Except for the rats the rubble pile that had once been a department store had been undisturbed for years. Everything of value had been looted shortly after the quake and the site had been judged unprofitable and never redeveloped. Once this had been a fashionable neighborhood now it was just another slum. There were no shortage of those in tinsel city.

So the rats were the only ones to here the whining hum and see the glowing blue hole rip itself in the air. They fled from the commotion and the unmistakeable odour of cat.

There were no sentient witnesses to see the two objects emerge from the gateway. The giant crystal struck the ground and bounced. The figure who'd clung to it was shaken off and hit the ground hard. While her silhouette resembled a woman's a closer look would have revealed surprising differences. A chill October breeze ruffled her fur but didn't awaken her.

The crystal came to rest and the hole in reality disappeared. Silence returned to the lot for a few minutes. Then there came the sound like ice cracking underfoot. A spiderweb of cracks appeared on the surface of the crystal, growing rapidly in size and length.

There was a shattering noise and an arm tore out of the crystal into the empty air. More breaking sounds followed then the figure who'd been sealed in the crystal sat up throwing fragments everywhere.

Jadeite ripped free and fell beside the crystal. He rolled into a fetal position and shivered for several minutes. At length he unwound and tentatively looked around. It had been horrible, frozen in place, nothing to feel except the crystal against your skin, not able to scream not even able to breathe! Yet somehow alive, aware and capable of seeing anything before you. He'd longed for death to end his torment. Yet now, impossibly, he was free.

Or was he? Perhaps his mind had finally collapsed into madness as an alternative to his living hell. Well if he was mad it was a fine madness. Anything was preferable to enduring another minute in the crystal.

Where was he? He sensed a youma aura nearby and saw the unconscious catwoman. She looked familiar. Ah yes one of his low echelon agents, Mangrove or something like that. Had she rescued him and brought him here? But where was here? It didn't feel like the human world he'd visited or even the one he remembered from his youth. Yet it clearly wasn't the Dark Kingdom.

Perhaps he could find out. After all he was one of the four and commanded considerable power. Jadeite reached out with his mind, his awareness rippling out over the city. He touched the nonhuman minds of what appeared to be slaves, slaves that dreamed of bringing the whole city down in fire and blood. The darkened minds of humans their dreams crushed down by the monolith that ruled their lives. Here and there a few points of light but they were the exception.

Towering above it all, spreading its poison to the city and beyond was the GENOM tower. A dark cancerous blot squatting in the heart of MegaTokyo. All this Jadeite felt as he read the soul of the city.

He opened his eyes and smiled. "My kind of town!"