AN: Dearest fans, and new readers alike—hi! I know, I know: if you popped on over here because you received an email update that Ala Verity is posting again, and your first thought was "Omg she's not DEAD?"—trust me, I KNOW.

Long story short: to all those hard-core, long-time Sailor Moon fanfic readers out there, I recently and serendipitously met Alicia Blade (a.k.a. Marissa Meyer), the prolific former Sailor Moon fanfic writer and now New York Times best-selling author. She asked me if I was still writing, and the truth is that I have been – only on a novel-length dissertation (on children's literature!) and on another of my YA original projects. So I'm sorry I've neglected you guys, and yes, you're allowed to throw tons of rotten tomatoes at the screen if you'd like. But I'm back to finish what I started here with these 100 drabbles, and don't intend to disappear again until I do. The next few drabbles I salvaged from my old files but have updated according—ahem, four years later.

So as they say in that ghastly game of fighting games, Mortal Kombat: Let's "finish it."

100 Themed Drabbles

Ala Verity

84. Glasses (Word Count: 583)

"You're kidding. You don't like caramel?" Usagi eyed her boyfriend, who was lounging in an easy chair in their apartment, with a mixture of suspicion and astonishment. "Since when?"

"Since Queen Beryl tried to seduce me with a caramel apple while taking over the Moon Kingdom," Mamoru replied from behind the newspaper he was reading.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

Usagi put her hands on her hips, squinting at him from across the room. "Well, what else have you been hiding from me? Are you secretly descended from a pair of blobfish, too?"

"Depends what you mean by 'descended.'"

"Mamo-chan!"

"Usako." Mamoru rustled the newspaper and gave his girlfriend a serious look through his glasses. "There's a lot about me you don't know, you know."

"No, I don't know that you—I mean, that I don't know about what you know!" Usagi huffed, jumping to her feet and stalking the floor like an angry cat. "Is there anything else I should know that you'd like to tell me that I haven't been aware of not being aware of?"

"I'm an alien spy planning to take over the universe with the help of man-eating slugs."

"Mamo-chan!"

"All right, all right. How about this one?" A wry smile twitched at the corner of Mamoru's lips as, in one slow fluid movement, he pulled off his glasses. "I don't need to wear glasses."

"Chiba Mamoru, I'm serious!"

"I am, too." His grin widened. "What's the matter, don't believe me?"

"And why would I? You know as well as I do that you wear glasses. In fact, I can't believe you're trying to pull one like this on me when you're wearing—"

"—fake glasses?" Mamoru finished for her. His face broke into a grin. "Yeah. I only started wearing them for show after I met you. I thought you'd like, you know—" He shrugged and waved the glasses at her. "—a brainier kind of guy. My vision's actually perfect."

"…You're kidding."

"Nope."

Usagi blinked at him several times, apparently at a loss for what to say, before she sputtered furiously, "All this time…and here I thought…you had perfect vision and you didn't tell me?"

By this time, Mamoru was feeling rather smug. "You never asked."

"I still don't believe it," she said flatly. "I have never, ever seen you go anywhere without your glasses on."

"Aha. I thought it might come to this." He sighed with the air of a martyr in the face of a sinner and held out his glasses. "Here. See for yourself."

In the long silence that followed, Mamoru could almost hear Usagi battling mentally with herself over whether to accept his proffered proof of his perfection or not. She would, of course, see exactly what he wanted her to see—a fake pair of glasses.

What she did not know, however, and what it was Mamoru's own amused intention to keep her from discovering, was that Mamoru actually had terrible eyesight, and that he nevertheless would be able to fool her for quite some time before the secret got out.

Finally, a quiet ahem interrupted his thoughts.

"I think I'm quite all right," Usagi said, her voice slightly higher than usual.

"What's wrong? Afraid to admit I'm right?"

"Something like that."

Mamoru leaned back with a satisfied smile. "Ah, so now you see the light."

"Better than you, at any rate," Usagi replied in a smug voice laced with amusement. "You were offering your glasses to the lampshade, Mister Twenty-Twenty."