"Where are we?"

Zoe opened his eyes, and then wondered whether he'd opened them at all. He was enveloped in a pitch black darkness.

"I have no idea," he heard Jade reply, somewhere to his right. He put out a hand and smacked into something soft.

"That was my eye, which ever of you asses just put his finger in it - "

"Sorry," Zoe responded, automatically, then:

"Wait a minute - we're alive!"

In the darkness, someone clapped.

Zoe guessed that it was Jade, and he was, of course, correct.

"The question of us living was never the issue," Jade pronounced, his voice floating eeriely toward Zoe, "It's rather a question of when we are living."

"When?"

"For a science major, you are exceptionally dim."

"I'm not a science major, I'm an archite-"

"I don't know how Ami-san puts up with you," Jade continued. He intended to lighten the mood with this banter, but the mention of Ami reduced Zoe to a state close to depression.

"When are we, then, and how do we get back, that's what I want to know," Nolan commented, gruffly.

"We don't," came a deep voice from behind them.

"Well, don't be so optimistic," Jade began, but Kon cut him off.

"Someone's coming," he whispered. They all remained as still as possible in the silent darkness. About thirty feet away from them, a faint light began to glow close to the ground until it lit up the outline of a door, which, on being opened, showed their startled eyes the shadows of four men. In a few seconds of safety, the shitennou plastered themselves against the cold rock wall of the semi-cave structure and waited for their eyes to adjust. The shadows of the cavern-like room, due to the relatively little light produced by the new commers, threw useful shadows over them as they watched from the darkness.

Zoe was the first to figure it out.

"Oh, my god," he whispered, "That's -"

Konnor put a firm hand on his mouth. All of them stared in near disbelief at their dopplegangers.

As though they were watching a film or a magic mirror, the men stared at their former selves as the past shitennou gathered together around what appeared to be a small, thin stalagmite that opened up at the top in a dish-like manner.

Jadeite was the first to reach the rock fountain; he waved a gloved hand over its surface and it immediately shimmered with light.

The other shitennou approached closer and bent over the basin to peer inside.

"So this is the human we are to capture?" Nephrite asked.

Zoisite twirled a loose lock of hair around one finger and gave a short laugh.

"He doesn't look like he'll be much of a fight. What does the Queen want with him?"

"Who knows," Jadeite muttered.

Kunzite merely grunted and turned away from the basin, heading for the door without glancing back at his companions.

Once he'd left, the others turned to look at each other.

"There's something wrong," Nephrite said, at last, "You can feel it, can't you?"

Jadeite shot him a sly glance.

"Perhaps," he admitted, "Though our leader's behavior is nothing out of the ordinary, if that's what you're suggesting."

"Maybe he's just jealous," Zoisite countered, innocence written on his countenance when Nephrite turned to glare at him.

"At least I'm not a fluttering fop," the larger man growled, "Neither of you failures is going to succeed. Mark my words."

He turned on his heel to stride out of the room.

"Consider them marked!" Zoisite called, cheerfully. The door slammed with some force.

Zoisite chuckled to himself, but there was a distinct glint of worry in his eyes.

Jadeite caught it, of course; he missed nothing.

"Not so confident as you'd have us all believe, are you, Zoisite?"

Zoisite's lips tightened into a smile.

"Oh, there's plenty of time to play."

He made a mock bow to Jadeite and disappeared - teleported - with only a small displacement of air to indicate his exit.

Jadeite gripped the sides of the bowl with both hands and gazed into it; the light cast up from it made strange shadows on his face.

"Show her," he whispered, and the mirror surface rippled. Apparently whatever he saw startled him. He gathered his cloak around him and exited with short, hurried steps, leaving the mirror still rippling with light upon the last image.

As the door closed, Jade eased himself from the wall, disregarding Konnor's muffled grunt of disapproval. He crept across the space to the fountain and gingerly leaned over it without touching it. His eyes widened and then, just as quickly, faded to an expression of bafflement and distrust.

"What was he looking at?" Zoe whispered, edging close to the fountain to peer in.

In the glassy surface of the clear, illuminated water of the basin, was a picture (almost like a digital transmission) of a girl lying unconscious, but stirring now. She was in cave-like room.

"That's Rei," he gasped.

Konnor and Nolan peered over his shoulders to see her.

"I don't understand."

Konnor stared in a state of some abstraction. Suddenly his brow cleared.

"We're in the past," he pronounced.

Jade gave an exasperated sigh.

"I think we've established that -"

"This, more specifically, is not our past," Konnor continued. He let his gaze travel to each of the men in turn. Jade's eyes lit up.

"Of course!" he smacked a hand to his head, "Of course."

"Would one of you two geniuses mind explaining it to us normal folk?" Nolan requested, politely.

Jade grabbed his friend by the shoulders, his face flushed with excitement.

"Don't you see, Noles? The Phantom Queen ordered Pluto to return us to our own time. To our original times before the crystal allegedly pulled us back into life."

"Yes, so?"

"So, so, my friend, if that were true - if this is our original time - if the crystal somehow wrenched us out of this time and hurled us into the future, then those guys shouldn't exist."

"The past us shouldn't exist?" Nolan repeated.

"We are the past us, or, at least, we should be. If that were true."

"Wait, what?" Zoe asked.

Jade gave a short sigh and ran a hand through his hair.

"Listen. Pluto's theory for our existence is that the silver crystal pulled us out of our own times, somehow freed us from Beryl's control, and gave us knew lives. But if that were true then these shitennou we just saw shouldn't exist. We should be in their places. We shouldn't even be having this conversation."

"Ok."

"That's why we had no memories of this time?" Zoe put in, "That's why I remember the silver millennium and the golden age, but not this?"

"Exactly," Konnor answered.

"We really were meant to be there," Nolan breathed, his eyes widening.

Zoe frowned.

"But then, why did Pluto send us back here?"

"This is where she thought we belonged. This is the only place she knew to send us."

"But we aren't supposed to be here."

"Right." Jade nodded.

"But then," Zoe went on, "Who exactly are these shitennou we just saw?"

Jade opened his mouth, looked at Konnor, who gave a half shrug, and shut his mouth.

"I think I understand it," Nolan said, startling them.

In his slow, methodical way, he began to explain:

"Remember what Hino-san told us about soulmates?"

Jade got a skeptical look on his face, but Konnor and Zoe continued to listen.

"Let's say, for the sake of argument, that somehow the highly unlikely thing occurred. That we and our soulmates, though killed during the time of the silver millennium, somehow were reborn thousands of years later. The senshi awakened to themselves long before we did, and they fought. But for some reason, we couldn't awaken. And though we've lived normal lives, there was always a part of us that was...missing."

"Our shitennou selves?" Konnor asked, "The god-self."

"Yes, I think so," Nolan nodded, "I think that whatever Beryl and Metallia did to us at our deaths caused our guardian selves to split from our souls. It is those guardian selves that she's enslaved - the embodiment of our powers and personalities as Endymion's eternally chosen guard -"

"Chosen by the Earth herself," Zoe murmured, "Forever bound by Elysion's vows."

Even Jade was paying attention now.

"Those selves are the men we saw. They're nothing more than phantoms or wraiths - the embodiment of our chained spirits - perhaps they even share some memories of their past lives when those lives were ours."

"It's so weird, what you're describing," Zoe commented, "It's like having a split personality."

"Venus, Mina," Jade corrected himself, "Told me something like this once. She said that after she remembered her past life and gained her powers, she often felt as if she were two different people occupying the same body. There was always Mina, but there was also Venus - and Venus wasn't entirely human, but something more ancient than that."

They were silent for a moment, each lost in his own thoughts. The light from the basin ebbed slowly out, until it was only the dullest of glows.

"But the question that no one's really answered," Zoe said, "Is how do we get back?"

The men looked at each other, and then turned as one to view the door, carved in solid stone - the only escape from the room. Slowly, the light winked out.