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Notice was given soon after the events of February 21st, as word slowly began to spread about the strange storms. The console in the Celestial Theatre was accessed, the Code consulted. Earth was in danger. A great serpent capable of devouring worlds was on its way. Fortunately, there might be information and backup defenses somewhere in the Moon Palace. Unfortunately, most of the Palace was still inaccessible.

You must do whatever is necessary to protect the planet, the Code had said.

All Order characters have been encouraged to make their best effort to gain access. Maybe they read Ganymede’s entry in the database. Maybe they heard directly from Kerberos, Ida, or Valhalla. Maybe they heard through the grapevine as information began to travel. Whatever the case, on the night of Friday, March 14th, a gathering of sorts had begun to take shape within the currently accessible area of the Moon Palace.

A table laden with food and drinks had been erected; simple fare—sandwiches, various chips with various dips, muffins, cookies, even a tower of cupcakes, with cases of soda and bottled water. Fuel for whatever crimes they were about to commit, maybe, or an attempt at comfort from an otherwise anxious Princess who asked now for a desecration of sorts, an invasion which some may find distasteful of what often appeared to be a sacred place.

Perched on the table was a handwritten sign: $500 for anyone who tries to get into the inaccessible parts of the Moon Palace and provides me with video or photographic evidence of the attempt, whether or not you are successful. xoxo Ganymede

If the food bribe wasn’t incentive enough, maybe the monetary one would be.

Cynthus, Squire of the Moon

“Open sesame!” Cynthus shouted at the first curtain of silver light she came to. “Abracadabra! Wait, what’s the spell to unlock doors in Harry Potter? Alomahora?”

Cynthus stood with her hands on her hips and a disgruntled frown on her face. She was a Squire of the Moon! This place should totally listen to her! She’d been working really hard to fix up her Wonder! Maybe she hadn’t gotten as far as Amarynthos and Ephesus had, but she was also only a Squire!

“Are any of you recording?” Cynthus asked her friends. “Ganymede said I could raid her closet if I tried. Have you seen it? It’s two stories. She has so many cute shoes and Dad keeps complaining about the credit card bill, so I need her hand-me-downs before he cuts me off.”

Her dad would never do that, Cynthus was sure, but her friends didn’t need to know that. (They probably suspected.)

“Serenity, Serenity, let down your hair!” she tried again. “Or maybe it’s like the Bloody Mary thing? Say her name three times and she appears. Serenity. Serenity. Serenity.”

-

Yvoire, Squire of Ganymede

“It’s alohamora,” Yvoire said, ignoring the scoffed whatever he received from Cynthus in response.

His signet ring had been upgraded by Lucasta soon after he recovered it. Ganymede had insisted he do so and Yvoire generally took her advice. So he recorded Cynthus’ silly attempts, half suspecting Ganymede would’ve let her raid her closet anyway, but if getting into the Moon Palace was really so important, Yvoire figured any incentive helped.

He glanced at their surroundings. The Moon Palace itself was both beautiful and sad in its destruction. Yvoire thought of his own Wonder—a castle on a river, still healing from whatever occurred to put it in such a poor state. He wondered if they should have been putting some of their focus into the Moon Palace, too, if all it needed was a little care and attention from those who were left.

-

Rose, Page of Lysithea

“What do you think happens if we touch it?” Rose asked. She did not reach out to do so. She stood clustered among her friends, holding a plate of snacks for them to pick at when they chose to. “Has anyone ever tried?”

She’d been to the Moon before, but never to explore the Palace. For a while she hadn’t even known it was possible to access any of it. Rose tended to err on the side of leaving things alone out of respect for the dead unless they absolutely needed something.

Apparently now they did.

When she’d heard what was coming for Earth, naturally she’d been worried and afraid. That something so terrifying existed at all was enough to turn her stomach. That they were all in danger from it was even worse.

Super Grieve of Grieve

Mouth full and chewing at the steady pace of someone who knew there would be enough left for a second helping, Grieve watched the kids go at it. Cynthus, the one she'd dubbed the singular Smart One of the bunch was shouting a lot of bullshit, so Grieve was a little surprised when it didn't immediately work. Didn't magic doors and the like love a kid shouting bullshit?

Chugging a can of Mountain Dew, she eyed the little Moon Knight (so weird that those just existed now, the Code shoulda done that centuries ago) taking a good poke at it. From the sounds of it...the barrier sounded like it might be delicious and refreshing.

grieve finished her drink and then strode up next to barrier, lowering her voice a bit but not nearly enough, she tried to coax whatever ghost of Serenity was swanning about the place, "Hey babe. Love what you've done with the place.," See? She could be polite, Muri. "Did you know there's a naked statue of your dipshit hubby in the basement of..." her voice lowered even further, becoming indecipherable as she narc'd on a long dead space noble. "...and I bet I could get it for you. I mean, last I saw it was a bit worn down and missing the best part but..."

She tried to bodily smoosh her wholeass self into the barrier.

"C'mooooon, I want some Ganymoney."

Apparently saving the world from whatever whatever serpent was that big of a deal compared to getting money off of Gany-with-the-good-ti...

Well, anyway, Grieve couldn't read and the pictures of the serpent made it look pretty wimpy in her estimation. Five-hundred dollars and a bunch of free snacks sounded a lot more interesting.

Sailor Mönch, of Popcorn!

To say Nada been constantly on her magical space girl phone since she got it, would be like, a total lie. She had school, activities, and a part time job. Senior year was serious business! But she had been on her magical space girl phone pretty much every other waking minute. She hadn't gone to her world yet, it seemed like it should be a big deal when she did, and wasn't sure what sort of preparations she should make for it. A cake? A special dinner? Or maybe a picnic basket! And should she bring music?

So that was out, but the moon was in! Way way in! Or way way out in space, haha! She'd been pretty much over it (the moon that is!) when she'd realized there was an app for that. Sure it was only open a few days a month, but that made it especially cool and fun, right?

Right!

So when she arrived to see a whole party being thrown, Mönch couldn't help looking around for like...maybe a banner with her name on it? Just like, the other magical space people welcoming her into the family or something? Of course it wasn't that, but it was still a party! With food! And games!

Not really sure how to play this one, Mönch settled for cheering people on from the sidelines. "Wow! You guys are doing great! Almost got it!"

Rowan Trumoia/Sailor Tempesti

Since its implementation, Tempesti had been obsessively scouring the database for any scrap of information that might force the fragments in her mind into a coherent whole, so when she encountered Ganymede’s call for assistance in “breaking and entering” in the Moon Kingdom it was only a matter of “when,” not “if” she would join the search for whatever aid they could find on the Moon.

Right. The Moon.

She still wasn’t used to that even as she looked around, with an almost certainly unflattering expression of sheer awe.

Following the battles on Asmodeus, powering up had been unusually difficult and draining. Tempesti suspected that taking a few days to rest might set whatever she’d knocked out of alignment right again, or as right as it ever was, but this did not allow time to laze about. Regardless of whether there was a literal world eating serpent or it was a metaphor for something equally unpleasant, there was no scenario in which she could justify sitting on the sidelines while her allies put themselves in harm’s way. It was a relief to know that Aruna would be there, even if she couldn’t imagine that the quasi-maybe-not-quite-criminal nature of their mission was entirely to her taste. The idea of forcing her way into someplace like this left her a little uneasy herself, despite the overwhelming curiosity that had been gnawing at her from the time she heard about this place.

Because her parents always taught her that it was rude to show up at a gathering empty-handed, she’d carefully loaded her Official Space Travel Rucksack™ with a hefty carafe of hot water, a few boxes of carefully labeled handmade tea bags, some paper travel cups, sweeteners, and stirrers. Hopefully the addition wouldn’t be rude, and she’d always imagined the Moon was cold anyway so maybe tea would help. Hurrying nervously over to a flat piece of nearby rubble she quickly set up her little tea station and scanned the gathering group for familiar faces.

Thalassa, DSS of Exhaustion

Senshi phones usually struck Thalassa as stupidly, unnecessarily complicated and generally bothersome. They were supposed to let you contact other senshi, but some people (Thalassa) never answered when you called. Other people (Thalassa) didn’t check the stupid messenger application, never mind texting you back. Still more people (Thalassa) forgot the idiotic thing even existed unless somebody else (usually some combination of Pyrrhus, Troilus, and New Kaifeng: Now Considerably Less Drunk!) reminded them that it was A Thing.

But there was one thing of actual use on the dumb phone: the database thing. Most of the entries on it weren’t worth Thalassa’s time……but one from Sailor Ganymede offering snacks at the Moon Palace on the night of the fourteenth? That sounded like exactly the sort of thing Thalassa took an interest in.

Apparently, the phone had the way to get to the Moon Palace, too. Some little icon with a moon symbol on it (go figure). Looking around, he couldn’t say that he was impressed. A bunch of child Squires and child Knights, all of whom were making far too much noise (any noise was too much noise when it came to children; there was a reason why Heibing liked being out of the house whenever Liánlí had his little nieces over).…… A collection of people whom Thalassa knew but they didn’t have what he was interested in (well, Kaifeng and Murikabushi probably had something in their subspace pockets, but neither of them was the one who had actually promised snacks).…… Grieve, throwing herself into the magical barrier like an absolute weirdo.…… And ah—there they were.

Thalassa did not smile as he made a beeline toward the spread of snacks. But if you knew him or just looked closely, you might have noticed an eager glint in his eyes because of free food, offered willingly by someone who wasn’t even present to make sure that people displayed the ******** “manners” things that humans and Helene put so much stock in.

He was in the middle of shoving one of the red velvet cupcakes in his face when he noticed that other people were by the snack table, too. On one hand, some curvaceous redhead senshi (Tempesti) was setting up a lot of supplies that looked like they were for making drinks, maybe? On the other hand, some extremely fluffy-looking senshi in pink (Mönch) was, uh, cheerleading? Was that the Earthling term? Thalassa frowned as much as he could while chewing on a mouthful of cupcake, glancing down at one of bowls of chip dip as though it would tell him whether or not “cheerleading” was the right word.

………Reflecting on it, he didn’t think so. Since bringing him home some months ago, Liánlí had gotten Heibing to watch some “television show” that had cheerleaders in it and none of them had been even half as fluffy as the girl in the pink. They’d all been sleek and streamlined, not to mention mean (except for the one who happened to be stupid), and none of those things seemed to apply to the pink, fluffy girl beside him.

“Were both of you born on Earth,” Thalassa asked, because you couldn’t always be sure about these things and however they answered might affect his judgment. “Or do you just have an easier time passing for human than some of the rest of us?”

With the question asked, he resumed munching his cupcake. He could wait for answers and eat. His multitasking abilities were unparalleled like that.

He could also wait for answers and call out at Grieve, “Use your elbows! They’re pointier than your horns are these days!”

Ekström Knight of Mercury

Ekstrom was blaming the storm for the issues she had accessing the database of information regarding the storm. She had formulated her own ideas on it, but after reading the entries so far it sounded…so much worse than anything that she could have thought of on her own. She didn’t need much more convincing than the threat of a world-ending entity coming straight for Earth to finally use that glowing pearl accessory she kept stashed in her subspace (and quite honestly often forgot about; she’d never had reason to go to the Moon Palace until now).

She had no ideas on how to get past magical barriers of any kind, but at the very least she could be there to support anyone who tried.

“No luck yet, looks like,” she murmured to herself as she approached the small group that had gathered. Among them only two were familiar–Ephesus, who she offered a small smile in greeting, and the yellow senshi. Grieve, was it? Watching her ram herself into the barrier got a little giggle out of her; it was a similar intensity to her offer of training on how to kill, though definitely a lot more amusing.

Rather than join them straight away, Ekstrom stood a bit further off, wanting a broader view of the curtain they were all standing in front of to see if anything stuck out, listening to the exchange about the possibility of a device generating the shield. While it couldn’t hurt to look for something like that, for all they knew it could be as innocuous as an off-color portion of a wall or something.

And considering the size of this place?

The Knight worried her lip at the thought, but kept her doubts to herself. There were still other possibilities…

She paused her thoughts on what those other possibilities might be when a senshi walked right up to the barrier and just...cast his magic. It felt a bit like a of course, it's so obvious sort of moment–magic lock, magic key (assuming it was that simple, which she had a feeling it wasn't be but she could hope)–and Ekstrom held her breath and kept her eyes peeled for what, if anything, might happen to the barrier.

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The Space Caulldron

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Deep Space Super Sailor Madriu

Somehow, the Moon Palace looked exactly like Madriu had expected. Crumbling, ruined, and devoid of anything that seemed at all personal. Just being here had him more than a little on edge--as if the ghosts of that distant, dusty kingdom might rise to be offended by their breaking and entering situation.

Well. At least there was food.

The room they'd all started in seemed thoroughly covered, and really, Grieve being here and throwing her entire inimitable personality into trying to break the barrier by force sort of made Madriu feel like he might not, per se, be necessary here.

Still, there was food, so he stopped by the table, scooped up a sandwich, and decided to wander. There might be some more information somewhere else--or maybe he just wanted to get away from the noise and bustle. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, with a call being put out like this, but...well. Obviously he still wasn't ready for crowds.

He worked his way through his sandwich fairly quickly, the same way he often found himself wolfing down most food, and he was glad for it when he found a room that looked like a library. Carefully wiping his hands, he stepped inside, taking everything in curiously.

He scanned the library to see if anything stood out--not that he was necessarily expecting anything, but there was no point in not looking.