Commentary: The last chapter. =) Though I've decided the Outers don't really have a place in this story, expect an epilogue to this that may well provide them a mention.

Thank you all so much for sticking with me through this week-long exercise. I had a great time. As always, I hope you did too.

CYCLE

PART V: Moon

or

Boom-shaka-laka

Six thousand miles away from her friends, Tsukino Usagi is studying a sausage.

It is not the first, the second, or even the sixteenth wurst to fall under her scrutiny, because Usagi has been stuck in the airport in Frankfurt, Germany for over twenty hours, and there are really only so many shops with so many wares to browse beyond the security and customs checkpoints. She has played with nesting dolls, examined beer steins, and marveled over cuckoo clocks—she has fiddled with fluff-bearded nutcrackers, stuffed herself full of Bavarian chocolates. She has attempted to decipher, as she is doing now, the intricacies of the common kielbasa.

She is puzzled.

She is also, she determines as she blows her bangs from her eyes, bored stupid.

Wieners just aren't terribly engaging.

Heaving a sigh, Usagi meanders back toward her gate, her carryon bag tucked under her arm. Her eyes trail longingly to the cluster of payphones along one nearby wall. They are useless to her because she ran out of change two hours ago.

She spent it on a churro.

Her gaze falls on a man sitting in a hunch beneath those payphones. He is not a remarkable individual: he is scrawny, knobby-kneed. Looking at him, Usagi feels inexplicably drawn to him nonetheless—the same way, maybe, dust motes trail to sunlight. Hitching her bag higher, she trots resolutely over to him, folds her legs, and takes a shameless seat at his side. He jerks. He looks at her.

Usagi looks back.

His eyes are brown and the lid of one is twitching a little bit. Beads of sweat stand out on his upper lip. He licks them away, and Usagi sees that his teeth—his lower ones, anyway—are perfect but for a tiny chip on an incisor.

She thinks the chip probably makes for a cute smile.

He is wearing a motorcycle jacket with a red shirt beneath it; checkerboard jeans too. He has very long eyelashes—he smells like leather, anxiety, old sugar. Usagi asks him sympathetically, "First time flying, huh?"

He stares at her. A muscle jumps in his cheek. His eyelid flutters again. He opens his mouth—his top teeth are perfect; no chips there—and his chapped lips tremble.

Usagi touches the man's wrist. It—he—jolts. She tells him, "I was afraid too. But don't worry! It's not scary, not really, and if you have, uhm…"

She trails off. Her mouth puckers. She pulls her hand away from the man and thrusts it next into her carryon. She digs around intently. Candy wrappers, a heart-shaped compact, and a small picture fall from the carryon into the space between Usagi's thigh and the stranger's hip.

He picks up the last two items—Usagi doesn't appear to notice that they have shifted free. The compact is gaudy, heavy. Its latch comes undone: the huge fake crystal behind it winks at him.

Lighting flares over the runway outside. The crystal catches its glow and throws a spatter of white specks over the man's chest.

He flips the compact closed and looks at the picture next. The girl rummaging in her bag next to him is in it, throwing the camera a peace sign. There are others too, their hair all colors, their mouths grinning, their eyes on the dumpling'd blonde at their heart.

She is their heart.

A silver stick wafts into his vision above the picture.

"It's spearmint gum," Usagi relates, beaming. "If you chew it during takeoff, your ears will pop and you won't even get a headache! Promise! I had some cinnamon before too, but I can't find it, sorry—"

She looks sideways, realizes he has two items that belong to her: her grin softens to a smile. She takes the compact with an embarrassed giggle and thrusts it back into her bag. She lets him keep the picture, though, and turns—her elbow jostles his—to point to its various members.

The strange girl spends the next several minutes telling him about her friends, her family, her world. She is going to visit one of them—a dark-haired man—in America. The others await her return to Tokyo. She has promised, she whispers to him, to bring them all presents, but she isn't sure she's going to be able to fit anything else in her bag.

Eventually she falls quiet. She doesn't appear to mind that he has said nothing to her: not a word. He hands her the picture, watches her slip it carefully into her carryon. He tries to give back the stick of gum too, but she shakes her head.

Furling his fingers around it, she says quietly, "You need it more than I do, I bet."

He does. He clutches it hard as the storm outside stops—as Tsukino Usagi is finally told by a warbling intercom that she may board her flight.

"I wish I'd met you sooner," she tells him, climbing to her feet. "I think you're my good luck charm!" And then, gentle but severe, "Don't forget to chew that, okay? Really."

He nods.

She smiles at him. She waves—she turns. She is a blink of brightness in the crowd for one moment, two, and then she is gone.

The man sits by himself a little while, trying to remember why he is here. When he is unable to think of a good reason, he pulls from his pocket two things: a counterfeit plane ticket and a small remote. He throws the first into the nearest trash can. After taking the batteries from the second, he ditches it too.

The bombs sewn into the lining of his jacket are now unable to detonate, and that is a terribly good thing. He no longer remembers putting them there.

He leaves the airport. As Usagi's plane circles overhead in the lee of the storm, he unwraps the stick of gum, places it between his lips, and smiles.

Chipped tooth and all, it's bright as the moon.