“Again, Oscurio?” Lady Espirita asked of her dark minion who knelt before her.  “That’s twice now.  Can’t you ever manage to find out who they are and capture them?”
 “I cannot, my lady,” Oscurio replied apologetically.  “It seems that during the millenniums that have passed, Princess Zephyr’s powers have increased.  It would make sense if the other senshi’s powers had as well, but I haven’t detected even a trace of them yet.”
 Diabla sighed impatiently.  “When you go down there this time, try to do something well for a change.  The Astral Senshi are in Dublin, we know that now.  We want them destroyed.”
 “Yes, madam,” Oscurio nodded, then stood up.  He left the room and paced in the corridor outside, muttering to himself.  “What am I going to do about Zephyr?  She’s too powerful for me to deal with on my own, and with the other senshi—” His incoherent mumblings were cut short when he bumped into another man coming down the corridor.
 “Problems, Oscurio?” the man asked.  Oscurio looked up to see the Death Duchesses’ second warrior Cuchillo, who was taller than Oscurio and had short silver hair and a similar uniform, except with the addition of a belt with sheathed knives and daggers hanging from it.
 “Leave me alone.”  Oscurio turned and walked the other way.
 “I heard about the issue of Sailor Zephyr,” Cuchillo said. 
Oscurio was about to teleport himself away, but stopped.  “Have you?”
 “Everyone has,” Cuchillo said.  “And I think I can help you.”
 Oscurio feigned indifference, although he was interested as to what Cuchillo’s plan was, he didn’t want to appear desperate.  “I’ll do this on my own, thanks.”  He started to walk off, but made sure he kept Cuchillo within earshot in case he revealed his plan.
 “Trolls,” Cuchillo called down the hall after Oscurio, who turned around and looked over his shoulder at the silver-haired man.
 “What?” Oscurio asked.
 “Trolls,” Cuchillo repeated, holding up a leather pouch.  “Hundreds of troll-stones in this pouch.  When you plant them in an inanimate object, it will come to life and be forced to obey your orders.”
 “Interesting,” Oscurio said, approaching Cuchillo and reaching for the pack of troll-stones.
 Cuchillo snatched them away.  “Not so fast.”  He paused, grinned wickedly, then continued.  “In exchange for the troll-stones, you will do me one favor that I request.”
 “What favor?” Oscurio asked suspiciously.
 “I’ll tell you what it is when I need you to perform the favor for me.”  Cuchillo tossed the bag at Oscurio, who nearly missed catching it and almost spilled the bag all over the floor.  “Now go.  Use them at your discretion.”  He waved his hand as if he was shooing a fly.  “Oh, and Oscurio?  I’ve heard that plants make excellent trolls.”

***

 “What the heck are the Powerscourt Gardens anyway?” Dani asked, reading over the brochure that Sister Belinda, their biology teacher, had given them.
 “They’re way out in Wicklow,” Lilia explained.  “They’re gardens, obviously.”  She looked excited over this new field trip prospect.
 “Well, I knew that,” Dani rolled her eyes.  “But I’ve never heard of them.”
 “So you’ve never read any of those, like, tourist guidebooks?” Mariah asked.
 “No,” Dani admitted.  “Tourists are idiots anyway, and I don’t want to look like one of those stupid American tourists you always see who pronounce all the Irish words wrong and act like they know everything just because they’ve been here for three days.”
 “I don’t blame you,” Viola said.  “Do you have any idea how many of those kind of people we get in Stratford?”  She shook her head in disbelief.
 “I would advise you,” said Sister Belinda, having distributed all the brochures, “to bring your raincoats just in case, some money for lunch or anything you may want to buy, a camera, and a bottle of water.  The bus leaves tomorrow morning at a quarter to 10.”
 Lilia punched Dani teasingly.  “Get ready for some sightseeing.”

***

 “Looooow liiiiieeeee…the fields of Athenry,” Lilia sang on the bus ride down to Powerscourt.  “Where once we watched the small free birds fly…”
 “Oh baby, let the free birds fly!” the other girls responded with their part.
 “Our love was on the wing,” Lilia went on.  “We had dreams and songs to sing.”
 “Screw the Queen!” Mariah chanted, then apologized, “No offense, Viola.”  She thought for a minute, then realized, “You know, it would rhyme better if the line were ‘Screw the King’, wouldn’t it?”
 “There’s no king yet, eejit,” Lilia said.  “You really shouldn’t be saying that anyway, Mari.  You’re from Canada and you don’t have fluent Irish, so there.”
 Mariah replied by sticking her tongue out at Lilia.  “Don’t get all holier-than-thine.”
 “Thou, Mariah,” Viola corrected.  “Holier-than-thou.”
 “Yeah, she knows, she’s from Shakespeare country,” Anala remarked.
 “Well, I ditto Mariah,” Dani said.  “You don’t have to be Irish to realize that genocide is wrong.”
 “It’s not genocide,” Viola defended her country.  “If you call Cromwell’s exploration in Ireland genocide, then you can call Columbus’s exploration to the West Indies genocide too.”
 “That _was_ genocide!” Dani exclaimed.  “Columbus _murdered_ the natives there.  I don’t even know why we celebrate Columbus Day anyway.  That’d be like celebrating Hitler’s Invasion of Poland Day.”
 “I bet your man in Austria, you know, that freaky far right Nazi party?” Lilia said.  “I bet that guy Heider celebrates that.”
 “Well, we _do_ celebrate VJ Day,” Anala said.  “It was genocide to drop those atomic bombs, in my opinion.”
 Mariah held her head in her hands.  “Pleeeease stop talking about politics and shite like that,” she complained.  “I’m getting a headache.  I don’t understand any of this stuff.”
 “You wouldn’t,” Lilia muttered.
 “Hey, shut up,” Mariah shot back.
 “We’re here, girls,” Sister Belinda said, as she walked the row of the bus handing out tickets.  “You can look around the gardens, then we’ll meet at half-one for lunch in the restaurant.”
 The girls got off the bus in front of the main building, which housed some gift shops, a restaurant, toilets, and an exhibit.  Anala, Dani, Lilia, Mariah, and Viola headed for the gift shop first, to get a snack and something to drink.  Anala got a brownie, Dani got lime-flavored sour licorice, Lilia got a Dairy Milk bar, and Viola and Mariah got orange and raspberry sherbet, respectively.
 “I didn’t get anything fruity,” Anala explained as they started out into the gardens.  “There’ll be bees and stuff around here, and they like that kinda stuff.”
 “I don’t care,” Mariah said.  “I’m not allergic to bees anyway.”
 “Are you sure?” Viola worried.  “You can’t really tell until they sting you, as far as I know.”
 “I’m pretty sure anyway,” Mariah replied.
 “Even if you’re not allergic,” Dani said, “it hurts like hell.  I got stung when I was 6.  The bee was even DEAD, for Christ’s sake, and it still managed to sting me.”
 “You’re joking,” Anala gasped.  “How did it manage that?”
 “It was in the swimming pool,” Dani explained, “and I got in and didn’t see it, and it stung my foot.”
 “You’re lying,” Lilia accused.
 “I’m not.”
 “You ARE, you’ve got to be.”
 The argument ceased when they saw the gardens.  A set of wide stairs flanked by pots of flowers and Greek and Roman statues on either side led down to a lily-covered pond.  In the middle of the pond was a statue of the god Poseidon, spraying water from the trident he was holding aloft.  Grass sloped down on either side, and paths led off through the trees to different areas of the garden.
 “Cool,” Dani marveled.
 “Hey,” Anala said, looking in her brochure.  “These gardens were designed by a drunk guy.”
 “They weren’t,” Viola said.  “I don’t see how…”
 “I’m not messing!” Anala argued.  “It says in the brochure.  He’d drink a bottle of sherry a day, and when the sherry ran out the work for the day was done.”
 “Probably why it took a hundred men 12 years to build the friggin’ thing,” Lilia said as they descended the steps.
 “They’d push him around in a wheelbarrow,” Anala continued.
 Dani looked at a ramp that led down the hill beside the stairs.  “I bet that ramp is what they used to bring him down in.”
 “Nerd,” Mariah said, snatching the brochure from Anala.  “Put that thing away and enjoy the gardens, you freak.”
 Enjoying the gardens is exactly what the five girls did for another hour and a half.  Although in another part of the gardens someone else was doing the same.  In a dark area, hidden from the sun by the branches and leaves of a thick gathering of trees, Oscurio crouched, unseen by the visitors to the garden.
 “Perfect location,” he said.  “It’s perfect.  If Cuchillo said plants make good trolls, I trust him on that.  He’s an expert on trolls, being one himself.”  Oscurio snorted and congratulated himself on that line, which he would use on Cuchillo himself later on.  “Lots of kids here, kids who could be senshi, but they just don’t know it yet.”
 He removed a troll-stone from the pouch that hung around his neck, put on a glamour spell to make himself look more like a human, and searched out the perfect troll carrier.

***

 “This is my favorite area of the gardens,” Lilia said, stepping down a stone staircase and walking along the ridge overlooking the Japanese garden.  “It’s so peaceful; I love it here.”
 They walked down the stairs into a cave, where water trickled down the sides into a pool in the bottom.  Through the cave entrance, Dani spotted a black-and-white bird sitting on one of the stone pagodas…Cypress.  Sneaking away from the group as discretely as possible, she sat next to the pagoda and confronted Cypress.  “What are you doing here?”
 “I followed you, of course,” Cypress said.  “You didn’t see me flying along behind the bus?”
 Dani shook her head.  “Why are you here?”
 “Just in case you needed a guardian while you were away,” Cypress explained.  “And you do.  I saw Oscurio walking around the gardens.”  Cypress seemed to laugh, and shook his head in disbelief.  “Wearing a glamour spell, like he thought I couldn’t see through that.”
 “Where is he?” Dani asked.
 “HEEEEEELP!” someone screamed, coming from the staircase and pond where Dani and her friends were earlier.
 “Does that answer your question?” Cypress said sarcastically, as Dani raced towards the pond, pulling her transformation pen out of her backpack as she ran.
 “Oh, crap, where will I transform?” she wondered, arriving on the scene and seeing Oscurio at the head of the stairs.  He was holding up the dagger that Dani had seen him using at the cinema, and there was a strange creature hopping around the stairs.  It had three legs, green skin, wild yellow hair, and it was clothed in flower petals with flower buds for hands. 
 She dropped down and crawled towards the pond, towards the two statues of horses that were on either side of the pond, and crawled into the cave area under the bridge.  “Zephyr Astral Star Power!”
 A moment later, Sailor Zephyr emerged from under the bridge.  Oscurio was bewildered, not having the cop-on to figure out that the girl that had gone under the bridge and the girl in the sailor suit that came out were the same person.
 “Well, look here,” he remarked to his troll.  “The bitch is back.”
 “Hey, pick on people of your own mental capacity,” Zephyr shot back.
 “So then I shouldn’t be picking on you,” Oscurio began.
 “Darn right,” Zephyr nodded.
 “…Because I’m so much more intelligent than you,” he finished.
 “Okay, he managed to turn that one right around on me,” Zephyr muttered.  “Forget this inane name-calling.  Star Wind!”
 Oscurio expected her to react in this manner, and he was able to evade the attack.  “Don’t you know any other attacks?”
 “Certainly do!” Zephyr lied.  “Like, uh…” She was forced to make up an attack phrase.  “Like this!  Astral Kick!”  She ran up the stairs as fast as she possibly could and did a flying kick at Oscurio, although she was at a disadvantage being downhill from him, and her kick wasn’t as powerful as it potentially could be.
 “Lame,” Oscurio commented.  “Troll Salvia, get her!”
 “I will do as you command,” Salvia, the plantlike creature, said mechanically.  It began walking threateningly toward Zephyr.
 “Got to be faster than that,” Zephyr said, gearing up for another Star Wind.
 “I am faster than that,” Salvia said, misinterpreting Zephyr’s remark.  She sped up, running towards Zephyr, and fired one of her flower hands at her, which subsequently grew back.  The flower, which Zephyr expected to be weak, was in fact powerful enough to throw Zephyr back down the stairs and almost knock her into the pond.
 To no one in particular, Zephyr commented, “I could use some help here…”

***

 “Wonder where Dani’s gone off to?” Mariah asked rhetorically, dabbling her feet in the pond in the Japanese garden.
 “I think I saw her go off that way,” Lilia said, pointing towards the pond.  “I’m not sure, though.  Maybe she left something up there and she had to go and get it.  Want me to go look for her?”
 “Don’t bother,” Anala said lazily, who was also wading in the water, just relaxing.
 “That’s what you would do,” Lilia returned, “but I’m gonna go look for her.”  She headed back up the uphill path to the pond when something caught her eye in the cave underneath the bridge. 
“What the…that looks like Dani…” she said to herself, approaching the cave to see a person with lime-green hair raising a green pen in the air.  The whole cave started to glow with some sort of green and blue light, and later a girl in a sailor outfit who looked somewhat like Dani ran out of the cave and up the stairs, engaging in battle with a man at the head of the stairs.
“I wonder what that girl’s doing,” Lilia thought aloud.  “And what the heck that glowing thing was that she threw at that guy.  And what on earth that green thing is?” she said in confused amazement, upon seeing Troll Salvia. 
Lilia got a little closer, then was able to recognize the man.  “That’s that guy we saw at the cinema, isn’t it?  And there were all these unconscious people in the lobby.”  She narrowed her eyes, beginning to grow suspicious.  “Something is rotten in the province of Leinster, folks.”
She joined a crowd that had begun to gather around the battle scene, watching the action take place.  “Fools!” Oscurio exclaimed, seeing the tourists who had gathered around and begun to take pictures.  “The Astral War is not a tourist attraction!” 
With that, he raised his dagger, which cast a dark shadow over the crowd.  The tourists fell unconscious where they stood, all except for Lilia, who grasped at her chest and doubled over in pain.
 “It’s like I’ve been stabbed,” she thought, “or I’m having a heart attack or something.”
 Cypress was watching, perched on the horse statue.  “That girl isn’t fainting,” he said, noticing Lilia.  “Either she’s extremely strong and resistant to energy attacks, or she’s a senshi.”  Lilia was crouched in a fetal position on the stairs now, and Cypress was keeping an eye on her forehead to see if a senshi symbol appeared on it.
 Out of the corner of her eye, Lilia saw a purple light.  “What’s that?” she wondered.  “I must be having a heart attack, and I’m about to die, and that’s the light at the end of the tunnel.”
 At the same moment, Cypress saw a glowing symbol on the girl’s forehead…the symbol of Vega, a heart with two Vs in it, one right side up and one upside down.  “That’s her,” Cypress concluded, flying down and landing next to Lilia.  “Sailor Vega!” he whispered.  “If you value your life, come with me to the cave!”
 “C-cave?” Lilia repeated.  “What are you calling me Vega for?  I’m Lilia.”
 “Just come to the cave!” Cypress hissed, flying into the cave.  Lilia started crawling weakly over but when she got into the cave the pain stopped.
 Short of breath, she gasped out, “What…what happened there?  And…why…” she stopped, seeing the magpie.
 “Sailor Vega?” Cypress ventured.
 Lilia screamed at seeing a magpie talk.  “Who are you?”
 “I’ll explain later,” Cypress said.  “Take this, though.”  He flew in a circle above Lilia, producing a purple pen similar to Dani’s, but with a green stripe around the base and one green and one purple jewel on either side of the gold star topping the pen.
 Lilia pinched herself.  “Ow!”  She rubbed her eyes.  “Shit.  I’m not dreaming, am I?”
 “Just take the pen, you’ll know what to do,” Cypress directed.
 “If you say so,” Lilia said uncertainly, picking up the pen.  Her memories of the Silver Millennium came to her faster than Dani’s.  She remembered being drafted into the Senshi Army as the soldier from Vega, remembered snatches of that last battle against Darkdeath, but most importantly remembered a phrase: “Vega Astral Star Power!”
 Again the cave glowed with light, but this time it was a purple light.  A gigantic blossom grew at Lilia’s feet, and it enclosed her in its petals.  She floated a foot above the ground as a sailor suit, tiara, choker, and boots formed on her.  The bloom unwrapped, revealing Lilia in a suit like Zephyr’s, except it was purple with green trim and the choker and bow were adorned with flowers.  She was now an Astral Senshi, Sailor Vega.
 “Oh, cool,” Sailor Vega grinned and admired her outfit.  “I love this color…wait.  How did I do that?”
 “Doesn’t matter,” Cypress said.  “Go out there and help Sailor Zephyr.”
 “Who’s Zephyr?” Vega asked, apparently not regaining all of her memories.  “I seem to remember some girl who looks like Dani, and she’s a princess…and she looks like the girl out there who’s fighting that flower monster.  Is that Zephyr?”
 “Exactly,” Cypress said.  “I’ll explain it all to you later.  Just go help her fight off the monsters!”
 “Um…okay…” Vega said uncertainly, going up to the stairs and stepping over the unconscious people to get to the battlefield.
 Zephyr nearly fainted.  “Another senshi-person?  Cypress, who’s this?”
 “Sailor Vega,” Cypress said, landing on the horse statue’s tail.  “She’s come to help you.  I’ll explain later.”
 “How am I supposed to help?” Vega asked Cypress. 
 “Say ‘Pollen Rain’ or something like that,” Cypress said.  “I think that’s your phrase, anyway.”
 Vega tried this out.  “Pollen Rain!”  She raised her hands to the sky, and a brownish yellow cloud formed over her.  It drifted until it was directly above Salvia, and a downpour of brown liquid drenched the troll.
 “Wonder what that stuff is,” Vega said.
 “Maybe it’s drink,” Zephyr somehow managed to joke in the serious situation.  “You never know.  Maybe you’re supposed to get the flower dude drunk or something like that.”
 Salvia screamed an unnatural-sounding wail, the acidic substance that Vega had created dissolving her until she was no more than a puddle of green on the step.
 “Oh, god,” Vega was alarmed.  “I didn’t mean to kill it!  Honestly!  I’d never want to kill another human…”
 “It’s not dead,” Zephyr said.  “See?”  The puddle of Salvia’s liquid remains reformed into a small white flower.  This was the troll carrier, what Troll Salvia was before Oscurio implanted it with the troll-stone.  “It was never a human anyway, I guess,” Zephyr justified.
 “Damn you,” Oscurio snarled.  “You made me waste a perfectly good troll-stone, brats.”  A portal opened up behind him, which he stepped through.  “Expect to see more of me.”
 “Weird,” Vega said.  “Yes, that’s the operative word.  Weird.  Too weird, in fact.  This is so weird that I’m not even sure what the flip is going on anymore.”  She pinched herself again.  “Ouch.  And obviously I’m not dreaming.  So what’s happening?  Am I hallucinating, or going crazy or what?”
 “I’ll explain it all to you later,” Cypress said.
 “You keep saying that, now I want you to actually do it,” Vega demanded.
 “Back in the cave,” Cypress said, jerking his head towards the cave.  “Lose your transformations once we’re in there—just tap your brooch there, but don’t do it yet—and I’ll tell you the whooole thing.  You don’t have to be back on the bus until 2, right?  Good…this might take a while…”
 

Author's Notes
Lots of Irish culture stuff in here.  Okay, first off, the Powerscourt Gardens actually do exist.  I know, I've been there before and that's how I could give such an accurate description.  Another little trivial thing, but did you notice how the girls all had snacks that were the same color as their hair?  I took a bit of liberty with Mariah's, as raspberries aren't exactly purple, and Anala's brownie would probably not have been black, but you get the idea.  And the stuff they were talking (and singing) about on the bus?  It's Irish history stuff.  See, a long time ago some British asshole named Cromwell invaded Ireland and screwed everything up, so the Irish are mad at the British.  Not really, as in they wouldn't beat up British tourists they see in the streets or vandalize British cars, just lightheartedly.  And according to them, if you want to insult Cromwell or the British you better be Irish and have fluent Irish (the language, as in Irish Gaelic, although they'll smack you around the place if you call it that), otherwise you're a hypocrite.  *shrug* I don't exactly get it either, but that's what they're talking about.  And those aren't the actual lyrics to "The Fields of Athenry", some Irish Nationalists modified it so that it's like a protest song.
P.S.: The troll's name isn't Saliva, as in the secretion in your mouth, but Salvia, a flowering plant.  All right?  All right.

Relevant Images
Powerscourt
Zephyr in Powerscourt
Vega

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