Her ears twitched when the door had been closed gently. She had not been asleep during that time, but she had been afraid of what might happen if it was known that she had been awake all this time. Now, revealing her eyes to the room that she had been locked into, she could see that this man had not meant her harm as such. This was a room for a princess, not a prisoner, the luxury of its decoration had surprised her for the dinginess that she had come to expect when being caught prisoner. The usual décor was one of hard cement walls and cold floors, but as she swung her legs to the ground, she found her feet sinking into the depths of the plush pure wool carpet that cushioned her from the floor. Nothing had been spared in restoring the room to its glories of classical revere, she could not help but gape at the large crystal chandelier high above her head, or the draperies shimmering as the sunlight hit its velvety surface. The cushions which she had early been resting her head against had been feather cushions enwrapped in silk covers, resting smugly in its place with the elegant oak four-post bed, and sashes that divided the resting from the rested.
    As she looked down upon herself, she realized that she was still dressed in her old clothes, which could only mean that she had not been searched. Reaching down into her pocket, once again she found her mini-computer, untouched by anyone. Opening the draws in the dresser table, she searched through the compartments. Some held stationery, calligraphy equipment, mathematics materials, while other held underwear which she could only imagine to be hers. The wardrobes contained rows and rows of dresses, evening gowns, almost as though she was expected to wear nothing else but elaborate dresses and high-heeled shoes.
    She quickly pushed her henshin stick into one of the draws, and turned to her computer. She knew that if she was to transmit any information from the computer, it would be noticed immediately by the security of this vast manor, the only way that she could send messages would be via the transmission system of this place. Unless she could deflect the message onto the system, the problem lay in that she did not know where it was… she needed plenty of luck for a guess.  But she couldn’t resist the temptation of sending even the smallest dot of information to show that she was well and alive. The transmission time required was the same as that for a telegram, more letters, more time, so, she quickly thought out a short message and tapped it onto the keyboard. Turning on the scrambler, she scrambled the message into a code that she hoped Luna would be able to work out, and so it would seem like a random error message if it was opened.

    They greeted Motoki at the door and explained their presence to him. They past him, walking to the last game machine in the arcade, Luna snuggled behind the machine as the rest looked on, worried that she might become electrocuted in the small space.  At last, the machine gave way and moved to the side, revealing a set of large steps. Luna and Artemis leapt in without hesitation, while the girls stood there, dumbfounded for a moment, they did not remember the control room to look as such.
    “Girls, come down here, we seem to have a message from Ami.”
    That was all that was needed to assure quick entry from the four girls, Motoki looked at them expressively, as if to ask if he too could join in the group, but Makoto turned to him and shook her head. “At least wait until Mamoru arrives, I think he will be coming to join soon, at least I hope so.”
    “Makoto!”
    “Coming Luna!” Makoto yelled in reply and hurriedly flew down the stairs.

    “Anyone got that?”
    “Yes sir, it came from our system.”
    “Who sent a message down to Tokyo?” No one answered the chief’s question. “Well, the find out what the message was.”
    “Yes sir!” replied the young man in the red suit beside him. Vigorous tapping on keyboards ensued as the young man tracked down the stray signal that had been sent out. “Sir, it was sent by the main system, it is only an error, a random signal.”
    “Give me the signals.” The young man quickly handed him the printout, on which were the letters: ‘nfnznhzuv-mldliib’. “What?”
    “Its randomly generated, usually it doesn’t send out, but it’s the fault of the system that we have sir.”
    “Continue then!” The chief scrunched up the sheet of incriminating paper and retreated back into his seat.

    “What? Are you sure that the computer is working? This is a message?”
    Luna looked at the screen in bewilderment, she had no idea what the message in front of her said. “The source did look a bit funny I must admit.”
    “Wait,” said Artemis, “I think it is a code, sent via a scrambler.”
    Rei tapped her fingers on the desk nervously, waiting for someone to come up with a solution to the problem. “Well, that was useful wasn’t it?”
    A sound of running feet suddenly exploded down the stairway as two grown men tumbled into the control room. “What was the message?” they yelled excitedly.
    “Oh Mamoru!” Usagi turned to him, “they’ve taken Ami!”
    “How? I mean we all knew that she was in danger, she was supposed to be safe with you.”
    “Mamoru, don’t blame us!” Usagi batted her eyelashes at him, “it wasn’t our fault, they just came upon us and took Ami away, we couldn’t do anything about it. I know we should have done more… but we tried our best, and… I swear we are going to get her back!”
    “You mean you knew about this beforehand, and you didn’t do anything? You know, like call the police or something?”
    “It’s easy for you to say ‘call the police’.  What are we supposed to tell them Motoki? That we are the infamous group of Bishoujo Senshi and now we want their protection? We’ll get two responses, either thrown straight out of the station, or thrown into the psychiatric hospital and I don’t know which one would be better. You saw what happened just then, we did our best to protect her.”
    “Okay, no more blaming, what does the message say?” Mamoru asked.
    “We can’t read it, it’s either encrypted, or just random.  I am more inclined to believe in the former though.” Luna replied.
    “Umm… didn’t she write a decoder for this computer?”
    “She did?” All eyes turned to Motoki’s statement.
    Motoki shrugged, “well, at least that was what I understood it to be, she was in here yesterday until pretty late at night, sitting in one of the lofts up there. I went over to ask her what she was doing, and she said that she was writing a decoding system for this thing. And then, she had just finished it, but because it was so late, she couldn’t wait for this machine to be empty, so she left without installing it, she was going to do it today.”
    “The thing is… she didn’t get the chance, it must still be on a disk.” Artemis said.
    They all started when Mamoru suddenly ran up the steps back into the arcade, returning with what looked like a blue disk in his hand. “Is this her disk? She must have deliberately dropped it, I saw it when I came in.” He inserted it into the disk drive and waited for Luna to load the program, slowly, a wall of blue flooded the screen and the sign of Mercury flashed and revolved in the middle.
    “Wow, this girl is amazing.” Motoki gasped at the sophistication of the program that he had seen her write earlier, in such a short time without the need of aid of computer manuals.
    Rei looked at him oddly, with an air of an older sister talking to her dumb brother, “well she is the brains of the group.”
    The screen prompted for a password which Luna looked at anxiously and began to press random words. Each time the computer refused her entry into the treasures that lay behind. In a rage of irritation, Luna jumped away from the computer and yelled, “we’ll never get in there, we don’t know the password.”

    Placing the bags on the floor, he turned to his father and smiled, “That is all the luggage we have, oto-san.”
    “You are in a hurry to go somewhere.”
    He dipped his head slightly, “yes, may I please be excused?”
    “You are meeting someone?”
    “No,” turning, he opened the front door, “I will be back by dusk oto-san.”
    “I will expect you for dinner then.”
 

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