The Coming Terror of Darkness: Struggle of the Eight Guardians

The guardians find themselves swamped by a horde of monsters and attempt a Sailor Teleport toward the heart of Mugen Academy. Detecting the Holy Grail somewhere close, Mistress 9 slips into Hotaru's shape and abducts Sailor Moon, telling her that the girl's own awareness has surfaced once more.

At the same time, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto touch down by helicopter only to be ambushed by Daimons themselves. To keep the others alive, Sailor Pluto reaches for the forbidden power that halts time.

Cornered by the swarm, Sailor Pluto freezes the flow of time so that Uranus and Neptune can slip clear of the trap and survive, though whether she perishes from breaking that taboo or in the helicopter's blast is left unresolved. During the clash Uranus draws her Space Sword, its red blade flaring gold, and drives it into Germatoid's eye, guided by Neptune's Submarine Reflection singling out the genuine foe among his many duplicates. Germatoid steps into the story for the first time here, and the Time Stop ability makes its debut.

This is the final time Usagi, Ami, Rei, Makoto, and Minako appear in their ordinary school uniforms before transforming, and the last outing for Mercury's Shabon Spray and Venus's Crescent Beam in the 1990s series. The manga differs in that Germatoid was Professor Tomoe's own Daimon identity rather than a separate consciousness, and the outer guardians raised a shield around the academy with their talismans. It carried the English dub title "Who's Really Who?" and reached North America on July 27, 2000, after its Japanese broadcast on February 4, 1995.