I'll try to cut the preamble a bit shorter this time.

Some obligatory notes:

Feel free to distribute this, as long as it remains intact, in its entirety, and is not used for profit (fat chance of that).

I apologize for Mizuno at Baltimore. I really do. If you haven't read it, don't. All you really, truly, absolutely positively need to read is Mizuno the Senshi in order to understand this. Given my tendency to overkill the exposition, you'll be lucky if the bloody story isn't repeated verbatim here. Anyway, if you really want to read the previous part, do it after this one.

If you've missed previous parts, then get thee to http://www.smart.net/~levar/epreview.html, or your favorite fanfic site; this is getting pretty good propagation.

This gets gory at times. Far more bloody than I usually like it, in fact. I would even go so far as to give this an R rating. Then again, I haven't been to the movies in so long that I don't know what you can get away with with a PG-13. Let's just simplify things and say that it gets violent at times.

There are no backhanded FSC references. It may look a hell of a lot like one, but it ain't. (You'll know what I'm talking about when I get to it.)

I'd like to give some gratuitous thanks here. Thanks to Ken Arromdee for his excellent FAQ, which I alt-tabbed to constantly for those little details that, in my opinion, make this fanfic great. To everyone who wrote to me concerning part one and two; you know who you are, and I won't embarrass you by putting any of your names here. To my entire lunch table, who gave me six out of ten possible points on the Modified Weirdness Scale for this effort. To the two Georges: Handel and Gershwin, whose music I listened to constantly during the writing of this piece, and some dead guy named Gustav Mahler. To Susan Cooper, whose books made fantasy okay in my mind.

Finally, everyone's favorite part of a fanfic. Sailor Moon and all associated characters were created and are owned by Naoko Takeuchi and a bunch of other people, of whom I am not. These trademarks, as well as some others, are used without permission. To any corporate bigwigs, I just want you to know that I have no intention of making any money out of this. It's all in good clean, not-for-profit fun.

And if you're not a fan of Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy, be warned that I'm this wordy throughout the whole piece. I think it adds to the atmosphere of the piece, but if you were one of those people who threw away _Return of the Native_ after the first two chapters, don't even bother with this one. And if you have a short attention span, you probably haven't made it this far, so I have little to worry about.

And the notice I've been waiting since December to include: EVERYTHING is explained here. If you have any questions about the storyline thus far, they'll probably be answered here. This is the payoff, the jackpot, the culmination of four months of foreshadowing. This is also my last really long work until character sketch #2, but that's not so important. I had the most fun writing this part, and I hope you have just as much reading it.

And now...

Character Sketches #1, Sailor Mercury - Part III, "Mercury"
Prologue: The old and the new

Tiresias:	Shall I add to it and make you angrier still?
Oedipus:	To your heart's content.  Mouth away!
Tiresias:	I say that you and your most dearly loved
	Are wrapped together in a hideous sin, blind to the horror of it.

				-Oedipus the King, Sophocles

The four women stood near the jetway. They were, by all accounts, outrageously beautiful, with short skirts and tight-fitting bodices. They also looked about eighteen. The fact that they were actually in the neighborhood of forty years old was irrelevant at this point in time.

Behind some conveniently placed barricades, the Senshi Snoop Squad lay in wait. They had been conceived back in the '90s, when the senshi's existence had first been confirmed. Since then, every newspaper and television station had one reporter (and usually not a few cameras) tailing the senshi wherever they went. Whether it was publicity appearances at malls or top secret government meetings, autograph sessions or convening the new Constitutional Committee, the SSS was there.

Sailor Moon (or Serenity as more and more government officials were calling her), refused to call them an entourage, but that was what they were. Their presence was so expected by now that when Sailor Venus (as chief senshi in charge of PR) made the call to Tokyo International, the crews there had known to provide for the media zoo. Everyone was prepared to meet the arrivals.

Except the arrivals.

"Amy!"

"Minna-san!"

Amy Henderson, formerly Amy Anderson, nee Ami Mizuno, ran out of the jetway as soon as she caught sight of her friends. Sailors Moon, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter: they were all there. But while they looked in the prime of youth, the years showed on Amy's face.

There were the slight beginnings of crow's feet on her eyes, and her face had more lines than it had before. Her hair, now dyed black, still showed a few gray streaks. The four were still getting used to this when Amy turned. "Boy, have I got a surprise for you! Guys, may I present my husband, David Henderson."

The man in question was still walking, having been left behind when Amy began her happy sprint. "Pleased to meet-"

He was cut off by the flashbulbs that went off. "Don't worry, honey, you'll get used to them." Amy, for her part, was still trying to get used to being back on Japanese soil for the first time in years. "Oh, did you leave Minerva behind?"

"You mean Athena," corrected David.

The two giggled, as if at some private joke. The others looked puzzled.

"Athena?"

"Minerva?"

"Athena and Minerva," said Amy in flawless Japanese, a fact which she took great delight in, "are our daughter."

"Nani?" asked Sailor Moon. Some things never changed....

"Well," took over David, "I wanted to name her Athena..."

"...and I wanted Minerva. I always went for the Roman names, wouldn't you agree guys?"

The others looked at the woman otherwise known as Sailor Mercury and hid their knowing smiles. David merely looked puzzled; while he knew of Amy's abilities as Sailor M, her Sailor Mercury side was still hidden to him. Amy Anderson still didn't equate to Ami Mizuno.

"Yes," said the befuddled David, "so we compromised. Any moment now, Athena Minerva Henderson will be coming around the bend."

"Well," said Sailor Mars, "which name does *she* prefer?"

"No preference," said Amy and David in unison.

"She loves to make things difficult," said Amy.

"But she makes up for it," continued David. "She's devastatingly intelligent, with a very quick mind. I think you'll like...Athena Minerva."

"Great. Knowing me, I'll probably just run them together." A mischievous smile broke across Sailor Venus's face. "Hey Amy-chan, how's 'Ami' sound to you?"

"Ami? I once knew an Ami." But no-one else paid attention to his remark; 'Ami' was coming around the bend. The four senshi who had remained in Japan took in a collective gasp; the girl seemed to walk straight out of the past.

She reached the group and bowed slightly. "Konnechi wa, minna-san."

Moon, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter just stared at the blue-haired girl who was a dead ringer for a fifteen-year-old Ami Mizuno.

"Told you I had a surprise."