"We will get Arcturus back," Sailor Zephyr told the other Astros.  It was 10:00, and they had met in the woods behind Dani’s house.  They were going to use their teleportation power to go to Darkdeath to get Sailor Arcturus back.  "We’ve got to get her back."
 "Yeah, if we don’t my mom will kill me," Sailor Io said.  Zephyr glared at her.
 "Io, be serious," Zephyr said.  "This is literally a matter of life and death here.  If we don’t succeed, we could die, or the Death Ladies could kill Arcturus."
 "Are you sure you’re ready?" Cypress asked.  "I don’t know if I’ve trained you well enough…"
 "We’re ready for whatever the Death Ladies try to do to us," Orion said.
 "Right," Zephyr agreed.  The Astros joined hands in a circle.  "Ready, guys?" Zephyr asked.
 "Ready," the rest of them confirmed.
 "Okay then…" Zephyr said.
 "Astro Teleportation Power!" they yelled in unison.
 "Take us to Darkdeath!" Zephyr added.
 The sailors each glowed their respective colors: green for Zephyr, purple for Vega, blue for Andromeda, orange for Inferno, yellow for Io, red for Orion, black for Nova, and light blue for Spica.  Their colors combined to form a glowing white star above the center of the circle.  The star flashed, and the Astros were gone.
 
 

 In the same moment, on Darkdeath, a glowing white star appeared hovering in the air in front of the Death Ladies’ castle.  The star spun in the air, then split apart into nine clouds of energy in different colors.  The clouds of energy formed the shape of nine people holding hands in a circle.  Then the nine people appeared.  The Sailor Astros.
 The Death Ladies had been watching this from the balcony of their castle.  "So they’ve come for a fight, let’s give them one," Diabla said.
 "Yes," Muerta agreed.  "Espirita, how about you go welcome them?"
 "I will," Espirita replied.  She left the balcony and ran downstairs to let the Astros in.
 Diabla looked down at the Astros.  "You’re on our turf now, Sailor Failures…" she said. (Note from the author: Yes, that’s Alan’s and Ann’s line.  I’ve been watching too many Doom Tree episodes…)
 
 

 "So this is Darkdeath," Vega said.  She looked around at their surroundings.  Everything was black.  There was a dark, shadowed castle looming above them.  "Nice place.  And it’s so cheerful, too."
 "Well, why do you think they call it ‘Darkdeath’?"  Andromeda answered.
 A grinding noise coming from the castle caught their attention.  The drawbridge of the castle was lowering down to let them in.  Lady Espirita appeared on the drawbridge.
 "Hello, Astros," she greeted them.  "So you’ve come for Arcturus at last.  Well, first you must make your way through our castle, then you have to find our chamber.  If you want Arcturus back, you’ve got to get through both us and our castle.  Are you sure you’re willing to do this?"
 "We are," Zephyr said.
 "All right, then," Espirita agreed, fading from view.
 "Well, let’s go!" Orion said, charging towards the drawbridge.  The other Astros followed him onto the drawbridge.  But once all the Astros were safely on the drawbridge, it snapped closed, throwing the Astros into the entry hall.
 "Ouch!" Inferno muttered.  She had landed on top of Spica, and Nova had landed on top of her.  "What was that for?"
 "I should have known they’d do that," Nova groaned.  "I had forgotten.  They do that sometimes."
 "Great," Orion replied.  Both Io and Zephyr had landed on top of him, and they were all struggling to get up.  Once everyone was up again, they went onwards down the hall.
 "Nice decor," Vega said, noticing the suits of rusted armor hung along the walls.
 "You guys?" Io asked cautiously.  "Am I going crazy or did that suit of armor just unsheath its sword?"
 "You’re going crazy," Orion said, continuing along the hall.  But even he stopped when he heard the sound of a metal sword sliding out of its sheath.  He turned around slowly.
 "I think…the armor…is alive," Andromeda whispered.  "But it’s not logical…"
 "Nothing is logical here," Nova said, watching another suit of armor raise its arm.  Another suit jumped off of the wall and swung its sword at Spica, challenging her.
 "So you want a fight?" she said to the armor.  "Fine.  I’ll give you one."  She took out her own sword, and she and the suit of armor fought.
 "Spica, don’t do that!" Andromeda warned.  "You can’t kill it, it’s an inanimate object!"
 "Huh?" Io asked.  "It’s an animated object?"
 Andromeda ignored Io and tried to pull Spica away from the suit of armor.  But it was too late.  The suit of armor took one swing with its sword and took off Spica’s head.
 "No!" Orion shouted.  He ran forward and kicked the armor.  The armor went flying across the room and fell to the floor, unmoving.
 "Spica…I did warn her, but she…" Andromeda said, staring at the dead Sailor Spica.
 Zephyr was about to cry, but she shook her head.  "We’ve got to go on."  She led the Sailors onward until they reached a dead end.
 "Now what?" Inferno asked.
 Zephyr shrugged.  "Not sure.  I think this might be another—"
 She was cut off short.  The floor beneath them disappeared, and they fell.  Down, down they fell until they hit the bottom of the pit.
 "Another trap?" Nova asked, standing shakily.  "Yes, it was."
 "So you know about these traps?" Vega asked her.
 "Not all of them," Nova replied.  "And no, I can’t warn you when there’s a trap, because I don’t know where all of them are."
 "Okay, is everyone all right?" Zephyr stood, brushing off her sailor suit.  "Because we’ve got to keep going."
 "No, not everyone is okay," Inferno said.  "Look!"  She pointed to Io, who was still on the ground after the other Astros had gotten up.
 "Io?" Vega went over to her cautiously and turned her over on her back.  "I think she hit her head.  She’s out cold."
 "And another one bites the dust," Nova said.
 Zephyr sighed.  "Well, we don’t have time to wait until she regains consciousness, so we’d better just figure out where we’re going to go, then go there."
 "If she regains consciousness, you mean," Nova corrected.  "She probably won’t."
 "Will you just shut up for two seconds?" Orion requested, exasperatedly.
 "Sorry about that," Nova replied.
 "Anyway, let’s go!" Zephyr encouraged them.  They had landed in a hallway, and Zephyr was leading the sailors down it when the walls started to move closer together.
 "Hey, what’s up with that?" Inferno demanded, beating on the walls.  "Stop it!"
 "We’re going to die!" Vega cried.
 "You know, I heard somewhere that the most pleasant experience of your life comes when you die, so don’t worry," Nova said, sarcastically.  Vega rolled her eyes.
 "I can take care of this," Orion declared.  He put one hand on one wall and the other on the other wall.  "Here!  Go on through now.  Go ahead!"
 "But we can’t just go and leave you here!" Inferno argued.
 "Just go," Orion insisted, smiling faintly.  "Go on.  Spica would have wanted it this way."
 Reluctantly, Inferno and the others ran down the hall until they got into an open space.  The hallway behind them closed with a loud slamming noise.
 "I guess Orion is with Spica now, like he wanted," Andromeda said sadly.
 "We must keep going," Zephyr said, determined.  She strode forward, but then stopped.
 "What, Zephyr?" Vega asked, running forward.  Then she saw it too.  A wall of spikes stood before them.  "Okay, this is bad."
 "No kidding," Nova said.  "Even I didn’t know about this.  So what’ll we do?"
 "Climb it," Zephyr said.  "If we grab with our hands onto the part of the spike that isn’t sharp, then we step on the spikes…"  She proceeded to demonstrate how to climb the wall.  "See?  Now you guys try."
 The others followed her example.  Zephyr got to the top, then helped the others to climb up with her.  Suddenly, they could hear a scream come from below, followed by evil laughter.
 "What?" Inferno ran to the side and looked over.  "It’s Andromeda!"
 "What about Andromeda?" Vega asked.
 "It looks like one of those Death Ladies came and pushed her onto one of the spikes," Inferno said.  The others came and looked, and they saw Sailor Andromeda.  She had climbed halfway up, but was impaled through one of the spikes.
 Zephyr tried not to cry, but she couldn’t help it.  One tear rolled down her cheek, but she brushed it off.  "Keep going."
 The Astros turned away from the wall, only to discover that they were in another room.  This one had three doors leading away from it, down different hallways.
 "So where do we go?" Vega asked.  "Nova?"
 Nova was about to reply, but a voice answered for her.  The voice came from the hallway on the right.  "This way," it said.  "This way."
 Zephyr followed the voice, but then another voice spoke up, this one from the hallway on the left.  "No, this way.  This is the right way."
 Zephyr turned towards that voice, and another one spoke, coming from the center hallway.  "This is the right way," it declared.  Soon all the voices were talking at once, all trying to tell the Astros which way to go.  After a while, Zephyr couldn’t stand it.
 "SHUT UP!!!!" she yelled.  The voices stopped.
 "Ignore the voices, all of them," Nova said.  "I think this is the right way."  She pointed down the hallway to the left.  The four remaining Astros went down that hallway until they reached an open room.
 "This looks suspicious," Vega mused.
 No sooner had she spoken than flaming arrows began to shoot from the walls.  The Astros ran through the arrows, just running, not really caring where they were running to, so long as they got away from the arrows.  Then, the arrows stopped.  Zephyr looked around.
 "We’re short one Astro, I think…" she said.
 "Vega," Inferno realized.  "She’s back there!"  She pointed towards where Sailor Vega lay on the ground.  One of the flaming arrows had gone straight through her heart.
 "There are only three of us left," Nova observed.
 "Yeah, thanks for pointing that out Nova, but I can count, you know," Zephyr muttered sarcastically.  She turned around, only to realize that they were standing in front of a moat.  "Another obstacle.  Again."
 "We’ve got to swim!  It’s the only way across," Nova said.
 "But I can’t swim!" Inferno protested.  "Not very well anyway."
 "Try," Zephyr urged.  She dove into the water and began to swim across the moat, the other two behind her.  Once they had gotten to the other side, Zephyr and Nova climbed out.
 "Where’s Inferno?" Nova turned around, looking out over the moat.
 Zephyr looked too, but she couldn’t see her.  "Drowned, I guess."  She shrugged.  "No matter.  I can fight them on my own, and with you too, right?"
 Nova nodded, then turned back to Zephyr, realizing something.  "But there’s only us.  We’re outnumbered.  Just us…"