Disclaimer: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko, Koudansha, TV Asahi, and Toei Douga, and DIC.

Feedback is always appreciated. Email me at danielmcdonagh@hotmail.com

Chapter 3: Clergy Catastrophe!

"I fight for love and justice, and that means you!" Aluminum Siren pointed accusingly at Tigers Eye and scowled angrily. Then she smiled hopefully at him and asked, "How was that?"

"That was better." Tigers Eye was watching her performance with a thoughtful expression. "Your poses really made me feel threatened, but the line was wrong. You said that I was love and justice. I'm supposed to be bad, remember."

"Oh, right!" She scratched the back of her head and giggled nervously.

"Keep trying, though. You're improving a lot," Tigers Eye encouraged her.

"Okay. Um…" Siren seemed to be considering how to try her intimidating speech this time around. Unbeknownst to her, Zoicite had entered the room and was watching her performance with barely concealed mirth.

Siren nodded to herself as if she had decided what to do, then placed both hands on her hips and glared at Tigers Eye. "Disturbing the peace that I cherish, I won't forgive you!" She pointed at him with her right hand, then brought it back to her left shoulder and pointed with the left hand "I protect the peace, and that means you!"

Tigers Eye tried to hide a sigh. "You did it again." He massaged his temples.

"Did what?" Siren placed a finger to her lips and blinked in confusion.

Zoicite, meanwhile, just broke into laughter. "That was terrible!" he roared while slapping his thigh.

"What?!" Siren turned round to glare at him. "I'd like to see you do better!"

Zoicite waved her away while he was still creased up in mirth. "Improving on that would be too easy!"

"Prove it!" Siren demanded challengingly.

Zoicite straightened himself up. 'I'll show her!' he thought "Fine!"

Zoicite positioned himself in the middle of the room and stretched out his arms while breathing heavily. 'Here goes!' he thought. "For love and justice…" He stretched his right arm up while bending the left at his side. Then he brought the right arm down and bent it while stretching the left arm out. He followed this by bringing both arms in to form a V in front of his chest, then mirrored his earlier movement by stretching the right arm out and bending the left at his side. "…I am Zoicite!" he yelled while extending the left arm in front of his face and moving his right arm so the hand was under the left armpit. Then he turned his body to the side and extended both arms, one in front, one behind. "And I will punish you!" he finished, forming a V with his right arm and pointing over it with the left.†

As he finished, Siren started bouncing up and down and clapping. "That was incredible! You have to teach me that!" She looked at him with big hopeful eyes.

Zoicite blanched. He hadn't meant to get so into the routine. "Er…" He tugged at his collar nervously, then craned his neck as if trying to listen to something. "What's that, Eudial? You want me in the lab? I'll be right there!" And with that, he darted from the room as fast as he could.

Eudial was indeed in her lab (she had effectively claimed the basement for herself and designated it as her lab) and was currently working on several weapon systems. She had not been allowed to take the Fire Buster Mark III that she had built in hell with her from the afterlife, so she had to make a new one.

That was already done, so now she was trying to make a new heart crystal removal gun. She had no intention of stealing any pure hearts, but she figured it would make an ideal non-lethal weapon, since it took a while to die from losing a heart crystal and most people would be totally incapacitated by it.

Sadly, as she had just remembered, the firing chamber of her old gun was filled with Professor Tomoe's special Daimon growing goop, which Eudial didn't have the slightest clue how to make.

So like any good scientist, she was randomly combining chemicals which she remembered seeing in the professor's lab.

In her defence, she was doing it methodically.

She looked over the ten batches she had made so far. "Now, how to test it?" she mused thoughtfully. She could try growing daimons, but that would take years. She had a way which would take minutes.

Zoicite was peacefully absorbed in reading his book as he relaxed in the easy chair in the living room.

He didn't notice when Eudial entered the room and leveled her gun at him.

He did notice when a thick semi-gelatinous goop spattered all over his chest. "What the hell are you doing, woman?!" he sputtered, looking at his soiled uniform, then back at the former Deathbuster.

"Not that one…" Eudial seemed to be speaking to herself as she refilled her gun from another beaker, then aimed and fired at him again.

Zoicite stood up and tossed his book aside after being hit again. "What is wrong with you? Can't I get five minutes of peace in here?!" He glared daggers at her.

Eudial ignored him as she refilled the gun from beaker C. She aimed at him, but Zoicite dived behind the couch. "Leave me alone!" he yelled from behind it.

"Look, it will only take a minute, and I'll clean your uniform when I'm done." Eudial spoke as if she were talking to a small child.

Zoicite stood up from behind the couch. "I don't care! Just take your goop gun and—" He didn't finish as the gun splashed more semi-organic compounds all over him. He stared at Eudial in mute horror as she calmly refilled her gun. "Can you even hear me?" he wondered aloud.

Eudial didn't even respond as she fired for the fourth time. Zoicite looked down at his thoroughly ruined uniform, then at the woman responsible. "That does it, bitch!" he snarled even as Eudial readied her gun a fifth time. "Zoi!" he yelled, sending a destructive flurry of sakura petals at her just as she pulled the trigger.

But this time, instead of firing a disgusting mass of slime, the gun fired a bolt of energy which slammed into his chest and knocked his heart crystal out his back.

Eudial picked herself up after Zoicite's attack. "That hurt!" she griped, before looking at the unconscious form of Zoicite slumped over the back of the couch. Behind him, a dirty grey crystal hovered in the air. "Batch E it is, then!" She smiled in triumph. She hadn't expected to get it so quickly.

She walked over to Zoicite's prone form. "You just had to fall forward and get gunk all over the couch, didn't you?" she berated him as the slime dripped from his uniform all over the leather furniture. She then picked up his heart crystal. It had a distinctly clammy feel, not at all like any of the pure hearts she had attempted to steal in the past. "Figures…" she muttered to herself as she put it on his back where it was reabsorbed.

A few minutes later, Zoicite groggily got up. Eudial was nowhere in sight.

Later on in the evening, Sailor Aluminum Siren, Eudial and Tigers Eye were all watching TV. Zoicite was sulking in his room.

A beeping began to emanate from Eudial's police scanner and Siren leapt from her armchair (no one was sitting on the couch because it hadn't been cleaned yet. Everyone expected that if they left it long enough then someone else would take care of it) and went to read the report.

"What's it say?" Eudial asked.

"Terrorists have kidnapped the Pope, who is on a tour of Japan," she started reading.

"Holy Pontiffs, Batman!" Tigers Eye yelled in a camp voice. When he didn't get the laughs he expected, just weird stares from both women, he apologetically held up his glass of martini and said, "I'm very drunk…"

Eudial stood up, an expression of grim determination on her face. "Let's roll!"

The Defenders of the Earth were racing along in Eudial's car to the terrorist's hideout, which Zoicite had identified as being an abandoned warehouse at the docks by using his scrying powers. He had also changed into a clean uniform.

Tigers Eye looked out the car window and saw an enormous structure being built on Doom Mountain. "I wonder what they're building there?" he mused.

"I wonder why the changed the name from Mount Fuji to Doom Mountain?" Eudial commented.

Siren looked up from the cup ramen she was slurping. "I heard it was bought by an eccentric genius…" ‡

"Don't worry, your majesty," one masked terrorist said to the Pope, who was securely duct-taped to a wooden chair. "We'll release you just as soon as the government of Japan gives in to our demands."

"Baka!" another terrorist reprimanded the first. "You only call the emperor 'majesty'. It's 'your highness' for the pope!"

"Are you sure?" Another joined the discussion. "I thought it was 'your eminence'."

"Nah." The second terrorist shook his head. "That's only for cardinals and bishops."

Sadly, the octogenarian Pole didn't speak Japanese, so he was unable to correct them.

The terrorists were interrupted in their discussion anyway, by the arrival of a small canister flying in through an open window. "Say, what's that?" One of the terrorists prodded the canister with his rifle. It promptly exploded, filling the warehouse with thick smoke. At the same time, one of the walls exploded, the blast taking out two terrorists.

"Who's there?!" a terrorist demanded, as they all turned to the blast.

Four figures were silhouetted by the impromptu entrance. They all walked into the warehouse with deliberate slowness. "I am Sailor Aluminum Siren!" One of them declared, striking an intimidating pose. "I fight for love and justice, and that means you!"

"What?" asked one confused terrorist.

"Oh, forget it!" Eudial slapped her forehead. "Get them!" she yelled, diving to the side and readying the Fire Buster Mark III. While the first fire buster had been little more than a powerful flamethrower, the second used napalm to make the flames stick to the target. The third, however, used thermite and was capable of burning through concrete. She squeezed the trigger and released a gout of flame which consumed five terrorists into fiery oblivion.

Zoicite leapt high into the air, adroitly dodging a hail of bullets "Zoi!" he yelled, disarming two terrorists with the destructive cherry blossoms.

Tigers Eye squared off against one terrorist. "You're dead meat, asshole!" the terrorist yelled, aiming his gun at Tigers Eye.

"Oh? Really?" Tigers Eye raised an eyebrow, then just as the terrorist was about to fire, he said "One!" causing a large wooden board to appear and hit the terrorists back, knocking the gun from his hands. "Two!" Manacles appeared and bound his hands and feet. Tigers Eye decided to leave it at that; removing his dream mirror would be pointless.

Siren raised her arms up and launched two fireballs at a terrorist, momentarily incapacitating him. She laughed out in triumph… until the terrorist's star seed went black and he transformed into Sailor Terrorist. "Aaah!! Kill it! Kill it!" she screamed as she ran away from the phage.

Zoicite duly obliged by forming a crystal spear and launching it at the phage, impaling it easily.

The terrorist leader (who remains nameless because… well, why bother identifying with them?) looked aghast as these freaks managed to decimate his team. "You still lose!" he snarled, getting their attention. "I've rigged this warehouse! We all die!" He pushed a small radio detonator, starting the five-second countdown.

"Let's get out of here!" Eudial yelled, starting for the entrance. "Siren, get the Pope!" she screamed, seeing the former animamate was closest.

"Right!" Siren yelled back.

The four protectors of peace, one with a passenger, all raced out of the warehouse in the nick of time, being slammed to the ground by the concussive force of the blast as the warehouse exploded, sending shrapnel everywhere.

"I can't believe we did it!" Tigers Eye grinned as they picked themselves up. "Our first success against evil!"

"How's the Pope?" Zoicite asked Siren while nursing a bruise on his kidney he received in the blast.

"He's fine!" Siren allowed the stray puppy she had grabbed to lick her face. "And just the cutest little pope ever, yes, you are!" she cooed.

Eudial looked at Siren, a terrible sinking feeling in her stomach. "What is that?" she asked, knowing for sure that the answer would not make her happy.

"He's the pope, silly! I rescued him from those mean old terrorists, didn't I?" She giggled as the puppy licked her nose.

Zoicite quivered with rage. "The pope was the guy in the hat!" he yelled, incandescent with rage. "The tied-up guy in the hat!"

Siren abruptly stopped her playing with the puppy. "What?" she asked, a note of panic in her voice. "But I thought… since the puppy was next to the terrorist leader, then it was the hostage… I don't even know what a pope is…" she stammered defensively.

The quartet all looked at the gutted ruins of the warehouse. The head of the Roman Catholic Church would be a lot closer to God now. Suddenly their heads snapped round as they became aware of police sirens in the distance. Getting closer.

"Run!" Tigers Eye yelled, bolting for the car, with the others close behind.

To be continued.

† He just copied the Sailor Moon poses.

‡ Can we say 'foreshadowing'?

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007