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Elizabeth's Secret was not a very secretive establishment. Elizabeth's real secret, Corinna decided, was that they didn't really sell lingerie that was any different from anyone else's, they just called it a specialty store and didn't sell anything else -- and somehow that bit of marketing genius made people flock to have it. Then again, Corinna had a boyfriend she was overwhelmingly in love with, and she found that underwear variety was something that was personally important to her. She liked feeling pretty. She liked Dylan thinking she was pretty. It was a reasonable investment.

A giant lizard-beast was the last thing she had expected. There had been rumors of monsters in Destiny City, but they'd seemed exaggerated: no one ever seemed to get a good photograph of one, and Corinna herself had certainly never seen one. It was a reasonable doubt.

But in the rush of everyone else running out of the store, Corinna was able to run into an abandoned dressing room and find her compact. She was transformed a few seconds later, trying to remember the scant battle training she'd gotten over a lifetime ago. 'Stay where your soldiers can defend your position,' she remembered. That was unfortunately impossible: the place where her soldiers could defend her position was a world away.

Instead, Sailor Selene ran out after the monster, Crescent Wand in hand. The lizard, dangling bras and underwear like Christmas ornaments, spotted her movement. It lumbered towards her, eyes unfocused.

Another sailor soldier, one Selene didn't recognize, flew after the monster. She led with her elbow, crashing into the lizard's side -- it swung about, inadvertently smacking Selene into a rack of bathrobes with its tail. She grabbed onto the tail of the thing, wrapping her arms around it to try and slow it down.

It was hard to fault the women who were clamoring for their lives to get out of the store. They were only human, with whatever human resources were available to them: the strength of their arms, the speed of their feet. Some of them were only in their underwear, or in bras that still had the ink-tags on them. One brave, terrified young girl grabbed a tape dispenser off of the checkout counter and chucked it at the monster's head. She had impressive aim -- it was a direct hit.

In these distracting moments, Selene extracted herself from the lizard's tail and got back to her feet. The heel of her shoe briefly snagged around the wheel of a display rack, but soon after, she was standing again. Selene slid two fingers under the big, onyx diadem on her forehead, and it came free as though it had never really been attached. It spun over her hand, picking up speed till it was a blur, a dark, glittering blur.

It wasn't her strongest magic -- it wasn't very strong magic at all, barely a step above throwing a tape dispenser -- but her magic would've been dangerous while the lizard was being stabbed at with wild tree roots. Selene wasn't planning on ending up dead just to kill a lizard.

"Selene Tiara Action!" she called, casting the gray discus forward. It shot out of her hands, locking in on her target -- and when it struck, it managed to slice off one of the beast's stubby arms. There was a brief spray of thick, irridescent blood.

Selene had grabbed a long metal pole with a hook on the end, the kind that was used to reach clothes on the high overhead hangers. She had opted to ignore the 'EMPLOYEE USE ONLY' sign next to it, considering the current circumstances. At present, her plan appeared to consist of stabbing at the lizard with it (blunt metal pole versus tough, scaly lizard hide was not exactly a winning battle), and caning the lizard with it. The caning at least appeared to have some effect.

"Nothing I'd risk -- " she started to answer. In the middle of Sailor Selene's sentence, however, she was interrupted by the scale-model Godzilla reaching into a clump of people that hadn't managed to edge around it and get to an exit. Selene gasped.

It was an older woman, and she screamed as she was lifted into the air by the creature's one remaining arm. Struggling for her life, the woman managed to extend one arm into the monster's face -- and there, fairly impressively, she unloaded a can of pepper spray into one of its big, shiny red eyes.

The monster recoiled -- but instead of letting the woman go, it clenched its grip tight, crushing at her waist and rib cage. She let out a horrifying scream, which gurgled into sputters as her ability to draw oxygen was abruptly cut off.

Sailors Izar and Selene were circling the lizard as best they could, smacking at it with their makeshift polearms (Izar's, in particular, was leaving some interesting marks, and getting some tail-thrashing reactions). But Selene stepped back when she was facing the front of the lizard again, and held her Crescent Wand out before her.

She'd never used her main attack on a mindless sort of beast before -- there was no gaurantee that it would work at all. But now it seemed she had to at least try it; the monster wasn't letting the woman go --

"Blue Moon Reflection!" Selene called out, swinging the Crescent Wand in a carefully-cut circumference around herself. A mirror appeared before her that was carved within itself with circles, mirrors within mirrors -- creating a crater landscape. A moon, a giant mirror moon.

The monster stared into it, entranced -- but the only thing reflected in the mirror was Sailor Selene herself, as though it were a window where she stood and a mirror everywhere else. As though nothing in the world existed except Selene, and then -- soon -- it didn't. The lizard's eyes went blank, then took on a golden glow at the center, an echo of Selene's own. It fell very still. Now, now she had it.

She held out a hand, palm open in a halting gesture. "Let the woman go," she commanded, trying to keep her voice level and steady.

Slowly, looking more confused about the order than anything else, the creature set the woman down on the ground --

-- but it quirked its head, looking baffled, distracted -- snarled, once -- and grabbed the woman back up again. The bright glow had left its eyes. Selene might've known she wouldn't be able to reflect herself onto something with the attention span of a goldfish trying to remember more than three seconds in the past. There went that effort . . . and now their options were becoming very few.

"Your last chance, Izar," she warned cryptically. "Make it count."

Sailor Selene didn't do anything right away, so -- already executing her plan -- Sailor Izar went left, planning on dealing what would probably be a pretty agonizing blow to the wounded monster. Selene was, certainly, surprised by the matter-of-fact ruthlessness of this plan -- but moreso than that, she was impressed by it. It showed daring, and a willingness to get her hands dirty in doing what had to be done. This girl, Sailor Izar, was athletic, capable, and quick on her feet. And, more the luck, she had experience as a sailor soldier. Sailor Selene herself, admittedly, couldn't say she had experience as a sailor soldier, just that she was one. She had reigned in peacetime . . .

. . . but that was long ago, now. And there was a task at hand.

Sailor Izar's plan likely would've succeeded in freeing the woman, she realized. But killing the monster for good was another story. For that, they needed more than Izar's roots or Selene's tiara.

Izar had given her permission to try something else. Technically.

And Selene didn't need permission; it was her right to name her court. The White Moon Court had stolen the Marcasite Crystal -- it was Nehelenia's right to marshal her soldiers to reclaim it. The White Moon Court could certainly supply some of them.

Sailor Izar didn't notice the mirror that took shape behind her, nor the woman standing in it, staring at her. She was focused on her task, arms upraised to deliver a crushing blow with the hat rack into the creature's wounded weak arm.

A pair of hands came out of the mirror behind Izar, grabbed her and began tearing her in.

She didn't know what was happening -- her instinct was to struggle, to fight for her life. She did. Kicking, shoving, Izar struggled to get away. She yelled "No!" through gritted teeth as she was dragged into the shimmering silver pool of the mirror.

Then she was gone. Time seemed, momentarily, very slow.

Most of the people in the store had managed their escapes by now. Selene took a breath, quiet and deep, then let it out again. She waited expectantly -- all the while, the image of Sailor Izar clawing at the hands that held her was playing through her mind. She felt sorry -- not for what she had done, because nothing about it had been unjust -- but sorry, all the same, that things had to be this way. The waiting, and the sound of Izar's screaming that echoed in Selene's head, seemed to last forever.

In reality, only one or two long seconds had passed: then, the same girl who'd been forced into the mirror came freely back out of it. It was as though her colors had shifted, that was all -- the white and apple-green of her uniform had given way to deep charcoal and terra cotta. Her eyes had deepened to violet. She was the same person as before -- but she was also a different person entirely.

"Sailor Gaia," Selene said. "Quickly."

"I thought it was cute," Selene shrugged, looking and feeling a bit more tired than usual. "And look how tall you are -- you'll look great in swimsuits."

She paced a bit, stepping over towards the older woman that the creature had been suffocating -- but a pair of other brave shoppers who had toughed it out during the attack had already gotten there. One was trying to talk to the woman, while the other called for an ambulance on her cell phone. The police, of course, would likely already be on their way, given all this commotion -- but it was a good idea to alert them that there were injuries, even so. Selene came back to where Gaia was standing.

She stood there, for a while, mutely staring at her sailor soldier of clay -- then leaned forward, staggered, almost toppled, until she had her arms wrapped around Gaia and her forehead pressed against the taller girl's clavicle.

Selene didn't cry, or faint -- nothing like that. She simply stood there, reeling a bit, shivering intermittently. She'd never fought a giant lizard before. "I'll be fine in a moment," she said dully, "so let's not have a scene."

"What for?" Selene was saying, as she powered back down. "You just need to carry a mirror -- "

Then she looked up, and abruptly stopped short. Corinna stared at her for a while, stared at the deep pink eyes of a girl who went to her own school, a girl who drove a van that should've been euthanized a decade ago. "You drove me home?" she said, though this shouldn't really have been a question. "Madison Heller?"

She hadn't expected Madison Heller. She wasn't sure what to make of Madison Heller, wouldn't have spent a second thought on her as a candidate, wouldn't have dreamed of investing her with cosmic responsibility, of all things.

But the universe already had, it seemed -- and Sailor Izar appeared to have been acquitting herself quite well. So, apparently, the truth was that Corinna simply didn't know the first thing about who Madison Heller actually was. She fidgeted, suddenly red-faced and uncertain.

Corinna reshuffled her purse a bit, and they both headed toward the rear fire exit that led out of the store, away from the police sirens wailing out front. The exit stood ajar -- or, rather, more accurately, a clothing rack had gotten knocked partway out the doorway so that it now kept the door from closing. Overhead, the fire alarm light (for the deaf and hard of hearing) was flashing in its slow white strobe, but there was no accompanying sound: it was broken or had never worked.

They ducked beneath the rack and out the opening it was creating -- Cora's shoe got a bit snagged at one point, but she dislodged it without much effort. "Gaia can tell you what you what you need to know," she was saying to Madison, "and anything else that's been going on since -- since Alex and I left you, we can discuss over coffee. Maybe . . . maybe we can sit in your van?" Clearly this was some kind of large step for Corinna, actively volunteering to get back in the lovingly-named rapemobile with Madison. Her olive branch.

Well, it was a start. In the end, the friendly alliance of Corinna Grant and Madison Heller had begun in the front seat of Maddy's car.

There were worse beginnings.