"I'm fine, he just made me realize something I hadn't considered..." Mercury answered. Speaking of things she hadn't thought of...why had it never occurred to her to ask Zoisite about the necklace before? He might remember more of the Silver Millennium than she did right now. What if he recognized it as well? But he would have said something earlier, surely. It wouldn't hurt to try...but maybe after they finished this test. She'd have to remember to ask Venus too, whenever they saw each other later.

"Oh?" Zoisite said. "Now I'm intrigued, do share." He knew that if she didn't want to she wouldn't tell him a thing, but given everything that had happened, he couldn't help the curiosity that was clawing at the inside of his had about the necklace she wore and how it related to that guy from the IT department.

"Er, well..." Mercury blushed and looked down at the keyboard for a moment. She hadn't expected Zoisite to prompt her to talk about it. "I've been trying to work out a few of my memories of the past I've been regaining," she admitted." I don't have much context to them, so they're difficult to understand. This necklace was in most of the flashes I've had though." She picked up the chain around her neck, showing off the delicate snowflake marked, hexagonal piece of white metal. 

"I've seen it so much over the last month that I decided to try and recreate it. And if someone else recognizes it, he might have seen other things that relate to myself." She let the chain go, and it continued to hang around her neck. "That man I just talked to could possibly be another person reincarnated from the Silver Millennium, and I want to find out. But since you asked..." Mercury looked back at Zoisite. "Do you recognize this at all? I have a feeling that it meant something important to me at one time, but I can't recall it."

"No, I'm sorry but I don't," he paused as another thought came to mind. "You were excited to show me something on your planet though. We were scheduled some leave time and were going to go to Mercury, but then....yah," he trailed off embarrassed to talk about his part in the betrayal of the Mon Kingdom that lead to the downfall of the entire solar system. 

"Perhaps this was related to that?"

"Something on my planet...." Mercury said, closing her eyes in thought. What did her home have to do with this key and Daisuke? What had she wanted to show Zoisite? "Wait..." Her eyes snapped open again. "I think I remember it now. Zoisite, do you mind coming to my lab tomorrow too? I can still show it to you, if I'm right." She really hoped she was on the right track here...

"Alright," he replied slowly, not that it seemed to matter, as Ami now seemed to be lost in thought, paying him no mind. He turned back to the computer, continuing on with his work. Over the next few hours, he couldn't help but be distracted wondering what it was exactly that she wanted to show him.

The next night, Mercury was in her laboratory, typing away at a computer connected to a large, cylindrical chamber on the other side of the room. She couldn't believe she had been right! It had taken her a while to remember more clearly, but after Daisuke had shown up an hour earlier and told her about his dreams, everything she needed had flooded back to her. And now to see if she had rebuilt the necklace correctly...

After she finished calibrating the scanner, Mercury sat back in her chair, unable to wipe the smile on her face. After 1,000 years, she could finally show Zoisite! She hoped he would still like it.

Anticipation about what it was that Mercury wanted to show him egged at his mind, keeping him slightly distracted all day. If any of his brothers were to see him, he would surely be teased. He, like Kunzite, were renowned for being able to focus in all sorts of situations. Then again, Mercury has always been able to drive me to distraction. I shouldn't be surprised that she's still capable of doing it without even knowing she is.  

Taking a calming breath, he knocked on the door, signaling to the occupant inside that he had arrived.

Mercury quickly stood up when she heard the knock, glancing at the door before pulling up the security camera feed. She saw Zoisite waiting outside, and jumped to unlock the door for him. 

"You showed up!" she said, eyes shining behind her blue visor. "And I just finished setting up too! It's just over there..." She led Zoisite in, door shutting behind them. She went back over to the monitor to check on it, and then pulled out her necklace. "I was right about what I was remembering earlier. What I had been trying to show you in the past was...well..." Mercury looked away from him, blushing slightly. "It's very personal to me, so could you...could you promise not to laugh when I explain it?" she asked.

"Of course I came," he admonished her gently, "You asked me to, did you not?" He was fairly certain that she could ask anything of him and he would do it for her if it was within his powers. It was a dangerous thing to admit and one he didn't want her to know about. 

"Come now, you've been waiting over a thousand years to show this to me, are you really going to keep me in suspense much longer?" he teased in an attempt to calm her nervousness.

"A-alright..." Mercury steeled herself and went to press a button on her keyboard. The cylindrical chamber in the back of the room opened up with a hiss, and cold fog drained out of it.

"Back in the Silver Millennium, my planet made use of some of the most advanced technology in the solar system. And one of those advancements was robotics." The smoke cleared, revealing what looked like a tal, humanoid statue of ice. It was a knight, wearing a simplistic yet bulky set of armor. Its helmet did not have a movable visor, and there were a set of slits where the mouth was supposed to be. With a soft whirring of an internal engine, the statue's eyes glowed blue, along with the sign of Mercury on its chest.

"This is Hermes, the first robot I had built on my own as a child. Most of this model were used to guard important areas, and they were equipped with combat tools, but in the process of creating him, I made a mistake with his processing core. His purpose ended up being my personal assistant while I was at home." Mercury turned back to face the robot, smiling fondly at it.

Zoisite knew his jaw had dropped in astonishment, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Mercury had built this back in the Silver Millennium when she was a child? Even today, their robotics weren't as advanced as he had a feeling Mercuries robot was. 

"This is absolutely incredible," he marveled, walking around the creature, looking it over from every angle. The fact that this technology had been around during the Silver Millennium was amazing...and also showed how little he knew about the other planets. "Did other planet have this type of technological capability?"

Hermes slowly tracked Zoisite's movements with his glowing blue eyes, his entire head quietly swiveling to keep the man in sight. It looked more curious than hostile or defensive though. Mercury beamed and placed a hand on the robot's chest, and Hermes acted almost startled for a moment before relaxing again. The ice making up his torso became transparent, revealing the cogs and smaller machines inside, and the glowing blue energy core where his heart would be.

"The other planets didn't have much use for our robotic technology, since they had more military prowess, but Mercury didn't raise many warriors, so we needed artificial soldiers that were intelligent enough to match real ones, or at least able to correctly follow and carry out our commands," she explained. 

"Quite a bit of our cities were run via computers, if I'm remembering correctly. Anyway, the reason Hermes wasn't allowed to be a guard was because he's technically capable of learning and copying behaviors, similar to a growing child. The scientists were going to run studies on him, but I thought it would be better if I kept him myself."

"What are you planning on doing with him now?" Zoisite wondered, walking back over beside Mercury. The implications and the impact that this could have on their society was profound. "Would it be possible to build more like him, as you did before?" Imagine being able to have guards on duty 24/7, never tiring. It would reduce human error and allow them to reallocated their people to other duties where there were never enough personnel. 

He couldn't help but think about how to integrate Mercurian technology into their security programs, how much that would improve and benefit them. What all could they do with this type of technology? It sounded hundreds of years more advanced than anything they currently had on Earth.

"Well you see, that's the problem..." Mercury said. "I'd love to analyze Hermes and reverse engineer the technology he contains, but the way he ended up in this time is a little...unexpected. He was reincarnated." When Daisuke had described his dreams to her a few hours ago, she had hardly believed it, but then she had pressed the button on her necklace, and the once completely human engineer had transformed into a machine. But how had it happened? Robots were not truly living, so how could Hermes have a soul to be reborn with, and as a regular human no less? 

"I'm not sure how it happened, I'm still working that out, but just like us, Hermes was revived after the end of the Silver Millennium. Yesterday, he was the man I talked to about the database system, oblivious to his past. And even when he's in this state, he still has a human will. I have no right to control or order him around, and I won't be doing any examinations on him without express permission."

Still thinking about all the possibilities this robot created, Zoisite was only half listening as Ami was talking. "Yes, reincarnation does pose a bit of a problem, I'm sure we can find a way around that." He waved a hand dismissively, as if it was not a big problem. "Wait did you say reincarnation?" Finally the pieces of what Mercury had said were clicking. 

"How is that even possible? I thought the only ones that Queen Serenity had sent to the future to be reincarnated were you know, things that were living beings."  How was it even possible that a robot had been brought to the future for a second chance at life, same as they all had.

"Well, I have a possible theory," Mercury said. "The creation of this kind of robot requires a combination of advanced mechanics and magical skill. It's a very delicate ratio, resulting in a creature similar to a golem you'd read about in a storybook. Hermes is artificial life." Mercury brought up a set of incomplete blueprints.

"The mistake I had made in the past was using too much magic in the process, resulting in Hermes being almost too lifelike. He still followed commands, but his mental abilities and understanding of other living beings continued to expand unchecked. It's possible that the amount of my own magic I had placed in him was enough for him to count as another soul, allowing his reincarnation."

"Magic on its own seems to be very unpredictable at times. It makes sense that when you mix it with technology it can have unforeseen consequences," he mused, standing beside Mercury. 

The idea that the magic and technology had mixed in such a way that it registered being close enough to a soul that Saturns destructive magic had skipped it was mind boggling. 

"Do you plan on telling their highnesses?"

"Well, it wouldn't be right to hide Hermes from them, he's not supposed to be a secret," Mercury said. Maybe the king and queen would find a way for this whole thing to work out without infringing on anyone's rights. And Daisuke needed someone to explain the entire reincarnation process so he'd understand what was happening. Serenity would know how to do it without scaring him, to at least break it to him gently enough so he wouldn't run away from the palace.

"And I need to atone for my mistake somehow. It's my fault Daisuke is like this at all."

Soon enough they began to work on figuring out the technology that Hermes was made from. They easily formed a routine, working on the palace security system during the day, grabbing a quick meal to eat and then returning to Ami's personal labs where they would continue this work in secret. 

Over the weeks, they began to get to know each other; Ami telling him little bits of her past growing up on modern Earth while he told her stories of a young Prince Endymion and what it was like growing up with the Shittennou. 

The peace didn't last for long. Ami slowly began to spend more and more time with Daisuke, often taking her lunch and dinner breaks with the worker, or talking to him quite animatedly while in her lab, almost completely ignoring Zoisite. Had he done something wrong? He was under the impression everything was going well between them, yet he felt as if she was pulling away and he didn't know what to do. Any attempts to talk to her were rebuffed. 

He paced around his room frequently, his mind turning over the problem, looking at it from different angels, yet he still couldn't fathom where everything had begun to fall apart. Perhaps they weren't meant to be and he should step aside graciously.

Mercury was in the lab again, working with Daisuke to figure out the next part of the mystery that was Hermes.

"So the icy exterior acts as a kind of cooling system for the engine and mechanism, fascinating..." Mercury said, looking around Hermes as she jotted notes down on a clipboard. "The level of efficiency in this design is amazing, not a single part of it is a waste!"

The last month had been amazing for Daisuke, all his feelings of being needed somewhere finally satisfied. He understood his "purpose" now, the thing that had been driving him for years. Daisuke was clearly meant to assist Sailor Mercury, and he was happy to continue doing so. When the King and queen had explained the concept of reincarnation and the Silver Millennium, everything fell into place for him. Even in his alternate robotic form, he could still feel a sort of dim pride in his chest.

Or maybe that was his core, he wasn't quite sure how things worked while he was Hermes...

For the first time in a long time, Zoisite was in Ami's lab, helping her with Daisuke. It wasn't the same as it had been before though, or at least that's how it felt to Zoisite. Perhaps he was reading too much into it or not, he wasn't sure. He felt as if he was almost invisible to her, Ami only talking to him when she needed him to pass her something or to ask if he was done with whatever task she assigned him. 

So lost in his thoughts he barely noticed when Sailor Jupiter came by asking for Ami's helping with something. She left the lab with a quick mumble about returning soon.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," Mercury said as she departed with Jupiter. Hermes turned his head slightly to watch her leave with the taller senshi, though he said nothing beyond an artificial sounding "affirmative". It was difficult to talk normally in this form, having to use a thought to speech program. The simpler the thoughts the easier they were communicated, so Hermes tended to speak in short phrases.

But now he was alone with the man who's name he learned was Zoisite. Hermes' chest cavity was partially open, revealing the gears and circuits that sat in his torso that were in the middle of being examined. It was exposing in a way, but he didn't mind it when Lady Mercury was personally working on him. This man was different though.

If he were a normal human, he'd call the emotion he was feeling jealousy, but he knew it was different than simply wanting attention. He wanted to return to service under Sailor Mercury, and this Shitennou was in a way taking his place that he once held in the past. Long ago, it was Hermes that assisted with experiments and cared for his princess, not this Zoisite. He didn't understand what had changed over the many years he had been unaware. 

With a quiet whir, his head swiveled to face Zoisite, glowing blue eyes focusing on the human. Hermes decided that he didn't like him. 

"What is your purpose here?" Hermes asked, almost flat in tone. "What role do you serve in this palace?"

Zoisite blinked in confusion when Hermes began speaking to him. In all the weeks he had been helping Mercury, the human-artificial intelligence hybrid had never spoken to him before and Zoisite, not having anything to say to him, hadn't spoken to him either. Anger simmered as his position in the castle was brought into question. He, like the other Shittennou had worked hard to carve themselves out a place in this new world, one where their talents and skills were being utilized in a place where everything seemed similar yet so different at the same time. 

"My role is that of King Endymion's General. I am currently assigned to work on a new computer protection system for the Palace with Sailor Mercury. She's asked me to assist her in working with you as I have skills and knowledge that are useful to her." The last part came out more bitter than he had intended. He felt like she only kept him around for those reasons instead of friendship, camaraderie and his skills. It was a sore spot with him, and he was still completely undecided what to do about it. 

"Now if you have no further questions, I have work to do." He gestured to the computer system he had been working on before Hermes had interrupted his work.

"You did not seem very close in the past," Hermes continued, undeterred by Zoisite's attitude. They both would know what he meant by the past, so he didn't clarify. 

"Not until the very end." He still recalled the times where Princess Mercury returned to her castle from the moon, and spoke about the Earth knight she had grown fond of. As a robot, he had not fully understood her train of thought, but using his experiences as a human, he could begin to decipher the emotions she had shared with him. She had been in love.

The creature's reference to the past and how he hadn't began to get close to Mercury until close to his betrayal set off an immediate reaction in Zoisite. His head began throbbing, and his body began tingling as memories that had been locked away were suddenly remembered all at once. 

Unable to stay in his chair, he sank to his knees, hands clutching his head, as his mind attempted to deal with the onslaught of memories. Too much, it was too much and it didn't seem like there was any end in sight. Memories that he had already recovered joined the frey, his mind making connections between the fragments. 

Some body please make it stop! 

Mercury chose that moment to walk back into the lab, having finished handling the problem that had cropped up with the other senshi. As soon as she saw Zoisite keeled on the ground in what looked like pain, she ran to his side.

"Zoisite, are you okay? What happened?" she asked, frantically trying to see what was wrong. Her hand touched his back as she looked him over for obvious injuries. Ever since he saved her from that exploding computer and gotten hurt, she was afraid that something bad would happen again and he wouldn't recover at all. "Is it your head?"

Spasms of pain were wracking his body, setting all of his nerves on fire. He felt like a giant exposed nerve. When Ami put her hand on his back in comfort he couldn't help the cry that left his lips as he lurched forward in an attempt to get away from the contact. 

It was too much, everything was so overly sensitive. Even the soft noises that the computer made were grating on him.

Mercury pulled her hand away when she heard his pained cry, at a loss for what to do. Just touching him seemed to hurt Zoisite more...

"Hold on, I'll get help!" She stood and moved to the comm system, pressing a button that connected it to the Shittenou's section of the palace. Kunzite seemed to know about Zoisite's issues last time, so maybe he could help him now.... As she frantically called him, Hermes watched Zoisite with a blank, unfeeling stare.

When Mercury had called him from her laboratory informing him that she had found Zoisite collapsed in upon her return, the leader of the Shittennou felt his blood run cold. The blonde would occasionally get severe migraines where the slightest noise or touch would cause him to flinch. He remembered all the times Endymion had been by Zoisite's bedside, trying to lessen the pain and lull his friend and protector into a state where he could sleep through the pain. 

Arriving, he quickly made his way inside, finding Zoisite collapsed by his work station with Mercury hovering nearby, unsure what to do to help. He felt bad for her, it was obvious that she was concerned but din't know what to do. 

Wordlessly, he crouched beside his friend, wrapping his fingers around the back of Zoisite's neck, pressing into certain spots to help relieve some of the tension he could see building in his frame. It would help him relax a little so Kunzite would be able to move him back to his room. 

"You're pushing yourself too far again," he murmured, picking Zoisite up and carrying him bridal style, headed back towards the Shittennou part of the castle.