Disclaimer: Yo! Dis Sailor Moon stuff is owned by Takeuchi Naoko, Koudansha, TV Asahi, and Toei Douga, and DIC, but I'll dis you if you lay claim to my stuff (would anyone want to?) like ArbyFish, or… well, I think that's the only thing I care not to see fall into the wrong hands… just ArbyFish.

CHAPTER THREE

Well, ya see…
— An ArbyFish explanation: The Journey of pancakes?

This story is true, only the facts have been changed to protect the guilty.

A shining hole in the fabric of continuity slowly slitted its way into the storyline. It was about eight feet off of the ground, above a small park somewhere in Tokyo. Blue, electric-like streaks of unexpectability twisted their way around the forming tear as it grew. It made no noise at all, no great tempests of wind. If anyone had been there at the time, they might have ignored it as an un-vivid hallucination and went on with their lives.

The hole grew to around four feet in diameter, and its event horizon positioned itself parallel (or tangent, depending on how far out you look) to the ground. After it had grown to four feet, it just hung there like a silent, pointless piece of discongruency for a few seconds.

Abruptly, things started to fall from the plot-hole.

First, something yellow and fuzzy fell out.

"Pika?" the cute little thing said.

He hopped around for a little bit, looking rather bewildered until a large, heavy rock fell from the plot-hole onto him.

"Uhngg… chuu," the pikachu groaned.

The hole paused for a few more moments.

Next, a funny little man sitting at a small, round dining table fell out and landed neatly upright, still sitting at the table with a wine glass raised as if nothing had happened. From the hole poured a pinkish, thick liquid into the man's glass. The man sipped at his drink and smacked his tongue near the front of his mouth.

"Hmmm, Pepto…" he said, swirling the contents of his glass around the rim. He noticed how well it coated the side and thought to himself that it must have been a very fine vintage. "1972, a very good year!" He chugged the rest in a single gulp. "Waiter!" he called out to one who wasn't yet in existence.

A butler-like person dropped out of the plot-hole, carrying a platter with a teapot on it.

"Would you care for some more poison… Oye mean TEA?" the butler said in an airy, low voice, catching himself very slowly on the 'poison' part.

"Please!" the drinker man said, holding his wine glass up to him. The butler clumsily poured out a helping of… tea, which the drinker quickly threw back into his throat, almost completely missing his mouth on the way.

As the poison seeped into the man's system, another man, dressed all in black, fell from the discontinuity fissure. He drew his rapier, made three quick slashes with it on the butler's shirt and ran off.

The plot hole then spat out a cyborg-like creature, which, as soon as it was able, stuck tubules into the necks of the drinking man and the butler.

"Oh, dear," the butler remarked, and sipped some more of his… 'tea'.

Both the drinker and the butler fell dead, leaving the partly mechanical man rather disappointed. The cyborg waddled off poutingly to go see if he could find anyone else to assimilate.

The afore mentioned, crushed, electric rodent squeezed his way out from under the boulder and ran off, in a different direction than any of the other characters.

The plot-hole, feeling rather tired, shrunk slowly to no more than an inch across and silently moved away.

…We'z gots a li'l problem. There's something comin' that we need ta take care of, ya see.

~~~ Begin Explanation ~~~

In a forest far, far away, there was a grand conference room. It didn't look like any normal conference room, of course, because it was high in the treetops, where it wouldn't be easily disturbed by uninvited visitors.

Inside the conference room there was… well, a conference… going on. What else would they be doing, playing water polo?

"That'd be fun!" answered the Blue ArbyFish ambassador, splashing around in his bowl of water.

"Can't stand water." the Red ArbyFish ambassador sizzled in his red-hot seat.

"There will be no respondin' ta the narray'er for the remaenda' of this explinashun!" Arby chastised the group in his special accent that was some weird cross between a British, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, and Australian accent, "Ya know?"

All of the eleven ArbyFish ambassadors nodded in agreement.

"Roight!" Arby said, and lowered himself in his green, mossy chair.

"'Ello says Oye to you to Blue to Red to White to Yellow to Grey to Brown to Orange to Purple to Black to Violet to Turquoise, to Turquoise to Violet to Black to Purple to Orange to Brown to Grey to Yellow to White to Red to Blue to you to Oye!" Arby did the traditional Green ArbyFish greeting, nodding his head to each of the ArbyFish as he said their color. He didn't use first names because this was a formal type of meeting.

The other ArbyFish proceeded to do their own traditional greetings.

The Blue one splashed Arby with water.

The Red one hit the Blue ArbyFish in nose.

The White one leaped at the Red ArbyFish with a knife, but the Red ArbyFish moved to the side slightly and the White ArbyFish missed.

The White ArbyFish sat back down in his cloud chair and the Yellow ArbyFish showed him an image of a star exploding and said, "Behold my power!"

The Grey ArbyFish didn't say anything to the Yellow ArbyFish, he just kinda looked up from the book he was reading and stared at him.

The Brown ArbyFish shoved a clod of mud in the mouth of the Grey ArbyFish.

The Orange ArbyFish belched three times in quick succession and slapped the forehead of the Brown ArbyFish.

The Purple ArbyFish gave the Orange ArbyFish a sword which he procured from some chick who was living in a lake in medieval Europe while he was in the past… his present… or… future… whatever.

The Black ArbyFish willed the space around the Purple ArbyFish to compress. The Purple ArbyFish avoided being crushed by whipping out a gravitational field manipulator (which he got from the future… his present… or whatever) and using it on the Black ArbyFish. The Black ArbyFish, to avoid his own compression, eased off of the Purple ArbyFish. After a few seconds of this, a Klein bottle was formed between them. The Black ArbyFish snatched it up happily and, seeing that he was lucky enough to get a ready-filled one, drank from it.

The Violet ArbyFish gave the Black ArbyFish a high-five (high-flipper) and let out a "YEAHHHHHH!"

The Turquoise ArbyFish simply said a contented "Hello" to the Violet ArbyFish.

Now that all the greeting was done, the conference could begin.

"Roight, Oye suppose you're all wonderin' whoie Oye called this 'ere Flangerbiscuit," Arby began. Just as Arby was about to continue, a Pink ArbyFish popped out from the floor of the conference room.

"Hello!" the AbryFish said, a few milliseconds after she popped up.

The other ArbyFish gasped and edged backwards, away from the Pinkness.

"What?" The Pink ArbyFish ambassador questioned, looking up at the bow on top of her head, "It's my bow, isn't it?" She attempted to fix it, event though it was incredibly, cutely perfect, "I try to keep it straight, but you know how underground travel is: dirt and more dirt."

-{The horrid Pink demon scurried around doing unspeakable things}-

The Brown ArbyFish, who was wearing sunglasses and sunscreen for this formal occasion above ground, spoke up in his deep, throaty voice, "Hey, Oye loikes dirt!"

"You must stop all Pink activities this instant!" Arby censured Pink.

"But I haven't even done my greeting yet!" Pink whined, taking out her pink wrapped pink box of pink chocolates with a pink bow around it.

"NO!" Arby said defiantly, "Your gree'in' has been banned from all formal occasions, and so 'ave you and your koind!"

The other ArbyFish nodded in agreement.

A tear welled up in the Pink ArbyFish's eye, "Oye *SNIFF* just wanted to be in your little conference, *SNIFF*."

The Black ArbyFish, known for their goodness and sympathy throughout the universe, took pity on the sobbing Pink.

"Oh… Aw'll do your silly greeting," Black said, getting up from his seat and coming closer.

"*SNIFF* You will?" Pink brightened, "Oh, but tradition states that you have to do your greeting first!"

"I don't think that you want me to do that," Black warned, rotating his whole body back and forth in a kind of head shaking gesture.

"Come on, I insist," Pink encouraged bowing slightly for emphasis.

"Alright," Black said, "If you insist."

Black compressed space around the Pink ArbyFish. The Pink ArbyFish, not being able to manipulate gravitational fields, didn't counteract the Black ArbyFish's greeting. A small black hole was formed where the Pink ArbyFish was, sucking her into it.

"Hmm," the Black ArbyFish shrugged and went back to his seat and drunk from his Klein bottle.

"Heheh. Pink ArbyFish aren't very bright, are they?" White chuckled.

The Turquoise ArbyFish ambassador wasn't sure about the whole thing, "Doesn't anyone here think that that was kinda… wrong?"

The ArbyFish ambassadors looked at each other, then back at Turquoise.

"I guess not," he said.

"Arby," Lita said, still a little unsure about the little creature, "What does this have to do with us?"

"Oyes gots ta get awl the stuff leadin' up to it b'fore Oye can get ta them!"

"Oh."

"There shouldn't be any…" Arby shuddered, "PINK in this universe anymore." He turned to Black, "'ave yew encoun'ered any spatial rifts lately?"

"A few," Black answered, raising his glass in an unspoken toast to something-or-other, "there was a weird one… started spilling stuff all over."

"So what is it, already?" the White ArbyFish had grown impatient, "I haven't got the time to mingle with you colorful lot. I have… plots that need plotting."

"Haven't got the time?" the Purple ArbyFish smiled and pulled out a box that had a variety of watches in it. He rummaged through it, picking out one of the watches and showing it to the White ArbyFish, "I picked this one up from one a them sushi ladies, out on the last rock'a this system." He looked down at the watch, which was a miniature grandfather clock that had four faces, one on the top, left, front, and right sides of the rectangular prism, "'Ere, it keeps track of Greenwich time and Sandwich toime, Accelerated, regular, and unleaded time."

The White ArbyFish wasn't impressed, "What about diesel time?"

"Well, you can program it, if you like," the Purple ArbyFish flipped to the back of the watch where there were little levers and switches that popped up when he hit a covered button on the side, "You can have smart time and slow time, teatime and bedtime, time that runs inward and time that runs out; time that goes backward, time that slides down, time that shows Saturdays, and the time of your town, time that you take, time that you've bought, time that is wasted, and time that is shared, time that has measles, and a time when you cared…"

"I get the picture," White stopped him.

The Yellow ArbyFish's attention was seized by a chance to display his greatness again.

"Behold my power!" Yellow said as he ran the clip of a star exploding again on his little television set.

"Yeah, we saw it," the White ArbyFish responded.

The Yellow ArbyFish turned off his television set and put it down. He looked disappointed for a second. He felt these formal meetings were so… ego squelching. But then looked up, glowed brightly, and smiled, filled with the pride of his own luminosity.

With the added light, the Brown ArbyFish shrieked and hid under the table.

"Hey!" Brown yelled from underneath the table, "Turn ya'self down! Ya' could kill a guy loike 'hat!"

The Yellow ArbyFish obliged, but he wasn't happy about being unable to show off.

The Grey ArbyFish discontinued his book reading for another moment and said, "?get meeting of point Shall the the to we"

"Roight!" Arby said and clacked his petrified-mushroom-gavel on the table, "Well, ya see, you'z is all 'ere cuz we'z got's a li'l problem. There's a Jiggerflu out 'hare that's targe'in ArbyFish in 'is quest fa' ul'amit powa. No'ma'lee we wouldn' 'ave a prob'em wit' it, but 'e's got a way ta get past our no'mal defenses an send us ta other dimensions an' obli'eraye us or somethin' loike 'at."

"But why does he want to gain ultimate power?" the Orange ArbyFish ambassador piped up.

"Isn't that what we all want?" the White ArbyFish said, "The power to torture the innocent… the ability to cause endless suffering to the blameless… The strength to crush screaming multitudes upon a single whim?"

"Oye can do that!" the Black ArbyFish smiled, raised his Klein bottle in another unspoken toast to something or other, and continued to drink from it.

"Do we have a casualty count yet?" Violet said.

"Not exactly…" Arby shook his head, "Blue?" Arby was going to get an estimate from Blue, but Blue had disappeared. "Great! Can we get another Blue ArbyFish in 'ere? An' put a stabloizer on 'em!"

Two Green ArbyFish brought in a Blue ArbyFish and threw him into the fishbowl where the other Ambassador had been. The Purple ArbyFish ambassador produced a little, square, circuit-board-like device with a red, a yellow, and a green light on it. He attached it to the fishbowl, then tapped the contraption twice. The light went from red to yellow to green.

"There 'ya go," Purple completed his task, "That'll keep 'ya here for awhile." The Blue ArbyFish seemed not to care too much either way, but nodded to him, anyway. Purple went back to his chair.

"So, casualty report?" Arby questioned the newcomer as though he was the same ArbyFish that had just disappeared.

"There has been an increase in the fluctuation frequency of our numbers," Blue started. The numbers he was referring to was the universal population of Blue ArbyFish, but then went on to talk in general ArbyFish terms, "It seems to indicate that there have been about a half of a billion lost in the past week…"

"That's horrible!" the Violet Ambassador said, getting up in his vibrating rocking chair.

"That works out to about 0.00000000000000000012 percent…" Blue continued.

"I wouldn't say that's such a great loss," White commented.

"It does seem to be getting worse, though…" Blue interleaved more words between the others' interruptions.

"How much worse?" Violet asked Blue.

"Exponentially," the blue, small, seal-like creature squirmed in his fishbowl, "Is anyone else bored? I could really go for a game of Chinese Checkers."

"Yew got'a wait 'till ya finish ya' report," Arby told Blue.

"How long do you think we have?" Orange asked Blue.

"Around four weeks," Blue stated.

"Uh oh, that's not much time." Orange worried.

"He's probably too powerful for us now." Black offered.

"What are we going to do?" Violet questioned.

"Can't we just send Purple back and have him take care of it?" Red asked.

"All by himself? It'd mur'a'loize 'em!" Brown intoned.

"We could send him back with a message." Turquoise said.

"What koind of message?" Brown asked.

"Something that would warn us in the past." Turquoise said.

"That won't work because as soon as we warn ourselves, this meeting would have never taken place and the warning never would have been sent." Blue dismissed the suggestion.

Purple was about to give his knowledge about the matter, but couldn't get anything in edgewise.

"What? You don't believe in parallel timelines? This is the original timeline apart from the alternate one that we're about to create." Orange offensively postulated.

Purple again opened his mouth, but was interrupted.

"No, time doesn't work that way! There's just a single timeline and anything we do to the past will affect the future and therefore create a paradox in which what we did to the past will change what we are going to do to the past and therefore we wont have done to the past what we did to the past, because it can't be exactly the same no matter how hard you try. The little variations change the future so much that when you go into the past from the future, what the 'future you' does changes the 'past you' that becomes the 'future you' who went back to the past and so changes what you just did, so you can't actually do anything to the past because it'll never happen." Blue explained.

"How do you explain this, then?" Orange held up the sword that Purple gave to him.

"Um… well," Blue stammered.

"Excuse me," Purple finally got in.

The ArbyFish shifted their attention to Purple.

"I don't want to." Purple disenthused.

"Well, then!" Arby shouted, "That'd be different then, wouldn' it?"

All the ArbyFish nodded in agreement and the conversation moved on.

All the Senshi were sitting around Arby now, waiting for something applicable to their current situation to arise.

Murray had long since left, taking Chiisai with him.

"So your entire race is being wiped out by some super-powerful force that will stop at nothing until your kind has been eradicated from the universe?" Raye questioned Arby.

"Well…" Arby seemed to be thinking, "yes, I 'spose yew could say that."

Luna couldn't handle the whole sequence of events that had happened to her in the past two days, so she went off into another room by herself.

Serena was the only one who seemed to not be paying much attention to Arby. She had taken her hair down out of the usual meatball-head (odango atama) style that she usually wore it in. She thought about putting it into huge spikes, but there was no time for that, now. The blonde girl leaned back in her chair, relaxing and mostly looking at the ceiling. The spacey girl was also the only one who noticed Luna's departure.

"Oh. Bye, Luna," Serena said to the cat who was wandering through the doorway.

Maybe she could shave it off and paint it back on… No, that only worked for eyebrows and mustaches.

French braids are nice, she thought, I wonder if Arby knows how to French braid. He'd probably put mushrooms in it. Though, I like mushrooms… or do I? Do I like mushrooms? Of course I like mushrooms, and fungus too. Wait, no… Not fungus. Stupid ArbyFish, scrambling my brains.

"Why is this thing attacking ArbyFish specifically?" Ami asked.

"Well, ya see…" Arby began one of his longer explanations. "It uses us as a koind of mallet ta hit itself in the noggin' with, and thereby causing skull fractures and brain swelling. Once ya fracture ya' skull enough, it gives it room ta grow, so ya gotta 'ave a lot of mallets if ya wan' ta become supa'powaful. Mallets wear out afta awoile; so ya'z got ta get new ones. 'Course ya got ya diffrent soize mallets, koinda loike eggs, ya'z got ya' small eggs and ya' brown eggs, and ya' ostrige eggs, and ostrages stick their 'eads in the ground, so they taste a li'l loike beef…" Arby continued.

Luna came back into the room with a mouthful of papers.

"Hey, Luna. Long time, no see," Serena said, not caring so much that she had just bid her farewell.

Luna jumped up onto a small side-table by the door and set the papers down beside her. She tore one of the papers from its binding, licked it till it was soggy and pasted it to herself.

Luna, like some sort of demented caterpillar, continued this process of cocooning herself with Raye's comic books.

"'Course they only 'ad a magic marker ta defend 'em with, but they wouldn'ta 'ad ta work so 'ard if they'd dropped the sausage out of the bean 'opper. After that, the mucus at the desk just shook me flipper with a foine 'how'dya do' and went about 'er business…" Arby's explanation went on.

Raye's attention shifted from Arby, wondering about the motion she saw out of the corner of her eye.

"Luna, what are you doing?" Raye asked the cat, who ignored her, "HEY! Those are my comic books!"

Raye stood up and ran over to the cat.

"Luna!" Artemis yelled and ran over to the cocoon.

The others then got up too, disengaging themselves from Arby's rambling.

"…The maid didn't loike that mess one bit, couldn't fig'ya whoy not…" Arby stopped his explanation and fluttered over to the group that was now around the cocooned Luna, "EY! Oye will not be ignored!"

Raye futilely attempted to peel her comic books off of Luna. The papers had hardened into a shell-like material. A paw holding an electric plug shot out from the cocoon and stuck the plug into an electric socket near the table. The cocoon began to glow a dim yellow.

"ARBY!" Raye yelled at the little green seal-like creature, "WHAT'S WRONG WITH HER NOW?!"

Arby fluttered up to sit on Raye's shoulder, flipping his tail back and forth quickly in a way that seemed like it really shouldn't have made him fly, but it did anyway.

"Oh, well, ya see… She's 'n old friend 'a moine," Arby explained. "Aren't ya Luna?"

The cocoon shook in response.

"She's so ex'oited ta see me that she 'ad ta calm 'erself down in chrysalis form!" Arby went on. "Oye 'ope she comes out a monarch, meself."

"She's going to turn into a butterfly?" Ami asked.

"Well, she moight," Arby returned, "But can't very well let that 'appen, cat's turnin' inta' buh'a'floies all ova' the place. It simply wouldn't me propa'!" Arby stood up straight and made as dignified look as he could.

"What is with you and being propa', anyway?" Lita asked doing her bet to imitate the word in question.

"Well, ya'z got'a be propa', else what would the missus say?" Arby retorted.

Serena sat up from her reclined-against-a-roof-support position.

"Arby, you don't have any missus!" Serena said.

"That's not tha' point!" Arby snapped… one flipper against the other, "It's the principle 'a tha' thing!"

Arby fluttered off of Raye's shoulder and onto the cocoon.

"Anyway, you'z can't do anything about Luna, 'cause ya can't bake ya' biscuits b'fore they've 'atched!" Arby hopped a bit on the cocoon.

"I don't think it would wise to try to open the cocoon," Ami said, "Usually the animal inside doesn't live very long if you take it out before it's time."

"Besides the fact that we couldn't even if we wanted to." Raye knocked on the hard surface of the cocoon, "Why do they always come after MY comics? There are perfectly good stores that supply them all over this city! Why, WHY, WHY?!

"Arby, you still haven't explained how you got into Luna's stomach in the first place," Ami said.

"Oye was gettin' ta that part b'fore you'z star'ed askin' questions," Arby answered.

"Why is the question 'what is the answer'" Serena prodded Arby with one of her fingers.

"Oye would've been if Oye wasn't, which Oye wos." Arby made a shory hissing sound and bit Serena's finger. Serena retracted her finger and looked at it, but there were no bite marks in it. "Don't wosh that fa' awoile," Arby pointed at her finger with his flipper.

"Arby…" Serena started, but was interrupted by Arby.

"Roight," Arby said, "You're dismissed. Off ta Batterspoon with ya!"

"I don't see why I have to go to Batterspoon," Serena said.

"You'z got ta get ya'self trained! You don't know 'ow ta fully control ya new powa'!" Arby said.

"I took care of that daimon with… only a little problem!" Serena pleaded.

"Ya' just scared it a li'l bit!" Arby replied, "Yew need ta do much more than that! Got'a make their 'eads explode 'n chew their own limbs off 'n stuff loike that! Wouldn't be propa' otherwoize!"

"I don't even know where it is!" Serena protested.

"Just turn left at the brick wall and follow the Brown ArbyFish straight on till Cleaveland." Arby directed.

"Oh, well that's easy, then, isn't it?" Serena said in a partially sarcastic manner as she headed out the door.

"Don't eat any plastic yen!" Arby yelled after her.

The others looked at Arby in confusion.

"Where woz Oye, then?" the little, green, seal-like creature said in reference to his story.

Serena strolled out of the room with her head held high, in great confidence that her journey would be successful. The breeze tossed her hair away from her face as she went down the steps of the temple, gently combing it in preparation for her date with destiny. The sky was clear, like the knowledge that she would prevail. The sun shone brightly, like the hope she had that everything would end in happiness and joy. Then, as she turned into a darkly shadowed alleyway, she stepped in something brown and squishy.

It squirmed out from beneath her shoe. The brown thing she had stepped on was wearing a thick, black suit with a sort of gas mask connected to it. The mask had opaque lenses for the eyes and it looked like it had a single boot under the folds of the material. It looked up at her, unhappily mumbled something too low in pitch for her to hear clearly, spun around, and hopped off. He stopped at a hole in the ground at the end of the alleyway and looked back at her before jumping down into it.

Serena figured that was the Brown ArbyFish she was supposed to follow, so… she followed, going down the hole after him.

She found herself crawling through a pitch-black tunnel with only the sound of a mumbling Brown ArbyFish to guide her. As she plodded along on her hands and knees, Serena could feel herself getting horribly dirty. The tunnel seemed especially made to maximize the amount of filth one got on one's self when going through it.

There were several forks in the tunnel, which marked places where the tunnel branched in two, each time Serena had to listen for the Brown ArbyFish before continuing. She could feel the tunnel start to level off now and begin to curve more sharply to the left. Serena felt herself suddenly lose all sense of direction. Eventually she couldn't tell whether she was on the floor or the ceiling, or crawling from the inside out for all she knew.

She began to make out a murmuring in front of her, like the sound of hundreds of car stereos, all with the bass turned up too loud. And then she began to see a faint yellow light. At about the same time she reached the end of the tunnel and fell quite a ways to the floor of what appeared to be a sort of nexus, playground, or somewhere else. Whatever it was, it was large enough for her to stand up in, so she did.

The ArbyFish she was about to fall on moved out of the way quick enough so that they weren't squished. They were staring at her now. The low-toned conversations stopped.

"Um…" Serena said, looking around, "Excuse me, could you please direct me to Batterspoon?"

The ArbyFish looked at each other.

"Battasupun wa doko ni arimasu ka? Donde' esta' Batterspoon? Missa on Batterspuun? Gidyea Baterspuun?" Serena tried a few other languages to see how they were received, "Fala Portu— *MUFF**HUACCHH*?" One of the ArbyFish stuffed a clod of dirt into Serena's mouth.

"Hey," Serena said in a low muffled tone through the dirt. She scooped up a clump of dirt and shoved it into the mouth of the ArbyFish that had done likewise.

"'Ello," The ArbyFish said in a still low, but now understandable British tone, "Noice grub for a ringworm."

"Oh, yeah… nice grub." Serena responded, "Could you please tell me how to get to Batterspoon?"

"Nope, 'Froid not." The ArbyFish said.

"But, why not? I was told you could lead me to it!" Serena said, getting ready to be startled, disappointed, sad, and angry all at once, "Don't you know where it is?"

"Well, we know, but we're all busy now, and it'll take a while to get there, and we have to train our earthworms for the incoming onslaught, and…" the Brown ArbyFish made excuses.

"So, you basically don't want to…" Serena said.

The ArbyFish looked at the other ArbyFish and said, "Well, no, not really. The route goes above ground and we don't like it up there. The ArbyFish that brought you down here only agreed that far. We didn't get a volunteer to take you the rest of the way."

"So what do I do now?" Serena said.

"I think you should go see the White ArbyFish; they're never busy."

There was a general sound of agreement around the cavern, and the Brown ArbyFish parted a path to a hole in the floor.

"White ArbyFish? But they're pure evil!" Serena almost gasped.

"No, they're nice." the Brown ArbyFish said, then got behind and pushed her towards the hole. "Go on, then."

The other Brown ArbyFish joined in pushing her.

Serena tried to claw her way away from the hole, but she was soon overwhelmed and thrown down.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

"So the moss told the loichen that neva'more would they be able to plant their roots in the rocky 'ills 'a England," Arby finished his explanation of how St. Molybdenum drove the pseudophage out of Great Britain.

There was a concerned look on the faces of the others who were present.

"Arby," Ami said gently, "you said this was going to have something to do with the horrible threat that is coming."

"Well, so it does!" Arby spat back, "'Ya see, if the loichen 'adn't diffused through the 'ole world, the entoire ecological balance with it's moss ta' mold ratios would'a been disrupted, an' the mushrooms would'a' 'ad petitions soigned and they would've called on the Gerrymander ta' 'ave the bramble-bushes open a proivate rebate system that would've…"

"ARBY!" they all shouted.

"Wot!?" Arby used tone of one being accused of a social misdemeanor.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" Serena continued to scream as she fell, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH."

Serena stopped screaming and waited for a few seconds.

"Dude," she said, "this is a really deep hole!"

She waited for something to happen.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" She started up again when nothing did.

"So Oye asked the duchess if she woz a member of the ignobility, an' she reploied, 'The quality of your spittle is hinged upon forces unbeknownst to karma-domo.'" Arby continued, "Oye deposited three mushrooms in the coin-box at door an' went me way. She then called the vice-deputary of state an' had 'im flog awl those who…"

There was a knock at the door.

"I'll get it!" Mina popped up and ran to the door.

The glimmer of hope in the other's eyes faded as their chance to escape passed.

When Mina opened the door, she encountered a small, dolphin-like creature sitting on its tail.

"Oh, um, hi," she said to it through the doorway.

"Is Arby here?" the dolphin-like thing said.

"Yes," Mina replied.

The thing's eyes glowed Pink briefly. It produced an envelope from some unseen pocket and held it up to Mina. The letter had 'ARBY' scrawled on the front by someone none too adept with a pen.

"Could you give this to him?" It asked.

"Sure," Mina said and took the letter.

The dolphin nodded and started to hop away.

Mina closed the door, went back, and gave the envelope to Arby.

"Who was that?" Lita asked, to which Mina shrugged her shoulders.

Arby accepted the envelope and opened it without trouble, because whoever wrote it hadn't bothered to lick it closed. He unfolded the letter and began to read it aloud.

"Yew 'n me, Open battlefield 2a, in 'alf an hour, or else," Arby read, and then bubbled, "We'z gonna 'ave a duel! Oh, GOODIE!"

Arby re-folded the letter and ate it.

"What's this all about?" Ami asked Arby.

"'Sloike Oye said; we've been challenged to duel unta' death or insanity." Arby said, taking out a red and green plaid, Scottish-looking hat with a puffy, white ball on the top.

"Who's the dolphin, and what's with the hat?" Mina questioned.

"'Ya got's ta wear a duelin' 'at!" Arby replied, "Wouldn' be propa' otherwoize! An' the dolphin is me arch-enemy, a'course!"

"Oh," Mina said, enlightened, yet confused.

A dark, black-and-purple-mottled spherical object moved through space at a speed fast enough to accommodate its needs of interstellar travel. Though it was still far from its destination, it could smell the smoke from the victory pyres, and taste the burnt flesh of his enemies. It chuckled to itself as it approached a large planet named Axiom, which was full of those creatures that it despised.

It slowed to a halt above the planet as a million groups comprised of fifty Black ArbyFish each surrounded it.

"Excuse us," one of them broke away from the ranks and said, "We're going to have to ask you to leave."

The object unrolled itself, revealing a huge, monster with an arch-backed posture, and with its head a part of its upper torso. Its legs were large and stocky, its arms likewise, but with pointy claws for fingers. Its skin had deep cracks and bulges in it.

"I will leave…" Its mouth, full of sharp teeth, shredded the words into nice strips and spit them out with razored malice. "…After I have DESTROYED YOU ALL!!!"

The Black ArbyFish realized that diplomacy had failed and began to warp the space that the monster was occupying. The monster's features distorted and shifted in fifty million different directions.

The monster gritted its teeth with effort and projected a Pink field around itself. Its body slowly melted back into normal space and Pink electric-like energy shot out from Pink veins in the cracks of its skin to the shield around it.

The few bolts of Pink energy coming directly from the monster's body split off outside the field and hit each of the Black ArbyFish, then went in chains between each of them, creating a huge mesh of pulsating Pinkness.

After a few seconds of this, the Black ArbyFish vanished, and the creature groaned and grew a half as much larger. He then advanced to the planet's atmosphere.

As he approached, he rammed into a hard, Green barrier surrounding the planet.

*GRROUFF* The creature snarled.

The monster could see the source of his blocked passage from orbit. On the surface, there were three monumentally colossal mushrooms 302,000 miles across at the stem, each surrounded by twenty billion Green ArbyFish focusing pure Green energy through them.

Blazing Pink beams of doom shot from his eyes, burrowing through the shield and burning into one of the protruding fungal masses.

*PLANET-SHAKING-KASHROOOM!!!* It exploded in a wash of Pink and Green, causing a beigish-orange wave to ripple across the surface of Axiom and leaving a brightly smoldering crater in its place.

Arby paused. "Oh dear, Oye feel a great disturbance in the 'shroom, Oye does."

Raye nodded slightly. "The sound of a gajillion bad accents shouting out, and suddenly being silenced."

"That means they're attackin' Axiom," Arby gasped. He straightened his dueling hat. "Just gotta blow 'em up quicka', then."

He hopped toward the exit and glanced back at the others.

"Come along. Yewz woz invoited, too. Get ready. Just three an' a 'alf shrooms left 'till Duesday. Toime ta get the mini-skirts on. Transformation wand power-up eye-shadow n' awl that rot."

Everyone just stared at him, then looked outside, and looked back at him.

Arby impatiently tapped his left flipper on the table he was sitting on. "C'mon, then. Powa' up. 'Op tew it!"

The girls looked at each other, shrugged, and took out their respective wands.

"Mercury Star Power!"

"Mars Star Power!"

"Jupiter Star Power!"

"Venus Star Power!"

The transformation music wound up and everyone went through their sequence.

A great cry went up from amongst the world's inhabitants, and, those that could, flew and cruised away to make their escape.

The great attacking beast roared once more, drew back its head and fired one more continuous light red beam toward the planet. The beam burrowed through the world's mantle and core, and in a horrific display of firepower, was quickly reduced to a scattering of broken rock.

Millions of Yellow ArbyFish surrounded the monster in a huge spherical formation. "Now, behold our power!" they shouted in unison.

The solar system's eight hundred thousand stars instantly flared brightly. They expanded and contracted, going from red to orange to yellow to blue to indigo to violet, and finally compressed to a small black form.

*ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!* A tremendous shockwave tore into the creature at the speed of light.

A Green ArbyFish sat on a rock outcropping on the great ArbyFish home world of Idiom, wearing a straw hat, and munching on a piece of long grass as it saw the destruction taking place. He strummed slowly on his banjo to the tune of "Oh, Susanna".

"Got any sixes?"

"Go fish!"

Serena sat in midair with a deck of cards in front of her, playing solitaire.

"HIT ME!"

"GIN!"

*THUD*

"Ouch." Serena finally hit bottom, "This seems too familiar."

A white harp seal pasted a note to her forehead as he hopped by, depressedly.

"Whoie won't they kill me?" the seal said and waddled off.

Serena tore the note from her forehead and read it aloud.

"Please refrain from throttling the duchess." Serena made a confused face, "Hmmm… Obviouser and more hackneyed."

"'Scuse me!" a harsh throaty voice came from by her side.

Serena looked over, still lying down and came face to face with a red Arby-like creature.

*WAAAAAAM!* It punched her right in the nose.

"OOOOOOUUUUCH!" Serena screamed, holding her nose in pain.

Serena scowled fiercely, clenched her fist, tensed her muscles, and…

*SLAAAAAM!* …She returned the favor, knocking the ArbyFish through a wall on the other side of the glowing, red cavern.

Serena got to her feet and looked around. She stood on plywood boards that were nailed in place and covered the rest of the hole she was falling through. The sides of the cavern were mottled with swirling red and orange bright spots that filled the room with a dim, burnt umber light. They seemed to be a moving liquid, but they were keeping their shape. The air was sweltering and Serena could feel slick sweat start to accumulate on her skin.

The ArbyFish popped out of the magma and hopped back over to Serena.

"Well, fire and brimstone to you, too." it grumbled.

"What's with the plywood?" Serena asked.

"The core's out for repairs," it stated, "You'll 'ave to take a different route."

"Different route?" Serena questioned in incredulity. "How could you move the core of an entire planet?"

"Well, it was contracted out." the ArbyFish said, hopping over to look if there was any damage to the plywood.

"To whom?" Serena probed.

"A co-op of Black and Purple. It needs to be buffed and spit shoined, else the better planet bureaux'd give us a bunch a crumble 'bout lowered property values and depreciating system real estate. Oye wouldn't want them buildin' an 'oighway through 'ere, would you?"

"I suppose not." Serena shook her head. "Can you tell me how to get to Batterspoon?"

"Third 'shroom to the roight and straight on 'till Tuesday's what Oye've 'eard."

Another Red ArbyFish popped out of the magma and interjected, "Thas not roight. It's fourth shroom to the left and wait for sunroise."

"It tis not!"

"Prove it!"

"Alroight." The ArbyFish picked up a clod of magma, which hardened between its flippers.

*Thwack!* *BLAM* The two began chucking lava-bombs at each other.

"Hey!" Serena shouted, dodging the rapid exchange of rock volleys.

Hundreds of other ArbyFish popped out of the walls, attracted by sounds of a brawl, and joined in.

*Whack*thud*BLAM*Pow*THUNK!*

"Ya motha' drinks cranberry juice!"

"Oh, yeah?!"

"Yeah! With oyce cubes!"

"WOT???" One ArbyFish began to get REALLY steamin' mad, the heat from its body beginning to open a larger hole in the wall.

*BLAM-BLAM-BLAM* The fighting continued and the walls began to shake. The largest hole in the wall liquefied and began to smoke.

"Wait! We'z got an eruption 'ere!" a Red ArbyFish with a monocle growled.

"YAAY!"

"Awl Roight!"

"Bring it on!"

The fighting stopped and all present hopped in front of the smoking hole that was forming, sitting up on their tails, their off-white underbellies aimed toward where the blast was sure to focus.

"Uh oh," Serena said, then yanked a large piece of plywood off the framework and dove down another hole.

"Won," the ArbyFish began a countdown, "too, threee!"

*ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!* A superheated, explosively pressurized gust of magma engulfed the entire room.

The ArbyFish cheered.

Arby emerged from the temple with bagpipes playing in his head.

"Noice day for a bangercufkin!" Arby smiled.

"So what is this thing that we're going to fight?" Sailor Mercury was hungry for conceptual data on the foe.

"'Sloike Oye said," Arby hopped along, "it'sa Dolphin. 'Sme arch-enemy an' roival."

"How'd that happen?" Sailor Mercury quizzed.

"'Twas a feud that 'append long ago." Arby remembered. "We got the poison, an' they got tha' fangs."

"Oh," Sailor Mercury said, not really understanding, "sounds like if you reconciled your differences and get together you'd make a great team."

"Eackh!" Arby spat. "Where'd be the fun in that?"

Ami sighed and decided to discontinue diplomacy.

As they neared the grassy battlefield, they saw the dolphin sitting on a stump, holding the end of a leash. Attached to the leash was a creature that looked like a cross between a wolf and a grizzly bear. The head and midsection was mostly stocky-looking wolf, while the limbs and the upper and lower torso was bear. The slitted eyes were piercing and intelligent. Its movements had a strange agility to them. It made no noise, but stood and glared at their approach.

The dolphin noticed that his 'pet' was staring at something and turned his attention towards that area.

"Miniskirts… Arby, you've gone too far this time!" the dolphin spat.

Arby turned to look at his crew. "Well, it's betta' than last toime!" he shouted back. "They awl 'ad go-go boots, bell-bottoms, an' an attitude ta' match! These is much noiceah, they is. Ya know, ya gotta 'ave miniskirts, otherwoize they wouldn' be indecent an' scare the enemies inta perplection an' confusion an' such."

"Curse your deduction skills!!!" the dolphin moped, slapping his flipper against his pet beastie.

The beast turned his head quickly to the dolphin and scowled, then whipped his head back to his intended prey.

"Oye see yew's gots yaself a noice li'l grizzly-badger roight there, yew does."

"Grrr," the beast didn't appreciate his lineage being thrashed.

"Enough," said the dolphin. He pointed at his beast. "Gerrymander, I choose you." He pointed at the Senshi and looked at Arby. "Those yours?"

"Arby?" Mercury said.

Arby fluttered back and sat on a far-back tree branch, adjusting his dueling cap again in the traditional manner of the McKleinbottle Clan, to which he was an honorary member. "Indeed they iz. They is me fisticuffs, and yourz are a noice fit to be accepted." He nodded at the beast.

"ARBY…" Mercury insisted.

The dolphin nodded. "We begin, then."

The beast leapt toward Sailor Mercury, claws slashing and teeth gnashing as it did.

"ARBY!!!" Sailor Mercury screamed before narrowly jumping out of the way of the teeth only to be knocked aside by a sweeping paw. She was thrown all the way off the battlefield into a cluster of trees that lined the edge of the field that Arby and the dolphin were on.

The dolphin chuckled evilly. This duel would be over much quicker than the last one. It pays to ally yourself with powerful beings.

Gerrymander didn't miss a beat in attacking again. He simply ignored the airborne Mercury and went on to the target behind her, Sailor Mars.

Sailor Mercury landed with a thud and an unconscious exhale of air, skidding to a halt on her side just before a pond in the midst of the trees.

A wake trail in the water made its way from the other end of the pond in her direction. As it reached the bank nearest to Mercury, from out of the pond popped a little, Blue, seal-like creature. He hopped quickly up to the fallen Ami and dove into her ear, dropping a little polo mallet on his way.

The beast flew over her, claws swiping, as she just barely dodged when her legs gave out as a reflex motion.

Gerrymander came back to earth and, digging into the ground, turned at a right angle, attacking Sailor Jupiter.

A piece of Sailor Mars' sleeve slit open to reveal a cut underneath.

White… So bright. No end in sight. All she could see was… nothing, but everything. No, not everything. Every color. No… Just white. White is every color. White is no color. No color subtracted. Every color added. It smelled sanitary. Too sanitary. It made her feel queasy. She could hear tapping. It was irregular.

*Ding!* Something sounded as the tapping stopped and then *rrrrrrrrratch* and the tapping resumed.

Was that a typewriter?

She looked around. There was something fuzzy and peachish in her line of sight. What is that?

"Miss?" the peach blob.

She could feel something soft, slick, and leathery beneath her.

Chapter not yet completed…

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Last revision: January 7, 2006