Usagi, Ami, Rei, Minako. Should the four warriors now see their comrade as an enemy? Surely not, but they would have henceforth to defend against her, until one of them find a solution. And it didn't seem close to happen. Ami had reviewed the whole Moon archives, Rei had contacted about fifty ancestor's soul, Minako had contacted each and every clairvoyant and other charlatans of Tokyo and its suburbs and Usagi… felt useless, unable to find where to investigate.
Faced to their powerlessness in front of this problem, they concentrated on the entity, whose case could be fixed. Sitting around the sacred fire, they observed as Rei summoned. After a short wait, the vague silhouette of a dragon appeared within the flames. Ami brandished her computer and took readings. "It is it, Rei said with effort, the dragon, it's our entity. Ami, take your readings faster, it's not letting itself be watched easily, it's hurting me."
Ami soon told her she had everything she needed and Rei let the image dissolve with obvious relief. A sudden draft stretched the flames with great noise and blew it.
"The fire is out, is it normal? Usagi asked.
- No, Rei said with a tired tone while wiping the sweat from her forehead, and I'd add it's a bad sign.
- WHAT?
- According to the belief, it's a very bad omen, but it might just be the entity who has something to hide, I think it's powerful enough to do this.
- Why?
- Come on, so I stop looking at it! But at its level of consciousness, it shouldn't know enough about good and evil to want to hide something. It's on the defensive.
- It can possess Makoto…
- We're not sure it's possessing her!
- It killed her, just for that I bet! Why would she have turned on us otherwise?
- Because you're making her suffer! Because of you, she's trapped in a body that's been dead for almost three weeks! She has an unbearable look and smell and it's not going to improve. She knows and it hurts her, no one would want to be in her place. Usagi, there is no cure for death, it's wrong to hold on to her, there will be no more solution tomorrow. Let her go, you'll meet her again someday anyway. We reincarnated more than once, didn't we? It's not more tragic this time than the others. Stop hurting her!
- Rei, I think it's very vicious from you to want her death.
– Well. If you're going to be like that I'm not helping you. Handle this yourself!"
On this she got up and walked out angrily, banging her heels on the floor. For a while only the clicking of Ami's computer keys could be heard, then Yuuchirou timidly entered the room. "Heu… Sorry… Rei says if you don't leave immediately, she'll chain you naked to a tree and let the grandfather loose…" They looked at each others, then accepted to leave, this reunion was a fiasco anyway.

Jupiter was thinking, laying on her bed, when a strange flowing feeling surprised her. The effort broke something inside her and she quickly hopped to the bathroom not to spill anything on the floor. She pushed as to defecate, the same way she had earlier evacuated her intestines, but only a weak flow ran, her effort only caused some air to come out of her wound. She waited for gravity to take care of it, leaning on the back of the seat and resting her head on the wall not to have to make any effort, while she thought of what to do.
When she was done, she washed herself again, flushed the toilet on an hideous mix of entrails and worms and decided it was more than time to attack. She would do anything to part from this body, if only Usagi could understand… but she was too selfish to even try! If she had been sure to succeed, she would have committed suicide, but she knew it would do her no good but to lose more limbs and becoming more helpless. Would Usagi force her to live until she's no more than a handful of dust? And then, no doubt she would choose to keep her in a little pot, why not with a nice little flower in it so she would still live to her eyes, and she would never let her rest!
She could already barely talk and couldn't see but through her dragon's eyes. Her voice was but a whisper, it seemed it was her chest who just emptied itself, more air came out through her wound and other punctures than her throat. She had only one leg and one of her arms was useless. All soft organs had liquefied and flowed out of her body, she weighted at most twenty kilograms.
Would she be allowed to die or not, she had to get rid of this body. It was so to say empty, what if she swallowed a little ten litres of gasoline before going to "admit her mistake" before Sailor Moon? Great idea!

While elsewhere in the city a lucky journalist covered the most incredible theft in a gas station, Usagi was walking home, still in company of her two allies for what little road they had to do together. They didn't speak much these days, so Minako had all the attention she could have wished for when she pointed an object farther ahead. "Oh! What it is, a banner?"
They followed her gaze. Near the horizon, against the sky, a thin ribbon was moving, precisely like a banner floating in the wind. However, its movement took it far enough from the ground so they saw it wasn't attached to it. This thing flew by itself, and few things to their knowledge did this.
" No… Minako corrected, isn't it the dragon?
- I sure hope not! Usagi exclaimed. But it looks like it, though at this distance it could be anything, a flying snake, or a worm, a big one, I mean…
- Usagi, when you'll be done saying stupid things, do you promise you'll inform me?
- Stupid yourself! Should we transform?
- Absolutely. Ami?"
The third warrior nodded and put away the computer that had kept her busy. They transformed and finished just in time for the arrival of the object they had seen, who really was what they had thought it was. Jupiter jumped down with relative ease considering she was missing a leg. She walked toward them, helped by a stick she had brought, in a very approximate direction.
"Usagi? she called without anger though it was hard to tell with her blurred speech, Usagi, you are right! I want you to help me, I trust you!
- Mako! Moon took a delighted tone as she received her surrender. Finally, everything will be fine.
- Ah! So that's where you are… can I hold your hand? I can't see you.
- Okay. You know, I don't know yet how to do, but it won't be long.
- You'll find, I trust you."
Moon had walked toward her friend and leaned her hand to take hers when a push on her arm from Mercury prevented her. The girl put her finger on her lips to order her to silence, and offered her own hand to Jupiter. If she was really blind, which made no doubt, she would know nothing of the substitution as soon as Moon would talk from a realistically close location.
"I've searched too, Usagi, I have a solution. Two, in fact. Two options.
- What?
- Either you immediately cease to keep me alive, that's the best thing to do, and you never do something this stupid again…
- Mako! What are you saying?
- Wait, it's still not the best, do you want to know?"
She had tightened her grip and Mercury struggled to free her painful wrist, without too mush insistence not to raise suspicion. She then noticed the large adhesive wrapping her body. She had thought it was meant to hide it, or retain some part that would have left the whole, but her movement had parted two strip. A clear liquid was seeping out. The rather unsubtle smell was almost covered by the one from putrefaction, but the ethereal scent was perceivable. "Usagi! Run! She's covered with gas!
- No my dear! Jupiter whispered into her ear, not knowing she was holding Mercury. It's the other solution, you die and I finally have peace!"
Perfectly synchronised with her words, the quietly resting dragon turned the head, its nostrils already smoking with the fire it prepared. Sailor Moon screamed: "No! It's Ami you're holding! I'm here!"
Surprised, Jupiter pulled her prisoner to herself and caught her head between her arms. Effectively, she didn't have Usagi's hair. She pushed her away and hopped gracelessly toward the voice that had just warned her. However the flow of flames she hadn't thought of stopping hit her before she got there. She jumped a few more steps, unconcerned about the burning fuel on her skin, then she was disoriented by a spinning sensation and she was soon laying on her back, unable to get up and still on fire.
To witnesses, the incident that had stopped her was much more clear and horrible. The fire was temporarily blown out, allowing a brief view of the torso inflating enough to tear the adhesive allowing it to retain the liquid, then bursting itself longitudinally, exploding like a tree trunk being hit by a lightning, before being swallowed by a ball of burning vapours.
Torn into pieces, the body flew in three main parts and thousands smaller ones. The leg and hips immediately met the ground, the left shoulder, complete with a part of the torso and the arm fled laterally and ended their race against a wall, the head and other shoulder, without the matching arm, flew up with a quick rotating motion.
Mercury had received some gas but little enough to put it out herself, then she used her power to put out Jupiter and anything what happened to be too close. Moon knelt in front of the carbonised part that included the head.
The explosion did nothing to embellish her, on one side her teeth showed, the cheek torn off, and all the skin was blackened and burned. An empty eye-socket gaped, the other still bordered with loose eyelids contained a dried and shrunken eye. The hair had burned and part of the scalp hung from the skull, one torn ear attached to its end.
This head was attached by a surprisingly intact neck to a clavicle and a few ribs, a short chaplet of vertebra remaining of her back. Shreds of flesh reminded of the location of muscles and organs.
"Oh, Makoto… Moon whined, I'm sorry. It's better like that. Better for you."

Chapter 14