New Earth By Tisha Part 3 Rei found herself in a very dark room, the walls, floor, and ceiling all made of rock, as if it were a giant cave. She was sitting on the cold floor; her hands each shackled to the wall and stretched out above her. Both of her feet were tied together and chained to the floor. She struggled against her restraints but was unable to get even an inch of slack. She had never felt so helpless before. Most of her life she had had powers to rely on, but even those were gone. Her eye caught movement in the room and she squinted against the fuzziness of her eyes to see. There was a dark figure, masculine looking, walking slowly toward her. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she could see him better. He was looking at her closely, almost circling her like a vulture. He had dirty blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. The more Rei looked at him the more he reminded her of Yuuichirou. She shook her head, taking it as being impossible. "What do you want?" She asked him, still trying to get her hands free. The man looked almost shocked at the fact that she could speak. He squinted his eyes at her again and turned around. "I don't see what you mean; I've never seen this girl before." The voice echoed off of the walls and filled the silence of the large room. They echoed several times in Rei's ears as she realized that she knew that deep voice. It *was* Yuuichirou's voice. She swallowed hard, telling herself that it was only a hallucination. A woman's icy laughter filled the air and Rei spotted another figure in the room. "Good. I didn't think you'd remember her. Now, darling, you can go back into the other room." Rei watched the man leave and she looked at the woman, trying to decide whether to fight, cry, or ask questions. The woman stood for several minutes, simply looking down at Rei. "Damn you. You're not so pretty. It must have been your little Shinto powers. You had to have put a spell on him." Rei struggled with the words, trying to make meaning out of them. "What are you talking about? Why I am here?" The woman smiled at her. "You are here, because it's about time I had my revenge for what you did." ••••••••••••••••••• Michiko carefully folded the letter and set it on the nightstand. "What do we do?" The other four stood in silence. None of them had expected something like this to happen. They had all believed that they would accomplish their mission and go home. They had never even given consideration to Rei, and the fact that she had no powers anymore. Chibi-Usa sat next to Michiko. "We've got to call my mom." Takara looked at her. "You know, I don't think we should. What good would it do for them to know? They'll want to come and fix things themselves and end up getting hurt. *We're* the ones with the powers. *We're* the warriors. We should do our job." Naomi smiled and nodded at her best friend's idea. "It's true. Then they would finally start trusting us instead of worrying about us so much." Michiko gradually gave in to the idea. "But my mom was supposed to call tomorrow morning and tell them that we were going." Takara thought for a minute. "I'll do it. I can ask for my mother and just tell her that we're about to go. They'll just figure that I wanted to talk to her and they won't even wonder. Rei wasn't going to call them again unless we had some sort of trouble. So if we just go they'll figure that everything is going well." Kita sat down and hugged herself. "What if everything doesn't go well?" ••••••••••••••••••• "I didn't do *anything* to you. I have no idea who you are." The woman swung her long, dark hair over her shoulder and clasped her hands together. "Well then, perhaps I should formally introduce myself. My name is Toshi. I *should* be ruling this lousy earth right now. And I *would* be, if it hadn't been for you." Rei shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about." Her voice broke with threatening tears of confusion and exhaustion. "We were a step ahead of them all. We *knew* the identities of all of the senshi. We could have killed all five of you in two minutes and wreak havoc on the earth. And that *was* the plan, but it backfired." Rei widened her eyes, trying to fight the tears that she didn't want to let show. She was completely confused by this woman's talk as well as the person who could have only been Yuuichirou. But Yuuichirou was dead. The woman wasn't making any sense and Rei's arms were starting to ache in their upward position. "Please, I really don't know what you mean." "Ahh, and of course, I'm not stupid enough to spoil the surprise. I'll let this little bit of information torture your mind. Oh, and of course the appearance of your dead lover will help a little." She cackled evilly. "And don't even start to think that you'll be rescued. Unless you actually have enough faith in those five little children to get you out of this situation. You see they are already planning to try this on their own. A very wise idea if you ask me." Rei slumped back in defeat. The very thought of her daughter purposely entering this building made her tremble from head to toe. She didn't know what to do. It was true that Usagi and the others wouldn't have had many choices anyway, but those five girls were not ready enough to face this woman. ••••••••••••••••••• "Hi, this is Takara. We're completely ready and trained and we're going to do great!" She heard the voices of her mother and the others over the line, wishing luck and giving instructions. "We've got to go, Rei will call you if there's trouble. Talk to you later!" She quickly disconnected the line and looked at the others. "Well, we'd better leave." The others agreed and transformed into their senshi forms, standing in a circle in the hotel room. They activated their sailor teleport and were taken to the underwater palace. Everything was dark but Michiko was able to light the hall with her power. It was a long cave-like hall that stretched in two directions. They took a guess and started walking. ••••••••••••••••••• Rei watched as the man came back in and once again studied her. She tried not to look at him, tried not to believe that it was real. But he was so real that she knew it wasn't an illusion. "Yuuichirou?" The man squinted his eyes at her, once again acting as if it was amazing that she could talk. "How do you know my name?" Rei swallowed hard. Toshi came into the room and laughed. "Yuuichirou, you can leave again." Once he was gone Toshi looked at Rei. "I just love to torture you like that." Rei glared at her. "It's not him. He's dead." Another evil laugh filled the cold of the room. "Of course he is. To *you* at least. Him and I were destined to be together. And we were going to rule the world. The plan would have gone perfectly if he hadn't gone and fallen for you. He kept assuring me that it was just for show, and that he would still kill all of you. I figured he'd get over you eventually and remember our destiny. But when you went and got yourself pregnant there was no hope for that anymore. He planned to marry you." Rei shook her head, trying to block out all of what Toshi was saying. "No, he never even knew I was pregnant." "Haven't you figured it out by now? You *never* knew him. He did know. He found your little pregnancy test in the trash. It wasn't even him that you broke up with. By that time I had already claimed him back as my own and sent a clone to get killed. I erased all of the memories of you from his head. He's *mine* now." Rei sobbed loudly. She wanted to put her hands over her ears but they were still chained above her. Somehow the whole story fit together, but she couldn't give in to the idea that he had come to kill her. She couldn't let herself believe that half of their time together had been a lie. That for all of these years he had been alive and not even known that she or his own daughter existed. Toshi left her alone and she fought against the information with all of her might but it slowly clouded her brain as the truth. And she broke down and sobbed uncontrollably. To be continued...