I do not own Sailor Moon or any brand names.
Whew! The end? Or is it? I apologize for the sappy parts.
Epilogue…I hope!
A white light shimmered in the night sky that hung over the Earth, flashing its white brilliance for a split second before twinkling out. Six- year-old Kaylee Belles was the only one in the room who spotted it through her bedroom window. "Daddy! The sky lit up!"
Frank Belles leaned his head down to peer between the white sills, completely ignorant of his stepson's very recent demise. "It must have been a shooting star, honey. There's nothing there now."
Kaylee slid under her covers. "I think it was an angel. They live on the moon, you know."
* * * * * * * * * *
The light had not disappeared, as Frank Belles suspected. It flew over the corners of the Earth, everywhere at once, so that Kaylee was by no means the only spectator of its short lifespan. It rushed to the tip of the Pole, and then spliced into a fresh hole in the unblemished layers of snow. It rushed through the caverns, passing by the bodies of dead monstrosities, stopping only when it reached its desired target.
A pair of lungs suddenly inhaled, gasping as the stagnant air that had settled in rushed out and was replaced with oxygen, triggering the respiration process out of hibernation, the blood rushing through veins and arteries and capillaries as the heart started to beat again. The pair of bright blue eyes attached to the same body that the lungs shared snapped open, as good as blind in the absolute blackness.
Jadeite gasped again, disoriented. A few moments ago he had been talking to his grandfather, no, sensing his grandfather, really, since a few minutes ago he didn't have a mouth to talk with. He had been nothing but a pure being, free from bodily restraints.
"Jake," he whispered, his voice rusty. His grandfather's old nickname for him. "Grandpa…"
Someone else hacked a cough in the darkness, and then groaned in pain. "Oh…" she moaned. "Where…?"
A name occurred to him. "Venus? Mina?"
"Jay-Jadeite!" Her head pounded as she pulled her battered body into a sitting position, rubbing her neck. "What…?"
"I don't know," another voice answered, older and matronly. Something furry brushed against Venus's ankle. "What—why are we here? What brought us back?"
Venus shuddered at the reminder. "Where's Serenity? I have to find her; I have to protect—"
"Endymion?" Jadeite called into the suffocating black void. "Where are you?"
Venus gathered Luna in her arms and moved towards the sound of his voice. "Jadeite? Where are you?" Her forehead smashed into something as equally hard, and forehead-shaped to boot.
"OW! You found me," Jadeite said, starting to laugh. "Oh my God, I'm alive, I don't know how but I'm here…Venus!"
She laughed along with him, tears streaming down her face. "I know! I know!" They embraced, nearly squishing Luna, who was sandwiched between them.
"Where are—"
"I don't know. Let's find them!" A golden heart flared up in her hand, temporarily blinding their newborn eyes. Luna moaned in pain.
Jadeite thought his corneas had ruptured. "OW! OK, that's really fucking bright. Let's roll!"
* * * * * * * * * * *
Mars and Zoicite were yelling underneath their stone prison, both surprisingly sounding none the worse for wear despite being buried underneath a thousand tons of rubble. Jadeite's face positively lit up when he heard Mars' screamed curses.
"Mars!" He jumped to the top of the pile, frantically digging. "Hold on, don't move, we're going to get you out."
"Jadeite?" Her voice cracked with tears. Venus's heart tugged at the emotion in her friend's plea, but the illusion was soon shattered by Mars's next sentence. "Where the hell do you think I'm going? I'm buried under a ton of rocks!"
"Ow, my ears please," Zoicite grumbled, unseen, his voice rising up from the rocks. "Uh, I'm not going to go off on why we should rightfully still be dead right now because this is neither the time nor the place, but on the other hand, does any one have any suggestions as to digging us out in a way that would be faster and easier than Jadeite's pick and roll?"
"You know an easier way, Einstein? 'Cause I can just stop digging right now!" Jadeite stomped on a patch of rock.
"OW! Asshole! When I get out from under here—"
"Boys!" Venus shouted before immaturity had a chance to reign. She thought for a moment. "Jadeite, why don't you try blasting us out?"
He swallowed and ran a hand through his sunny hair. "I was thinking of that, but I have this feeling that I'm going to throw a brick and end up frying them both, or something to that effect. I still don't have really great control."
"What if I stick them in a dome?" A voice said behind them.
Venus turned. Kunzite was standing in the entrance, supported heavily (or totally) on one side by Jupiter, his face chalky pale as he swayed. Jupiter tried to counterbalance his weight, and they both almost went over.
"Jupiter! Kunzite!" Luna's brick red eyes welled up with tears. "I feared the worst when we left you behind to battle the youma."
"Yeah, well you feared right, Luna." Jupiter lifted the guardian cat in her arms and pressed her face to the black fur.
Venus ran to him, resuming her steady stream of tears. She threw her arms around him, squeezing his broad chest with every ounce of her strength. She began to sob as she listened to his heart hammering underneath the wall of muscle.
"Nice to see you too, V," Jupiter grumbled, her cheeks rosy and eyes bright, looking unnaturally healthy next to the microwaved death that was Kunzite.
Venus heard her, and reached out with one arm and encompassed her friend in the hug.
"Don't leave me out!" Jadeite yelled, his voice full of elation at seeing his best friend alive. He rushed the trio and bear-hugged them. "Kunz, bud, I'd hug you but I think it would kill you right now. You OK?"
"Remember that game last year against Oregon when I was knocked out? That was a goddamn pillow fight compared to—"
"HELLO! Why are we concentrating on the people NOT buried under a ton of rubble?!"
Jadeite broke away, his mischievous grin alive again on his face. "It has to be all about you all the time, doesn't it, Zoi?"
"I'm under here too, SWEETHEART, so if you ever want to have sex with something other than you'll right hand, you'll find a shovel, pronto!"
Jupiter smiled as she placed Luna on the ground and deftly caught Kunzite before he fell over. "It has to be all about you all the time, doesn't it MARS?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about, BITCH, so shut up and dig me out already!"
It took hardly a minute to blast away the crumbly rubble. Mars through herself around Jadeite's neck, nearly in tears from joy. "Oh, God I thought I'd never see you again!" She pressed her face against his, brushing away stray tears with one filthy glove.
Zoicite brushed clouds of dust from his hair and grinned as Venus and Jupiter nearly knocked him over with their tag-team hug. "Can we leave now? This whole Lazarus thing is really freaking me out."
Mars's eyes twinkled, and she pried her face away from Jadeite's long enough to throw him a wayward grin. "Plus there's a good chance Mercury's alive, right?"
"Hey, if I'm walking and talking and seriously hurting right now, there's no reason why she's not either. Can you make it, bro?" The last question was directed at Kunzite, who swayed unsteadily after Jupiter dropped him, his eyes glassy.
"What? Yeah, I think. Just don't drop me, OK, Jupiter?"
Why do I have to carry him? We have two more than capable guys here alive and well! She grunted as she readjusted herself under his bulky arm. "You know, it's a good thing you're not a really big guy or this would be pretty damn hard."
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"Curious," Mercury muttered to herself, and lifted the heavy, clawed hand of a dead youma and, to Artemis's horror, sniffed it.
"Ugh!" Artemis leapt away, unable to continue watching the grisly display. "What are you doing?"
She was too deep in thought to hear him. "Smells almost like…almonds. Boy, I really wish I had my computer with me. I wonder what happened to it…"
Artemis sighed, ruffling his whiskers. "I'll add that to our list of concerns." He paced back in forth, uneasy with being so close to so many youma, dead or otherwise. He had tried to persuade Mercury to leave the throne room, to perhaps to find the others, to leave this horrible, dark place that chilled him right through the fur. She had considered his proposal for exactly two seconds before deducing that the others had a better chance of finding them than the other way around.
"But Mercury," he had protested. "What if they're not-what if we're the only ones who are—?"
"I'm not even going to even entertain that notion," she had said stiffly, and then began sifting through body parts, poking and prodding through the finer points of youma anatomy.
Artemis watched her pick through body parts, most of them halfway incinerated courtesy of Jupiter and Mars. A few were cleanly spliced, most likely slashed with Venus's sword, and Mercury recognized her own flash- freezing on a handful. The guardian cat's words rang in her head, despite her best efforts to push them away with everything from the periodic table to commercial jingles.
What if he's right? What if we're the only ones alive? What if—
What if Zoicite's dead? Her vision blurred as tears built in her eyes and spilled over. She hastily wiped them with the back of her dirty glove.
Could I live without him? She mentally berated herself for asking such a question that she already knew the answer to. If he were gone, she would simply stop. Stop everything. Stop eating, stop breathing, stop living. She would shrivel into an empty shell of herself and wait to blow away with the wind.
How strange that someone could invade her being so much, in such a short time. She knew the touch of his skin. The smell of his neck. If she closed her eyes, she could go back to her dorm room, dark save for the orange light from the streetlights peeking in through the blinds. She was curled on her side in a fetal position, he was curled behind her, one arm under her neck and the other around her stomach.
Oh God. Please. Please let him be alive. She mentally slapped herself.
Serenity! How could let her princess, the one she swore to protect above all others, slip her mind so easily? You're slipping, Mercury. Cut it out. Standing there in near darkness, knee-high in corpses, she wondered if one person was worth it.
She swiveled at a sudden noise behind her, Artemis scampering behind her legs in pure reflex. "What was that?" he whispered, his voice trembling.
"Stay back," she responded, her hands glowing blue in preparation for battle.
The doorway to the throne room rattled as something on the other side tried to force it open. "Who's there?" she hissed.
The door swung open and banged against the hard stone of the wall, revealing Zoicite, who was rubbing and flexing his shoulder. "Wow. I think that was solid oak. Great idea, Mars; it's not like I really NEED my pitching arm or anything." He dodged her subsequent blow, barely.
Mercury's couldn't speak. Her eyes simply sprouted tears like rain dripping from a tree leaf.
"So, where do you think Neph's at? Should we go to information and have him paged?" Zoicite asked, slamming his fingers down on the keypad, trying to force his communicator to work for the umpteeth time. "Nope, still no reception. That's the last time I buy—well, not buy, from a cheap little Mom and Pop."
Jupiter's lips were so tightly pressed together the blood had drained from them, and they were as white as his face. "I don't know. I hope he has the sense to stay in one place until we find him."
"Jesus Christ." Nephrite sucked on his last cigarette, which was only a millimeter away from being just a filter. He could have sworn that the rock he was passing was the same one he passed twenty minutes ago. Just to be on the safe side, he stubbed his Camel out and placed the butt on top as a marker.
Fifteen minutes later, it was staring him back in the face. "Fucking rock. This is bullshit."
In another part of the drafty hellhole that Beryl had called home, Venus picked up her head and sniffed. "Smell that?"
Jupiter broke out in a grin that seemed to light up the corners of the lightless cave. "Turkish Golds."
Nephrite heard them coming, his heart almost leaping out of his chest as he picked out the voices. "HEY! OVER HERE!" He sent a comet hurtling to the ceiling that exploded into a thousand points of light. It illuminated Jupiter's tear-streaked face as she dropped Kunzite like a sack of potatoes and ran into his arms.
"Oh my God!" she choked. "Oh my God!"
He hugged her so tightly his arms cramped. "I was trying to find you! I wasn't leaving this place until I found you!"
She laughed in his ear and pulled away, grinning from ear to ear. "Find me! You can't even find your car in Wal-Mart's parking lot!"
"You're worth more than my car."
She laughed. "That means something, too!"
Teleporting was a bit more of a challenge, since basically they were all in a weakened condition and mentally drained, and concentrating when one has just been resurrected from the dead proved to be a most difficult challenge. A lack of energy landed them on the outskirts of the campus instead in a warm, dry, and very recently totaled living room, and as a double whammy they immediately detransformed out of their Guardian forms, and thus their accelerated healing decreased and the full brunt of their injuries hit them head on.
Amy, Raye, and Zach were almost felled by agonizing pain in their head, but had to settle for collapsing on the curb, their heads in their hands, trying to block out the weak glow of the rising sun. Jay began coughing compulsively. Kevin, who had been threatening to pass out for the last twenty minutes, made good on his word and instantly crumpled to the pavement like a sack of wet cement.
"Aw, damn, Kev! Get up! We can't carry you!" Matt, ever the thoughtful friend, kicked Kevin in the ribs.
Lita groaned. "Should we call a cab?"
"Got any cash?" She shook her head. "Plan B, please."
A car turned the corner, some kind of lights on the roof, and for a split second, Matt presumed that it actually was a taxi, and was rehearsing his bargaining speech with the cabbie when he noticed that it was painted an ominous black and white. "Fuck."
Mina groaned as she knelt next to Kevin. "Do you think they'll notice?"
Jay turned around. "Mina, we've got a six-six, two eighty linebacker laying in a fetal position on the sidewalk. You tell me."
Zach chewed his lip nervously. "I just contributed in saving the entire Earth from outside invasion and widespread destruction. So why am I still afraid of cops?"
The cruiser slowed to stop in front of them, and a mustached, meathead cop sporting a pair of reflecting Oakleys ambled out, chomping on a soggy toothpick. "Looks like we had a rough night, huh fellas?"
Jay wearily raised his eyes to the cop. "Officer, you have no idea."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Serena wanted to sleep forever, the amorphous blackness of dreamless slumber enveloping her like a blanket, smothering the agonizing memories at least temporarily, but as soon as gray light began leaking in between the destroyed blinds, her mind snapped back into consciousness.
She was too tired to cry anymore; her swollen eyes stared at the ceiling while inside, she was completely blank.
What do I do now? I can't go on without them. I can't live like this.
Darien's breath was hot against her ear; she pulled closer to him, wondering why he didn't make her feel better.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"WHAT THE—" Zach displaced his anger at his present life situation onto the battered pay phone, its dirty chrome pitted scarred from years of small- time criminals hammering on it when their one phone call was met with endless ringing instead of the voice of a trusted friend willing to donate excessive amounts of cash (or bond). "Why aren't they answering? Amy, your turn, try Darien's place again. Leave another message."
* * * * * * * * *
She heard movements in the hallway, low voices, something scraping, and then the doorknob jiggled.
Serena sat up with a start, knocking Darien's arm off of her. "Who's there?" she whispered.
The door inched open, stopping when it hit a broken chair, and the person behind it pressed more weight and shoved it forward, bulldozing the crap out of the way.
Matt and Jay dragged Kevin in, and in an affectionate display of care and concern, immediately dropped him on the floor with the delicacy of a falling piano. "Oh shit," Matt muttered, rubbing his sore shoulder. "Never again, dude."
Jay was standing still in shock, taking in every inch of the decimated room. "Oh my God, what the hell happened?"
Zach and Amy entered after him, their eyes wide with shock. Lita supported Raye on one side, Mina on the other. "Oh Mylanta!"
Serena sat absolutely still, her breath coming out in shallow gasps. They hadn't noticed her yet, and Darien slept on. Artemis jumped over Kevin's body and poked at the pieces of the broken table. "Someone must have broken in while we were gone!"
Matt's face flushed as he whipped out and punched Zach in the shoulder. "You left the door unlocked again! I'm going to beat your ass in!"
Zach punched him back. "I didn't leave it open!"
Matt wrapped his arm around Zach's neck and pulled him to the floor. "Well then who the hell did?"
Jay ran his hand over a hole in the wall. He sighed. "There goes our security deposit."
Serena made a small noise in the back of her throat; everyone stopped and stared at her. Mina broke through from the back.
"Serena!" she rushed to the couch and threw her arms around her princess. Serena erupted into noisy, wet tears. "Are you OK? Metallia didn't hurt you did she?"
The rest of the girls jumped in the hug. "I'm sorry, Serena! I thought you were a pile of dirty laundry!"
"Oh, Lita!" Serena smiled, burying her face in the taller girl's neck. "I can't believe you're all alive!"
Everyone stopped for a second, watching the two girls hug. A single tear, different from the other salty rills of water running down Serena's cheek, this one silver and glittering and solid, slipped out of her eye, turning over and sparkling with the brilliance of a ten carat DeBeer, and fell onto Mina's sweater. It spread out, expanding until it was the size of a starfish.
"Oh!" Serena plucked it off. "The crystal!"
"Holy shit! What just happened?" Matt rubbed his eyes.
Raye blanched. "Why did it come out of your eye?"
"Well, you see, Darien—"
"Darien!" Jay started slapping him in the face. "Yo, sped. Wake up."
Darien darted upright. "What--? Why--?" He nearly jumped out of his skin at first, shock with the force of an A-bomb
They jumped on him in a piggy pile, shouting while Darien remained still, white-faced. "Oh my God. Oh my God." He seemed unable to form any other phrase; his face wavered and he started grinning crazily. "Fucking-A. Oh my God. How—you were dead! How did you—"
Luna wiggled a little out of Serena's death hug. "I think I know."
"Celebrate now, explain later!" Zach laughed, hugging Serena while she cried. "So what happened, Darien? And what happened to our place?"
Darien began laughing, hysterically, until tears rushed out of his eyes and his throat hurt and scratched and his jaw ached. He felt like running down the street screaming and smashing car windows, but instead picked up Artemis with one arm and threw the other around Matt. "Someone must have broke in."
Then he spotted Kevin sprawled out on the carpet, and his face fell. "Is Kevin dead?"
* * * * * * * * * * *
Kevin woke up in time to help with the cleanup.
Zach was working overtime, repairing the table, smoothing over holes in the walls, and affixing legs to chairs. Everyone else was shoveling objects beyond repair into garbage bags.
He stopped and sighed. "We might have to get a new TV." Collective groans.
"It's on Darien!" Matt declared, miserably kicking a pile of splintered wood that had once been part of an end table.
Darien spluttered. "Me? You're the one with money!"
"Wait, you mean I'm going to miss "The Price is Right?" Jay was aghast.
"You can live a week without drooling over Barker's Beauties," Raye retorted sharply, unfurling the twisty cord of the vacuum.
"So what happened after you turned into Serenity?" Mina asked, delicately tossing the larger pieces of glass into the garbage.
"Oh, yeah, well…" Serena finished the story.
Artemis's brow furrowed. "So you caught our souls in the crystal, but something went wrong when you tried to release them?"
She nodded. "That's what my mother did when the Moon Kingdom fell; she caught our souls in the crystal and released them into the future. She showed me how to do it, just in case something happened, and I—" She swallowed thickly. "I nearly died when it didn't work."
Lita rubbed her shoulder. "Hey, don't worry. It did work, in a…weird- roundabout-chance-occurrence way. That's all that matters, right?" She stood up. "Who's hungry? I'm in the mood to make some chicken Parmesan."
Zach reached in a hole in the wall and pulled out the eight ball. "That would be do-able if we actually had chicken. Hey, why are you so wired and Kevin's ready to die?"
"I'm fine," Kevin moaned from the couch.
"Prove it, bro. Stand up."
"No. Fuck you. Leave me alone."
Lita rustled around the kitchen, searching for pots and ingredients. "Well, I have kind of an idea, but it's pretty gross. You see, when I was…brought back, I guess? I still had Zoycite's crystal stuck in my neck, and I guess that kept all the blood in. Kevin got slashed, and—it was so gross—most of his blood ended up on the floor." She stood up. "And WHY does it STILL smell like pot in here? You had that party two days ago."
Amy was sweeping remnants into a dustpan. "I'm still trying to determine why in fact we were resurrected. Serena, you said yourself that your first attempt to release our souls failed."
Darien stopped for a second. "Um, I think I did it, actually."
"Really? How?"
He squirmed, visibly uncomfortable. "Well, I broke the crystal. The first crystal."
Mina's jaw dropped open. "You BROKE it? What do you mean?"
"I mean I broke it. I threw it against the wall, and it shattered like glass and disappeared. I guess your souls were trapped inside, and they were freed when the crystal broke."
Zach groaned. "You broke it. Wasn't our TV enough?"
"Yeah, how are we going to watch March Madness now?" Matt added.
Raye smacked Darien on the arm. "I can't believe you broke it! You're really lucky Serena cried a new one out, or we would have been up shit creek."
"If Darien didn't break it, we wouldn't even be here to talk about, Raye," Jay added. She frowned at him.
"Maybe that's why all I remember is white."
Darien scoffed. "That's right. You should be thanking me." He scooped up a pile of debris and held it out to Zach. "Yo, Straub. Throw this away." No answer. "Zach? Zoi?"
Zach was kneeling on the floor, a jagged piece of silver glass in his hands. "What? Sorry." He held the sharp triangle up to his face; familiar green eyes stared back at him. He tilted it slightly; the reflection wavered.
In that instant, Darien knew what he was looking at, what he was remembering. What he was still beating himself up over.
"Funny to think how it all started," he said softly. "Enough concentration, a lot of magic…"
"One stupid word," Zach finished, chucking the piece of mirror away. "All this could have been prevented if I never opened my mouth."
"You don't know that."
"Thanks, Chiba; that's just another way of saying 'You fucked up and we know it', in nicer terms." He sighed. "Don't worry about it; it's not your fault. It was my stupid idea, and it just ended up blowing up in my face. Just like everything did back then."
He was hit on the side of the head with a DVD case. "Zach, shut up. We didn't exactly twist your arm talking you out of it." Jay resumed his lament about the TV. "I'm more pissed about this right now. Darien, you didn't get in our rooms, did you? Because if you touched my—"
"HEY!" Lita screamed from the kitchen. She reached into the oven and pulled out a plastic sandwich bag, half-filled with unmistakable greenish-brown foliage. "Someone stashed this in your oven! No wonder it smells like weed in here!"
Luna gasped. "Someone left DRUGS in your oven?"
"The nerve!" Matt interjected. "I'll get rid of it." He pulled it out of Lita's hands and passed it stealthily behind his back to Jay, who tucked it in his pocket. He winked at Darien. "So I'm thinking we need to have a party tonight."
"Explain where this need comes from," Artemis mumbled, curling in a ball on the floor next to the couch.
"We're alive. That's all the reasoning I need."
Artemis stared at him strangely. "I guess it is."
* * * * * * * * * * *
"I love you."
Serena giggled in the darkness. "I love you more." She leaned back against Jay's pillow, which smelled like Raye's Pantene conditioner, and let Darien kiss all over her neck. The sounds of the party were muffled through the closed door, shouts and laughter and music, sounds she would miss the most. Darien undid his belt with a clink.
"Move, I gotta piss. Maybe shit." Musto, resident go-to guy after he picked up everyone from the police station that fateful day, let out that mood- killing adage in the hallway loud enough for them to hear through the door.
"No, don't. Amy's puking in there." This time it was Erin's voice. They heard a door open and then shut.
Serena raised her eyebrows in the dark. "Mamo-chan, maybe I should—"
He kissed her forehead. "She'll be fine. Erin's with her."
She was still worried. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. Let's just try to have a moment alone without worrying about everyone."
"But she was funneling…"
"Usako."
A sigh. "All right."
The door burst open suddenly, letting in a small amount of dim orange light, a roar of music, and two occupants, kissing and laughing hysterically and tumbling like bowling pins onto the carpet. Jay, wearing only gray Bryce U. shorts, landed on top of Raye, who, to Serena's horror, was absent of all clothes except for her black and intentionally revealing underwear. Raye screeched, tried to wiggle out from underneath him, almost losing her bra in the process. "Stop it!" She wrapped her arms around his neck and returned his kiss as they rolled on the floor.
"Raye! Oh my God!" Serena screamed, pulling the comforter up to her neck. Dear lord I'm half naked!! And so are they!
Jay lifted his head and smiled. "HEY! WHAT'S GOING ON?" He was louder than normal (which was rather loud regardless), his eyes glassy and unfocused. "CHIBA, ARE YOU FUCKING IN MY BED?"
Darien was crimson. "Jay, get the hell out of here!"
They stood up unsteadily, Raye swaying like a Weeble-Wobble. "Sorry," she blurted out, and then collapsed on Matt's bed. Jay threw himself next to her and tried to pry her bra off again.
Serena lost it. "BOTH of you get out! Get your own room!"
Another figure appeared, silhouetted against the open doorway, all willowy limbs and waves of hair. "Raye? Are you in here?"
"Mina!" Raye leapt off of the bed and threw herself at the blonde, who caught her in midair. The momentum sent them tumbling to the floor. "I lost!" They both found it absurdly hysterical.
Darien blinked, not knowing whether to turn his eyes away or not. "Screw clothing" must have been the theme of the night, because Mina was clad only in a white camisole and panties. "I lost too!" she screamed.
Raye held up one hand. "WE BOTH LOST!"
"Lost what?" Serena asked, mildly curious.
"Strip quarters."
"You can play strip quarters?"
"You can play strip anything."
Two figures appeared in the doorway, blocking the light out once again, each toting an O.E. forty. "What's going on in here?" Zach asked, either not knowing or not caring that his girlfriend was on her knees worshipping the porcelain god across the hall.
Matt was a little more unbalanced. "What're doin'?" He fell against the doorframe and was only prevented from falling by Zach grabbing the front of his shirt. "Why's everybody naked?"
"That's it! Everybody get the hell out!"
Matt and Jay rushed over to Darien, whose complexion by this time closely resembled Heinz 57, and both started punching him. "Darien's kicking me out of my own room!" Matt poured his forty on Darien's head while delivering that statement, soaking the pillow. Jay punched him in the teeth.
"DUDE, THAT'S MY BED!"
"EVERYONE LEAVE!" Serena shriek, her piercing voice snapping everyone to attention. Mina pulled Raye to her feet.
"C'mon, let's leave them alone. We'll go bother Kevin."
"I'm game," Matt said, rubbing his mouth. They filed out, Jay singing along with the party music as he left.
"CADILLAC GRILLS, CADILLAC MIL'S, CHECK OUT THE OIL MY CADILLAC SPILLS…"
Serena sighed. "I am sure going to miss this."
"I'm not," Darien replied, lying.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"What are you thinking, Artemis?" Luna asked softly, twining around her tail with his. They sat together under a tree next to a grassy field in the middle of campus, watching everyone play touch football in the dusky orange light. It was warm, the bugs were starting to fly up from the grass in a flurry of white wings, and the air smelled like heat and earth.
Artemis watched Serena sloppily lob the ball and scamper away like a rabbit. "That something's not right." Kevin stretched to catch Serena's pass, and then took off, knocking Darien down like one of those inflatable clown punching bags.
"Of course something's not right. I still can't explain what kind of magic erased every person's memory. No one remembers anything: the youma attacks, or the Senshi…it's like all that evil never existed. I wonder if the television stations have the tapes, or if they're gone, too." She sighed. "Guess we're back to fighting evil in complete obscurity."
"We never did it for the recognition." Across the field, Matt tackled Kevin at the knees and brought him down in an attack of grass stains. The two guardians pretended to ignore the subsequent swearing.
"I know that," Luna huffed in reply. Her voice turned more matronly. "I don't know, I just wish the girls—and well, I guess the boys, too now—well, that for once they knew that they were appreciated for all they do."
"They know they're appreciated. We appreciate them."
"Of course, Artemis." She smiled a little, blinking to adjust to the dimming light. "Someday they'll get the recognition they deserve." She watched as Raye pushed Zach to the ground and kicked him in the ribs for good measure. "In the meantime…they can enjoy themselves. They can enjoy their normal lives."
Artemis's nose twitched a little. "Goddess knows their lives won't be normal for long. There's always something on the horizon…" Jay dove on a fumble, and was promptly pounced on by everyone except Amy. "Weren't they playing touch football?"
"At first," Luna said calmly.
Amy tried her best not to sniff.
She and Zach were spending the day packing up her room, her foster home for the last nine months; the place where she had laughed, cried, studied, worried, made friends, drew up plans to defeat the Negaverse, tried alcohol for the first time, and lost her virginity. Now it came off the walls, stripped off the bed, stuffed in cardboard boxes and suitcases. Almost every time they sealed a box, she would experience a mini-crying jag that she tried to hide from Zach, and believed herself successful until Zach hugged her tenderly from behind and pressed a Kleenex to her face.
"Hey, it's OK," he whispered while she sobbed silently. She managed a small, wan smile.
"I know. I just, I just…"
"Got too comfortable?" She nodded. "Come on, Amy, it's not that bad. It's only for a couple months, and you'll get to see your Mom again, and sleep in a building that you don't share with two hundred other people."
"Bedford has one hundred and sixty five."
"You catch my drift."
She smiled again. "This is hard; everything is making it hard. I like it here. I like the people, I like the curriculum, I even like swimming, and I thought I'd hate it." Her lip trembled precariously. "I'm going to miss the LIBRARY!"
Zach bit back his laughter as she cried against his chest. "Yeah, I know. Third floor, reading room, last table on the left."
"I-I'm going to miss it so much! I'm not going to see Lita or Darien or Mina or YOU for three months!" I have to stop crying. I'm leaving a huge stain on his shirt!
"Hey. It's OK. We've got our amped-up cell phones, you can talk to me whenever you want."
"It's not the same."
"I know." They stared out the window for a few minutes, down towards the parking lot, filled with parents and students packing their cars for the trip home.
Zach broke the silence first. "At least you don't have to live with Darien for three months."
She rolled her eyes. "Please! Both of you were thrilled when I proposed that solution."
He grunted. "He's so possessive of his toothpaste. You would think it's made of gold or something, the way he hoards it."
A breeze from the open window scattered some loose papers onto the floor. "Darn," Amy said, kneeling down to scoop those up. "Dr. Anderson wants a copy of my final project for—" Zach was standing at the window, staring down at the parking lot at a father and son loading boxes in the back of a minivan. The father clapped a hand on his son's back, and they climbed in the van and drove off.
Amy tried to swallow away the lump in her throat. There was a question that she had wanted to ask for a long time, ever since Zach had brought it up a few weeks ago. "Are you going to go?"
He snapped out of it and began gathering desk articles. "To what?"
"To the hearing. You know—"
"Oh. No." He pulled tape over a box. "Nana's going. She's going to testify to keep him there so he, uh, doesn't try and find me."
Amy couldn't think of anything to say. "I guess it's better that h-he doesn't get out. What about your Mom?"
"No one's found her yet. She's wouldn't go anyway; she's probably in LA sucking dick for crack."
"Zach!"
"What? It's true."
"She's your mother!"
"Nana's my mother." A trace of a smile passed his face. "The State of California Penal System is my father."
She made a face at him, then softened. "I'm sorry. I wish there was something I can do."
He grinned at her. "You do enough."
There was a knock at the door. "Come in."
A group of girls pushed their way in, toting a cluster of balloons and a cardboard box, their muscled arms exposed by their tank tops. The Lady "Amy!" they all screamed. Each one had blue hair, the blonde or brown roots poking out underneath the oddly colored locks. BU's Mermaids had arrived.
Amy's face lit up. "Hi, you guys! What's going on?"
The girl in front, a broad-shouldered, ponytailed senior named Audrey (nickname: Diesel) held out a piece of folded cardboard. "You weren't leaving without your team pic, were you?"
Amy opened the frame. Inside, the team was lined up in front of the pool in two lines, wearing their blue and white warm-ups. Amy picked herself out of the first row, kneeling. Each girl had bright blue hair, the picture taken back at the start of the season, when they were freshly dyed. She broke out in a grin.
Diesel ran her hand over Amy's head. "Wow! You've been touching up, huh? It looks good on you, Ames!"
She lowered the picture. "I've grown to actually like it."
"Get used to it!" Another girl, Lindsey, piped up from the back. "We're dyeing them again next year!" She ran up and embraced Amy. "Keep training, girl, we need you to break some more records next year!"
Julie, a sophomore who was presently gawking at Zach, asked, "Hey Amy, are you coming out tonight? Sammy's going."
Amy turned to Zach, her face aglow. "No, I think I'm staying in. I think my friend Raye's going there, though. I don't think she's occupied with anything important." Her face darkened. "And I don't think I'm drinking alcohol ever again after what happened last time."
Zach rolled his eyes and hugged her. "Please. That is the saddest example of human bullshit…OW!"
* * * * * * * * *
"AH!"
Raye buried her face on Jay's bare shoulder, breathing heavily as she came down. "Oh," she gasped, brushing stray hair out of her face.
Jay adjusted the pillow behind his head and wiped his forehead. "You said that already. Along with 'God', 'Jay', and 'Yes'."
She rolled off him and sat up. "So? Please don't make my imitate your O- face."
"Stop hating on the O-face. If it wasn't for the O-face, there would be no O and you wouldn't be getting it so good."
Raye's eyes widened and she hit him on the shoulder. "You're disgusting!"
"And you like it!" She made a face, and leaned across and grabbed an elastic band off of her nightstand. She pulled her hair up into a sloppy ponytail with a few quick flutters of her hands. Jay absently reached up and fingers one of the black tendrils that hung off her forehead.
"I'm going to miss you," he said, genuinely sounding sullen.
Raye looked down at him, her violet eyes wide. "I know. I'm going to miss you, too. It'll be nice to see Grandpa again, but…" I can't joke around with him the way I do with you. I can't say or do things that I do in front of you. Because I've known you for three months and a thousand years, and I think you know me better than my own family.
Oh yeah. And the whole sex part.
His finger idly twisted her hair into a tight spiral. "I'm going to be bored." Because you're gorgeous and passionate and fun and everything you do from flipping your hair to chewing food makes me want to have sex with you.
And I'll be around guys all summer. Yuck. I don't know what girls see in us anyway.
"That's because you'll have no one to fight with," she replied, slapping his hand away when he pinched her butt. "OW! Stop it! I swear, you get off on antagonizing me!"
Jay grinned, his full, shit-eating grin that was his trademark. "I get off when you get off, baby!"
She jumped up and smacked him with her pillow. "YOU ARE UNREAL! Why do you say things like that?" Jay laughed so hard he started choking while he deflected her blows. Raye's face reddened until it burned. "You think this is funny?" She began pummeling him between words. "What…is…so…funny!:
He grabbed her spare pillow and lightly whacked her in the stomach. "You're pillow fighting me naked. It's…" He sat up suddenly, grabbed her wrists and pulled her body against his. "Really hot."
Raye was mad enough to burst, but her poisonous anger seemed to dissipate like smoke when he bent down and kissed her. She jumped up on his body effortlessly.
Someone knocked at the door. "Raye? Are you home?"
Jay broke the kiss and looked at Raye. Who's that? He silently mouthed.
The intruder knocked again. "Raye?"
Raye blanched. "It's that Chris guy from upstairs! You know, the one that does a lot of drugs and follows me around."
Jay's eyes hardened until they were slits of blue in a remarkable impression of Kevin when mad. "Come back later, man. Or better yet, don't."
Chris lowered his hand and turned away from the door. Tall and lanky, he lumbered down the hallway towards the elevators. Someone was waiting for him back in his room, someone important. Someone who was very interested in Raye, or rather, Raye's small blonde friend who he really didn't give too shits about…
Raye herself on the other hand…if things worked out…well, Chris just really hoped that things worked out. He could get rid of that idiot baseball player she was fucking at the moment. Hell, he could get rid of all the idiot baseball players on campus. In the United States. In the world. All for a price, but well worth it. Next semester, he would have his chance. He and his new partner. Three months…
Back in the room, Raye's eyes flew open. "That was so rude!"
"So what? He's gone."
"You are—" she jumped down and picked up the first object she could grasp, which happened to be one of her sneakers, and winged it at him. Jay ducked, and the sneaker hit the flimsy screen covering the window, and popped the frame out. Shoe and screen tumbled out the window.
"NO!" Raye screamed, diving towards the open window, stopping only when she realized she was naked. "DAMMIT! MY SHOE!" She started hitting Jay anywhere she could. "This is all your fault!"
"Raye?" came a voice from outside. "That you?"
"Serena!" she shouted from across the room.
Serena smiled up at the window, Raye's sneaker in her hand. "Are you trying to kill me?"
"YES, Serena, that was exactly what I was planning on doing with my own SHOE which I NEED! I swear, you don't have enough brains to fill a Dixie cup!"
Serena frowned, but Darien came to her rescue. "Raye, no offense, but you're the one who threw her shoe through a screen."
"DARIEN SHUT UP!"
Jay poked his head out the window. "Here, Chiba, toss it back up."
Darien chucked it back, and the pair continued on. Serena was flipping through a stack of recently developed pictures, shaking her head each time. "This would be a great picture of Zach and Matt if they weren't holding forties…and well, giving me the finger. Oh God, I could never show this one to my mother; you can see right down Raye's shirt! And these…do we have any pictures that are decent?"
Darien grabbed the pile. "Here. Maybe if you cut the sides off you won't be able to see the kegs."
Serena rolled her eyes. "This is impossible. Even if Luna saw one of these, I'd never hear the end of it."
"You know what else is going to be impossible?" He brushed her hair back and tucked it behind her ear. "Being without you until next semester."
Serena grabbed his hand and kissed it. "I know. I'll miss you terribly." Her eyes welled up. "Do you really have to stay? Why can't you come home with me? I'm sure my parents wouldn't mind."
He shook his head. "I would love to, Serena, you know that. But I've already got that internship at the hospital, and it's too big of an opportunity to pass up. Besides, it's only about three months. We've done it before."
"I know. But you really don't have to get a job, you know? You'll be king of the Earth one day, and it won't really matter, will it?"
The pleading look in her big blue eyes almost made him renege the whole deal and follow her anywhere. "Well, we really don't know that for sure. Me and the guys were talking about it last night when—" He cut himself off, almost giving everything away. When we were smoking that gigantic bag of pot we found. Right before I started giggling at Zach's screen saver and devouring all those Funyuns. "—when we went to The Green."
"I didn't know you went to the bars last night."
He pulled her close and picked up the pace a little. "Yeah, we did. We couldn't sit around all night." Yes, we did, while completely burnt and stupid. Kevin left the bartender a sixteen dollar tip. Nothing like that will happen again, and neither you nor the other girls will know what went on this time.
"Oh." She stuck her hand into his back pocket. "You're not going out tonight, are you?"
His smile was borderline dangerous. "I'm staying with you tonight. Don't plan on sleeping."
"Oh, God, I can't believe you have me smoking. This is ridiculous. I can't do this. I'm going to get cancer. I'm going to get emphysema. I'm going to not be able to run." Lita exhaled a cloud. "How come I'm not coughing? Don't people cough when they smoke?"
Matt tied the garbage bag shut. "I never coughed. I think it's because we have invincible lungs, remember?"
"I guess. This is my first and last, though. I hate the taste, and it stinks."
Lita sat on the counter in the kitchen of the guys' apartment, helping Matt clean everything out. Of course, they had taken advantage of being alone—several times—until Lita suggested that they clean out the refrigerator, which hadn't been done since they moved in at the beginning of last year. They had forgotten to defrost the freezer, too, and everything inside was covered with ice so cold it burned their fingers. They had started hacking at it with screwdrivers, making very little progress except for jarring their hands and frustrating themselves to the point of overload. Lita, stressed over the results of her final projects and living with Matt's family for the summer, had grabbed his cigarettes off the counter and lit up. Matt almost dislocated his jaw in shock.
"Are you saying I stink?"
"No! I'm just so nervous!"
"About what?" He hacked off a giant chunk of ice, which crashed on the floor and skittered across the linoleum.
"Everything. Meeting your family. Occupying their home, eating their food, running up their bills and just generally making a nuisance of myself."
"MAKOTO, believe me, they WILL NOT CARE. They invited you in the first place, remember?"
She made a face at him and blew out more smoke. "Yes, I know, NOAH."
He flicked water at her face when she used his first name. "The only people that call me that are strangers."
"Well, it's you, Noah Matthew Haberman IV!"
"Ugh, stop it. You're making me sound like my father. The only people who call me that are strangers."
Lita pulled a few boxes out of the freezer and automatically tossed them. "I like it. If I was your mother I wouldn't have started calling you 'Matt'."
"Again, you have not lived in a house with three other 'Noah's' of varying generations. I think she wanted to know who she was talking to." He stabbed the ice viciously with his Phillips. "So why don't you go by Makoto? It's the name your mother gave you."
She caught a falling ice tray before it had a chance to crack him in the head. "Not American enough. Everyone knows me by 'Lita'."
He tousled her hair, his eyes a little bit sad. "How about I can call you 'Makoto', and you can call me 'Noah'? Fair deal?"
Lita smiled. "Sure. We're going to confuse the hell out of everyone."
"Who cares? It's their problem." Matt leaned forward and kissed her quickly, on the corner of her mouth. "Let's put this away for awhile, huh? I can think of better things we could do…"
She shrugged him off. "After we're done. This fridge is making me sick."
He sighed. "Fine! Let's just chuck everything and get this over with."
"I thought that was the plan anyway."
Matt reached into the back and pulled out a misshapen greenish ball covered in freezer burn. "What's this?"
Lita examined it closely. "Oh, I think it's the youma hand that Amy stuck in there. She wanted to dissect it."
Matt automatically dropped it the floor like it was on fire and frantically shook off his hand. "You're fucking kidding me!"
"Nope."
"Oh my lord—I think I'm going to be sick. Do we have any Lysol?"
She slid her arms around his waist. "How about I make you feel better?" She kissed him, deeply, warm and wet. The only sound in the apartment was their heavy breathing. Matt hauled her up on the counter, and she began to pull her shirt over her head as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
Matt stopped her. "Could we just like—could we get rid of the hand first? It's freaking me out."
"Oh, you're kidding." She stared at him closely. "You're not."
"C'mon. This was almost but not nearly as disgusting as finding Jay's retainer in the utensil drawer."
She let out a Cheshire Cat smile. "Wait, I have an idea." She picked the frozen hand up and carried it into the bedroom, and slipped it under Zach's pillow.
"No! The retainer's under there! Put it under Kevin's!"
"OK. He's going to kill us, you know."
"We won't admit to anything; he'll have to torture us first. Now, where were we…?"
"This book doesn't make any sense," Mina complained, throwing it in the grass. She leaned back against Kevin's chest. "It has all the Italian words listed first. How am I going to find the words I need like this?"
Kevin picked it up and flipped through it. "Maybe you could try using the second half of the book where it's English to Italian."
She grabbed it out of his hands, and blushed scarlet. "I knew that."
"No, you didn't. Or else you wouldn't have asked."
"Whatever." She turned her head so her cheek pressed against the hard muscle of his chest. "I'm going to hate Italy." The breeze rustled the leaves of the tree they were sitting under, allowing little patches of sunlight to leak through. Mina had taken off her sandals and buried her bare feet in the thick, carpet-like grass.
"Yeah, right. That's like saying 'I hate money'. It just doesn't happen."
"Well, it will happen. I'm going to be flying around this entire summer, living out of my suitcase, and the only people to talk to are perverted photographers and druggie models. Do you know how ridiculous coked-up models are? I think I'll be the only one who doesn't snort a kilo of blow up her nose daily."
"Promise me you won't do anything stupid like that." Good one, Belles. Great way to call the kettle black after that all that bud you smoked last night. God, I hope Jay wasn't playing with cameras again.
Mina didn't even miss a beat. "Of course. I've grown attached to my brain cells, thank you."
"I've grown attached to your brain cells, too." His hand roved to the small of her back. "So make sure you come back in one, unburnt piece."
"I will. I promise." She absently played with her cuticles. "When my contract is up, I don't think I'm going to renew it."
He lifted his eyebrows. "Why not?"
"I don't know." She shifted around in his arms. "I don't want to have to leave every weekend anymore; I'm sick of sitting in hotel rooms by myself wondering if I'm needed back here, if something's happening and I'm not there to protect Serena. I'm tired; it's a full time job and I'm only 19. I need a break." She sighed. "I'm going to take semester off, at least. I want to get my grades back up. I want to spend time with you." She leaned her head back, rubbing her forehead against his chest. "Besides, I already have a full time job. One that pays zero, comes with no benefits, comes with an incredible amount of responsibility that no one with two brain cells to rub together would want, and puts my life on the line. Swell, huh?"
"Don't I know." Mina knew he did.
They stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon, leaving when the light started to dim into gray dusk, and the cicadias came out and started humming, and Mina gathered her shoes and held Kevin's hand as they walked back to his apartment, for a night of sex, solitude and thawing youma hands.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Darien saw it coming. He threw Serena's carry-on bag up to deflect the blow, but somehow Raye's fist managed to snake past his upraised arm and knock his sunglasses from his head.
"IDIOT! Don't you ever drive like such a dick again! You know Kevin drives like an old man!"
Kevin made a face at her comment. "I do not—"
"Yes, you do! Don't even lie about it." Raye was in a particularly bad mood; Darien figured she was seriously shortchanged on sleep. She pulled off one of her shoes and handed it to the guard. "My God, just because you have a fast car doesn't mean you could weave around like that. Drive like a normal human when you have someone following—"
"Raye! Stop talking to my boyfriend like—like he's your boyfriend!" Serena yelped. Jay blanched.
"Hey!"
"All right, everyone shut up." Matt stepped in. He squeezed Lita's hand and pulled her aside. "You OK? Remember, you're not actually getting on a plane. We're never even going to leave the ground."
Lita's face was white, but she smiled. "I know. I'm just a little nervous. I hate even being around these stupid things. There is no way I'm ever getting on one again. We'll just have to teleport."
"We'll miss the in-flight movie that way."
"Guys! Late?" Mina tried not to bite her nails as she ran down her mental checklist. Passport. Tampons. Communicator. Wallet.
Artemis poked a paw out of the cat carrier. "I don't think I could take this again; Luna, if I get sick like last time…"
"Artemis, if you keep this up all the way to Japan, I'm going to muzzle you. Mina, tell him about the muzzle."
She opened the carrier and lifted him out and squeezed him. "I'm going to miss you so much! It just won't be the same in Europe without you!"
"I know, Mina, I'll miss—Mina—you—argh! I can't breathe!"
She loosened her grip. "Sorry."
They reached their gates, the ones that would take three of them to Japan and one to Italy. "Guess this is it," Zach muttered flatly.
"Yeah."
Serena held back her tears as she faced Darien. "Did you ever notice that we're always saying 'goodbye' and 'see you later'? Don't you wish this would be the last time we ever had to say it; that we wouldn't need those words anymore? That we'd never have to say them again, because we'd never be apart again?"
He cupped her face with his hands, caught her tears as they fell. "I wish those words to be gone forever."
Raye and Jay were listening in. "Wow, someone was paying attention in class." He kissed her forehead. "Do you mind if I was a lot less poetic?"
She lifted her chin, strong and proud. "I don't care how you say it, just as long as you do."
"OK, how's this: I will miss you. Every day. I will think of you every minute when I'm not sleeping or kinda sleeping or spacing out or something to that effect. It will suck, because I love you. I will be happy again when you are back."
She shrugged. "It's not Shakespeare, but it'll do. How's this for me: I will miss you. Every moment. Except those when I am sleeping or meditating, but even then I will still probably think of you, because I love you that much."
He pulled her close. "Good enough."
Zach held Amy against his chest as she quietly sobbed. "Don't cry, Amy. It's not that sad; we'll see each other again."
She choked a little. "Promise?"
"I promise. I will never let you go, no matter what. Anytime you need me, I'll bust my ass getting to you. I'm never far away."
She smiled through her tears. "I know you're not."
"I love you."
"I love you more."
"That's impossible."
Mina tried her best not to cry. "I hate goodbyes. They always end up badly for us."
Kevin took her hand in his. "Let's break our record, then, huh?"
"OK." She took his other hand. "Goodbye. For three months. Then goodbye never."
The stoicism cracked in his face and he smiled. "I was scared to talk to you at first. I thought we'd have nothing in common."
"Little did we know."
"Yeah, really. But now we do."
She tossed her hair back. "And nothing is keeping us apart this time. Not time, not distance, not evil. I love you. I loved you before I saw your face."
"I loved you before I knew you existed."
"Had to trump me, didn't you?" She raised her face to his. "Kiss me."
Lita wiped away imaginary tears. "Oh God, it's so sad! Matt, give me a goodbye, too!"
"All right. Goodbye, Mako! I'll see you in the parking lot in five minutes, then in the car, and then back at our place for the Case Race! Until then, my love! Those five minutes will be like getting eaten alive by cannibal ants with extra teeth."
She elbowed him in the ribs. "You're such a dork. Let me say goodbye to my girls."
The couple got to exchange one last look before Lita pulled them aside into a huddle. "Well, this is it girls. What a fucking year, huh?"
"You sure got a mouth on you," Raye retorted, her smile taking the edge off her words.
"Shut up. How do we want to do this?" Mina asked, her hair falling in her face.
"Short and sweet, like me?" Serena giggled. "Quick and easy, so it doesn't seem like goodbye?"
"Got it." Lita winked. "See you next semester you guys. I love you."
"We love you too, Makooo," Serena warbled through her fresh tears, regaining some of her junior high giddiness.
"Stay safe," Raye said.
"Be careful," Amy warned.
"And remember," Lita finished, glancing back at the guys, standing off to the side. "Till death do us part. Friends until the end."
"Amen." Mina added reverently.
"God bless," Serena raised her eyes heavenward.
"BREAK!" Raye shouted. They darted in three different directions, giggling through their tears.
"Until next year, girls," Lita whispered after them. "We'll all be waiting."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Again, I grovel in forgiveness at this taking so long. I really didn't mean it. Thanks to all that stuck by me and showed support. I know that this was hard to read sometimes, and I have plotholes the size of China, and it started out Mina-centric and then just turned into Senshi soup. Some lines I wish I cut, some things I wished I added, but oh well! Make sure you bug me for the sequel: [email protected]
Whew! The end? Or is it? I apologize for the sappy parts.
Epilogue…I hope!
A white light shimmered in the night sky that hung over the Earth, flashing its white brilliance for a split second before twinkling out. Six- year-old Kaylee Belles was the only one in the room who spotted it through her bedroom window. "Daddy! The sky lit up!"
Frank Belles leaned his head down to peer between the white sills, completely ignorant of his stepson's very recent demise. "It must have been a shooting star, honey. There's nothing there now."
Kaylee slid under her covers. "I think it was an angel. They live on the moon, you know."
* * * * * * * * * *
The light had not disappeared, as Frank Belles suspected. It flew over the corners of the Earth, everywhere at once, so that Kaylee was by no means the only spectator of its short lifespan. It rushed to the tip of the Pole, and then spliced into a fresh hole in the unblemished layers of snow. It rushed through the caverns, passing by the bodies of dead monstrosities, stopping only when it reached its desired target.
A pair of lungs suddenly inhaled, gasping as the stagnant air that had settled in rushed out and was replaced with oxygen, triggering the respiration process out of hibernation, the blood rushing through veins and arteries and capillaries as the heart started to beat again. The pair of bright blue eyes attached to the same body that the lungs shared snapped open, as good as blind in the absolute blackness.
Jadeite gasped again, disoriented. A few moments ago he had been talking to his grandfather, no, sensing his grandfather, really, since a few minutes ago he didn't have a mouth to talk with. He had been nothing but a pure being, free from bodily restraints.
"Jake," he whispered, his voice rusty. His grandfather's old nickname for him. "Grandpa…"
Someone else hacked a cough in the darkness, and then groaned in pain. "Oh…" she moaned. "Where…?"
A name occurred to him. "Venus? Mina?"
"Jay-Jadeite!" Her head pounded as she pulled her battered body into a sitting position, rubbing her neck. "What…?"
"I don't know," another voice answered, older and matronly. Something furry brushed against Venus's ankle. "What—why are we here? What brought us back?"
Venus shuddered at the reminder. "Where's Serenity? I have to find her; I have to protect—"
"Endymion?" Jadeite called into the suffocating black void. "Where are you?"
Venus gathered Luna in her arms and moved towards the sound of his voice. "Jadeite? Where are you?" Her forehead smashed into something as equally hard, and forehead-shaped to boot.
"OW! You found me," Jadeite said, starting to laugh. "Oh my God, I'm alive, I don't know how but I'm here…Venus!"
She laughed along with him, tears streaming down her face. "I know! I know!" They embraced, nearly squishing Luna, who was sandwiched between them.
"Where are—"
"I don't know. Let's find them!" A golden heart flared up in her hand, temporarily blinding their newborn eyes. Luna moaned in pain.
Jadeite thought his corneas had ruptured. "OW! OK, that's really fucking bright. Let's roll!"
* * * * * * * * * * *
Mars and Zoicite were yelling underneath their stone prison, both surprisingly sounding none the worse for wear despite being buried underneath a thousand tons of rubble. Jadeite's face positively lit up when he heard Mars' screamed curses.
"Mars!" He jumped to the top of the pile, frantically digging. "Hold on, don't move, we're going to get you out."
"Jadeite?" Her voice cracked with tears. Venus's heart tugged at the emotion in her friend's plea, but the illusion was soon shattered by Mars's next sentence. "Where the hell do you think I'm going? I'm buried under a ton of rocks!"
"Ow, my ears please," Zoicite grumbled, unseen, his voice rising up from the rocks. "Uh, I'm not going to go off on why we should rightfully still be dead right now because this is neither the time nor the place, but on the other hand, does any one have any suggestions as to digging us out in a way that would be faster and easier than Jadeite's pick and roll?"
"You know an easier way, Einstein? 'Cause I can just stop digging right now!" Jadeite stomped on a patch of rock.
"OW! Asshole! When I get out from under here—"
"Boys!" Venus shouted before immaturity had a chance to reign. She thought for a moment. "Jadeite, why don't you try blasting us out?"
He swallowed and ran a hand through his sunny hair. "I was thinking of that, but I have this feeling that I'm going to throw a brick and end up frying them both, or something to that effect. I still don't have really great control."
"What if I stick them in a dome?" A voice said behind them.
Venus turned. Kunzite was standing in the entrance, supported heavily (or totally) on one side by Jupiter, his face chalky pale as he swayed. Jupiter tried to counterbalance his weight, and they both almost went over.
"Jupiter! Kunzite!" Luna's brick red eyes welled up with tears. "I feared the worst when we left you behind to battle the youma."
"Yeah, well you feared right, Luna." Jupiter lifted the guardian cat in her arms and pressed her face to the black fur.
Venus ran to him, resuming her steady stream of tears. She threw her arms around him, squeezing his broad chest with every ounce of her strength. She began to sob as she listened to his heart hammering underneath the wall of muscle.
"Nice to see you too, V," Jupiter grumbled, her cheeks rosy and eyes bright, looking unnaturally healthy next to the microwaved death that was Kunzite.
Venus heard her, and reached out with one arm and encompassed her friend in the hug.
"Don't leave me out!" Jadeite yelled, his voice full of elation at seeing his best friend alive. He rushed the trio and bear-hugged them. "Kunz, bud, I'd hug you but I think it would kill you right now. You OK?"
"Remember that game last year against Oregon when I was knocked out? That was a goddamn pillow fight compared to—"
"HELLO! Why are we concentrating on the people NOT buried under a ton of rubble?!"
Jadeite broke away, his mischievous grin alive again on his face. "It has to be all about you all the time, doesn't it, Zoi?"
"I'm under here too, SWEETHEART, so if you ever want to have sex with something other than you'll right hand, you'll find a shovel, pronto!"
Jupiter smiled as she placed Luna on the ground and deftly caught Kunzite before he fell over. "It has to be all about you all the time, doesn't it MARS?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about, BITCH, so shut up and dig me out already!"
It took hardly a minute to blast away the crumbly rubble. Mars through herself around Jadeite's neck, nearly in tears from joy. "Oh, God I thought I'd never see you again!" She pressed her face against his, brushing away stray tears with one filthy glove.
Zoicite brushed clouds of dust from his hair and grinned as Venus and Jupiter nearly knocked him over with their tag-team hug. "Can we leave now? This whole Lazarus thing is really freaking me out."
Mars's eyes twinkled, and she pried her face away from Jadeite's long enough to throw him a wayward grin. "Plus there's a good chance Mercury's alive, right?"
"Hey, if I'm walking and talking and seriously hurting right now, there's no reason why she's not either. Can you make it, bro?" The last question was directed at Kunzite, who swayed unsteadily after Jupiter dropped him, his eyes glassy.
"What? Yeah, I think. Just don't drop me, OK, Jupiter?"
Why do I have to carry him? We have two more than capable guys here alive and well! She grunted as she readjusted herself under his bulky arm. "You know, it's a good thing you're not a really big guy or this would be pretty damn hard."
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"Curious," Mercury muttered to herself, and lifted the heavy, clawed hand of a dead youma and, to Artemis's horror, sniffed it.
"Ugh!" Artemis leapt away, unable to continue watching the grisly display. "What are you doing?"
She was too deep in thought to hear him. "Smells almost like…almonds. Boy, I really wish I had my computer with me. I wonder what happened to it…"
Artemis sighed, ruffling his whiskers. "I'll add that to our list of concerns." He paced back in forth, uneasy with being so close to so many youma, dead or otherwise. He had tried to persuade Mercury to leave the throne room, to perhaps to find the others, to leave this horrible, dark place that chilled him right through the fur. She had considered his proposal for exactly two seconds before deducing that the others had a better chance of finding them than the other way around.
"But Mercury," he had protested. "What if they're not-what if we're the only ones who are—?"
"I'm not even going to even entertain that notion," she had said stiffly, and then began sifting through body parts, poking and prodding through the finer points of youma anatomy.
Artemis watched her pick through body parts, most of them halfway incinerated courtesy of Jupiter and Mars. A few were cleanly spliced, most likely slashed with Venus's sword, and Mercury recognized her own flash- freezing on a handful. The guardian cat's words rang in her head, despite her best efforts to push them away with everything from the periodic table to commercial jingles.
What if he's right? What if we're the only ones alive? What if—
What if Zoicite's dead? Her vision blurred as tears built in her eyes and spilled over. She hastily wiped them with the back of her dirty glove.
Could I live without him? She mentally berated herself for asking such a question that she already knew the answer to. If he were gone, she would simply stop. Stop everything. Stop eating, stop breathing, stop living. She would shrivel into an empty shell of herself and wait to blow away with the wind.
How strange that someone could invade her being so much, in such a short time. She knew the touch of his skin. The smell of his neck. If she closed her eyes, she could go back to her dorm room, dark save for the orange light from the streetlights peeking in through the blinds. She was curled on her side in a fetal position, he was curled behind her, one arm under her neck and the other around her stomach.
Oh God. Please. Please let him be alive. She mentally slapped herself.
Serenity! How could let her princess, the one she swore to protect above all others, slip her mind so easily? You're slipping, Mercury. Cut it out. Standing there in near darkness, knee-high in corpses, she wondered if one person was worth it.
She swiveled at a sudden noise behind her, Artemis scampering behind her legs in pure reflex. "What was that?" he whispered, his voice trembling.
"Stay back," she responded, her hands glowing blue in preparation for battle.
The doorway to the throne room rattled as something on the other side tried to force it open. "Who's there?" she hissed.
The door swung open and banged against the hard stone of the wall, revealing Zoicite, who was rubbing and flexing his shoulder. "Wow. I think that was solid oak. Great idea, Mars; it's not like I really NEED my pitching arm or anything." He dodged her subsequent blow, barely.
Mercury's couldn't speak. Her eyes simply sprouted tears like rain dripping from a tree leaf.
"So, where do you think Neph's at? Should we go to information and have him paged?" Zoicite asked, slamming his fingers down on the keypad, trying to force his communicator to work for the umpteeth time. "Nope, still no reception. That's the last time I buy—well, not buy, from a cheap little Mom and Pop."
Jupiter's lips were so tightly pressed together the blood had drained from them, and they were as white as his face. "I don't know. I hope he has the sense to stay in one place until we find him."
"Jesus Christ." Nephrite sucked on his last cigarette, which was only a millimeter away from being just a filter. He could have sworn that the rock he was passing was the same one he passed twenty minutes ago. Just to be on the safe side, he stubbed his Camel out and placed the butt on top as a marker.
Fifteen minutes later, it was staring him back in the face. "Fucking rock. This is bullshit."
In another part of the drafty hellhole that Beryl had called home, Venus picked up her head and sniffed. "Smell that?"
Jupiter broke out in a grin that seemed to light up the corners of the lightless cave. "Turkish Golds."
Nephrite heard them coming, his heart almost leaping out of his chest as he picked out the voices. "HEY! OVER HERE!" He sent a comet hurtling to the ceiling that exploded into a thousand points of light. It illuminated Jupiter's tear-streaked face as she dropped Kunzite like a sack of potatoes and ran into his arms.
"Oh my God!" she choked. "Oh my God!"
He hugged her so tightly his arms cramped. "I was trying to find you! I wasn't leaving this place until I found you!"
She laughed in his ear and pulled away, grinning from ear to ear. "Find me! You can't even find your car in Wal-Mart's parking lot!"
"You're worth more than my car."
She laughed. "That means something, too!"
Teleporting was a bit more of a challenge, since basically they were all in a weakened condition and mentally drained, and concentrating when one has just been resurrected from the dead proved to be a most difficult challenge. A lack of energy landed them on the outskirts of the campus instead in a warm, dry, and very recently totaled living room, and as a double whammy they immediately detransformed out of their Guardian forms, and thus their accelerated healing decreased and the full brunt of their injuries hit them head on.
Amy, Raye, and Zach were almost felled by agonizing pain in their head, but had to settle for collapsing on the curb, their heads in their hands, trying to block out the weak glow of the rising sun. Jay began coughing compulsively. Kevin, who had been threatening to pass out for the last twenty minutes, made good on his word and instantly crumpled to the pavement like a sack of wet cement.
"Aw, damn, Kev! Get up! We can't carry you!" Matt, ever the thoughtful friend, kicked Kevin in the ribs.
Lita groaned. "Should we call a cab?"
"Got any cash?" She shook her head. "Plan B, please."
A car turned the corner, some kind of lights on the roof, and for a split second, Matt presumed that it actually was a taxi, and was rehearsing his bargaining speech with the cabbie when he noticed that it was painted an ominous black and white. "Fuck."
Mina groaned as she knelt next to Kevin. "Do you think they'll notice?"
Jay turned around. "Mina, we've got a six-six, two eighty linebacker laying in a fetal position on the sidewalk. You tell me."
Zach chewed his lip nervously. "I just contributed in saving the entire Earth from outside invasion and widespread destruction. So why am I still afraid of cops?"
The cruiser slowed to stop in front of them, and a mustached, meathead cop sporting a pair of reflecting Oakleys ambled out, chomping on a soggy toothpick. "Looks like we had a rough night, huh fellas?"
Jay wearily raised his eyes to the cop. "Officer, you have no idea."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Serena wanted to sleep forever, the amorphous blackness of dreamless slumber enveloping her like a blanket, smothering the agonizing memories at least temporarily, but as soon as gray light began leaking in between the destroyed blinds, her mind snapped back into consciousness.
She was too tired to cry anymore; her swollen eyes stared at the ceiling while inside, she was completely blank.
What do I do now? I can't go on without them. I can't live like this.
Darien's breath was hot against her ear; she pulled closer to him, wondering why he didn't make her feel better.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"WHAT THE—" Zach displaced his anger at his present life situation onto the battered pay phone, its dirty chrome pitted scarred from years of small- time criminals hammering on it when their one phone call was met with endless ringing instead of the voice of a trusted friend willing to donate excessive amounts of cash (or bond). "Why aren't they answering? Amy, your turn, try Darien's place again. Leave another message."
* * * * * * * * *
She heard movements in the hallway, low voices, something scraping, and then the doorknob jiggled.
Serena sat up with a start, knocking Darien's arm off of her. "Who's there?" she whispered.
The door inched open, stopping when it hit a broken chair, and the person behind it pressed more weight and shoved it forward, bulldozing the crap out of the way.
Matt and Jay dragged Kevin in, and in an affectionate display of care and concern, immediately dropped him on the floor with the delicacy of a falling piano. "Oh shit," Matt muttered, rubbing his sore shoulder. "Never again, dude."
Jay was standing still in shock, taking in every inch of the decimated room. "Oh my God, what the hell happened?"
Zach and Amy entered after him, their eyes wide with shock. Lita supported Raye on one side, Mina on the other. "Oh Mylanta!"
Serena sat absolutely still, her breath coming out in shallow gasps. They hadn't noticed her yet, and Darien slept on. Artemis jumped over Kevin's body and poked at the pieces of the broken table. "Someone must have broken in while we were gone!"
Matt's face flushed as he whipped out and punched Zach in the shoulder. "You left the door unlocked again! I'm going to beat your ass in!"
Zach punched him back. "I didn't leave it open!"
Matt wrapped his arm around Zach's neck and pulled him to the floor. "Well then who the hell did?"
Jay ran his hand over a hole in the wall. He sighed. "There goes our security deposit."
Serena made a small noise in the back of her throat; everyone stopped and stared at her. Mina broke through from the back.
"Serena!" she rushed to the couch and threw her arms around her princess. Serena erupted into noisy, wet tears. "Are you OK? Metallia didn't hurt you did she?"
The rest of the girls jumped in the hug. "I'm sorry, Serena! I thought you were a pile of dirty laundry!"
"Oh, Lita!" Serena smiled, burying her face in the taller girl's neck. "I can't believe you're all alive!"
Everyone stopped for a second, watching the two girls hug. A single tear, different from the other salty rills of water running down Serena's cheek, this one silver and glittering and solid, slipped out of her eye, turning over and sparkling with the brilliance of a ten carat DeBeer, and fell onto Mina's sweater. It spread out, expanding until it was the size of a starfish.
"Oh!" Serena plucked it off. "The crystal!"
"Holy shit! What just happened?" Matt rubbed his eyes.
Raye blanched. "Why did it come out of your eye?"
"Well, you see, Darien—"
"Darien!" Jay started slapping him in the face. "Yo, sped. Wake up."
Darien darted upright. "What--? Why--?" He nearly jumped out of his skin at first, shock with the force of an A-bomb
They jumped on him in a piggy pile, shouting while Darien remained still, white-faced. "Oh my God. Oh my God." He seemed unable to form any other phrase; his face wavered and he started grinning crazily. "Fucking-A. Oh my God. How—you were dead! How did you—"
Luna wiggled a little out of Serena's death hug. "I think I know."
"Celebrate now, explain later!" Zach laughed, hugging Serena while she cried. "So what happened, Darien? And what happened to our place?"
Darien began laughing, hysterically, until tears rushed out of his eyes and his throat hurt and scratched and his jaw ached. He felt like running down the street screaming and smashing car windows, but instead picked up Artemis with one arm and threw the other around Matt. "Someone must have broke in."
Then he spotted Kevin sprawled out on the carpet, and his face fell. "Is Kevin dead?"
* * * * * * * * * * *
Kevin woke up in time to help with the cleanup.
Zach was working overtime, repairing the table, smoothing over holes in the walls, and affixing legs to chairs. Everyone else was shoveling objects beyond repair into garbage bags.
He stopped and sighed. "We might have to get a new TV." Collective groans.
"It's on Darien!" Matt declared, miserably kicking a pile of splintered wood that had once been part of an end table.
Darien spluttered. "Me? You're the one with money!"
"Wait, you mean I'm going to miss "The Price is Right?" Jay was aghast.
"You can live a week without drooling over Barker's Beauties," Raye retorted sharply, unfurling the twisty cord of the vacuum.
"So what happened after you turned into Serenity?" Mina asked, delicately tossing the larger pieces of glass into the garbage.
"Oh, yeah, well…" Serena finished the story.
Artemis's brow furrowed. "So you caught our souls in the crystal, but something went wrong when you tried to release them?"
She nodded. "That's what my mother did when the Moon Kingdom fell; she caught our souls in the crystal and released them into the future. She showed me how to do it, just in case something happened, and I—" She swallowed thickly. "I nearly died when it didn't work."
Lita rubbed her shoulder. "Hey, don't worry. It did work, in a…weird- roundabout-chance-occurrence way. That's all that matters, right?" She stood up. "Who's hungry? I'm in the mood to make some chicken Parmesan."
Zach reached in a hole in the wall and pulled out the eight ball. "That would be do-able if we actually had chicken. Hey, why are you so wired and Kevin's ready to die?"
"I'm fine," Kevin moaned from the couch.
"Prove it, bro. Stand up."
"No. Fuck you. Leave me alone."
Lita rustled around the kitchen, searching for pots and ingredients. "Well, I have kind of an idea, but it's pretty gross. You see, when I was…brought back, I guess? I still had Zoycite's crystal stuck in my neck, and I guess that kept all the blood in. Kevin got slashed, and—it was so gross—most of his blood ended up on the floor." She stood up. "And WHY does it STILL smell like pot in here? You had that party two days ago."
Amy was sweeping remnants into a dustpan. "I'm still trying to determine why in fact we were resurrected. Serena, you said yourself that your first attempt to release our souls failed."
Darien stopped for a second. "Um, I think I did it, actually."
"Really? How?"
He squirmed, visibly uncomfortable. "Well, I broke the crystal. The first crystal."
Mina's jaw dropped open. "You BROKE it? What do you mean?"
"I mean I broke it. I threw it against the wall, and it shattered like glass and disappeared. I guess your souls were trapped inside, and they were freed when the crystal broke."
Zach groaned. "You broke it. Wasn't our TV enough?"
"Yeah, how are we going to watch March Madness now?" Matt added.
Raye smacked Darien on the arm. "I can't believe you broke it! You're really lucky Serena cried a new one out, or we would have been up shit creek."
"If Darien didn't break it, we wouldn't even be here to talk about, Raye," Jay added. She frowned at him.
"Maybe that's why all I remember is white."
Darien scoffed. "That's right. You should be thanking me." He scooped up a pile of debris and held it out to Zach. "Yo, Straub. Throw this away." No answer. "Zach? Zoi?"
Zach was kneeling on the floor, a jagged piece of silver glass in his hands. "What? Sorry." He held the sharp triangle up to his face; familiar green eyes stared back at him. He tilted it slightly; the reflection wavered.
In that instant, Darien knew what he was looking at, what he was remembering. What he was still beating himself up over.
"Funny to think how it all started," he said softly. "Enough concentration, a lot of magic…"
"One stupid word," Zach finished, chucking the piece of mirror away. "All this could have been prevented if I never opened my mouth."
"You don't know that."
"Thanks, Chiba; that's just another way of saying 'You fucked up and we know it', in nicer terms." He sighed. "Don't worry about it; it's not your fault. It was my stupid idea, and it just ended up blowing up in my face. Just like everything did back then."
He was hit on the side of the head with a DVD case. "Zach, shut up. We didn't exactly twist your arm talking you out of it." Jay resumed his lament about the TV. "I'm more pissed about this right now. Darien, you didn't get in our rooms, did you? Because if you touched my—"
"HEY!" Lita screamed from the kitchen. She reached into the oven and pulled out a plastic sandwich bag, half-filled with unmistakable greenish-brown foliage. "Someone stashed this in your oven! No wonder it smells like weed in here!"
Luna gasped. "Someone left DRUGS in your oven?"
"The nerve!" Matt interjected. "I'll get rid of it." He pulled it out of Lita's hands and passed it stealthily behind his back to Jay, who tucked it in his pocket. He winked at Darien. "So I'm thinking we need to have a party tonight."
"Explain where this need comes from," Artemis mumbled, curling in a ball on the floor next to the couch.
"We're alive. That's all the reasoning I need."
Artemis stared at him strangely. "I guess it is."
* * * * * * * * * * *
"I love you."
Serena giggled in the darkness. "I love you more." She leaned back against Jay's pillow, which smelled like Raye's Pantene conditioner, and let Darien kiss all over her neck. The sounds of the party were muffled through the closed door, shouts and laughter and music, sounds she would miss the most. Darien undid his belt with a clink.
"Move, I gotta piss. Maybe shit." Musto, resident go-to guy after he picked up everyone from the police station that fateful day, let out that mood- killing adage in the hallway loud enough for them to hear through the door.
"No, don't. Amy's puking in there." This time it was Erin's voice. They heard a door open and then shut.
Serena raised her eyebrows in the dark. "Mamo-chan, maybe I should—"
He kissed her forehead. "She'll be fine. Erin's with her."
She was still worried. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. Let's just try to have a moment alone without worrying about everyone."
"But she was funneling…"
"Usako."
A sigh. "All right."
The door burst open suddenly, letting in a small amount of dim orange light, a roar of music, and two occupants, kissing and laughing hysterically and tumbling like bowling pins onto the carpet. Jay, wearing only gray Bryce U. shorts, landed on top of Raye, who, to Serena's horror, was absent of all clothes except for her black and intentionally revealing underwear. Raye screeched, tried to wiggle out from underneath him, almost losing her bra in the process. "Stop it!" She wrapped her arms around his neck and returned his kiss as they rolled on the floor.
"Raye! Oh my God!" Serena screamed, pulling the comforter up to her neck. Dear lord I'm half naked!! And so are they!
Jay lifted his head and smiled. "HEY! WHAT'S GOING ON?" He was louder than normal (which was rather loud regardless), his eyes glassy and unfocused. "CHIBA, ARE YOU FUCKING IN MY BED?"
Darien was crimson. "Jay, get the hell out of here!"
They stood up unsteadily, Raye swaying like a Weeble-Wobble. "Sorry," she blurted out, and then collapsed on Matt's bed. Jay threw himself next to her and tried to pry her bra off again.
Serena lost it. "BOTH of you get out! Get your own room!"
Another figure appeared, silhouetted against the open doorway, all willowy limbs and waves of hair. "Raye? Are you in here?"
"Mina!" Raye leapt off of the bed and threw herself at the blonde, who caught her in midair. The momentum sent them tumbling to the floor. "I lost!" They both found it absurdly hysterical.
Darien blinked, not knowing whether to turn his eyes away or not. "Screw clothing" must have been the theme of the night, because Mina was clad only in a white camisole and panties. "I lost too!" she screamed.
Raye held up one hand. "WE BOTH LOST!"
"Lost what?" Serena asked, mildly curious.
"Strip quarters."
"You can play strip quarters?"
"You can play strip anything."
Two figures appeared in the doorway, blocking the light out once again, each toting an O.E. forty. "What's going on in here?" Zach asked, either not knowing or not caring that his girlfriend was on her knees worshipping the porcelain god across the hall.
Matt was a little more unbalanced. "What're doin'?" He fell against the doorframe and was only prevented from falling by Zach grabbing the front of his shirt. "Why's everybody naked?"
"That's it! Everybody get the hell out!"
Matt and Jay rushed over to Darien, whose complexion by this time closely resembled Heinz 57, and both started punching him. "Darien's kicking me out of my own room!" Matt poured his forty on Darien's head while delivering that statement, soaking the pillow. Jay punched him in the teeth.
"DUDE, THAT'S MY BED!"
"EVERYONE LEAVE!" Serena shriek, her piercing voice snapping everyone to attention. Mina pulled Raye to her feet.
"C'mon, let's leave them alone. We'll go bother Kevin."
"I'm game," Matt said, rubbing his mouth. They filed out, Jay singing along with the party music as he left.
"CADILLAC GRILLS, CADILLAC MIL'S, CHECK OUT THE OIL MY CADILLAC SPILLS…"
Serena sighed. "I am sure going to miss this."
"I'm not," Darien replied, lying.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"What are you thinking, Artemis?" Luna asked softly, twining around her tail with his. They sat together under a tree next to a grassy field in the middle of campus, watching everyone play touch football in the dusky orange light. It was warm, the bugs were starting to fly up from the grass in a flurry of white wings, and the air smelled like heat and earth.
Artemis watched Serena sloppily lob the ball and scamper away like a rabbit. "That something's not right." Kevin stretched to catch Serena's pass, and then took off, knocking Darien down like one of those inflatable clown punching bags.
"Of course something's not right. I still can't explain what kind of magic erased every person's memory. No one remembers anything: the youma attacks, or the Senshi…it's like all that evil never existed. I wonder if the television stations have the tapes, or if they're gone, too." She sighed. "Guess we're back to fighting evil in complete obscurity."
"We never did it for the recognition." Across the field, Matt tackled Kevin at the knees and brought him down in an attack of grass stains. The two guardians pretended to ignore the subsequent swearing.
"I know that," Luna huffed in reply. Her voice turned more matronly. "I don't know, I just wish the girls—and well, I guess the boys, too now—well, that for once they knew that they were appreciated for all they do."
"They know they're appreciated. We appreciate them."
"Of course, Artemis." She smiled a little, blinking to adjust to the dimming light. "Someday they'll get the recognition they deserve." She watched as Raye pushed Zach to the ground and kicked him in the ribs for good measure. "In the meantime…they can enjoy themselves. They can enjoy their normal lives."
Artemis's nose twitched a little. "Goddess knows their lives won't be normal for long. There's always something on the horizon…" Jay dove on a fumble, and was promptly pounced on by everyone except Amy. "Weren't they playing touch football?"
"At first," Luna said calmly.
Amy tried her best not to sniff.
She and Zach were spending the day packing up her room, her foster home for the last nine months; the place where she had laughed, cried, studied, worried, made friends, drew up plans to defeat the Negaverse, tried alcohol for the first time, and lost her virginity. Now it came off the walls, stripped off the bed, stuffed in cardboard boxes and suitcases. Almost every time they sealed a box, she would experience a mini-crying jag that she tried to hide from Zach, and believed herself successful until Zach hugged her tenderly from behind and pressed a Kleenex to her face.
"Hey, it's OK," he whispered while she sobbed silently. She managed a small, wan smile.
"I know. I just, I just…"
"Got too comfortable?" She nodded. "Come on, Amy, it's not that bad. It's only for a couple months, and you'll get to see your Mom again, and sleep in a building that you don't share with two hundred other people."
"Bedford has one hundred and sixty five."
"You catch my drift."
She smiled again. "This is hard; everything is making it hard. I like it here. I like the people, I like the curriculum, I even like swimming, and I thought I'd hate it." Her lip trembled precariously. "I'm going to miss the LIBRARY!"
Zach bit back his laughter as she cried against his chest. "Yeah, I know. Third floor, reading room, last table on the left."
"I-I'm going to miss it so much! I'm not going to see Lita or Darien or Mina or YOU for three months!" I have to stop crying. I'm leaving a huge stain on his shirt!
"Hey. It's OK. We've got our amped-up cell phones, you can talk to me whenever you want."
"It's not the same."
"I know." They stared out the window for a few minutes, down towards the parking lot, filled with parents and students packing their cars for the trip home.
Zach broke the silence first. "At least you don't have to live with Darien for three months."
She rolled her eyes. "Please! Both of you were thrilled when I proposed that solution."
He grunted. "He's so possessive of his toothpaste. You would think it's made of gold or something, the way he hoards it."
A breeze from the open window scattered some loose papers onto the floor. "Darn," Amy said, kneeling down to scoop those up. "Dr. Anderson wants a copy of my final project for—" Zach was standing at the window, staring down at the parking lot at a father and son loading boxes in the back of a minivan. The father clapped a hand on his son's back, and they climbed in the van and drove off.
Amy tried to swallow away the lump in her throat. There was a question that she had wanted to ask for a long time, ever since Zach had brought it up a few weeks ago. "Are you going to go?"
He snapped out of it and began gathering desk articles. "To what?"
"To the hearing. You know—"
"Oh. No." He pulled tape over a box. "Nana's going. She's going to testify to keep him there so he, uh, doesn't try and find me."
Amy couldn't think of anything to say. "I guess it's better that h-he doesn't get out. What about your Mom?"
"No one's found her yet. She's wouldn't go anyway; she's probably in LA sucking dick for crack."
"Zach!"
"What? It's true."
"She's your mother!"
"Nana's my mother." A trace of a smile passed his face. "The State of California Penal System is my father."
She made a face at him, then softened. "I'm sorry. I wish there was something I can do."
He grinned at her. "You do enough."
There was a knock at the door. "Come in."
A group of girls pushed their way in, toting a cluster of balloons and a cardboard box, their muscled arms exposed by their tank tops. The Lady "Amy!" they all screamed. Each one had blue hair, the blonde or brown roots poking out underneath the oddly colored locks. BU's Mermaids had arrived.
Amy's face lit up. "Hi, you guys! What's going on?"
The girl in front, a broad-shouldered, ponytailed senior named Audrey (nickname: Diesel) held out a piece of folded cardboard. "You weren't leaving without your team pic, were you?"
Amy opened the frame. Inside, the team was lined up in front of the pool in two lines, wearing their blue and white warm-ups. Amy picked herself out of the first row, kneeling. Each girl had bright blue hair, the picture taken back at the start of the season, when they were freshly dyed. She broke out in a grin.
Diesel ran her hand over Amy's head. "Wow! You've been touching up, huh? It looks good on you, Ames!"
She lowered the picture. "I've grown to actually like it."
"Get used to it!" Another girl, Lindsey, piped up from the back. "We're dyeing them again next year!" She ran up and embraced Amy. "Keep training, girl, we need you to break some more records next year!"
Julie, a sophomore who was presently gawking at Zach, asked, "Hey Amy, are you coming out tonight? Sammy's going."
Amy turned to Zach, her face aglow. "No, I think I'm staying in. I think my friend Raye's going there, though. I don't think she's occupied with anything important." Her face darkened. "And I don't think I'm drinking alcohol ever again after what happened last time."
Zach rolled his eyes and hugged her. "Please. That is the saddest example of human bullshit…OW!"
* * * * * * * * *
"AH!"
Raye buried her face on Jay's bare shoulder, breathing heavily as she came down. "Oh," she gasped, brushing stray hair out of her face.
Jay adjusted the pillow behind his head and wiped his forehead. "You said that already. Along with 'God', 'Jay', and 'Yes'."
She rolled off him and sat up. "So? Please don't make my imitate your O- face."
"Stop hating on the O-face. If it wasn't for the O-face, there would be no O and you wouldn't be getting it so good."
Raye's eyes widened and she hit him on the shoulder. "You're disgusting!"
"And you like it!" She made a face, and leaned across and grabbed an elastic band off of her nightstand. She pulled her hair up into a sloppy ponytail with a few quick flutters of her hands. Jay absently reached up and fingers one of the black tendrils that hung off her forehead.
"I'm going to miss you," he said, genuinely sounding sullen.
Raye looked down at him, her violet eyes wide. "I know. I'm going to miss you, too. It'll be nice to see Grandpa again, but…" I can't joke around with him the way I do with you. I can't say or do things that I do in front of you. Because I've known you for three months and a thousand years, and I think you know me better than my own family.
Oh yeah. And the whole sex part.
His finger idly twisted her hair into a tight spiral. "I'm going to be bored." Because you're gorgeous and passionate and fun and everything you do from flipping your hair to chewing food makes me want to have sex with you.
And I'll be around guys all summer. Yuck. I don't know what girls see in us anyway.
"That's because you'll have no one to fight with," she replied, slapping his hand away when he pinched her butt. "OW! Stop it! I swear, you get off on antagonizing me!"
Jay grinned, his full, shit-eating grin that was his trademark. "I get off when you get off, baby!"
She jumped up and smacked him with her pillow. "YOU ARE UNREAL! Why do you say things like that?" Jay laughed so hard he started choking while he deflected her blows. Raye's face reddened until it burned. "You think this is funny?" She began pummeling him between words. "What…is…so…funny!:
He grabbed her spare pillow and lightly whacked her in the stomach. "You're pillow fighting me naked. It's…" He sat up suddenly, grabbed her wrists and pulled her body against his. "Really hot."
Raye was mad enough to burst, but her poisonous anger seemed to dissipate like smoke when he bent down and kissed her. She jumped up on his body effortlessly.
Someone knocked at the door. "Raye? Are you home?"
Jay broke the kiss and looked at Raye. Who's that? He silently mouthed.
The intruder knocked again. "Raye?"
Raye blanched. "It's that Chris guy from upstairs! You know, the one that does a lot of drugs and follows me around."
Jay's eyes hardened until they were slits of blue in a remarkable impression of Kevin when mad. "Come back later, man. Or better yet, don't."
Chris lowered his hand and turned away from the door. Tall and lanky, he lumbered down the hallway towards the elevators. Someone was waiting for him back in his room, someone important. Someone who was very interested in Raye, or rather, Raye's small blonde friend who he really didn't give too shits about…
Raye herself on the other hand…if things worked out…well, Chris just really hoped that things worked out. He could get rid of that idiot baseball player she was fucking at the moment. Hell, he could get rid of all the idiot baseball players on campus. In the United States. In the world. All for a price, but well worth it. Next semester, he would have his chance. He and his new partner. Three months…
Back in the room, Raye's eyes flew open. "That was so rude!"
"So what? He's gone."
"You are—" she jumped down and picked up the first object she could grasp, which happened to be one of her sneakers, and winged it at him. Jay ducked, and the sneaker hit the flimsy screen covering the window, and popped the frame out. Shoe and screen tumbled out the window.
"NO!" Raye screamed, diving towards the open window, stopping only when she realized she was naked. "DAMMIT! MY SHOE!" She started hitting Jay anywhere she could. "This is all your fault!"
"Raye?" came a voice from outside. "That you?"
"Serena!" she shouted from across the room.
Serena smiled up at the window, Raye's sneaker in her hand. "Are you trying to kill me?"
"YES, Serena, that was exactly what I was planning on doing with my own SHOE which I NEED! I swear, you don't have enough brains to fill a Dixie cup!"
Serena frowned, but Darien came to her rescue. "Raye, no offense, but you're the one who threw her shoe through a screen."
"DARIEN SHUT UP!"
Jay poked his head out the window. "Here, Chiba, toss it back up."
Darien chucked it back, and the pair continued on. Serena was flipping through a stack of recently developed pictures, shaking her head each time. "This would be a great picture of Zach and Matt if they weren't holding forties…and well, giving me the finger. Oh God, I could never show this one to my mother; you can see right down Raye's shirt! And these…do we have any pictures that are decent?"
Darien grabbed the pile. "Here. Maybe if you cut the sides off you won't be able to see the kegs."
Serena rolled her eyes. "This is impossible. Even if Luna saw one of these, I'd never hear the end of it."
"You know what else is going to be impossible?" He brushed her hair back and tucked it behind her ear. "Being without you until next semester."
Serena grabbed his hand and kissed it. "I know. I'll miss you terribly." Her eyes welled up. "Do you really have to stay? Why can't you come home with me? I'm sure my parents wouldn't mind."
He shook his head. "I would love to, Serena, you know that. But I've already got that internship at the hospital, and it's too big of an opportunity to pass up. Besides, it's only about three months. We've done it before."
"I know. But you really don't have to get a job, you know? You'll be king of the Earth one day, and it won't really matter, will it?"
The pleading look in her big blue eyes almost made him renege the whole deal and follow her anywhere. "Well, we really don't know that for sure. Me and the guys were talking about it last night when—" He cut himself off, almost giving everything away. When we were smoking that gigantic bag of pot we found. Right before I started giggling at Zach's screen saver and devouring all those Funyuns. "—when we went to The Green."
"I didn't know you went to the bars last night."
He pulled her close and picked up the pace a little. "Yeah, we did. We couldn't sit around all night." Yes, we did, while completely burnt and stupid. Kevin left the bartender a sixteen dollar tip. Nothing like that will happen again, and neither you nor the other girls will know what went on this time.
"Oh." She stuck her hand into his back pocket. "You're not going out tonight, are you?"
His smile was borderline dangerous. "I'm staying with you tonight. Don't plan on sleeping."
"Oh, God, I can't believe you have me smoking. This is ridiculous. I can't do this. I'm going to get cancer. I'm going to get emphysema. I'm going to not be able to run." Lita exhaled a cloud. "How come I'm not coughing? Don't people cough when they smoke?"
Matt tied the garbage bag shut. "I never coughed. I think it's because we have invincible lungs, remember?"
"I guess. This is my first and last, though. I hate the taste, and it stinks."
Lita sat on the counter in the kitchen of the guys' apartment, helping Matt clean everything out. Of course, they had taken advantage of being alone—several times—until Lita suggested that they clean out the refrigerator, which hadn't been done since they moved in at the beginning of last year. They had forgotten to defrost the freezer, too, and everything inside was covered with ice so cold it burned their fingers. They had started hacking at it with screwdrivers, making very little progress except for jarring their hands and frustrating themselves to the point of overload. Lita, stressed over the results of her final projects and living with Matt's family for the summer, had grabbed his cigarettes off the counter and lit up. Matt almost dislocated his jaw in shock.
"Are you saying I stink?"
"No! I'm just so nervous!"
"About what?" He hacked off a giant chunk of ice, which crashed on the floor and skittered across the linoleum.
"Everything. Meeting your family. Occupying their home, eating their food, running up their bills and just generally making a nuisance of myself."
"MAKOTO, believe me, they WILL NOT CARE. They invited you in the first place, remember?"
She made a face at him and blew out more smoke. "Yes, I know, NOAH."
He flicked water at her face when she used his first name. "The only people that call me that are strangers."
"Well, it's you, Noah Matthew Haberman IV!"
"Ugh, stop it. You're making me sound like my father. The only people who call me that are strangers."
Lita pulled a few boxes out of the freezer and automatically tossed them. "I like it. If I was your mother I wouldn't have started calling you 'Matt'."
"Again, you have not lived in a house with three other 'Noah's' of varying generations. I think she wanted to know who she was talking to." He stabbed the ice viciously with his Phillips. "So why don't you go by Makoto? It's the name your mother gave you."
She caught a falling ice tray before it had a chance to crack him in the head. "Not American enough. Everyone knows me by 'Lita'."
He tousled her hair, his eyes a little bit sad. "How about I can call you 'Makoto', and you can call me 'Noah'? Fair deal?"
Lita smiled. "Sure. We're going to confuse the hell out of everyone."
"Who cares? It's their problem." Matt leaned forward and kissed her quickly, on the corner of her mouth. "Let's put this away for awhile, huh? I can think of better things we could do…"
She shrugged him off. "After we're done. This fridge is making me sick."
He sighed. "Fine! Let's just chuck everything and get this over with."
"I thought that was the plan anyway."
Matt reached into the back and pulled out a misshapen greenish ball covered in freezer burn. "What's this?"
Lita examined it closely. "Oh, I think it's the youma hand that Amy stuck in there. She wanted to dissect it."
Matt automatically dropped it the floor like it was on fire and frantically shook off his hand. "You're fucking kidding me!"
"Nope."
"Oh my lord—I think I'm going to be sick. Do we have any Lysol?"
She slid her arms around his waist. "How about I make you feel better?" She kissed him, deeply, warm and wet. The only sound in the apartment was their heavy breathing. Matt hauled her up on the counter, and she began to pull her shirt over her head as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
Matt stopped her. "Could we just like—could we get rid of the hand first? It's freaking me out."
"Oh, you're kidding." She stared at him closely. "You're not."
"C'mon. This was almost but not nearly as disgusting as finding Jay's retainer in the utensil drawer."
She let out a Cheshire Cat smile. "Wait, I have an idea." She picked the frozen hand up and carried it into the bedroom, and slipped it under Zach's pillow.
"No! The retainer's under there! Put it under Kevin's!"
"OK. He's going to kill us, you know."
"We won't admit to anything; he'll have to torture us first. Now, where were we…?"
"This book doesn't make any sense," Mina complained, throwing it in the grass. She leaned back against Kevin's chest. "It has all the Italian words listed first. How am I going to find the words I need like this?"
Kevin picked it up and flipped through it. "Maybe you could try using the second half of the book where it's English to Italian."
She grabbed it out of his hands, and blushed scarlet. "I knew that."
"No, you didn't. Or else you wouldn't have asked."
"Whatever." She turned her head so her cheek pressed against the hard muscle of his chest. "I'm going to hate Italy." The breeze rustled the leaves of the tree they were sitting under, allowing little patches of sunlight to leak through. Mina had taken off her sandals and buried her bare feet in the thick, carpet-like grass.
"Yeah, right. That's like saying 'I hate money'. It just doesn't happen."
"Well, it will happen. I'm going to be flying around this entire summer, living out of my suitcase, and the only people to talk to are perverted photographers and druggie models. Do you know how ridiculous coked-up models are? I think I'll be the only one who doesn't snort a kilo of blow up her nose daily."
"Promise me you won't do anything stupid like that." Good one, Belles. Great way to call the kettle black after that all that bud you smoked last night. God, I hope Jay wasn't playing with cameras again.
Mina didn't even miss a beat. "Of course. I've grown attached to my brain cells, thank you."
"I've grown attached to your brain cells, too." His hand roved to the small of her back. "So make sure you come back in one, unburnt piece."
"I will. I promise." She absently played with her cuticles. "When my contract is up, I don't think I'm going to renew it."
He lifted his eyebrows. "Why not?"
"I don't know." She shifted around in his arms. "I don't want to have to leave every weekend anymore; I'm sick of sitting in hotel rooms by myself wondering if I'm needed back here, if something's happening and I'm not there to protect Serena. I'm tired; it's a full time job and I'm only 19. I need a break." She sighed. "I'm going to take semester off, at least. I want to get my grades back up. I want to spend time with you." She leaned her head back, rubbing her forehead against his chest. "Besides, I already have a full time job. One that pays zero, comes with no benefits, comes with an incredible amount of responsibility that no one with two brain cells to rub together would want, and puts my life on the line. Swell, huh?"
"Don't I know." Mina knew he did.
They stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon, leaving when the light started to dim into gray dusk, and the cicadias came out and started humming, and Mina gathered her shoes and held Kevin's hand as they walked back to his apartment, for a night of sex, solitude and thawing youma hands.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Darien saw it coming. He threw Serena's carry-on bag up to deflect the blow, but somehow Raye's fist managed to snake past his upraised arm and knock his sunglasses from his head.
"IDIOT! Don't you ever drive like such a dick again! You know Kevin drives like an old man!"
Kevin made a face at her comment. "I do not—"
"Yes, you do! Don't even lie about it." Raye was in a particularly bad mood; Darien figured she was seriously shortchanged on sleep. She pulled off one of her shoes and handed it to the guard. "My God, just because you have a fast car doesn't mean you could weave around like that. Drive like a normal human when you have someone following—"
"Raye! Stop talking to my boyfriend like—like he's your boyfriend!" Serena yelped. Jay blanched.
"Hey!"
"All right, everyone shut up." Matt stepped in. He squeezed Lita's hand and pulled her aside. "You OK? Remember, you're not actually getting on a plane. We're never even going to leave the ground."
Lita's face was white, but she smiled. "I know. I'm just a little nervous. I hate even being around these stupid things. There is no way I'm ever getting on one again. We'll just have to teleport."
"We'll miss the in-flight movie that way."
"Guys! Late?" Mina tried not to bite her nails as she ran down her mental checklist. Passport. Tampons. Communicator. Wallet.
Artemis poked a paw out of the cat carrier. "I don't think I could take this again; Luna, if I get sick like last time…"
"Artemis, if you keep this up all the way to Japan, I'm going to muzzle you. Mina, tell him about the muzzle."
She opened the carrier and lifted him out and squeezed him. "I'm going to miss you so much! It just won't be the same in Europe without you!"
"I know, Mina, I'll miss—Mina—you—argh! I can't breathe!"
She loosened her grip. "Sorry."
They reached their gates, the ones that would take three of them to Japan and one to Italy. "Guess this is it," Zach muttered flatly.
"Yeah."
Serena held back her tears as she faced Darien. "Did you ever notice that we're always saying 'goodbye' and 'see you later'? Don't you wish this would be the last time we ever had to say it; that we wouldn't need those words anymore? That we'd never have to say them again, because we'd never be apart again?"
He cupped her face with his hands, caught her tears as they fell. "I wish those words to be gone forever."
Raye and Jay were listening in. "Wow, someone was paying attention in class." He kissed her forehead. "Do you mind if I was a lot less poetic?"
She lifted her chin, strong and proud. "I don't care how you say it, just as long as you do."
"OK, how's this: I will miss you. Every day. I will think of you every minute when I'm not sleeping or kinda sleeping or spacing out or something to that effect. It will suck, because I love you. I will be happy again when you are back."
She shrugged. "It's not Shakespeare, but it'll do. How's this for me: I will miss you. Every moment. Except those when I am sleeping or meditating, but even then I will still probably think of you, because I love you that much."
He pulled her close. "Good enough."
Zach held Amy against his chest as she quietly sobbed. "Don't cry, Amy. It's not that sad; we'll see each other again."
She choked a little. "Promise?"
"I promise. I will never let you go, no matter what. Anytime you need me, I'll bust my ass getting to you. I'm never far away."
She smiled through her tears. "I know you're not."
"I love you."
"I love you more."
"That's impossible."
Mina tried her best not to cry. "I hate goodbyes. They always end up badly for us."
Kevin took her hand in his. "Let's break our record, then, huh?"
"OK." She took his other hand. "Goodbye. For three months. Then goodbye never."
The stoicism cracked in his face and he smiled. "I was scared to talk to you at first. I thought we'd have nothing in common."
"Little did we know."
"Yeah, really. But now we do."
She tossed her hair back. "And nothing is keeping us apart this time. Not time, not distance, not evil. I love you. I loved you before I saw your face."
"I loved you before I knew you existed."
"Had to trump me, didn't you?" She raised her face to his. "Kiss me."
Lita wiped away imaginary tears. "Oh God, it's so sad! Matt, give me a goodbye, too!"
"All right. Goodbye, Mako! I'll see you in the parking lot in five minutes, then in the car, and then back at our place for the Case Race! Until then, my love! Those five minutes will be like getting eaten alive by cannibal ants with extra teeth."
She elbowed him in the ribs. "You're such a dork. Let me say goodbye to my girls."
The couple got to exchange one last look before Lita pulled them aside into a huddle. "Well, this is it girls. What a fucking year, huh?"
"You sure got a mouth on you," Raye retorted, her smile taking the edge off her words.
"Shut up. How do we want to do this?" Mina asked, her hair falling in her face.
"Short and sweet, like me?" Serena giggled. "Quick and easy, so it doesn't seem like goodbye?"
"Got it." Lita winked. "See you next semester you guys. I love you."
"We love you too, Makooo," Serena warbled through her fresh tears, regaining some of her junior high giddiness.
"Stay safe," Raye said.
"Be careful," Amy warned.
"And remember," Lita finished, glancing back at the guys, standing off to the side. "Till death do us part. Friends until the end."
"Amen." Mina added reverently.
"God bless," Serena raised her eyes heavenward.
"BREAK!" Raye shouted. They darted in three different directions, giggling through their tears.
"Until next year, girls," Lita whispered after them. "We'll all be waiting."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Again, I grovel in forgiveness at this taking so long. I really didn't mean it. Thanks to all that stuck by me and showed support. I know that this was hard to read sometimes, and I have plotholes the size of China, and it started out Mina-centric and then just turned into Senshi soup. Some lines I wish I cut, some things I wished I added, but oh well! Make sure you bug me for the sequel: [email protected]