Naru had never seen Tokyo traffic so well-behaved as on that drive across the city. After a short while she allowed her fingers to loosen their death grip on the seat. The other passengers in the van ranged from completely silent, some not even appearing to know where they were or what they were doing, to crying, to carrying on reasonably coherent conversations with their accompanying orderlies. The man sitting next to her looked around, wild-eyed, repeating an incoherent word over and over again. The orderly sitting next to him kept saying, "It's all right, we'll be there soon," with no apparent effect.

The van drove up to a wide green lawn which was bisected by a long curving driveway. The crystal towers rose from an elevated plaza set on the other side of the lawn. They sparkled like diamonds in the morning sunlight. Naru turned away, shielding her eyes from the brilliance. The van drove up the driveway and stopped at a broad, short stairway that led up to the plaza. An orderly opened the sliding door on the side of the van, and then he and the other orderlies helped the patients from the van.

Naru climbed the wide, shallow steps. Across the plaza, there was another set of steps that led to the area in front of the doors of the vast crystal building. At the top of the stairs, in front of the building, stood a woman in a flowing white gown, her long golden hair bound in two ponytails. A tall, black-haired man in a dark blue jacket and white trousers stood on one side of her, on the other side of her were ranged four women wearing the birghtly-colored, short-skirted fuku of the Sailor Senshi...

"Usagi," Naru whispered, suddenly realizing who the woman standing in front of the Palace was. Who Neo-Queen Serenity was. Usagi had always been pretty, but when had she gotten to be so beautiful, so regal-looking? Naru's childhood best friend, whom she had scolded for not studying hard enough, gone shopping with, eaten ice cream with, was the Queen of Crystal Tokyo, the greatest city in the world.

"Usagi-chan," she whispered again. But it didn't seem right. This glorious, majestic creature wasn't the girl she had grown up with. She was something different, special. Magical. Suddenly, Naru wanted to go hide in the van. She couldn't imagine anything more embarrassing than having her old friend who was now Neo-Queen Serenity-sama see her in this ridiculous hairstyle, wearing this ridiculous track suit, being treated like a crazy person. She started to slip away, back to the van, but the orderly standing next to her touched her arm. "Look," he said. "Isn't it amazing?"

Naru watched as, one at a time, patients who had been on the first van stepped up to the Queen, each accompanied by an orderly. Serenity--for that was her name now, not Usagi, Naru could never think of her as Usagi again--spoke with the person for a moment, waited for a reaction from the person, then raised a golden crystal-topped staff. Light flashed out from the staff, then cleared to reveal the person standing straight and alert, looking around as though they had suddenly awakened from a long nap. The healed person then bowed to the Queen and, unaccompanied by orderlies, hurried to join a group of people waiting over to the right. Often, the person was greeted joyfully by people waiting in the crowd--family members and friends, Naru supposed. Who would greet her when she was healed? she wondered. Was it too much to hope for that Serenity would welcome her back to the world of the sane as a friend?

Every once in a while, the person who had been brought to stand before the Queen would shake their head. A few more words would pass between the person and the Queen, then an orderly would step forward to guide the person back to a much smaller group waiting off to the left. Why would anyone refuse the Queen's offer? Naru wondered. Espcially if refusing meant they had to go back to the Institute instead of being free to rejoin their families and go on with their lives? A very few times after speaking with a person, the Queen herself would gesture for the person to be taken to wait with the small group. Naru assumed that these people were incapable of giving consent to the healing.

Naru's group was led up to the steps to wait in line for their turn with the Queen. As Naru drew nearer to the front of the line, her stomach twisted in nervousness and excitement. What would the Queen, her old friend, think of her now? And what was the healing? Would it hurt? Would it really change her? How wonderful it would be to finally be free of that miserable little white linoleum room!

The man in front of Naru, who had been mumbling in incoherent fear on the van, spoke with Serenity and nodded. The Queen's healing light washed over him. He stood up straight and looked around, then bowed to the Queen and shook his orderly's hand. As he started down the steps, a woman ran to meet him with an embrace.

Then Naru was at the top of the steps, in front of the white-gowned, golden-haired Queen. "Usagi-chan," she started to say, but stopped herself and bowed instead. "Queen Serenity-sama."

The Queen took Naru's hands in hers, and brushed Naru's cheek with a soft fingertip. "Naru-chan," she said, smiling. "My dear friend. How I have missed you."

"They said you can heal me. I'm not crazy, but if you can do something to get me out of that place..."

"I can free you of all the negativity and darkness that weigh down your soul. For so many people, it is these feelings that cause them to be considered ill, or insane. Too often, it causes them to act in ways that hurt others. Come, Naru-chan, my dearest friend, let me take from you all your sorrow, your anger, your guilt and regret, your terrible memories. I can purify you of these things so that you can be happy."

This wasn't quite what Naru had been expecting. "You want me to forget Umino? And my mom and the baby? And--" Even after all these years, she still choked up when she tried to say his name.

"Oh, no, my dear Naru-chan! You will not forget them--their memories will live forever in your heart. But the bad feelings, the anger and sorrow and guilt, will be gone, so that your memories will only be of joy and peace."

"But--" It all seemed so wrong. "How can my memories of them only be happy and peaceful? How can I have happy memories of a baby that I never even got to hold? And Umino--It wouldn't be fair for me to think of him only with happiness! For me to think I was a good wife to him when I wasn't! And my mom, and Nephrite? What right do I have to only have happy memories when they all died because of me?"

"But, Naru-chan, you won't remember that part. You'll only remember the good parts--"

"Then my memories would be a lie. They wouldn't mean anything! These are my memories, Queen Serenity-sama, and my feelings. I wouldn't be who I am without them!"

A look of deep sorrow filled the Queen's face. "Your answer is no, then."

"No." Naru felt a flicker of regret, thinking of the white linoleum room. But the price to be free of it was too high. "I won't let you turn my whole life into a lie, even if it is to make me happy."

The Queen closed her eyes as though in pain. "Very well, then." She nodded to someone standing just behind Naru. The sumo-like orderly, whom Naru recognized from her early days at the Institute, took Naru's arm in a surprisingly gentle but still irresistable grip, and began leading her towards the small group of people who had refused the healing.

"Wait!" Naru dug in her heels. She had made her decision, but the thought of really going back to the Institute was more than she could stand. "Please don't send me back to that place, Usagi-chan. Don't make me go back!"

"I'm sorry, Naru-san," the Queen said, switching to the more formal honorific. "Those who refuse purification must be put someplace where they can live safely and securely without endangering themselves or anyone else. It is the law."

"I'm not going to hurt anyone! Please don't make me go back there!" The orderly wrestled her down the steps towards the group on the left. The control that had given Naru some measure of dignity broke down. "Don't make me!" Tears streamed down her face and her hair flew wildly around her as she struggled. One of her house slippers had fallen off two steps above. What a pathetic picture she must make, she thought, the crazy lady with wild hair, one shoe missing, and a hideous pink track suit with the word CHICK across the butt. "I can't go back!"

The man standing beside the Queen, whom Naru now recognized as Mamoru, raised one hand. The orderly stopped trying to haul Naru towards the waiting group, though he didn't loosen his grip. "Do they treat you badly there?" the King asked. "Are they unkind?" He sounded genuinely interested in her answers.

"I can't stand being locked up in that little room all the time," Naru answered, "and drugged so I can never think straight, and there's no one to talk to besides the nurses and the orderlies and Dr. Tajima and the social worker, and they never really listen to me anyway. And I wish I had a TV or a radio and some more books to read." The king nodded and turned to whisper to the Queen, and the orderly began dragging Naru towards the group of outcasts again. "And the food is terrible!" she yelled.

When they reached the group of those who had refused purification, Naru rubbed the tears from her eyes and looked at the others. Some faces were angry, hard, and bitter, a few were sad, a few were completely blank. Naru supposed these last were the ones who had been judged incompetent to consent to purification. At least she had been considered mentally fit enough to make the decision for herself. Not that that was going to do her any good now.

The addition of Naru made the group big enough to fill one of the vans, so the orderlies escorted them back down to the curb and loaded them into the vehicle. As they drove away, Naru looked back at the glorious Queen cleansing yet another person with light from her scepter and sending him to where his family and friends greeted him with joyful embraces.

"Isn't she something?" the old man sitting to Naru's left asked. "That new Queen we got."

"Yeah," Naru said.

Though the old man's thinning gray hair still had comb tracks in it, and though his face sported a few cuts and scrapes from being freshly shaved, he looked grizzled and disheveled, and smelled as though his last real bath had been years ago. He was the only person on the van, besides the ever-cheerful driver and orderlies, who was smiling. "Looks like an angel, doesn't she?"

"Yeah," Naru said again, wistfully, thinking of her clumsy, silly, cheerful childhood friend who had suddenly, by some inexplicable process, become the Queen.

"I'll tell you something, though." The old man's grin broadened, and he nudged Naru's arm with his elbow. "We had a lucky escape. She's really a demon in disguise. Those people that let her heal them? She's really eating their souls. Now they're all zombies."

"Really," Naru said, but she couldn't quite dismiss the man's words. Was this what she sounded like when she insisted that anyone could be a monster in disguise? Who was she to say he was crazy? If monsters could take over anyone, couldn't they have possessed Usagi and turned her into this Queen? How else to explain what her one-time best friend had just done to her?

"Yep. Good thing we get to go home. Best food I ever had. I wonder what it'll be today. Fish, or maybe fish. I like the fish the best, though."

"It isn't always fish." This had to be the most interesting conversation she had had in months. "Sometimes it's chicken or shrimp, I think."

"Nah." The old man shook his head firmly. "It's always fish."

"How can you tell? I can't."

The man leaned his head even closer towards her. Naru held her breath at the smell. "It tells me. Every day I ask it, 'What are you?' and every day it tells me, 'I'm fish, please enjoy eating me.'" He nodded his head once, a look of satisfaction on his face.

Defintely crazy. At least she wasn't that far gone. She scootched away from him as far as the seatbelt and the passenger on her other side would allow. The man on her other side, thin and handsome in a severe way, had been one of the angry-looking ones. Now he looked at her and they shared a brief smile and roll of the eyes.

When the van pulled up in front of the mental hospital, the driver announced, "Welcome home to the Crystal Tokyo Institute for Wellness and Joy."

"Is that what they're calling it now?" Naru asked, more loudly than she had intended.

"Apparently," the man on her right said. "As though putting a pretty face on the truth can make it go away."

Naru thought the same thing as she climbed down from the van. Along with the beautiful weather, the brightly blooming flowers and fresh green leaves on the trees, and the magnificent Crystal Palace and its glorious Queen, there were also piles of rubble where buildings had been damaged or destroyed by the deep freeze and quick thaw. No one else seemed to notice them, dazzled as they were by the beauty that was the new city of Crystal Tokyo. The rubble would eventually be swept away and the ruined buildings forgotten. Like the ruined people, swept away and forgotten.

* * * * * * * *

King Endymion and Neo-Queen Serenity stood in a vast hall in one of the towers of the Crystal Palace. The room was dark except for the starlight and moonlight that shone in through the translucent walls. Four empty crystal catafalques stood in a row in the center of the room. A task lay before them, but the Queen was too troubled to begin. "I don't understand. Why wouldn't she let me help her?"

"It could be that she just wasn't ready to let go yet," the King replied. "Give her some time."

"I promised once that I would help her. To send her back to the Institute, to break that promise, was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do."

"I know, Usako," Endymion said, using the comforting old nickname. "I know."

"But it's the law, Endymion. We made the law, knowing what we know about what is to come, with the advice of the Senshi and the power of the Ginzuishou. The law must be followed, without exception. We must not change or undermine it if we are to prevent the disasters that lie ahead. Perhaps you're right, and in time she will come to terms with her difficult memories and experiences and be ready to let go of them then."

"I'm certain she will, Usako. In the meantime, it's in your power to make things better for her where she is now."

"Yes, that's true. I will do that." The Queen wiped a single glittering tear from her smooth, flawless cheek with a slender, graceful finger, then stood straight and tall again. "I'm ready now."

"You will be ready to purify them as soon as they return?" Endymion asked.

"Yes. It is necessary. We cannot risk them being overcome by memories and desires from their time in the Dark Kingdom. It's best if they only remember having been your Guardians. Even though..." The Queen caught herself from straying again into old sorrows and present regrets. "It must be done, and I am ready to do it."

The Senshi, who had stood back during the King and Queen's private conversation, stepped forward. Standing before the row of crystal biers, they clapsed hands and formed a circle with the Queen. The King stood just outside the circle, at Serenity's shoulder. Then the Queen and her Senshi pooled their power, opening up a portal to the place where four souls waited, trapped between life and afterlife, waiting for the time to come when they might be needed again and called back.

A light grew from the circle of women, combined of the distinctive light colors of each of them. They spoke as one. "Senshi Planet Power, Moon Crystal Power, restore and revitalize!"

Blinding light filled the whole room. When it cleared, four men lay on the catafalques. Two of them stirred, but before they could awaken, Serenity raised her scepter. "Moon Crystal Power Soul Purification!" Warm white light swept out over the four men.

The magical light faded, and the room's normal lighting slowly came on. One by one, the four men on the crystal platforms sat up. Their ruined gray Dark Kingdom uniforms had been changed during the restoration process to the handsome dark blue of Endymion's service. They looked at each other, then the one with long silver hair went to the side of the Guardian with lush, flowing copper hair and took him in his arms. Serenity smiled a little; that relationship had pre-dated the Dark Kingdom. The other two looked around, then the one with long wavy auburn hair stood up from his bier and sank to his knees. "My Prince! What happened--the palace--Where are we? What has happened?"

The other three Guardians also knelt before their King and Queen. "Welcome, my faithful Guardians," the King said. "There was a war, and you have slept long. We are in a new era of peace and prosperity, but there remains, as always, the potential for danger, and I need my Guardians by my side. Will you continue to serve me?"

"Why do you ask?" the silver-haired Guardian said. "We have always served you; we have never left your side, and never will."

Serenity and Endymion shared a glance. The purification had worked perfectly. The Guardians remembered nothing from the time when they had served Beryl in the Dark Kingdom. "I am glad to hear it," the King said. "As I said, you have slept long, and much time has passed. Lord Kunzite, Lord Nephrite, Lord Jadeite, Lord Zoisite. I have missed you. Welcome back."