The next morning, Naru left the four kids with plenty of snacks, board games, and videos while she went to her classes. The children promised to behave themselves while she was gone, and her mother promised to check on them from time to time, but Naru wasn't sure she liked the way Meiko and Toshiro looked at each other, their eyes shining with suppressed laughter, as they gave her their word not to tear down the apartment.

All morning, she felt distracted and restless and couldn't concentrate on her classes. She missed Umino already, and she was wondering again if she had done the right thing by refusing to go on his research expedition with him. It would have been all about him, his work, his interests; she would have had nothing to do but follow him around and do drudge work. But at least she wouldn't have been lonely.

The feeling that she had tried to ignore and suppress for so long was stirring. Naru was afraid that, whatever it was, it would rip her heart to pieces if she tried to examine it, but she didn't think she'd be able to avoid facing it much longer. In her darker moments that morning, she wondered what her mother would do with her if she went crazy.

It was a relief to have the distraction of lunch with Usagi, despite her friend's weird behavior on the phone the night before. At the café, Naru ordered a large slice of pizza and a soda, then sat down at a table to wait for Usagi, who was, as usual, late.

Usagi finally breezed in twenty minutes later, ordered her usual two slices of pizza, soda, and fruit custard, and sat down with Naru. "Sorry I'm so late. I had to get some make-up assignments in fabrics class." Usagi was studying interior decorating at a nearby vocational college. Though for the first time in her life she enjoyed school, she wasn't any more organized about her homework than she had ever been.

Naru smiled and closed the psychology textbook she'd been reading. "It's okay. I don't have any classes this afternoon. I should get home soon to check on those kids I found, though."

"Yeah, that's right," Usagi said, her mouth full of pizza. She swallowed, then went on. "Naru, I have to tell you some really weird things, about me and Rini and who those kids probably are."

"What do you mean, weird?"

"Naru-chan," Usagi said, lowering her voice to a whisper, though in the noisy café it was doubtful that anyone would hear or understand her anyway, "first off, and I should have told you this a long time ago, I'm Sailor Moon."

Naru stopped eating in mid-chew. "You're what?"

"Sailor Moon."

"You mean the girl super-hero who goes around saving people from energy-sucking monsters or whatever? Usagi, that's just an urban legend. You don't expect -" She stopped abruptly at the very serious, almost grave look on her friend's face. Usagi never looked that serious.

"You don't remember any of it, do you?" Usagi asked.

"Any of what?" Naru said. The darkness inside her suddenly blurred her vision. She was afraid she was going to start screaming. Naru fought back the inexplicable panic.

"Never mind," Usagi went on. "I'll show you when we're done eating."

The girls finished their lunch, then left the café. Usagi pulled Naru into a narrow, dim, deserted alleyway. "Usagi, what -"

Her words were cut off by a flash of light. Where Usagi had stood was the legendary girl-soldier, Sailor Moon, in her ridiculous short dress and long boots, with long blonde ponytails topped by jeweled balls. "Usagi..." Naru breathed.

Sailor Moon relaxed her stance. "I know. It's hard to believe. Sometimes I have a hard time believing it, too. But you need to understand who I am to understand anything else I'm going to tell you."

Naru was speechless, so Sailor Moon went on. "Rini is my daughter."

"But you're not old enough -"

"My daughter from the future. There's a portal from the Timestream right above that dock at the lake. That's where I first found Rini. I was standing at the end of that dock, kissing Mamoru, when she fell out of the sky and landed right on my head. We just about killed each other. It wasn't until later that I found out that she was my daughter. Me and Mamoru's daughter, actually. I also found out that she'd been sent here, to the past, because of a terrible war that was going on in the future. There was something here in this time that she had to find, to stop the war. Naru-chan, I'm positive that if those four kids were sent back here from the future, that means something bad is going on in the future, and it's going to spill over here."

"Usagi-chan," Naru said, struggling to find her voice, "I believe you, that you're Sailor Moon and everything, but - "

Sailor Moon detransformed. "I know it's weird. But it's real, Naru. Do you think I could come meet those kids?"

"Sure, Usagi. Come on."

The two young women left the alley. "Are you sure one of them isn't Rini?" Usagi asked as they walked the two kilometers to the OSA*P shop.

"Positive. I told you, two blonds, two redheads, not a pink hair to be seen among them."

"Hmm, that's odd. I wonder why Rini didn't come back this time."

Naru just shrugged. All of a sudden, her life was just getting way too weird. Strange kids falling out of the future, her best friend was Sailor Moon... Maybe she was getting caught up in some bizarre delusion of Usagi's. "Have you been feeling okay lately, Usagi-chan?" Naru asked.

"I'm not crazy, if that's what you're thinking," Usagi answered.

"Of course that's not what I'm thinking," Naru lied. "This is just... weird."

"Would you rather talk about you and Umino?"

Naru sighed. "Not really, but it's better than that other stuff."

The two girls walked the rest of the way to Naru's place, dissecting Naru and Umino's breakup. At the door of the second apartment, Naru shifted her books into one arm so she could put the key into the lock, and pushed the door open. Then she stopped dead.

Every table and chair in the apartment was stacked into a teetering pyramid. Blankets and bedsheets were draped over the lower layers, while Meiko, Mitsu, and Toshiro perched on the top chairs, two of which were balanced upside down over the chairs beneath them. The TV was turned up almost full volume, and the floor was littered with the remnants of snacks.

"What --?" Naru said, finding herself speechless yet again.

"I told you guys you shouldn't do that," Jasmine spoke up from the sofa. "I told you she'd be mad."

"Nah," Meiko grinned down from his perch. "She never gets mad."

"Just watch me," Naru said. "I'm supposed to be taking care of you guys. What do you think your parents will say if they show up and find out I've let you break your necks? Now get down from there. Carefully."

As the three children obeyed, Meiko said, "See, I told you we shouldn't do it."

"Huh," Toshiro retorted. "It was your idea."

Meiko reached the floor safely, and turned his brilliant blue-green eyes and charming smile on Naru. "It wasn't my idea, Naru-oneesan. Honest, it wasn't."

Naru tried to bite back her grin. He was shameless. "I don't believe you," she said. She turned to Usagi, saying, "What am I going to do -"

She fell silent at the look of pure shock on Usagi's face. Then she looked back at the children and saw almost the same look on their faces.

"Do you guys know who I am?" Usagi asked in a rather small voice.

Instantly, the children straightened themselves up. The boys bowed, the girls curtsied. "Queen - Queen Serenity -" Jasmine stammered. "We're sorry. We didn't expect -"

"It's all right," Usagi replied. "I'm not queen yet, anyway." She studied each of the children in turn. "Oh my." She looked at Naru, then back at the twins. Naru would have laughed at the look on her friend's face if she weren't so mystified. "Oh, my," Usagi repeated. She spoke to Naru again. "You may not remember right now, Naru-chan, but you will. Oh my." After another moment of looking from one child to another, she said, "Well, I'd better go now. I've got four back assignments to make up. Bye, Naru." The look she gave Naru was strangely tender, almost sad. "Remember, I'm always here for you, if you need to talk about anything. Bye, guys," she said more brightly to the children, who shyly waved, then bowed and curtsied again as Usagi left the apartment.

"Queen Serenity?" Naru asked just as the door closed. No one answered.

She turned to the children, and sighed. Meiko was right; she just couldn't seem to get mad. "Okay, kids, let's get this all cleaned up and then we'll get some pizza for supper, and a video."

The lingering tension in the room melted away as the kids, chattering happily, began disassembling their tower of chairs and picking up crumbs and wrappers from the floor. Thank goodness for pizza and videos, Naru thought.

Naru stayed up late studying after the four kids were in bed. When she went to bed, her sleep was disturbed by strange, vague dreams. A fleeting glimpse of a face that turned away just as she thought she knew it, a voice that faded even as she began to understand the words, feelings of confusion, joy, terror, and loss following each other in succession, too fast for her to be able to deal with them.

Naru sat up with a cry. Gradually she realized where she was - on the sofa in the second apartment. Why had she thought she was in a park somewhere? The overwhelming sense of loss and sorrow drained away, but she was afraid to go back to sleep lest it return. Maybe she should reconsider her decision to not go to the Amazon with Umino, if the upcoming separation was causing her to have this kind of reaction. But as soon as she formed the thought, she knew, with bone-deep certainty, that it wasn't Umino's imminent departure that was making her feel this way.

"Naru-oneesan?" a timid voice asked.

Naru looked up to see Jasmine bending over her, concern in her delicate face, while the three younger children hovered behind her. "Are you okay?" the girl asked.

"Yes. I - Yes, I'm fine. I just had a bad dream."

"What about?" Mitsu asked. She sounded so concerned, almost frightened, that Naru had to try to give her a reassuring answer.

"I'm worried about my boyfriend, that's all. Umino. He's going to spend a year in the Amazon jungle, studying insects."

"Your boyfriend?" Meiko asked. "The guy in the park, that drove us in his car?"

"Yeah. Well, he isn't really -"

"You aren't going to marry him, are you?" Mitsu sounded worried.

"I don't think so - Hey, wait a minute. It's none of your business who I marry."

"Yes it is," Meiko said, grinning mischievously.

Naru's strange mood broke. She threw a pillow at the boy and his sister. "Go to bed. Now." Laughing, the three younger children ran back to their rooms, followed by Jasmine, who gave Naru one last backward look. "Are you sure you're okay, Naru-oneesan?"

"I'm fine, Jasmine. It's sweet of you to be so concerned. Good night, now."

"Good night." The girl smiled shyly, then hurried to the room she was sharing with Mitsu.

* * * * * * * *

Naru was tired the next day. She needed a vacation, she decided in one of her classes, after realizing that the professor had been lecturing for twenty minutes and she had no idea what he was talking about. A nice long vacation, away from Umino and Usagi and strange kids who appeared out of nowhere. Although if Usagi was right, and they had fallen out of the future, that would explain why they knew her but she didn't know them. Maybe she just hadn't met them yet....

Definitely a vacation. A very long vacation. Before she ended up as nuts as Usagi.

Naru and the children ate supper with Midori that evening. While the kids played video games after the meal, Midori asked, "Any word yet from their parents?"

"Nothing."

Midori shook her head disapprovingly. "Some people. I would never abandon my children with strangers in a big city. Although..." She was silent a moment. "There is something familiar about the twins. Maybe their parents are distant relatives who know of us, but we haven't met them yet. They do bear a bit of a resemblance to you. And for some reason, when I first saw the blond boy, I thought of Usagi's friend Minako."

Naru was carrying dishes back into the kitchen. She stopped short at her mother's words, thinking of the look on Usagi's face as she had studied the children the day before. "I suppose you could be right," she said, her voice suddenly sounding hollow to her.

* * * * * * * *

She dreamed again that night, but the dreams were clearer than before. A man, tall, handsome, auburn-haired, blue-eyed, a voice she could never forget. Her confusion - how could he be so kind and wonderful, then suddenly turn frightening and dangerous? The memory of how it felt to be held in his arms as they danced, as he carried her away from - something dangerous and awful. A park. A tree. Caring, a moment of honesty, sudden joy abruptly followed by horror. He lay dying in her arms; his voice, growing weak, saying Don't forget me... You're in my heart. Then he was gone, and she was filled with a sorrow that would surely tear her in two...

"No!"

Naru was awakened by her own cry, but the dream-feelings didn't fade away. They were real; they were the memories that had drifted just beneath the surface of her consciousness for almost four years. "Nephrite," she cried, doubling over in pain, sobbing helplessly. How could I have forgotten you?

"Naru! Naru-oneesan!" Naru realized that someone was shaking her shoulder and calling her name. "Did you have another bad dream?"

Naru looked up through tear-filled eyes to see Jasmine. Something about the girl's face made her flinch away as a memory flitted across her mind, another lovely face spewing hateful words, Traitor... Aren't you lucky, though, to die with the girl you love... Destroy them both...

Jasmine backed away a bit, looking confused and dismayed. Naru felt a stab of regret at her reaction to the girl. Jasmine had nothing to do with what had happened. The face in her memory wasn't Jasmine's face, though there was a resemblance. She squeezed the girl's hand. "I'm all right, Jasmine. Thanks."

She turned her attention to the other children crowding around the couch, especially to the twins. Her heart gave a painful squeeze at the sight of them. They looked so much like him; how could she have failed to see it before? She took Meiko's and Mitsu's hands in hers, and pulled the twins closer to her. "Where did you come from?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"We came from Crystal Tokyo, in the year 3020, in the twentieth year of King Endymion and Neo-Queen Serenity's reign," Meiko replied carefully.

"Do you know a girl named Rini?"

Mitsu grinned. "Of course. She's the Princess. King Endymion and Queen Serenity's daughter. She has pink hair, you know."

"I know," Naru whispered. She was trembling hard as she gathered the courage to ask the next question. "Who are your parents?"

"Our father is Lord Guardian Nephrite. His regular name is Sanjouin Masato," Meiko replied.

"And your mother?" She didn't want to know if there was another woman in Nephrite's life, but at the same time she couldn't help needing to know.

Mitsu smiled. "You're our mother, of course."

The world tilted around her. Naru buried her face in her hands, then slid them down to cover her mouth as she started crying again. "What's the matter?" Mitsu asked.

Naru pulled the red-haired twins close to her. Their arms went around her. They were real; could it be true what they said? "Nephrite died four and a half years ago," Naru said through her tears. "He was protecting me, and got hurt, and died in my arms. I thought I would die, too... I loved him so much. I still do. But he's dead."

After a moment, Toshiro said, very matter-of-factly, "He must come back to life, then. My dad did, and he's a Lord Guardian, too."

Naru drew back just enough to look at Mitsu and Meiko. Could it be possible? Her best friend Usagi was Sailor Moon, these kids were from the future, who was she to say that something wasn't possible? The proof that it was possible was right in front of her, in the twins' faces. They looked so much like Nephrite, but now Naru could see herself in them, too.

"Tell me," she said, feeling very fragile, as though on the verge of being new-born, "does your father love your mother?"

"Lots," Mitsu said. "He's always hugging and kissing her - I mean you - and telling her how pretty she is and giving her presents -"

"It's gross," Meiko interrupted.

"No it isn't. It's so romantic," Mitsu sighed. Her brother made a face.

He loved her, or would love her. A wound that Naru had never allowed herself to acknowledge suddenly healed. He had never said that he loved her; she thought he did, he had rescued her when he didn't have to, he had died protecting her, he had touched her face so tenderly, with so much sorrow in his own face, right before he died. But she had never known for sure.

And it appeared that in the future, he would do considerably more than touch her face, or dance with her.... Naru felt herself start to blush. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

Meiko and Mitsu grinned at each other. "Well, there's Benjiro, he's seventeen, and Jomei is fifteen -"

Mitsu interrupted her brother. "He's fourteen."

"No, he's fifteen. Remember, he got the 4-D holographic Galactic Senshi game for his birthday?"

"Oh, yeah. You're right."

"Anyway. Then there's Keiji, he's twelve and Jasmine has a major crush on him -"

"I do not!" Jasmine protested, but Naru saw the girl's blush.

"Do too. I saw where you wrote 'Keiji and Jasmine forever' in hearts all over your notebook."

"That just means you were snooping, you twerp -"

Naru broke up the argument. "So three older brothers, and you two?" Five children, she thought rather dizzily.

"Yeah," Mitsu said. "Then there's Nariko, and she's six, and Renjiro is two, and Tamika is the baby. She's really little - she can't even sit up yet or eat or talk or anything. She's only a couple of months old."

Naru had tried to keep track of all the names and ages. The three oldest boys, the twins, a little girl, a boy, and a baby... Eight children. She had never known of a family with eight children. She and Nephrite were going to keep each other rather busy in the future, she thought, still feeling rather stunned.

But, she slowly realized, this meant that they would, somehow, have a future.

Something stirred inside her, something warm and bright and tingly, where the darkness had been before. Happiness, she thought. For the first time in a very long time, she felt pure, unreserved happiness. "You guys," she said softly, and started crying, this time for joy, as she pulled Meiko and Mitsu close to her again.

* * * * * * * *