously.  "And you
don't mangle the guy into meatloaf?"
	"I told you it's a weird dream!" offered Triese.
	The alarm bells ceased ringing for Ailine.  "Sure is." she concurred,
"Well, time to get back to the grind."
	Triese cleaned the dishes while Ailine sat down at her synthesizer, put on
her headphones, and got to work on her homework from music composition=
 class. =20
=09
	Outside the window, Colg was smiling.  "I'l have to keep an eye on that
girl." he said to himself, "Her description of her dream sounded very much
like the dungeons beneath the Hall Of Chaos."
	Another man wearing the same uniform popped up beside him.
	"What do you want, Drokvert?" Colg asked testily.
	Drokvert performed a half-bow in midair, "Commander Colg, you told me I was
no longer to deploy drones here, so where do you want me to deploy them?"
	"Japan." said Colg, "It's crowded, so they're more likely to go unnoticed."
	"If you'll pardon me asking, Sir, if japan is such a good place to deploy
drones, why didn't we send them there in the first place?"
	"Because, you dolt, that's where our information said the Sailor Scouts=
 were!"
	"Oh!" said Drokvert, and popped away again.
	"Idiot!" muttered Colg, then he too disappeared.

	The next day, the Sailor Scouts, along with the Star navigators, destroyed
a Beetle drone in the park in Tokyo.
	"Odd," said Sailor Mercury, "all indications pointed to an interest in
Victoria, now suddenly there's a drone here in Tokyo."
	"I know, It's weird!" said Sailor Elwing.
	"This is completely off the topic." put in Sailor Vega, "but it's Saturday,
so I thought we might all go back to my place for a bit; Triese's been
pestering me about meeting you guys, and for the sake of my health that
can't go on too long."
	"Sure!" said Sailor Moon, and the others all nodded their assent.
	"Great!" said Sailor Vega.

	Meanwhile, the object of their discussion, Triese, was sitting on a mat in
the bedroom, meditating.  Suddenly, she had what seemed to be a flashback,
at least, to felt like a flashback, but it didn't make any sense to her.
She was standing in front of a mirror in an unfamiliar ornate bedroom
wearing a diaphanous pale orange gown.  The thing which made her doubt
whether it really was a flashback, was that she seemed to be at her present
age, rather than five or six.  She decided to pull out of her meditative
trance and try again.  Just as she was beginning to come into consciousness,
she suddenly got very faint.  At that moment, Colg materialized, grabbed
her, and instantly transported the two of them to a cage in the dungeon.=20
	 As she began to struggle, Colg prudently popped to the other side of the
bars.  "You're not going anywhere until you tell me what you saw." he told=
 her.
	"I beg to differ!" Triese grated as she began rapidly rubbing one of the
bars in her cage, "Within a few minutes I'll be out of this cage and at your
throat.  And that's enough of an 'anywhere' for me."
	"Little fool!" laughed Colg, "You're not even in your own universe anymore,
what possible good would it do you to get out of that cage?"
	"It would rid me of your stinking carcase." Triese retorted acidly as she
continued to rub the bar.
	"Well You're obviously in need of a little lesson in humility, so I'll just
let you work on those bars for awhile, and I'll come back when you're more
reasonable." he said, and walked into a warphole.
=09
	Ailine unlocked the door to her and Triese's apartment.  "You guys wait
here." she told her fellow detransformed Sailors, "at this time of day she's
usually meditating, and doesn't like sudden disturbances."
	The others all waited by the door as Ailine quietly entered the bedroom.
"Triese," she called softly, "Are you busy?"  When she got into the room,
she realized that Triese wasn't there, so she quickly checked the rest of
the apartment (the kitchen and bathroom) and confirmed that indeed, not only
was Triese not there, there was no note saying where she was.  "This is
really weird!" Ailine said as she came back to the others, "She always
leaves a note if she's going out unexpectedly, and she always puts away her
meditation mat immediately after she's finished, and it's still on the floor
and warm, as though she was just here."
	"Maybe she was just in a hurry." suggested Lita.
	"But what kind of thing could make her go against all her previous habits?
And besides that, we should have seen her go by on our way up."
	"Maybe she got an urgent phone call?" offered Amy.
	"And did what, climbed out the fire escape?!  Besides, she takes the phone
off the hook when she's meditating, and it's still off the hook, see!"
Ailine pointed out the phone, which was indeed off the hook.  "No, I think
something is really wrong!"  She took them into the "living room" and
explained to them about the strange dream Triese had recounted to her the
day before.  "So you see," she said as she finished, "I'm afraid it may have
been some kind of premonition, and not a dream at all.  When she's coming
out of trance is the only conceivable time someone could grab her.  At any
other time, this room would be turned into a disaster area, and you can see
there are no signs of a struggle."
	Elwing looked at Treyor, "Do you think you could find her?" she asked.
	"I'd have te link with Ailine's memories of her, but aye, I most likely=
 could."
	"Then lets do that!" said Ailine.  The two of them linked hands and closed
their eyes.  Ailine concentrated on what she knew of Triese, and Treyor used
that knowledge to create a mental blueprint on which to base his search.
=09
	Back in the Negaverse, Triese had given up trying to weaken the bars by
friction.  She had quickly discovered that the bars were protected by some
sort of sorcerous energy, which kept them constantly chilled, and she had
only succeeded in making the bars damp with sweat, which swiftly froze and
made the task even more difficult.  AS she sat on the floor of the cage,
trying to figure some other way to get out of it, her mind wandered back to
the strange "dream" she had told Ailine about.  She had realized almost
immediately (how could she not) that the dream had been foretelling these
events.  She tried to remember the rest of the dream.  What had happened to
her after she was brought to the cage?  As she concentrated on trying to
piece together the remaining fragments from the tail end of her dream, an
orange sword appeared on her forehead and began to glow. =20
	Suddenly, as though summoned, a bluepoint Siamese cat with a crescent moon
on his forehead jumped out of nowhere, did a backflip, and got a grass green
power stick with an orange sword inside a crescent moon.  "You can get out
of here." he told her, "Take this stick and say 'Rigel Navigator Power!',
then use your talent to take the strength from the cell around you and pool
it into your arms, you will know how to do the rest.  Now I have to go
before I'm missed."
	'A talking cat!' thought Triese, 'What a day!'  "What's your name?" she
called after him as he jumped back into emptiness.
	"Reyltain." was the faint, echoing reply.
	Triese picked up the stick and said "Rigel Navigator Power!".  A ring of
swords surrounded her waist, then turned into slashing beams of orange light
which became a sailor suit with orange skirt and grass green bows.  The last
sword of light shrank and went to her forehead where it became a silver
Tiara with a sardonyx sword on it.  She began to do as Reyltain had
suggested, drawing strength into herself from the bars around her.

	"I've found her!" exclaimed Treyor, "She seems te be somewhere dangerous,
though, so we'd better transform now, then go an get her."
	"Okay." said everyone.  "Moon Crystal Power!"  "Mercury Star Power!"  "Mars
Star Power!"  "Jupiter Star Power!"  "Venus Star Power!"  "Elwing Navigator
Power!"  "Vega Navigator Power!"  "Polaris Navigator Power!".  They all
transformed, then Sailor Elwing linked with Sailor Polaris, and transported
the eight of them to where "Triese" was.
	They got there just as Sailor Rigel broke through the bars of her cage.
She was about to attack them when Sailor Vega shouted, "Triese, no, it's me,
Ailine!"
	"Ailine?" said Sailor Rigel, confused, "What's with the outfit?"
	'If ye don't mind, I think we'd be better te talk about it somewhere else."
interrupted Sailor Polaris.
	"You're right." said Sailor Vega, "Sailor Elwing, would you mind taking us
all home?"
	Sailor Elwing nodded and transported them all back to the apartment.  It
was a little crowded, but nobody seemed to mind.  They all detransformed,
and Triese was given the full round of introductions.
	"I still don't understand all this 'Sailor Scout' 'Moon Kingdom' stuff."
complained Triese.
	"Well," explained Ailine, "maybe if I tell you my story, it will help you
to remember yours.  One thousand years ago on the moon, there was a time
known as the Silver Millennium.  We were all royal warriors from that time.
I was Duchess Vega.  My cousin Duke Polaris," pointing to Treyor, "and I
were from earth, and came to the moon as royal representatives for Princess
Serena's betrothed, Prince Darien.  In times of need, I could change into
Star Navigator Sailor Vega, and help by making sound out of emptiness.
Unfortunately, like the other Star Navigators, I was unable to help during
the Moon Kingdom's direst hour.  We were drugged, and from that time until
the moment I was reawakened into myself by once more transforming into
Sailor Vega, there was only emptiness.  I have been told, though, that there
was a great battle, and the Moon Kingdom was destroyed by an evil queen
named Beryl.  By the grace of Queen Serenity, we were all saved, and sent to
live normal lives on earth."
	Triese just shook her head.  "Once again, memories I can't seem to reach."
she said sadly.
	"There is a solution," said Elwing, "if you'll come with us."

TO BE CONTINUED


