"Oh, come on, Ann! Don’t be so jealous! You know I could never be interested in any girl but you." Alan assured her breezily, leaning against the wall with a pleasant expression on his handsome face.

"Hmmph! You could’ve fooled me! But in any case, we don’t have time to argue. We need to think about new ways to get energy to keep The Doom Tree alive! After all, if it dies, we die!"

Alan nodded somberly, then a mischievous smile brightened his face, "Don’t worry, I have the perfect plan!" This said, Alan suddenly changed.

His brown hair grew much longer, falling to just below his hips. And it radically changed color, becoming a pale, sapphire blue with two bright streaks of red-violet at the temples. His eyes remained blue, though they were of a slightly paler shade and their exotic slant was now more pronounced.

His skin was pale, though a slight greenish tinge could be detected if one looked closely enough, and his ears, like any elf’s out of folklore, were sharply pointed.

His clothes had changed as well. Instead of the plain, gray school uniform he had been wearing, he was now garbed in a strange, but attractive dark blue/teal and black bodysuit that was decorated with a large blue jewel on the upper chest and gold metal lacings that accented the shoulder caps of the same color.

Alan glanced at Ann, who had undergone the same alterations, though her coloring was different. Her hair was slightly shorter than his, and was pale pink with light blue temple streaks. And her eyes glimmered like bright pink jewels. Her features were otherwise the same: pale, greenish-tinged skin, wide, slanted eyes, and sharply pointed ears. And although she wore a bodysuit identical in design as Alan’s, hers was a deep, burgundy red with patches of pale violet at the shoulder with the same gold lacings and shoulder caps.

From out of nowhere, it seemed, Alan suddenly produced a deck of playing cards, fanning them out in his hand so that the blank faces were turned towards Ann. "Pick a Cardian, Ann. Pick a good one that will gather lots of energy for The Doom Tree."

"Okay." Ann replied almost cheerfully, pausing for a brief instant before pointing with a dainty finger at a card near the center of the deck. Immediately, the selected card rose into the air, the others vanishing until needed again, and Alan drew out his flute.

"Cardian Medusa! I command you! Come forth now!" And with that, he began to play the same tune that he had played earlier for the two human girls. At first, the card started to shimmer softly in response to the beautiful music, then, the ornately decorated face suddenly expanded, until the figure of a terrifying being with a body that was clad in black armor that did not completely cover her scaly green skin appeared in the room.

She was truly quite hideous to behold. Her teeth were nothing more than a mouthful of sharp fangs between which a forked black tongue occasionally darted to stab at the air. The dark mass that at first seemed to be a head of thick, flowing hair was revealed to be, upon closer inspection, a cluster of writhing snakes that hissed and moved with a life of their own, and her slitted, red-glowing reptillian eyes shone like demonic rubies in the dim light of the apartment.

"Medusa at your service, Master." The Cardian hissed in a voice that resembled the rasp of dead leaves across dry stone, her silver talons scraping against the floor and her long, alligator-like tail sweeping back and forth as she awaited her orders.

"Go out into the city and collect all the human energy that you can." Alan commanded. The Cardian slowly nodded.

"It shall be done." She growled in response before vanishing in what seemed like an explosion of dark light, intent on her assignment. When the Cardian was gone, Alan turned to Ann, a smug smile on his face, "Well, that should solve our problem."

Ann scowled, "Not if those stupid sailor scouts show up again." She muttered darkly, "They’ve already destroyed Minotaur, and that ditz Sailor Moon wasted Vamphile the night before!"

Alan shrugged, seemingly full of confidence. "Don’t worry about it, Ann. Vamphile and Minotaur were just weak, that’s all, and the Sailor Scouts just got lucky. They won’t be able to beat Medusa."

Ann relaxed, her defensive, angry posture slowly disappearing. "Maybe you’re right." She said finally, though after a few more seconds, she glanced at Alan with a critical eye, "Now, if you’ll just leave the natives alone…" she said pointedly, remembering with a jealous frown the way her lover had played his flute for the two pretty, human girls at the school, the special tune that he had before played only for her.

Alan laughed cheerfully, an unconcerned expression lightening his alien, but still handsome face. "Calm down, Ann. The only reason I played for those girls was to make them trust me! And you know as well as I do that if we can get the humans to trust us, they’ll never suspect what we’re really up to."

Ann considered his words for a moment, then slowly nodded, almost reluctantly, "Just as long as they don’t start to trust you TOO much." She warned softly, a none-to-pleasant smile appearing on her sharp-featured, alien face.

"Ann, don’t be silly. You know I could never be interested in a weak, human female! You can always trust me. The humans aren’t important, keeping The Doom Tree, and ourselves, alive is!" Newly assured of her love’s fidelity, Ann smiled and sighed in contentment as Alan began to play again.

The gentle, almost hypnotic quality of the flute filled the air of the apartment with a feeling of peace and beauty that made both of them relax. It was a sensation that was vastly different from the atmosphere of the nearby streets, where their terrible servant was already beginning her devastating attacks on the unsuspecting city of Tokyo.

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