Yellow Roses, part 8: Shadow Stalkers

Oh, and you get a bonus quote today. :) Merry Christmas!

Website: The Scribs: Home of the Insane Fanfiction Writer Cassima

A couple years back, I... no, wait... that was yesterday...

--Some old movie

Greenness ensued from the general vicinity of Xander. "Scully, you're a doctor, right?" Lun@ inquired, desperate to make him stop.

The two agents exchanged a glance. "How did you know that?"

In one sentence, I've managed to talk myself into a corner. Damn. "You've mentioned it."

Scully lifted an eyebrow.

"Someone mentioned it. I heard it." At the agent's critical looks, Lun@ grew defensive. "Well, I could've guessed, I guess. Stop looking at me like that. I'm not some kinda bug to be studied or something."

"Lun@, you seem... exceedingly familiar," Scully told her, biting her lip.

"Well, I'm not," Lun@ replied sulkily. Sitting back in her chair, she yanked her blanket up higher and snuggled back into her chair. "I'm not anybody, okay? I'm just... me, so... we don't know each other." Pulling the blanket over her head, she jabbed the "Play" button on her Walkman.

Scully and Mulder exchanged a glance.

"So, do you think our friend is hiding something?"

"We are experiencing some turbulence--"

"I think I speak for everyone when I say, 'No shit'," Xander snarled.

"--so please find your seat and buckle in. Make sure that small children are firmly secured."

"I--am--so--going--to--hurl," the brown-haired teen groaned, punctuating each word with a poke at his pressure point. "Oh!" he cried in delight. "It worked! Will, I'm cured!"

"Finally," the miserable girl muttered. "I'm glad, Xander."

"Mmm..." Buffy murmured, sitting up and stretching. "What's up?"

"This airplane," Willow volunteered.

"Very sharp, Will."

"And, uh, turbulence."

"Ah, turbulence. Turbulence is... bad." Buffy snuck a look at Xander.

"Yes, but thanks to this nifty pressure point Lun@ showed me," he demonstrated by jabbing his wrist, "I'm all better. So, anyone up for a game of Travel Parcheesi?"

"I think I'll pass," Buffy told him dryly. "So, what's been going on?"

"Giles found information."

"'Bout what?"

"'Bout the Ginzouishou cult. It has nine or ten main people in it."

"That's specific enough. Nine or ten?"

"Well... I guess it's ten. But, see, the cool thing is, they're almost all female."

"With tiny skirts," Xander volunteered, displaying an ancient picture of three women in short skirts preparing for battle. "Their legs are longer than the average slayer's."

"What's so special about them? Why does Lun@ want them researched?" Buffy crossed her legs Indian-style and sat up straight, leaning against the window.

"Well... they were around about 2,000 years ago... The details are a little fuzzy, but I think they lived on the Moon, in the... uh... Moon Kingdom."

"Well, no points for originality," Buffy commented. "So what?"

"They, uh, they're supposed to live in... uh... in Japan now. There's nine girls--"

"In short skirts!" Xander inserted again, showing another picture of the girls, this time laying on the ground in a circle, holding hands.

"Xander, enough with the hormones."

"I like hormones! Hormones are good!"

"Anyway..." Buffy prompted with a hint of humor in her glance.

"There's one for every planet and Earth's moon. The Sailor Scout for Earth, though... well... isn't."

"Isn't?"

"She's a he. I mean, he's... not a senshi. He's the Earth Prince. He's in love with the Moon Princess."

"The Moon Princess?"

"The Keeper of the Ginzouishou."

"What's the Gheshunteit?"  

"Ginzouishou. It's a..." Willow flipped through the pages of the volume in front of her. "... silver crystal thingy. Really powerful stuff. If you had it, you could kill all the vampires easily. 'Cept, of course, Angel, 'cause, y'know, he's good 'n'... stuff."

"Yeah, no one wants to kill Angel," Xander agreed sarcastically. Buffy and Willow looked at him evilly. "What, wasn't that sincere enough for you?"

"Anyway... what else do we know?"

"Not much..."

"Wonderful. Remind me, why are we researching this again?"

"Because the almighty Lun@ told us to," Xander quipped. "All hail."

"Xander," Buffy called.

"Yeah?"

"Sugar bad." She gave him a pointed glance. "What's with you?"

"He's making up for lost time," Willow explained. "It's a guy thing."

"Wonderful," Buffy commented dryly.

"Hey," Xander yelped, "I'm getting the feeling that perhaps you have something against me and--"

"Your mouth?" Willow interjected.

"Rroww," Buffy mewed, delighted. "Down, girl."

"Anyway, back to the girls--"

"In--"

"Short skirts, Xander. Yes, we've caught on to that. What about them? And that crystal thing, that sounded useful. Let's get it."

"Getting it..." Willow stuttered, "would be bad. Bad! The other, uh, eight senshi would most likely, uh, pound your head into the ground before you even met the princess."

Buffy winced. "Ouch. What does this all have to do with clones?"

"Surprisingly, nothing," Xander informed them. "Gee, what a shock. We do grunt work for ol' Dog Girl while she--" he turned around in his seat to look, "--listens to music."

"What a bum. How dare she take a couple hours off to relax? Xander, Lun@'s been working in overdrive to figure everything out and teach me," Buffy grimaced, "even when I don't want to be teached, so--"

"Taught."

"'Scuse me?"

"You said 'teached'. The word is 'taught'. Oh, sorry." Willow's face reddened to the point of matching her hair.

"Will, get off of 'school' mode. School is officially over for the summer. I'm just going to kill some vamps and check out the beaches in sunny Japan." Buffy grinned happily. "I'm done with English... except for the speaking."

"Anyway, back to the Ginzouishou..." Willow changed the subject, "the Moon Princess and the Earth Prince are prophesied about many times. Supposedly, in the future there's this Crystal Tokyo, and they rule over... something... they're a King and Queen... Neo-Queen Serenity--she's the most powerful, even more so than her husband--and Neo-King Endymion."

"'Neo'?" Buffy wondered out loud.

"Yeah, as in 'new'," Xander answered from the pictures he was studying involving a senshi dressed in red with long, black hair and long legs. "In the old days, the Queen of the Moon, Queen Serenity, had a daughter named Princess Serenity. Once again, no points for originality. The Prince of Earth, Prince Endymion, and Princess Serenity fell for each other, and after they died in this giant hostile-takeover bit, Queen Serenity got pissed off and sent them all into the future, where they were re-born. So, they're the 'new' Endymion and Serenity."

Buffy and Willow just looked at him.

"What? Why do you guys always act so surprised when I have knowledge???" Xander exclaimed.

"Never mind, Xander. Never mind."

Back in Japan, the Sailor Senshi were having a meeting.

"Vampires?!? Are you sure?" Usagi exclaimed, horrified. "Well, I don't know what to do!!!"

"I guess it's back to eating garlic every night," Minako sighed, looking down at the ground.

"There has got to be a more efficient way of killing vampires than Sailor Special Garlic Attack," Ami objected, whipping out her handy little pocket computer about the size of a glasses case. She began to do computations on the probability of any of their current attacks working, but came up a bit short. "It's just not convenient."

"Well," Haruka interrupted, crossing her arms. "We have to do something. Ami, see what you can come up with."

"I'll try, but I'm not even sure I could..." she trailed off. "Unless..." She began tapping frantically at her mini-computer. "Unless I re-combine all the remaining functions into a single integral, and then use a power series to represent the remaining algorithms, and dump them into one big--" she continued to mutter away, a frown of concentration entered upon her face.

"Uh... yeah, Ami. We understand," a confused Makoto burbled out.

After all, who was going to stop the blue-haired girl with the IQ of 300 from figuring out how to stop evil?

Certainly not any of the bumblers there.

"Ami, I did mention that I got an 62% on my last math test, right?" Makoto asked nervously.

"Hm?" Ami grunted absently.

"Never mind," the brown-haired girl sighed, ponytail drooping. "It's not... never mind."

Back on the plane...

Buffy turned around. "Hey, Lunes."

Lun@ raised a hand in a half-hearted gesture of greeting. "Yo."

"What's up?"

"Nothing much. Hey, I'd like you to meet some friends of mine. Buffy, these are Mulder and Scully. They've been putting up with me for a while. Mulder, Scully, this is Buffy--" the vampire slayer. From every generation there is one sworn to protect the vampires, the demons... no, wait, that isn't right... A smile crept up on her face as she realized what she was thinking.

Buffy nodded. "Pleased to meet you," she offered.

"Yeah," Mulder answered, a bit distracted. Where have I seen that face before...?

Scully gave him a quick glance before responding to Buffy. "Yes. It's a pleasure." She shook Buffy's hand.

"So," Lun@ continued, looking at the agents a bit strangely, "did you find my research, or is it just a dead end?"

"No, surprisingly, no. Giles and Willow and Xander got what you were looking for, I think. I just... we can't see the connection to... can we talk about this later?"

"Yeah, sure, of course," Lun@ agreed quickly, dismissing it with one hand. "I don't know what I was thinking."

Buffy's head looked down at Willow. "What?" She resurfaced, bringing Lun@ a picture. "Willow thinks you should see this now. I don't know why..."

The rest of the world disappeared as if she had blinders on. Lun@ froze, not sure why it seemed that way, but it felt as if someone had kicked her in the gut. Reaching out one hand, the world seemed to freeze as she grasped the ancient ink drawing. Bringing the yellowed paper to her, she froze as she saw what is was of.

That face...

Where have I seen that face before?

It was a man with short hair and piercing eyes. His battle armor was archeic, as to be expected, and a long sword hung from his side. He was staring up into the sky impassively, just for the pose. There was little in his expression.

Mulder, curious, took a look at the picture and similarly froze. "I've seen him before," he blurted out, hardly conscious of what he was saying.

"Doubtful," Lun@ replied, snapping out of whatever she had been in. She passed the picture over. "Thanks, Buff. It's an old sketch from the..." the words avoided her. "Uh... Shoot, I know this one..." She drummed her fingers impatiently on the armrest and with the other hand pushed back a hunk of hair from her eyes. "Oh... damn it."

Mulder handed it to Scully, who frowned. He was in my dreams... Biting her lip, she passed the picture back. "Never seen it before," she told them in a strange tone.

Rubbing her fingers gently over the lines, Lun@ stroked the drawing gently. "I don't know..." she admitted. "I just don't know."

A couple hours later, it was time to get off the plane.

"I'm so hungry, I could eat an entire cow!" Xander exclaimed eagerly.

"Whatever happened to never eating anything again?" Willow asked slyly.

"You listened to me during my period of insanity? I would have said anything to stop the pain," he joked good-naturedly.

"Of course you would have." Buffy rolled her eyes.

"Lets just head for the hotel," Giles suggested, exhausted.

"What's up, Giles?" Jenny asked, worried. "Are you feeling alright?"

Good lord, another person is airsick, Lun@ realized with a grimace. Maybe this idea sucked after all. A vision of people dying flashed before her eyes and she stopped that train of thought. Don't be ridiculous, she scolded herself. What's with you lately? I mean, what's with me? I mean, I know what's with me, but why am I acting like this? I mean, I know why I'm acting like this, but why... why am I holding this conversation with myself? I mean, I know why I'm holding the conversation with myself, but...

They sat in the hotel that night after breaking Angel out of his luggage and sat around, planning what to do.

"Just plunge and move on, plunge and move on?" Buffy asked the group, eyebrows lifted. "I mean, that seems a bit... random."

"Well, we'll be doing research during the day, of course," Giles assured them. "We'll find out what's... ah... 'up'."

The teens exchanged a three-way glance. "Did he just say 'what's up'?" Willow asked them.

"I heard it, but I don't believe it," Buffy answered, just as shocked.

"Amazing," Xander commented.

Lun@ rolled over, continuing her sleep.

Meanwhile, in a room over a couple to the right, Scully was finishing up her expense report so far on her laptop. Closing the machine up, she lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Do I really want to sleep tonight?

She did.

And a dream came again.