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To most people, there were few things more eerie than a children's playground on a windy midnight. The swings creaked in their metal hangings, long-dead and mushy leaves that had been buried all winter tumbled into the sandbox to leave blotches of pure darkness. The moon was full that night, adding a silvery edge to the almost vanilla-flavored light that shone down from lampposts and didn't quite illuminate all the corners of the jungle gym. It wasn't a place for nice young ladies, so it was probably fortunate that the Lady who had appeared from nowhere in the dark corner beneath the slide was not particularly nice.

Oh Black Lady was charming, and had an innocence to her that made you think that perhaps she wasn't as evil as you thought. But her eyes were, more often than not, hard and cold - or worse, utterly insane. The wrap that was customarily draped around her figure was lightly knotted as a secondary belt around her waist, and after looking in every direction, a wide and girlish smile broke over the lady's features. She'd beaten the cavalier to the park, which meant that at the moment, the upper hand was hers. That, and she had time to indulge herself in some swinging before he came. Which of the two was responsible for the larger portion of her mirth was mysterious and possibly unknown even to her.

Settling onto the plastic and rubber u-shape, long fingers wrapped around chain and Chibiusa started flying into the wind. Legs moved and pumped and when full swing had been achieved with minimal effort required to keep it up, something gold appeared in her fingers to glint off the light. It was the star Hector had given the lost princess the night before, when asking to meet him again. No doubt he was going to potentially bring his comrades and if she was lucky (or unlucky), Nehelenia herself. But there was the remote chance that the violet-eyed prince might come alone, and it was that chance that had her sitting and waiting it out.

Ray was lovely company, when he chose to be, but the girl still craved someone that she could speak to without having to watch every word. Some of the teenagers in Destiny City were lovely, but they understood nothing about what was going on under their very eyes. Mirrorslave or not, Hector knew, and he was more akin to her than either wanted to admit. Distracted, the swing slid slowly to a stop, and hair floated around her with inertia causing a rather lovely picture. Fingers lifted the star aloft to the light again and a wry smile touched her lips. "You are late, prince."

There was playing dirty, and then there was straight up hitting below the belt. Hector had metaphorically cut the legs straight out from under Chibiusa as he held the ice cream under her nose with a flourish. Light surprise at the cavalier's excellent timing in relation to her statement turned into total bliss and absolute shock at what had been pressed into her hands. It was glory, it was bliss, it was ice cream and it was all hers! Black Lady simply started at it for a moment, watching the colors running together, then over at Hector who was observing her while nibbling at his own. Eyes wide as saucers, the tip of her tongue touched her lips unconsciously and she took a massive bite of the fudge-coated strawberry cream, the cone and sprinkles crunching as she chewed.

Apparently, this Usagi was no less a discerning eater than the last! Black heels tapped against the playground in a happy little rhythm as she ate, only pausing to breathe. The strawberry was almost gone entirely before Chibiusa remembered her manners and her eyes went wide again as the swing rattled with her swift movement. "Oh! Sorry! Thank you!" Color lightly touched her cheekbones but was banished again as two more bites of shell and dairy consumed her attention again. It didn't take long, not more than a few minutes, before the legendary Tsukino appetite absolutely destroyed it. Surprisingly as well, was that there was very little mess. However, she had quite a bit of practice in balancing her eating speed with polite neatness and it had evolved into a high art.

"It is ok to be late when you bring a treat. But I will make you a good wife, it is worth it!" The lady sparkled jovially in his direction with this last statement, hoping dearly that it might catch him as off guard as he had caught her. After all, it wouldn't do to let Hector thing he had the upper hand!

Swinging lightly at his side, a perky smile stretched over her face, Chibiusa couldn't help but feel lighthearted. It was always nice to have the upper-hand, especially after a dirty, vile, amazing trick like bringing her ice cream. Black satin flared out behind her like the tail of a gothic peacock as the young woman swung back and forth while speaking. "Not all boys. You. Wiseman. No luck yet." Okay, so maybe she'd never quite proposed the idea of a real marriage to Wiseman, but her cover story as his girlfriend hadn't flown. In fact, it had fallen out of the nest to its squishy, baby bird death and before she knew it she was 'married' to Raymond Gordon's mysterious brother nobody had ever heard of before.

"I love ice cream. Ice cream, and cake, and pie, and cookies...many things. Sweet, spicy, the very best. Not both though! No sweet AND spicy." Though considering this, she relented a bit and slowed her momentum on the swing to look directly at the prince. "Fruity and spicy maybe? Maybe. Thai? What do you like, Hector?" Show and tell went more than one way, and she was still determined to get around his defensive walls and find out what this mirror prince really wanted.

There was one small thing that bamboozled her, however, and her brow furrowed into something that would one day leave ghastly wrinkles. "You are nice now but...that does not sound right. What is charming?" It came out, char-mink, like a tiny furred creature had been previously set on fire. "Is it a real prince? That is odd." There was not much Disney culture in the 30th century, and though Cinderella had been present, the princess had much preferred to hear about the sailor senshi and other topics than fairy tales about handsome princes. After all, her father was the most handsome prince, except for Helios. Who was now a handsome princess? Oh dear, it was all so complicated!

Sometimes it was very hard to be a nice, patient young lady. Sometimes it was incredibly hard to resist the urge to just start yelling at people in Japanese to see how well they understood her language and then they could muddle through conversation that way! What held her back was the fact that she had done it before and been reminded that not everyone was a teacher, not everyone could explain complicated ideas in a way that made sense. So she simply shunted that backwards into her mind and nodded along patiently as he explained Twinkies.

"They sound tasty! All cake is trash food. But it is good food so that is stupid. I eat lots. Oven pizzas, take out, Taco Bell, silly dinner boxes that you put in the oven. Timer goes off, dinner! I also make bento." Which, sadly, was the most nutritious either of the Gordon household members ate on any regular basis. Sure the Chinese was probably alright, it had no MSG, but it still wasn't fantastic. The argument that she was a growing girl, however, was null and void. She looked like an adult, and thus there was no one to object that she was receiving the worst nutrition America had to offer. Black Lady was thrilled. "I also go out when I want. I have money." So if perhaps her rabbit side came out, she could find a salad bar somewhere, or perhaps a place that used healthier ingredients than processed Stouffers.

Leading her into talking about food made Chibiusa forget entirely that she had asked him a question to begin with, a success chalked up on his side of the board in successfully diverting her. "Mama was not much for good food. She ate lots of cake. And takoyaki. I miss takoyaki, they do not make it here." A wistful sigh and a glance up to the moon gave her an almost ethereal look for a moment before she smiled again. "Maybe can go to Tokyo one day, I will show you." If they didn't kill each other first, that was always a real possibility. Really, beneath all her friendly and playful banter, the Lady of Darkness was wondering what was taking him so long. Was this mirror prince honestly interested in making friends with her? But she was White Moon! Certainly she was not about to change her mind about the Black Moon pretender.

"And you bring Twinkies? Takoyaki for Twinkie." Almost hesitantly, as an afterthought, Black Lady held out her pinkie for the promise that most silly Japanese girls like herself engaged in. It was nothing for her to teleport halfway across the world, but to do so by herself usually did not end well. She and Wiseman never talked about the one time she had tried it, and he had been forced to fetch her back from Juuban. But if she could take a friend, it might not be awful. Might. If he was a friend one day.

The mention of the last human Great War had eyes rolling almost exasperatedly. With forces like the Silver Crystal in the world, what was a nuclear weapon? Several nuclear weapons were a bit of a problem, but had never been one for the future princess. Somehow, at some point, they had all just vanished from the face of the earth entirely. Everything in Crystal Tokyo was fueled from alternate power sources that had nothing to do with radiation - except maybe that of the sun.

Standing from the swing, Black Lady started to walk on the wooden beam divider that separated the playground turf from the rest of the grass. It was a handy tool for parents of unruly children, telling them they couldn't go past the 'wooden line' under any circumstances and to yell if anyone tried to get them out. So of course, it became a game, to push your friends outside the wood so that their parents got aggravated. In her mind though, this was immaterial, it was just a physical representation of the lines she walked every day. Why couldn't she go home? Where was there to go? How much could she tell this Hector, how much was too much? It was always just on this side of too much, and sometimes it hurt even more to keep it all in.

"My home...gone. Mama, papa, senshi dead. Ojiichan and Obachan, they do not know me." It was easy to see in the light that her eyes were lightly glistening with tears, and her voice was quiet so that it didn't shake. "I do not know how I live. I am not born for nine hundred years yet. But Usachan and Mamochan are...gone." Looking down at her own hands, they closed into fists and were down at her side. "Where do I go, Hector? Japan, they just speak like me. But it hurts lots. Wiseman is here. He cares." Defensively her chin rose, almost daring the young man to say something against this, to dare and tell her that the wizard did not care for her. As much as himself? Never, and she knew it. But he cared for her, and that was caring enough.

Asking Hector what he was doing on her side of the mirror was futile. His prince was tied to Nehelenia and would do her bidding, just as her father had done whatever he could for her mother. So it was just the two of them, silence growing, the proud princess with tears in her eyes and the second prince with so many questions.

It was easy to hear, the rush of air past her ears when Black Lady had reached out towards another place to grab the cliff she was clinging to, but had grasped only air. It was a hollow sound, almost a ringing of deep bells inside your head, light when you smacked it hard against concrete. Of course he didn't understand, didn't consider that she was anything more than a Moon Princess and wanted some sort of salvation. How could you want to be anything more than a bastion of good, or whatever the hell they were supposed to be these days.

Her head shook, face cold and sad with her next words. "I know. But you do not get it." There it was again, the slang term that had made her smile before, but brought no such feelings now. "I will not live. I do not want to live. No one will live." The span between them was barely more than that of a single body, but it felt like a massive gulf filled with raging fire, lightning, and all sorts of nastiness that couldn't be spanned no matter how much you tried. She was getting the wounds to prove that it would be impossible to make anyone understand that without her family, without her friends, she had nothing left. "I do not know how to be not-Chibiusa. How to be B - how to be anyone else." One letter, an almost slip in an unguarded and anguished mental state that could have ruined everything. Thankfully, 'B' could have stood for a lot of things.

"You live for your prince. What if your prince dies? You are prince? No." Her eyes were so old, for such a young voice, so knowing. The Princess of Crystal Tokyo had stared death in the face several times, his own queen the source of one of them. Once, she had been death. Now, she might be it again. There was no room to be fresh and innocent with what she knew, what she had experienced.

Sighing, the black and burgundy-clothed frame dropped again to her swing and took up the light pendulum motion that was comforting to her. "Does not matter. It's okay, Hector." Defeat was not something she was comfortable with, even now when her heart and mind had broken time and again with this new world and new life. Maybe they could drain the gulf slowly, and one day he would see what she knew. Until then, they just wouldn't talk about it, hopefully.

To a normal person, all the shifting in mood and personality between the two supernatural beings would have been aggravating and certainly confusing as hell. For Black Lady, she'd come to terms a long time ago with the fact that she sometimes would not be the same person from one minute to the next, and sometimes had two opinions on the same idea in the same five minutes. This was convenient when dealing with her comrade-in-arms, Wiseman, because he was perhaps even more mysterious and vague than she was at times - Chibiusa had never gotten the same answer out of him twice with her forays into 20 Questions.

So she simply accepted Hector's pushing of the swing with a lopsided smile and thought back to the 1980s, when she'd been the Rabbit on the run from Dimande and his family, the clan she was once again a part of. Fingers reached up to lightly touch her blackened crescent and she spoke over her shoulder at the mirror prince. "No, mama and papa had just me. Moon Princesses only have one, always a girl. But I do not look like them, so no one thought I was a princess. I was...clumsy? Silly and did not see why mama and papa were always busy, I thought they did not think I was their princess too. Mama has blond hair, blue eyes. Papa is black hair and blue eyes. I am pink and red! Very odd." With her slightly improving English she went on to tell him about the attack on Crystal Tokyo by the Black Moon Clan, how her foolishness in leaving the palace resulted in her mother's protective slumber.

It was easier to speak of now, almost ten years later, when her mistakes were evident and easy to gloss. "I did not mean to take the crystal. It just...poof." Fingers snapped to demonstrate. "I had to find Sailor Moon. Papa told stories, I knew she can help! So I asked Puu, she said yes, helped me." Chibiusa grinned widely now, remembering. "I fell out of the sky, in Mamo-chan's lap. Usagi got so mad, it was very funny! But I was scared, so I was mean. We did not like each other for a very, very long time." A long time indeed, not until after she had found out the clumsy crybaby Usagi was her beloved Sailor Moon, begging her for help. But then, she had been so bereaved by the idea that her mother still would not wake up, that she had run away and fallen into Wiseman's trap. All the same though, he had always known how it felt for her. He still understood.

That part of her history was glossed over and she jumped straight forward into the future. "Then I was Chibimoon. Came back, fought. Death Busters...Nehelenia." Her voice was sly upon reaching the name of Hector's sworn queen, but she spared him all the nasty details. That was simply rude, and she had better manners than that. "I went home after that, there was peace. Or at least, mama did not remember me after that, so she thought it would be ok. I went home, everyone cheered. Welcome home, Small Lady! I was a princess then. Mama taught me how to be a lady. But then...." Fingers went up again to touch the black crescent, and she said no more, simply kicked out her legs and made the swing go a tad higher than it had previously. Her entire history had been generally stretched out in front of Hector, it was up to him what he did with the information. Certainly, it wasn't anything important in the grand scheme of How To Get at Black Lady.

It always felt better to tell her story, a purge of emotion and feeling and a history that really did mean nothing to anyone but her and those tied up in it. Certainly she would stop at nothing to remove Nehelenia again from her world, if only she could find the woman. Of course Wiseman had been interested in what had happened to her after that first time, but she suspected it wasn't entirely genuine. Again, unimportant. It was the purge that was important, the removing of complicated feelings and turbulence that could upset all of their plans.

It occurred to the princess, leaning back against the slide so that her body stretched out beneath the starry sky of Destiny City, that she had been implicitly trusting again. At any point Hector could've taken out his sword and simply held it for her downswing, impaling her on its shining length. But he hadn't, wasn't that strange? His elder brother might have done it, but he cared a bit more for the mirror's queen than Hector seemed to, it would have been nothing more than removing an obstacle in Nehelenia's way.

Stretching her arms above her head, Chibiusa laced her fingers and peered up through them to make shapes in the darkness, symbols that made sense to only her before lowering them again. "I do not know. I am not used to being Black Lady...being this." A hand hand waved up and down her body, a smile and self-deprecating laugh in her voice. Of course she had a plan, but trust was not so solid yet that she would simply share it. "I do small things for Wiseman. It is fine for now. One day I will do what I want." Helios had awakened in her the desire to know who else it was that was aware of her presence here. Someone was awakening senshi, and that usually meant a cat. Luna? Artemis? Were there other cats than those two? The origins of the black and white pair were always a mystery, something not even Diana had been able to tell her.

Her arrangement with the new queen of the Negaverse had come at a fairly hefty price, but it would enable her to find those senshi the officers of the Negaverse avoided on principle and test them. Maybe there was someone here that they were protecting, and she would find them. What then? Even she was unsure. Curious, her own voice sounded and was muffled lightly by plastic. "If you got her crystal, do you mirrors go home?"