Cela Lelti approached the the temple, and was glad to see Vedek Efesa was there. He had watched over her ever since she came to the station, and was now the head of the temple. As she approached, he reached out and pinched her ear. "Your pagh is stagnated, child."
"Yes," Lelti replied. "I've done everything. There has to be something to add, but I just can't figure out what it is."
"You told me you wished to consult the Orb."
"Yes. I can't see where the path the Prophets laid out for me goes next. I need to ask them."
"Very well." He led her into the temple. They walked in silence into the room where the Orb of Prophecy and Change was kept. Taking the case down from the shelf, he placed it in frontof Lelti. With a "When you're ready," he exited.
Lelti stared at the casing. This was it. She was finally going to view the Orb. Carefully, she opened the case.
For a moment the Orb stood before her in all its brilliance...
Then she stood in the caves where she had spent six years of her life, where her foster mother had lived, and had raised her to be a cirenser. Four girls stood before her. One was in her adolescence, one was a little younger, the third was a juvenile, and the fourth was a toddler. The first was wearing a strange tight-fitting dress, aband around her head with a wormhole above it, and high boots. The second was dressed in the robes of a Kai. The third wore a cirenser's apron. And the last carried a scroll.
Suddenly First Minister Shakaar Edon stood behind them. He walked around them, and pulled out a Starfleet communicator, and placed it on her stomach. He spoke. "Overcome your fear. Find them."
And Lelti stood in the empty room with the Orb again. Slowly, she closed the case.
Vedek Efesa came back in. "Did you get your answer?"
"Yes," replied Lelti. "I did." She knew now what she needed to do. She needed to go back down to Bajor.
Later, in Ops...
"Captain," announced Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax, "I'm picking up an increased level of neutrino levels from the wormhole. Something's coming through." A second later she added, "Two things. Two very small things...I'm picking up two lifesigns."
"Lifesigns?" demanded Captain Sisko. "What species? Can you tell?"
"I think they're human, they're tumbling out of the wormhole. They're also unprotected."
The wormhole flared open, and a speck tumbled out. "Maximum magnification." ordered Sisko.
Immediately an image appeared onscreen. Two teenage girls, both dressed in strange tight-fitting dresses, were floating in space from where they had just emerged from the wormhole. One had passed out. The looked back at the wormhole, gazed at the screen, and made a feeble movement towards it before she too was out.
"Beam them directly to the Infirmary," ordered Sisko. "I'm going down there to greet them." He hurried into the turbolift.
When he got to the Infirmary he saw Doctor Bashir and Nurse Micet attending to the girls. "How are they?"
"One has to go in for minor surgery but they'll both live. They have an amazing amount of relisience."
"Can I speak with them?"
"Certainly. Wake them up." Kolana obeyed.
"Who are you?" Sisko asked the first girl.
The girl attempted to stand up, and was stopped by the restraints on the biobed. "I am the agent of Love and Intelligence,pretty soldier Sailor Mercury and-"
"-Sailor Mars!" finished the second girl, also trying to get up.
"Stay down," Bashir told them. "You're both suffering from internal bleeding."
"What are you doing here?" asked Sisko.
"We don't know," replied Sailor Mars. "There was a flash of light, and we fell out of a strange hole and into open space. Then we woke up here. Where is here?"
"You're in the Infirmary on Deep Space 9 near Bajor."
"Bajor..." murmured Sailor Mars. "That name sounds vaguely familiar."
"I agree," added Sailor Mercury. "But another thing puzzles me. You are using very advanced technology. Almost as if you were from the future. Is this the 30th century?"
"No," replied Sisko. "This is the 24th. What century are you from?"
"The twentieth." replied Sailor Mercury.
"Don't tell them so much!" Sailor Mars told her."They might be enemies."
Just then a Bajoran woman limped into the Infirmary. Sisko recognized her as the Cela Lelti, one of the merchants from the Promenade. "Excuse me.I just got tripped by a rude-" then she stopped short and stared at the two girls.
"What's wrong with you?" demanded Sailor Mars, trying to stand up again.
"I just had an orb vision," murmured Lelti. "There was a girl in it your age. And the dress she was wearing...it was of different colors, and the skirt was different but it was the same dress."
"What did she look like?" asked Sailor Mercury.
"She was blonde. Her hair was very short, eyes were grey. On the tall side."
"I take you are doing something about that." remarked Sailor Mars.
"She is down on Bajor somewhere." said Lelti. "I intend to find her."
"We should go with you." said Sailor Mars.
A of couple days later...
It had not been that hard for Sailor Mars to slip into the temple undetected, or to learn what the Orb was. Having learned it had something to do with the beings that lived in the wormhole, which were called the Prophets, she had decided to see if she could contact these beings.
The case stood before her. Pulling out a key she had made earlier, she slid it in. Opening the case, she stared into the Orb.
Suddenly she found herself surrounded by her friends. At the head was Usagi, holding Chibiusa. Standing next to her was Ami.
"You are the Mars." said Usagi. These must be the Prophets, thought Sailor Mars, remembering that they would take the shape of people you knew to speak to you.
"You and the Mercury are the sparks." said the Chibiusa-Prophet.
"What are we sparking?" asked Sailor Mars.
"The Senshi of this universe." replied the Ami-Prophet.
"You will help them start." said the Minako-Prophet. Sailor Mars would have thought Duh at this point, but it didn't really seem appropriate.
"She will fight evil." said the Makoto-Prophet.
"Who's She?" asked Sailor Mars.
"She is the one," said the Usagi-Prophet, "known as Sailor Wormhole."
Then Sailor Mars was back in the temple.
Carefully, she closed and locked the case. Then she left.
Days later, on Bajor...
"The second she described is slender-looking, with long curly blond hair. The third is short, juvenile, and with blond hair tied back in a braid. The fourth was also blond, in infancy, and...well, very cute."
Lelti was speaking with an orphanage matron, who she had sought out with gut feeling. Sailors Mercury and Mars stood behind her.
As she described them, the matron looked more and more astonished. "Those descriptions match four girls we took in a few months ago. I'll take you to them."
Pretty soon the three of them found them standing in front of four sisters, Ival Terisne, Ival Genin, Ival Mara, and Ival Liset. The girls matched the ones Lelti saw in her vision exactly, and when Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars approached Terisne, they sensed a strange energy field about her. "I wish Luna was here," commented Mercury. "She'd sense it better."
Lelti meanwhile was introducing herself. "I'm Cela Lelti. These are Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars."
The girls were at first silent, and thier eyes were hostile. "They've been through a lot." said the matron. They treat everyone like this."
"Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars are strange names." commented Ival Mara, breaking the silence.
"Aren't Mercury and Mars planets in the Sol system?" inquired Ival Genin.
"Yes." said Lelti. "It's complicated." She hadn't quite gotten Sailors Mercury and Mars herself.
The matron led Lelti off a bit. "It's remarkable you got them to speak. Terisne," she explained, "is fourteen, and she's the only one who ever speaks to me. She's the head of the group, takes care of the other, hardly ever thinks of herself.
"Anything else I should know?"
"Well at twelve, Genin has the strongest pagh anyone's ever seen. Mara here is pretty unremarkable, but she's only six. Liset is three, and as you described, she's cute. If she were here on her own, she would have surely been adopted, but the four girls refuse to be separated, and not many people have been willing to adopt them as a group."
"I'm willing," said Lelti.
"So quickly?" asked the worker. "You don't know what you're getting into, Miss Cela. You saw how they reacted. There have been some people who have tried to adopt, but the girls always discuss it, and if one of them rejects someone, they all do. I'd advise you to visit a few more times, and make sure."
"Okay," said Lelti, but deep down, she knew it wouldn't make a smidgen of difference. Even if it hadn't been for her Orb vision, she had fallen in love with all four girls, especially Mara. She was the perfect age to start training as a cirenser.
Sailors Mercury and Mars had been listening to this conversation. Then they went up to Terisne. "What do you want?" inquired the other girl.
"We fight evil." explained Sailor Mars. "We think you will fight evil as well."
The next evening...
Lelti usually didn't bother with her appearance. But that night she was making an exception. Having found the girls, she was now preparing to address the other half of the Orb vision.
The story of her and Shakaar Edon was interesting to say the least, between a changeling impersonator, a long correspondance, a Dabo showdown, and the constant interfering of Stormflower Leaflet, who could be such an idiot sometimes. Her subtle and not so subtle hints advocating the same thing as Lelti was thinking the Orb vision did, namely, that she and Edon become a bit more then friends and correspondance, had only served to turn Lelti very firmly against the idea.
Then suddenly she'd found herself thinking a lot about Edon, finding out the hard way that she couldn't get him out of her mind, and realizing, infuriatingly enough, that she had fallen in love with him.
It had taken her awhile to realize this, especially given she had never been in love before. And of course, she hadn't the foggiest idea what she was going to do about it. Now that the Orb vision had occured, she knew she had to do something, so she'd come down to Bajor and arranged to meet Edon. All of which she had done, in a very small restaruant in the outskirts of the city. He'd insisted on getting there an hour early, so everyone could get their attention-paid-to-the-minister done with before she arrived, which she thought very sweet of him.
But as the approached it, she heard a lot of voices, and wondered if he should have gotten there two hours early. To her amazement, when she entered, all eyes turned on her.
"Is that her?" a voice asked from the back. "Is that Miss Cela?"
"Um, yes," said Lelti uneasily. Then she saw Shakaar Edon, looking rather embarrased.
Suddenly it occured to her that he had likely been talking about her a little too much, and she felt very peeved. "Just what do you think you've been doing?"
"I told the maitre'd to give me a table for two," he replied meekly, "and everyone heard, and everybody wanted to know who was the second person was, and-"
"And you couldn't have made up a fake name?" Lelti countered.
"Uh, if I'd done that, you would have problems once you came and, uh-" she was glaring harder now, "no doubt gave your real name, and, uh-"
"Will you quit with the uhing! I hardly think it befits someone like you!"
"Okay." Lelti had to admit, it was very nice to have the First Minister cowering before her. "Would you like to sit down?"
Making sure to walk stiffly, Lelti strode over to the table he had reserved. "I get a better time at Quark's." she muttered, just loud enough for him to hear. She wasn't really angry about the attention anymore, it was more the previous problems she'd had with him, one of which was having quite an effect on her right now.
She knew just what he was going to say next. "Menus, and I think you should hurry. And I think you all should really stop staring." Lelti felt her heart do an odd flip at this. It was...cute. Yes, that was the word for it. Too cute. Way, way, way too cute.
She opened her mouth to say something, closed it, opened it again, and asked. "You?"
"Me?" he replied. "Are you asking how I am?" He guessed. Lelti was delighted. She nodded.
"I could talk about that for awhile, but all in all, not good. I don't know why I haven't resigned yet. I hate this job."
"Yes, you've told me that."
"Let me repeat it for emphasis." A phrase she had invented. She briefly considered telling him that.
"Anyway, you?"
"Great."
"Will you two just kiss already?" demanded someone from a nearby table.
Turning to this last irritation, Lelti growled, "I thought he told you-"
"Lelti, let it go." Edon said.
"You mean eat dinner with everyone yelling at us. To use a Terran expression, 'Check, please.' Let's go elsewhere."
They stood up. "Where to? Same thing's going to happen anywhere."
"People will want us to kiss anywhere?" demanded Lelti.
Edon looked very uncomfortable.
"Okay, I'll admit it. I think I-" What the hell are you doing, Lelti? "well, do I really need to say it? But that doesn't seem to me to adequately explain the actions of this crowd, or any other crowd."
Edon smiled sadly, and put his hand on her shoulder. "Oh, Lelti, you are so naive."
"NAIVE?!" If there was one adjective Lelti hated being called, that was it.
"Well, if you think people aren't going to be very curious about the private life of their leaders, you don't know much about what people are like."
"Still, they didn't act like this towards the changeling's behavior." Lelti pointed out.
"It might be, um, normal attention combined with what you, um, admitted."
"Don't going uming either!" Her hands went to his shoulders with the idea of shaking him.
Next thing she knew he had her in his arms, and there was something in his eyes she'd never seen before.
"Okay, what are you doing now?" she continued nonetheless. "If you're going to try to kiss me in front of-how many people are in here anyway?-all I can say is-"
But she did not get any further, because his hand covered her mouth. "Shut up." he whispered softly. Then he removed his hand from her mouth and replaced it with his own.
Lelti had been kissed before. She'd never enjoyed it. She wasn't going to now. Well, maybe she was...okay, she was. Figured.
Then she pushed him away. "No I will not shut up! Not until you admit it!"
"You care too much about words, Lelti." sighed Edon. "It's not really nessecary for me to say, you've already reached the conclusion, but fine:I love you, allright!?"
She smiled. "Allright, then." Actually, she had needed him to say it. Not that she didn't already know, deep down. She just needed him to say it anyway. At least he had. It was good. It was the first good thing all evening, but Lelti had the feeling many good things were coming up.