Interlude

Light and Shadow

Only a single light illuminated the gloomy room. Sinister music and occasional screams resounded in the dark. The light shifted and pulsed like a living thing, painting the faces of the two girls present in inhuman colours and sending the looming shadows skating wildly across the walls. Huge and distorted, they reared up behind the girls, whose attention was fixed on one thing alone.

"Naru! Be careful!"

The light grew even dimmer. "Fools," said a monstrous voice. "By coming here, you've worked right into the plans of the Dark Agency! We planned this all along. Hand over the magical crystal, or die!"

"Dodge it, dodge it, it's coming right at you!"

A gasp and a sudden flinch back let the harsh, artificial light glint off the mirror-bright shapes stuck to the ceiling. A moment later, a piercing shriek rang out.

"Naru! Naru, watch out, it's right there, you gotta- no!" The last word dragged out into a horrified moan, as one of the two girls slumped and fell backwards to lie prone across the floor.

Sad music announced the death of Sailor V as the boss-monster bashed her on the head with a club. For some reason, this made her dissolve into tiny golden sparkles.

With great dignity, Naru turned to her dramatically-sprawled-out friend and gave her an irritated glare.

"It does not," she said flatly, "help me concentrate when you keep yelling in my ear."

"I'm sorry."

"And for another thing, why do we need to have the lights off? It just makes it dark in here."

"Because there's way too much glare on your TV screen! It makes it hard to see!"

"No it doesn't! Are you sure you don't need glasses?"

"Of course I don't! My eyesight is perfect! Oh, but maybe I'd look cute with glasses! Okay," Usagi declared, bouncing upright and making grabby hands at the controller; her dramatic slump forgotten. "Now my turn, my turn! I wanna see how good this is before I try the long and painful and struggling and suffering and painful quest to get Mum to buy it for me when she says I play too many games already and should be studying as hard as Ami does," she shuddered at the prospect of that dark fate, "so gimme!"

Frown hidden in the low light, Naru handed the controller over and listened with half an ear as Usagi restarted the level and began button bashing, somehow guiding Sailor V through a series of obstacles and ugly monsters. It was a little disgusting that given her complete lack of coordination in the rest of her life, she was doing as well as she did.

"Ha! Take that, evil monster! In the name of the V, I will shoot you with laser beams! Pew! Pew pew pew!"

Yes. Ami. Usagi's new... friend.

Naru was aware she was trying to find something to hate about the girl, and self-conscious enough to feel vaguely guilty about it. But something about the blue-haired nerd just bugged her. She'd gotten chills all up her spine the first time Usagi had introduced them, and the feeling had lingered. But despite a few slightly shameful brooding sessions spent trying to find a chink in her armour, the wonderful Ami was apparently without flaw. She was smart, nice, hard-working, passive enough that she let Usagi drag her around, so much of a stay-at-home nerd that Usagi could have fun introducing her to things like video games and internet videos of cats falling off things and more than an hour of sunlight a week, blah blah blah...

She closed her eyes, ignoring a squeal from her friend as she reached the first level boss. No, she was just being bitter now. The stupid monsters in the game were reminding her of the things she knew were all too real. And... well, she'd been storing up stress. She could feel the tension in her skin. She knew what would get rid of it, but she hadn't had a chance to do it for a few days...

A shrill phone call cut across the game music – not her own sitting on the bed, but from Usagi's pocket. She startled left into Naru's shoulder, yelped as an elbow dug into her side below her ribs, threw herself away from the bony appendage reflexively, tangled a hair-streamer in something too dark to make out and faceplanted into the floor again.

"Waagh! Oof! Ow. Hello?"

It wasn't hard to guess who the muffled, indistinct voice on the other end of the line was. Naru knew Usagi's mum-is-mad cringe, and this was slightly less terrified and slightly more moon-eyed, therefore...

"Uh, sorry," Usagi said, snapping the phone shut. "Rei needs me at the shrine. Well, I say 'needs' me. Wants me. And is willing to shout at me if I don't go. And give me chores." Her gaze went hollow and stricken, dead inside in a way evident even through the gloom. "So many chores..."

Naru sighed. She'd had an hour and a half of Usagi-time. It felt like she was getting fewer and fewer changes to hang out with her best friend, but at least this would give her some time alone to... to fix her stress issues.

"Sure," she said. "Go ahead. Say hi from me."

"Will do!" chirped Usagi, already halfway out of the room. Naru watched her go, stared at her console, and waited.

Thirty one seconds later – she'd counted – Usagi stuck her head back through the door and tossed the controller back onto the bed. "Sorry sorry sorry, forgot I still had it, bye again!"

She departed once more. Naru turned off the TV and waited until she heard the clatter of feet on stairs and the slam of the door before moving. Scooting across to her laptop, she flipped it open and started it up, then rolled back the thick rug that covered most of the open space in the middle of her bedroom.

Underneath were the results of five weeks' obsession. Printouts of headlines, web pages and chatlogs surrounded a double-page spread of scrawled handwriting. Coloured thread connected different pieces of the mind-map together – red for attacks, blue for historical events, green for theory and conjecture. A laminated map of Tokyo was half-covered in post-it notes on one side of the thread-and-paper spiderweb, while the side nearer the bed held tacked-down photographs of the monsters and their moon-themed nemesis.

At the very centre of the double-spread was a single scrawled word, triple-circled and underlined.

YOUMA

Humming thoughtfully, Naru walked her fingers along one of the red threads and turned to her laptop. The white screen lit the gloom harshly, but she could deal with the headache that would come from eyestrain later. According to the chatter on one or two conspiracy blogs, there might have been a third Senshi involved in taking down the monsters responsible for the bus kidnappings. Tonight she'd try to confirm that and get a sketch from someone with more artistic talent, or at least a firsthand description. And she wanted a photo of Mercury, too. A proper one, not just a sketch from people who'd seen her.

She sunk into the rote motions of logging into chatrooms, asking questions, hunting through news articles and message boards for information. The eyestrain, her cramping leg and the dull ache in her back from hunching over all faded into the background.

Painted on the wall behind her, her shadow shook its head irritably and stretched for a moment, before settling back into a more comfortable position.

Naru wasn't scared for herself; that was the thing. She knew what was going on. She knew to be wary. She'd faced these monsters three times now; the mall, the concert and her own home. They weren't going to take her by surprise - after three close calls she could see them coming; could almost taste them on the air. And if she couldn't fight them, she could at least run away, and warn everyone else to follow suit.

It might get her looked at like she was a crazy person at first, but any doubters would shut up after the first monster bared its ugly face. Naru was kind of past caring what random strangers thought of her anyway. With actual demons wandering around Tokyo, who cared about some social awkwardness?

So she wasn't scared for herself. She had tools for this.

But Usagi didn't. Her bestie had come almost as close as Naru to the monsters - she'd been there at the concert and one of them had even had its hands on her at the mall. And despite that, she seemed oblivious to it! Still dancing around like a ditz as always, like nothing was wrong and there was no need to worry, and Naru loved her for it; she really did, but...

Deep down, Naru knew what the outcome of a monster happening upon Usagi alone would be. Knew, and felt sick at the knowledge.

The government wasn't doing anything. Nobody official had shown up with... with demon-busting guns or anything at the concert – heck, the security people at the mall had been hosting demons. Maybe they had people in the police and the army! Or the mayor's office or something! If they could work in plain sight in a crowded mall, nobody could be trusted! And Sailors Moon and Mercury were fighting the good fight, but they were just two heroes, and couldn't be expected to save every person in Tokyo.

So that meant it was up to Naru to protect her friend. Well, not just her; that Hino girl seemed to have her head screwed on right and was taking defensive measures with her ofuda and wards. But that was as bad as it was good – because it meant that a shrine maiden who dealt with spirits all the time thought Usagi was the kind of person who'd be likely to attract monsters. And Usagi only saw Hino during her part time job. Naru knew her friend better and saw her more; so if anyone was going to shoulder the lion's share of guard duty it was going to have to be her.

Right now she was working on the old adage from... some old guy or another: Know Your Enemy. There was lots of information on the occult and on demons in the Deep Web if you knew where to look for it.

... well, alright, the bits of the web that were more than five clicks away from the first page of the search results. But that was basically the Deep Web.

A lot of that information was gibberish, or obviously made up, or just felt wrong, but there were a few bits that were very interesting. Like the fact that these monsters had a history that went back a long, long way. Thousands of years, if the web translations of these stupid English web pages were right. They were really bad translations. She was having to learn way more English than they actually taught at school because none of the online translators knew enough words for the kind of things that webpages about the occult talked about.

But from what she'd been able to gather, there were descriptions that sounded about right from all over the world. There were life-sucking monsters out there, hiding in hell or another dimension or maybe even an alien planet with secret gateways that could get them to Earth. They'd been called on by Chinese sorcerers, invoked by Victorian occultists and feared by Caribbean vodouists. A few of the nutcases who'd summoned up monsters and tried talking to them had written about some sort of title system they used amongst themselves.

There were some useful tricks and rituals she'd turned up, too. Some she'd adapted from stuff on history sites; others she'd been let in on by other people investigating the monsters. One of them in particular looked promising, and it was that one Naru planned on trying out now. She'd come across it on a site where other Japanese schoolgirls hung out and talked about magic. They were amateurs – people into the occult just to feel special or mysterious who probably hadn't even ever seen a youma – and Naru had noticed this little ritual being maligned by a "practitioner" who claimed it was useless and didn't work. Pah. The so-called expert hadn't known anything about youma either when Naru had signed up using a different username to ask questions.

So really, that girl was stupid and no better than the others. Naru had something she didn't. She had her secret weapon.

With faintly shaking fingers, she spread out the folded print-out from the concert. On one side of the shot, Sailor Moon was etched in impossible detail; her aura almost whiting out the high-res camera with overexposure. Opposite her was nothing more than a shifting mass of blurred shadows and what looked like ruined film – despite the fact that the photo had been digital.

The monsters had ways of hiding from cameras. Obviously. Naru wasn't even surprised. Any proper conspiracy by soul-eating monsters would have some way to stop them getting photographed. But even if this wasn't a picture of the monster itself, it was still an image of its magic – and that meant she could use it. In some ways it might work even better this way.

Skimming through the badly portrayed instructions again – and skipping the one about the stupid chanting which obviously did nothing – she checked her materials. Photo, lamp, bowl, kettle full of boiling water, salt, map, tray. Check. Cutting down the middle of the photograph, she settled the monster's half in the bowl, flicked the lamp on and angled to cast no shadows over the bowl's contents. Then she slowly tipped the boiling water in and sprinkled the salt on top, trying to avoid any thoughts of this being like cooking. She sat back on her heels, and waited, biting her lip, urging the spell to work.

Behind her, painted on the wall, her shadow leant to one side to watch over her shoulder. It flicked its fingers encouragingly at the bowl.

The water began to darken. Ink leeched out of the paper, tinting the contents black and obscuring the bottom. Naru left it for a few minutes until it seemed as dark as it was going to get, then fished the paper out with a pair of tweezers.

The sodden paper was starting to disintegrate, but the photo was still visible on it. The stage, the park, the hints of the sky...

... and no murky shadows or monster.

Naru grinned. So, she now had the image of a monster's magic, bottled up in liquid form. Perfect.

She had already set the map of Tokyo up in the tray, and protected it with tightly wrapped cling-film. As soon as the water had cooled enough to touch, Naru poured a little onto the centre of the city, watching the black liquid run out in rivulets. Only a little, though. Covering the tray would be pointless.

Now all she had to do was focus on the link between the map and the real thing and let the magic-y water settle. With the image of a monster in the water and an image of the city in the map, the ink would be drawn to the places in the real city where the real monsters were! Hah! And those idiots online had said it was useless! In a few more minutes...

Someone knocked on the door.

"Naru?"

She bit back a naughty word, diving for the rug and yanking it over her mind-map on the floor. Casting around frantically, she grabbed the nearest covering – a t-shirt that hadn't made it to the laundry bin yet – and threw it over the tray as the bedroom door opened. Light spilled into the room, washing over the open laptop, the desk lamp and the squinting teenager behind them.

"Owwww..."

Her mother did not look impressed or sympathetic to her pain. She glanced around the room with a faint frown.

"Naru, what are you doing up here? You shouldn't be working in the dark like this."

"Just... surfing the web," Naru offered. "Uh, I was halfway through a... an online news article. Research. For school."

"Mmm." Mayumi Osaka surveyed her daughter's room again, but other than the unused desk and the normal amount of teenage mess on the floor, nothing seemed out of place. "Well, come downstairs and help me cook. I'll be out tomorrow evening, so I want to get something made that we can put in the fridge for you to reheat."

"But..."

"Now, Naru." Mayumi's tone was warning, and Naru grudgingly pushed herself upright and trudged downstairs. Halfway down, her nose identified the spices wafting up from the kitchen, and she groaned. Great. Her mother was trying new things again. And not just in the kitchen.

It wasn't that Naru was against her mum starting to date, exactly. It was good that she was getting over Dad leaving! She'd spent the better part of a decade just sort of drifting in her social life and honestly being a bit flaky where it didn't relate to the shop. It was only in the last year or so that she'd started to pull herself back together and focus more.

It was just that her taste in which men to focus on was terrible. Itsuki was such a fake! He tried to be friendly with Naru, in that patronising idiot way some adults had where they confused "not over twenty yet" with "permanently four years old", but all it did was set her teeth on edge. He was only interested in her mother, and she could tell he wished there wasn't an inconvenient daughter around. And he acted like a lovesick puppy around Mayumi and it was disgusting! Plus, he was even older than her mother and he shaved his head to cover the fact that he was totally going bald and could do with losing some weight.

"Naru?" Mayumi said mildly. "You're scowling. Is something wrong?"

"Uh... this is Malaysian, right?" Naru guessed, eyeing the pots on the stove as she followed her mother into the kitchen. Old school trophies from Mayumi's own education sat on the shelves, gathering dust, and photos of Naru's younger years warred for space with certificates. On one row behind glass lay a collection of semi-precious stones and geodes that her mother had picked up as samples from industry sellers. "I'm just not sure I'll like it. The last one tasted kind of weird. What's wrong with rice or noodles? You know, proper food."

Mayumi sighed. "Honestly, Naru. You're always so picky and critical. Give it a chance and stop complaining – and here, shred these vegetables."

At least that was an easy job that didn't need her to be near the pot. Naru settled into taking out some of her frustrations on the turnip, and brooded.

It wasn't just that Itsuki was an awful, awful person who just wanted to get kissy with her mum, she thought as she resumed her mental monologue. But urgh, why did she have to do it now? Now, when Naru would have to figure out ways to double-check anyone she seemed at all serious about to make sure they weren't a monster in disguise. Or being controlled by a demon. Or a member of a secret evil cult that had been lurking in the shadows for millennia and only now was stepping forwards to seize control of all of Tokyo. He looked like the sort. And her mum was almost as flaky as Usagi, sometimes – and not nearly as fast on her feet.

"So, Naru. How have you been doing in school?" Mayumi said, stirring the pot gingerly. "Any new friends? Or clubs, or hobbies?"

"Um... not really. I mean, Usagi has a couple of new friends, but they're more hers than mine."

"Mmm." That sound Naru knew well, and it never failed to annoy her. If you clearly weren't interested in something; you shouldn't ask – not ask and then make uninterested humming sounds.

"I guess there are a couple of clubs that I've been looking at," Naru added, kicking herself for trying to change the vaguely unsatisfied, disapproving tone with more detail. It never worked, but she kept trying regardless; a pointless habit she couldn't kick. "There's an amateur occultist group that's sort of... semi-official, and one of my friends is really into it. Things like crane games and card guessing – I said I'd go to a few meetings with her."

"That sounds interesting for you." Naru winced at the flat tone. Okay, that attempt had definitely missed. "Do I know her?"

"Huh?"

"This friend." Mayumi glanced at her in between doing something complicated with a paring knife and a chicken breast. "The one 'really into' the occult."

"Yumiko Nanba – from my class? We're not me-and-Usagi close, but we get along, so..."

"Mmm. Well, bring her around at some point. You know I'm always eager to meet the people you spend time with. Are the vegetables done?"

Naru's lips thinned. She had brought Yumiko round just a few weeks ago – Usagi and Kuri had come too and they'd made it a girl's night. Mum hadn't remembered her; big surprise. "Yeah, here. Hey, um, I should go up and just check over the last few answers on my Biology, if that's okay? I'll be down for dinner."

Mayumi nodded absently, humming something under her breath as she swept the vegetables into a pot, and Naru took advantage of her distraction to slip out of the room again.

She was free. Finally. Naru wasted no time hightailing it upstairs and back into her room. Please, please, please let the shirt not have…

It hadn't. No ink stains had bled through, and it wasn't sagging inward into the middle of the tray at all. Sighing with relief, Naru whipped it off. Now that she had a location, she could investigate a bit, or maybe…

… maybe…

Naru Osaka stared down at the results of her amateur spell in horror. Her face, lit by the screen of her laptop, was ghost-pale. For a second or two, she thought that it hadn't worked; that the ink hadn't moved. But no; it was too clustered, too ordered – little blobby shapes like bacteria, with hair-fine follicles of ink spreading out from the central mass and a few longer tendrils stretching into streets or down rows of houses.

And there were dozens of them.

Dozens. All making a shape that looked like it meant something, though it wasn't any kanji she knew.

She'd expected one or two; a headquarters or centre of command for the monsters infiltrating Tokyo. A sorcerer's tower, maybe – a modern sorcerer; the up-to-date version of those rich old guys back in the old days who'd called up demons and spirits in pursuit of immortality. Maybe it would be centred on a corporate building where grey-faced execs were dabbling with dark powers for profit, or… or centred in some foreign terrorist cell, or something singular, something that made sense.

Not a map with more ink blots than she could count with both hands and someone else to help.

She took a shaky breath, trying not to throw up. Something was rotten in Tokyo. And that meant… that meant she needed to investigate.

She needed to investigate, because this was an invasion force – no, an occupying force, and maybe they were planning to open up some sort of hell portal or something, so she needed to know what was going on so she could understand.

And once she had all the information? Then she could call in Sailor Moon and watch her drop the hammer on these things once and for all. Or the… glowing… head… tiara… thing.

Clicking the lamp on and arranging it carefully, Naru lifted the stained map out of the tray. The ink was drying, but still tacky – she'd need to be careful not to smear it. Lining up her phone and checking the light levels, she took a quick snap of it. That would do as a backup if this one got ruined.

Now… if she was here – she marked the store with a pin and wrinkled her nose at the faint smudge of ink over the building. She already knew about that attack, and didn't need reminding. But that meant that the smudge just there was only fifteen minutes walk away, and it was still light out.

Sliding her phone into her pocket and gingerly nudging the map under her bed to dry, Naru pushed herself upright and clattered down the stairs.

"Mum!" she called. "Usagi forgot her phone! I'm going to run it back to her, okay? Back later!"

She was out the door and running before she heard the reply.

...

Her investigations were somewhat hampered by the fact she wasn't quite sure which building on the map was the one her spell had found. Or even which street. Her map of Tokyo didn't have a fraction of the detail she needed to know things down to that level. But she was hoping that there was something nice and obvious in the area now that she knew to be looking.

There wasn't. There were no buildings with too many gargoyles on top, there were no mysterious plumes of many-coloured smoke, and there were no youma dragging people off the streets to a secret hideaway. Which was good! But it did make it harder to find them. No, all she could find was a sense of paleness, a gut feeling that there was something stretched about the area. She'd been hoping that her instincts would point her to the right building, but the best she could manage was to pin it down to one particular street where it felt strongest. Probably.

Eyes narrowed, Naru kept her back pressed against the wall – drawing more than a few strange looks in the process – and looked around. There, a pachinko parlour with a sign saying 'EVERYONE WINS'; there, a bar playing too loud music; there, a nightclub promising 'THE NIGHT OF YOUR LIFE'. None of them were places she'd be allowed into, and she didn't really know what was normal for those kind of establishments anyway. For all she knew, all of them were corrupted.

Closing her eyes, she raised one hand and tried to feel the air. But there was no luck there. The thinness and weirdness was all around her, but she couldn't feel what was making it. It was like looking for a forest when you were surrounded by trees, or trying to pick a single starting mistake out of Usagi's maths homework.

"Damn, damn, damn," Naru muttered. If she'd brought some of the youma ink, maybe she could have poured some of it onto the ground and seen which way it tried to roll, or maybe if she'd borrowed one of Mum's necklaces she could have tried to make some kind of dowsing tool. That was what psychics did on TV, right?

She screwed her eyes shut and wished really, really hard for a clue.

Nothing happened.

Naru slumped down with a melodramatic sigh. This magical psychic detective business was much harder than TV made it look. She checked her watch. Still some time before dinner. She should probably check that Usagi had actually made it to the shrine without being attacked by a monster. It was force of habit by now – she'd been trailing after Usagi since they were tiny; stopping her falling into lakes and pulling her back from attempts to pet big unfriendly dogs. And oh yes, she could certainly imagine Usagi blindly skipping down this weird, stretched-thin street and – urgh – probably accepting ice cream from strangers if she'd just come with them…

Yes, a quick walk to Hikawa Shrine was probably a very good idea. It would help put her mind at rest, and she was most of the way there anyway. She had been spending too much time inside in her room and the magazines said that was bad. A walk would do her good.

Her calves and thighs were strenuously disagreeing with this assertion as she climbed the hill up to the shrine, but by the time she was half way up it seemed too late to give up. She stepped through the gates.

There was no sign of Usagi anywhere. Not even when she called her name out loud.

"No," Naru whispered. "No, no, no." All her worst fears were coming true and Usagi had been grabbed by monsters and…

"Oh, pretty young lady," the old priest said, as he bustled over, looking up at Naru. Recognition flickered in his eyes. He ran his hand over his balding head. "Are you here looking for Usagi? Well, I suppose you are, unless you're searching for your lost rabbit." His bushy brows waggled, as he invited her to share in his joke. She didn't feel like laughing. "She and Rei and that nice young Ami girl just left. They said they were going out to catch a movie."

An ice-cold bolt of betrayal lanced through Naru's chest. Usagi had… had gone to do something without her. And hadn't even told the truth about what she was doing. Had she thought that Naru wouldn't find out? She probably would have gotten away with it, too, if Naru hadn't decided to check that she'd made her way here safely. Usagi didn't want to be friends with her anymore and… and…

No, she was being silly, Naru told herself even as her eyes blurred. Usagi wasn't that good a liar. But maybe Usagi's new friends didn't like her and that meant they didn't invite her and-and-and…

The old man's eyes widened. "Is something the matter?" he asked, his voice gentle.

"I… oh, I think Usagi might have accidentally picked up my phone and… and I know it doesn't matter but I just feel so stupid and…" Naru trailed away, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "I'll see her tomorrow. She can… she can give it to me then. If she hasn't lost it." But her mouth was running on autopilot and she wasn't sure that Rei's grandfather believed her.

"Are you sure? You're crying."

Her eyes drifted over to the wobbling shaving of the pale moon, visible over the buildings from the heights of the shrine. In the late afternoon, her shadow stretched out long and black behind her. It was getting late and she was probably in trouble. "I'm fine," Naru said in a little voice. "I… I need to get home. Mum's cooking n-now. I'm fine. Everything is… fine."

But everything wasn't fine. And she had to take a detour around the street where her spell had told her there might be youma, because the police had cordoned the entire street and the fire engines were there. It meant she was even later than she would have otherwise been, and got shouted at for running out of the house just before dinner. Her mother wasn't very happy to hear about the fact that the police had blocked off a street she'd tried to go down when Naru used that as an excuse, either.

"You need to keep yourself safe," Mayumi told her, over her lukewarm dinner. "You can't just go out without thinking, especially before dinner! I don't know what I'd do if you got badly hurt! It's just the two of us – what would we do if I got injured or sick while you weren't able to take care of yourself?"

Great. Motherly guilty trips, Naru thought bitterly. "Yes, mum," she said, nursing black betrayal in her heart. "Thank you for the meal," she added, digging into food she didn't like.

...