Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Crying On Your Grave ❯ Shi wa Tsuita ( Chapter 1 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Amby-chan 
Meet Mikazuki.
Usagi doesn't want anything to do with her.
Especially not after the death of one of the most important people in her life.
Anime/Manga: Sailor Moon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama / Suspense | Type: Self Insertion | Uploaded On: 07.11.2002 | Pages: 5 | Words: 7.3K | Visits: 257 | Status: Completed
Meet Mikazuki.
Usagi doesn't want anything to do with her.
Especially not after the death of one of the most important people in her life.
Anime/Manga: Sailor Moon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama / Suspense | Type: Self Insertion | Uploaded On: 07.11.2002 | Pages: 5 | Words: 7.3K | Visits: 257 | Status: Completed
CRYING ON YOUR GRAVE
by Amby-chan
** Welp, it's me again! Hai, your lovely wonderfully depressing but always happy ending author! You don't look excited.... Oh well. I am!
I'm getting better! This one has two chapters and an epilogue, and that's it! So, read on, try not to tar and feather me, and ENJOY. Remember to critique me as well! Either review, or drop me an email at amby-chan@sailormoon.com!!!
Now sit back, let your mouse scroll swiftly, and enjoy….**
Chapter One:
She tucked a strand of ebony hair behind her ear. Tucked it behind her ear and stood. Stood and looked around. Looked around and wept. Wept tears of blood. Her tears slipped down her cheeks like rain, looking out over the starry expanse, dotted with what had been her home, but what was now nothing more than chunks of rock and debris obscuring the surface of that beautiful planet from her black eyes.
When she was sure all of her tears had fallen and that she had no more tears to give, she straightened, wiping the tears from her cheeks, brushing them aside, forgetting that she had ever shed them. Her eyes, red with the tears she had shed and cast into oblivion, focused on that shining beacon, that light that, despite being dimmed with clouds of black ash and debris, shone with a never-ending light.
It had no light on its own. It was a pretend -- a fake. It stole this glistening silver light from Sun, the sun whose warmth bathed the Beautiful Planet in golden heaven. It stole this light, it twisted it, it perverted it, and it shone that perversion on the Beautiful Planet.
Sun's light was warm, life-giving.
Moon's light was cold, distant.. arrogant. Moon's light brought the death. It had brought the death to her home, and now it would bring it to the Beautiful Planet.
She could be said to be a cold woman at times, but there was one thing that was sure. She loved the Beautiful Planet more than life itself. She loved the green hills and the deep, shadowed valleys. She loved the high coldness of the mountains and the deep coldness of the seas. She loved the blazing heat of the desert, the scorching heat of the volcanoes. It was a planet brimming with life.
Moon was dead, except for a small kingdom kept alive only by one mortal's stubborn insistance. Moon could not flourish like the Yochi no Junbi, her Beautiful Planet. Moon would not flourish; she knew it in her heart, and in her mind, because the clouds covering Moon's surface were not just from the debris of her home.
They were the dark forces.
She brushed her hair out of her face, straightening herself, the tattered remains of her fuku blowing around her, determination and cold light shining in her eyes. Her eyes never left Moon, not to look around, not to look back. There was nothing more for her here. All she had, her sole purpose in life, was shining in her eyes, heavy and cold..
.. hated.
Without a backwards glance, she let herself drift from the remains of her home, let herself be caught up by Moon and pulled into the heart of the storm, into the heart of the dead planet, into the heart of her worst nightmares.
She had come to Moon -- to kill and be killed.
She would leave with neither accomplished.
But she would not forget her goal. No, she had too much in her heart and in her soul to forget her sole reason to exist so easily. She would not ever let go, so she locked her secret deep in her heart, to be released when the time was right. And only then.. when the time was right....
"Got it!!"
The tall blonde leaped straight up and spiked the ball, listening to the twack! it made when it hit the gym floor on the other side of the net with a small smile of satisfaction. She landed, light as a feather, on her feet, grinning widely as she straightened, only to be bowled over by another blonde, who had tripped on her way to congradulate her and fallen over.
"US-A-GI-CHAN!!!"
Usagi pushed herself to a sitting position, giggling embarassedly as she regarded her friend, Minako, who was slowly straightening herself up. "Gomen, Minako-chan!!" She giggled as an even taller brunette bent over and easily picked her up, setting her on her feet. "Arigatou, Makoto-chan!" She smiled as Makoto simply smiled, trying not to laugh at the expression on Minako's face.
"Ok, that's it with the volleyball. That's the third time you've knocked me over!!" Minako glared at Usagi, who sweatdropped, as the team they had been playing against, consisting of a red head, a raven haired, and a blue haired girl, ducked under the net.
"If we're done with volleyball, why don't we try some acrobatics, Usagi-chan?" The red-head smiled at her friend, knowing Usagi would be pleased with the suggestion. Usagi, normally a very ditzy, clutzy girl, was one of the most graceful on the balance beam, surprisingly to all. It wasn't surprising to her friends, however...
"SUTEKI!!" Usagi leaped straight up in the air and almost knocked over the red-head. "Naru-chan, you always have the greatest ideas! Let's go!!" The five girls sweatdropped as she nearly ran towards the gymnastics half of the gym, slowly following her.
She was already doing some tumbling, this time on purpose, on the mats when they arrived, and they paused to watch her slim body as she completed complicated back flips and half twists with an ease bodering on boredom.
"Go Usagi-chan!" Naru called with a smile, the girls all smiling as Usagi continued to have some fun on the mats.
Ami was taking off her knee-pads when the sound of someone on the balance beam caught her attention. She paused, raising her eyes to look, and gasped in surprise and amazement. A girl their age was exercising on the thin beam, doing many of the same moves Usagi was doing on the floor on the barely-inches wide beam. She made Usagi look like a clumsy duck out of water. A flash of black hair whipping out to one side as she flipped backwards, landing easily, greeted Ami's eyes.
"Wow!" Ami turned slightly to see Makoto standing there, hands on her hips, eyes slightly wide. "That's amazing!"
"Hey, what's everyone looking --" Usagi trailed off as she came over to the little group, all of whom had forgotten Usagi to watch the girl on the balance beam. Her eyes widened in surprise and also, Ami thought, a little bit of jealousy. "Yeah.. she's good..."
The girl planted her hands firmly on the balance beam and pushed off, twisting in the air to pin a perfect landing, both feet planted firmly on the floor. At the sound of the girls' applause, she seemed to stiffen, as if she'd been so absorbed in her gymnastics that she hadn't even realized they were there. She didn't turn around immediately, but bent, reaching next to the balance beam's supports for something. A necklace, apparently, for she hooked it around her neck, grabbed her towel, then turned around.
Usagi's mouth dropped open.
It was like looking into a mirror. They were the same height, with the same lithe body and wide eyes. But where Usagi's hair shimmered gold, the other girl's glistened with a blackness that made the color of Hotaru's hair look grey. Her eyes, too, seemed to be the exact opposite of Usagi's, for her eyes were a matching, chilling black. But, perhaps even more unusual, was the fact that her hair was pulled up into two odangoes on either side of her head. Two strands of hair drifted down by the sides of her face, but the rest of her hair was captured firmly in the two buns.
"By the kamis..." Usagi muttered, stepping back, just as her friends stepped forward. "Nani?" She straightened up, blue eyes darkening in confusion. It was like her friends didn't even see the uncanny similarities between them, like they just didn't notice the icy coldness of the energy that oozed from every pore of her.
"That was amazing! Where did you learn to move like that?" Minako asked as she handed the girl a water bottle. The girl accepted it with what Usagi saw as a condenscending smile, nodding her head mockingly at Minako. Usagi rubbed her eyes when she saw Minako smile as if this was pleasing to her. What was going on with her friends?
"I.. I don't know. I guess I've just always known.." The girl's voice was like she, full of vibrancy and life, pitches and nuances, but all colored with an icy coldness that seemed to dark even the light hearted meaning of the words, giving them an almost portentious feeling.
"Maybe you could teach me sometime," Ami suggested and Usagi was bewildered. They'd had to wheedle and connive Ami into coming just to play some volleyball for fun, and here she was, wanting to learn from this girl?
"I'd like that.. I don't have many friends. I'm new here. My father and I just moved from upper Tokyo to here. He says he wanted to get me out of the heart of the city..." The girl smiled and Usagi's heart clenched inside of her. Dimly she heard the girls introducing themselves, volunteering to show her around, giving tips on where the best buys could be found and where the best place to hang after school was. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her breathing constricted. A nameless fear gripped her heart, threading up from the deepest place inside of her. The world bucked and swayed around her.. except.. except for the girl's black eyes, staring at her with an expression of hatred and yet sympathy at the same time.
Then she realized she was on the floor of the gym, her head in Makoto's lap, staring up at the ceiling. She moaned and heard her friends exhale in relief. Raising a hand to her forehead, she slowly sat up, moaning at the headache that throbbed in the back of her eyes.
"Nani?... What.. what happened?"
"You fainted, Usagi-chan," Ami said gently. "You must have been working too hard on the mats. Just lie back and take it easy for a few minutes." She pressed her friend gently back and Makoto helped by pulling Usagi's head back into her lap with a firmness that erased any thoughts of protest from Usagi's mind. "You hit your head when you fell, but luckily it wasn't hard enough to cause a concussion. You're just going to have a very bad headache..."
Usagi closed her eyes and obeyed Ami for a few minutes, letting the world around stop tipping and spinning. What had happened? Usagi wasn't one to just faint for no reason.. Clutz out, yes, but faint? No.. All she could remember was a nameless fear gripping her, a sense of doom so thick it seemed she would drown in it.
Suddenly, a quiet, rough voice broke into her thoughts. "Night has fallen.. Twilight arrives, Moon child... Shi wa tsuita!" Usagi sat straight up, startling Makoto, her hand reaching for her brooch before she even realized what she was doing.
"Usagi-chan!!"
She found herself staring into those dark black eyes, those eyes that reflected herself back at her, seeming to throw her own frightened image back into her face mockingly. The girl stumbled back in surprise, her arms raised slightly, almost defensively. And for once, for once she looked as confused and scared as Usagi herself.
For a moment, silence reigned as the two girls stared at each other, emotions chasing each other across their faces. Fear, confusion, anger, hatred, sympathy... They all dwelled and then slipped away, only to return minutes later.
It was like they were locked in the moment.
Then Ami coughed gently, breaking the spell. Her eyes were dark, worried. "Let's get you home, Usagi-chan..." With her quiet authority, she went over and helped Usagi to her feet, subtly staying between the two girls. Makoto caught her eye and Ami mouthed softly "walk Mikazuki home"..
Makoto nodded and moved to the other girl, who was looking as pale and bewildered as Usagi herself. "Come on.. I'll walk you home..."
Mikazuki was at their school the next day. They could never be sure if she'd always been there and they just hadn't noticed her, or if it was her first day and she simply went unnoticed. Whatever it was, she appeared as part of the school as simply and naturally as if she'd been going there longer than Usagi herself. When Usagi asked Naru about her, the red-head grew silent for a moment, perplexed, then burst into laughter.
"Oh," she said. "I guess she must have always been here!"
It was like that with everyone. No one could recall ever having seen her before, yet they seemed to think that she'd always been there, always been a part of their world. And she began to move into the Senshi's world with the same kind of murky transition. None of the Senshi could really put a finger on the time when she began to hang out with them. It seemed natural, right, that she would spend more and more time with them, become more and more a part of their lives.
The only one who resisted this was Usagi.
The other Senshi could never understand quite why the usually-friendly Usagi grew so stony and cold around the small, pale girl. They couldn't see any reason why Usagi acted as she did -- Mikazuki had never treated Usagi with anything less than respectful friendliness. Even when cornered, Usagi herself couldn't really tell them why she disliked Mikazuki so much. She just did.
Their friendship began to grow more and more strained. Usagi would be all for a trip to the mall until she saw Mikazuki coming to join their group. Then she'd grow painfully silent and angry, and suddenly realize that she'd "forgotten to do something". She stopped hanging out at the temple with them because Mikazuki was there. When Mikazuki quite naturally was invited to their annual sleepover parties, she began to find reasons not to be able to go.
Not even Usagi knew why.
It was getting to the breaking point. More and more the unspoken ultimadum was growing clearer. "Her, .. or me." With no enemy after the defeat of Galaxia, there was no fight to bind them together, no enemy to keep their friendship strong. They were drifting apart in the peace that followed their final, great fight.
And as the tensions grew between them, the tension told more and more clearly on Usagi. She began to eat less, sleep restlessly or not at all. When she did sleep she was haunted by nightmares of black eyes and the endless repeating phrase that echoed around and around in her head.
"Shi wa tsuita."
Death has come. ... It had come for Usagi.
She softly shut the door, breathing quietly simply because the silence was too precious to break. She always enjoyed her silence, this quiet emptiness in the high of the night, when it seemed like the merest breath would shatter the world around her. Perhaps she valued the silence too much; she could never sleep at this time of night.
Especially lately. Before, she used to wake up for a few minutes, listening to the silence, before drifting back into peaceful dreams. It had been that way ever since she was a child. It was a nightly ritual that never failed to calm and soothe her. But lately it had seemed to grow with urgency. The wakefullness would come upon her with a shock like a bucket of cold water, driving her from her bed and out onto the patio, underneath the starry sky. It didn't matter whether or not she could see the stars. As long as she was under the sky, the driving need would abate into a dull ache that would stab at her for a while before slowly fading away.
Tonight it was particularly bad, a stabbing need deep inside of her that sent shivers of black nighttime down her spine.
Brushing a tendril of ebony hair out of her ebony eyes, she looked towards the sky, leaning on the balcony and simply looking. At least tonight was warm out and she wouldn't freeze. Truthfully though, she hardly ever noticed the temperature, her preoccupation with the sky and this aching need was so strong.
"Dark of sky and black of night, hinders eyes and frees all sight. Star crossed paths and twisted ways, we wait for night all of our days..."
She smiled softly, feeling complete as she murmured her time honored prayer. One night, when she was young, her mother had found her repeating it to herself, over and over again. Since that night, she'd never forgotten it, and, one way or another, it always got whispered to the sky before sleep conquered her completely.
It was her oath, not to forget something that she'd sworn to complete. An irony, because she could never remember exactly what it was she'd sworn not to forget. It bothered her, night and day. What was it? What was it that she'd sworn her life to?
What was she forgetting??
"Do you like looking at the moon?"
Mikazuki looked to her side, fear thumping at her heart before she recognized the tall, dark outline of the man's face, his ebony hair falling over sky blue eyes. She smiled softly, feeling her heart do the familiar skip-a-beat at his smile. She knew he was off limits.. He was Usagi's, and she didn't want to do anything to make Usagi hate her even more, though she didn't know what she'd done in the first place to gain the blonde's animosity.
She turned back to the sky, afraid that if she stared at him any longer she'd start blushing and stuttering. She was standing at the base of the apartment building in which she lived, the one three buildings down from Mamoru's apartment. She'd been out late -- at the movies with Rei and Minako. However, hurrying home she couldn't help but feel that overwhelming urge to stop and whisper her vow to the sky, right then and there. It was so irrational...
"Iie... I like looking at the blackness around the moon." It was a strange answer, from a strange girl, Mamoru reflected, looking down at the small slip of a girl, her dark hair and dark eyes seeming part of the dark sky above her. She was eldritch -- other worldly. Almost scary.
"Why the blackness? Why not the light of the moon?" He gestured up at the silver orb, full and heavy in the sky.
Mikazuki's eyes followed his gesture, and a frown crossed her face. She stared at the moon for a moment, feeling that .. that SOMETHING, right there, within reach if she could just snap her hands out and grab it --... She shook her head. Now she was being silly.
She looked at him, and smiled slightly. "Because the moon has no light. The moon steals the light of the sun and perverts it. It's not truly a source of light."
Mamoru stared at her. He had never heard anything so untrue, so wrong in his life. He would never have expected Shisouno Mikazuki to ever say anything like that. She was the same girl who loved kittens and puppies, who couldn't decide if she like tulips or daffodils better. She was sweet, and kind, and playful. To hear something so .. wrong come out of her mouth was like a blow to the gut.
Mikazuki was watching him, her long lashes covering ebony eyes. Ebony, empty eyes.. Eyes that seemed to reach for him, grasp at him with icy cold fingers, spreading numbness through his soul. She didn't seem to be herself; her hair was blowing and her eyes glowing with a dark, black light. When she spoke, the words were like the voice of the devil's itself.
"Shi wa tsuita..."
Mamoru stepped back, reeling in surprise. He'd been out taking a late night jog when he'd saw Mikazuki, and, since he was rather fond of her in a big brotherly sort of way, had stopped to say hello. Now it seemed he was not talking to Mikazuki, but rather to a being of the evil, dark forces herself.
"Shi wa tsuita, Mamoru-san.. Join me."
Then she reached out her hand.
Mamoru's world went black.
"Wh-.. what?" Usagi's hand scraped at the desk top beside her, seeking some purchase, some finger hold that would keep her upright and talking, keep her ear to the phone and her world intact. Her heart stopped inside of her chest, and for one long moment it seemed as if she would never breathe again. Then, with a heart-wrenching agony that seared her soul and left her numb with pain, it began beating again, but Usagi knew that it wasn't whole. Her heart was lying in a thousand pieces next to Mamoru.
Those pieces would follow Mamoru into the grave.
"I'm so sorry, Usagi-san. There was nothing the doctor could do for him. I.. I thought you should know. Ami-chan said you were quite fond of him."
This isn't happening.. This can't be happening... I'm dreaming. I must be dreaming! He can't be dead! Mamoru! Mamoru can't be dead! I refuse to let this be!! Usagi realized she was gasping for air, one hand gripping her shattered, empty chest with an almost fanatical fervor. No tears came.. She couldn't cry when she couldn't even believe it.
Ami's mother's voice came over the phone again, asking if she was all right, saying that if she needed anything, to simply call. Usagi stuttered out a reply and hung up without waiting for one. She was still concentrating on simply breathing.
Then her hand lost its grip on the desk and she reeled to the floor, crashing against the wall without evne feeling the pain. She was dimly aware of the fact that someone was trying to restrain her, that someone's hands were on her upper arms, holding her down, but it was like she was watching from a million miles away. No, she really wasn't there. She really wasn't that screaming, keening girl, that teenager who was beating her hands into a bloody pulp against the wall while her parents tried to restrain her.
No.. that wasn't her.
It wasn't her.
It wasn't
The day of Chiba Mamoru's funeral was one of those days that was neither sunny nor cloudy. There were clouds, but they weren't enough to block out the sunshine that seemed to dance along the ground, as if suggesting they throw off their black mourning robes and dance, careless and free, along the dewy grass with it.
Usagi hated the sight of it.
All she wanted to do was stare at the black casket that sat above the hole in the dirt, the gaping darkness that seemed to reach, to yearn for the body of her beloved. They hadn't opened the casket for viewing. Ami's mother had said that the damage to his face had been so severe they hadn't been able to reconstruct it She didn't want them to have to see Mamoru like that.
It had been Rei, strong, proud Rei, who had first asked what had happened, as if that would give them some sense of meaning, some reason for the loss of their friend and future king. The police detective who had come to talk to them had twisted his cap in his hands, looking as if he was going to be sick.
"I've been a police officer for twenty four years... And.. And I have never, EVER seen anything remotely like what we found there. It was like he'd just been.. ripped apart. We think it was a serial killer... the sick bastard..." He'd given them his promise that they'd do everything in their power to bring the serial killer to justice, then left.
Usagi hadn't seen him leave. She'd been in shock, staring, simply staring at the wall across from her. She hadn't said or done anything. Just stared.
One thing that she was ever so grateful for was the fact that Shisouno Mikazuki wasn't there. It would have been the last, most painful straw, because it would have reminded Usagi of what her last words to Mamoru were.
She had been upset and lonely. The Senshi and Mikazuki had gone to the mall, and she had, once agian, been left behind. So she'd gone to the one place she'd hoped she could find some sympathy. But Mamoru had looked at her, as if he didn't even know her. She'd known that she would not find arms to cry in here, not tonight.
"Why do you hate her so much, Usako? Is it simply because she is so much like you? Are you threatened by her? What is it?"
"I.. I don't know..." Usagi had pleaded with her eyes, pleaded with open hands and open heart for him to believe her, because it was the truth. She didn't know why she hated Mikazuki, only that she did and it was the only thing she could do. She would never forget the look in his eyes, his dark, lovely blue eyes, as he turned away from her.
"My Usako would never have hated anyone... Even if she did have a reason."
Usagi had reeled as if struck and fled. She hadn't gone back. And now.. now she would never be his Usako again. She would never clutz out only to find herself caught, safe and sound, in his strong arms. She'd never know the feeling of cuddling up to him, or his loving, amused grin as she make a fool out of herself by pigging down on thirty ice cream floats. She'd never hear him sigh "oh, Usako..." in exasperation when she acted like a little child anymore. She'd never love again...
She'd never live again.
"Your hold on that Beautiful Planet is gone, Moon. You will not hold the Beautiful Gem of the Heavens captive anymore and you will not ever be allowed to spoil it again... It was just the first step today, Moon. Your time will come, and I swear, I will make you pay for every wrong you have brought upon this Planet. I will make you weep for every time death came because of you..."
Her dark ebony eyes raised to the heavens.
"I will not let my home go in vain."
Her eyes closed, her body swaying slightly with her loss and her anguish, a soft sound of mourning coming from her throat, losing itself in the darkness around her.
"Shi wa tsuita."
"Mikazuki-chan!! Mikazuki-chan wait up!!" The dark haired girl paused and waited for the blue haired girl to catch up with her, smiling warmly in greeting. She stepped off to the side so Ami could stand out of the way of traffic, a soft smile on her gentle face.
"Breathe, Ami-chan. We don't need you fainting on us. Not today.." Mikazuki smiled warmly as Ami grinned, excited in her anticipation. Mikazuki held up a hand, forestalling whatever it was the blue haired girl was going to say. "Wait, wait.. I know what you are going to say.." She adopted a pensive, thoughtful look, as if she were thinking very hard, while Ami smiled in quiet amusement. "Could it be.. that you made it into your college?!"
Ami lost whatever shred of self-control she'd had before.
"HAI! HAIHAIHAI!!!!!" The two girls shrieked in joyous laughter and hugged each other tightly, laughing at the young genius's good fortune. She'd made it into the most competitve secondary college in Japan, the one school that even geniuses sweated about getting into.
"I'm so proud of you, Ami-chan!!" That set them off again, and they hugged and laughed and even shed a few happy tears. Ami had been working so hard to get into the college; she'd been up all night researching the ten page application paper that the college required all applicants to submit. She must have written the paper itself twelve or thirteen times before she was finally satisfied.
"When do you start?!"
Ami smiled happily. "Three weeks."
Mikazuki's eyes were a little bit sad at the thought of only three weeks left with her friend, but she smiled anyway, happy that all of Ami's hard work had paid off. "Well, we'd better make these last three weeks ones to remember, ne?"
She grinned widely. "Let's go find Rei and get some sundaes!!"
"Miss Tsukino, that looks wonderful. Keep up the good work."
Usagi turned her head slightly to look at the professeur over her shoulder before returning to her painting, leaning forward, concentrating hard on the tip of her paintbrush. Carefully she added just the right amount of paint, using her pinky to smear it just so. Nodding to herself, she sat back and studied the picture. It was a picture of the cherry trees in full bloom in the spring. Each bud and petal had been painted with painstaking care. The whole picture had taken her nearly a month to complete.
But then again, you could take a month to complete a picture when they were selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars at art auctions all around the world.
Usagi had never thought of herself as talented at art. She hadn't thought she had the dedication or the seriousness to make something beautiful out of a blank sheet of canvas and some colors. And probably, in her younger days, she hadn't. However, she wasn't so young anymore, and now she had less distractions than she'd had when she was fifteen.
She was eighteen now, and fresh out of highschool. And already famous. As Minako had said strainedly when they'd last saw each other on graduation day, "You made it, Usagi-chan. You beat us all to it.. Now.. enjoy it."
She'd left her home and came to the Japanese College of Fine Arts where she got in on a full scholarship. The fact that she didn't have any loans to pay off freed up her time for painting and photography, another one of her skills. She was happy in her penthouse suite with just her cat Luna to keep her company. She didn't miss anyone. There was no one in Tokyo for her to miss anymore.
Luna would sometimes look at her and sadly say, "Usagi.. why won't you go home?"
Usagi would look away and shake her head. "This is my home now, Luna. If you want to go back to Tokyo, you can go ahead. I'm not ever going back there."
After Mamoru's death, things had gotten better. She'd had a hard time of it, dealing with bouts of depression and even an attempted suicide. But after the suicide, things had looked on the bright side. She found herself smiling more, and had even gone out on a date with a classmate. Even though it had meant nothing to her, she still considered it a big step in the right direction.
Then, three years later, Makoto had disappeared. The police told them that one of Makoto's crazy, long lost aunts had showed up, and kidnapped Makoto. They still didn't know whether she was dead or alive, but it was assumed that she was not the latter. She would have contacted them, Usagi knew. Sailorjupiter would never have allowed herself to be caged or held hostage. Usagi had, hauntingly, not been as affected by this. She blamed the fact that Mikazuki's prescense had strained their relationship to the point that they weren't even on speaking terms.
Desperate for an outlet, Usagi had taken up painting and discovered that she had a rare talent for it. Her first, unsure paintings had been bought by a local college. Her fame had only grown from there, and soon she was making a fair amount of money just from her paintings alone.
Two years after Makoto's disappearance, in Usagi's junior year at a local college, Minako had been shot by a deranged fan. He had apparently thought that she was SailorV, and, when she refused to get in the car with him to go see his son, he had pulled out his gun and shot her. She had died instantly and without any pain.
And so it went. Usagi went on, her heart numbed and hardened. Somewhere, in the depths of her soul, she had always blamed Mikazuki. She had lost three of the people most important to her after the appearance of the strange, haunting girl, and had basically lost the other two. They never spoke to her anymore or even acknowledged her prescense. It was like the Sailor Senshi had never existed. Not even their memories of saving the world together could keep them from slowly and surely drifting apart.
Usagi was on her own.
"Miss Tsukino, you've done it again. That is absolutely breath-taking."
Usagi looked up from her painting to see the professeur standing in back of her, his eyes on the truly awesome painting she was nearly finished. Every detail had been carefully and meticulously included, and the scene seemed so real he felt as if the petals were going to blow out all over the floor of the art studio.
"Amazing..."
Usagi turned away from him, staring at the painting, without ever really seeing it.
"And in front page news today, the Cherry Hill Shinto Temple mysteriously burned to the ground, killing only one person, a young woman who was working at the temple. Investigators are not sure as of now what caused the blaze that leveled the small shrine and sent two people to local hospitals with severe burns, but they are being quick to say that there is no evidence of arson. Police Comissioner Katesu Koori said that the fire was most likely started by the Sacred Fire, a flame that was kept burning for twenty four hours in the main room of the shrine. All three people involved in the fire were at home when the blaze started. Two of them apparently made it out of the blaze alive, but the third, a young woman who was apprenticed to the caretaker of the Shrine, was trapped when the main roof collapsed. Her body has not yet been recovered. The survivors, an elderly gentleman and his young apprentice, are in intensive care but are expected to make a full recovery in time."
Usagi stared at the television, her hands gripping the back of the couch in front of her she was sure her fingers were going to dent right through the material and wood. Colors swam in front of her eyes, her breath coming in short little gasps. NO, her mind was screaming. NO, not so soon!!! Not so quickly, please!!! It's only been three months.. please, at least let me have more time!!!
"Usagi-chan..." Luna stared sadly up at her protegee, watching the pain swim across her young face. She knew that Rei and Usagi had not been talking, but Usagi had loved Rei as a sister and her dearest friend, and not even pain and anger could erase that.
And it had happened so soon...
There had been three years between Mamoru's death and Makoto's disappearance. Then there had been two peaceful years until the day when Minako had been shot on the steps of her own house. But now.. There had only been three months between the carwreck that killed Ami and the fire that killed Rei. It was all too much, too fast, and Luna was mortally afraid for the young woman who now slouched against the couch, sobs wracking her frame.
It could have all been coincidences. It could have been just twists of fate that had killed everyone that Usagi held dear, but Luna couldn't, in her heart of hearts believe that. Was it coincidence that their deaths had all been so innocent, so accidental or so easily explained? Luna didn't have the answers, and felt that she never would.
All she could do now was help Usagi pick up the broken pieces of her life.
Usagi went to bed early that night, wanting to surrender her tears to the pillows and blankets that had absorbed so many tears previous to this last, fateful night. Her bed had always been her refuge. She could, and would, curl up into a little ball, letting the tears flow over her cheeks and into the waiting fabric of the bed below her. The bed would take the tears and Usagi would never see them again. It was a comforting thought.
But while the bed in that role comforted her, it held its own terrors for her. If one thing could have been granted to Usagi, she would have wished never to have to sleep. For in her dreams came the eyes, those dark, black, empty eyes that stared at her balefully as she relived the good and the bad times, when her friends and her love had been alive and she had felt that it was all worth it, that some day she would have a happily ever after.
"Shi wa tsuita" those eyes whispered at her. "Shi wa tsuita." It was like a doomsday chant.
Tonight was no exception. The eyes stared at her, and she tossed and turned, seeking desperately to escape that gaze, that empty void behind those long black lashes. All the while they whispered at her, mocking and taunting. She couldn't escape them, couldn't escape the faces of all those she'd lost. She only had Luna with her now, for Artemis had pined away after Minako had been shot and eventually gave in to the eternal slumber. Over and over she kept seeing them, hearing them, reliving them. Over and over she kept losing them.
Reaching out for them, she screamed their names out until she was hoarse, until she could no longer make any noise, yet still she kept screaming for them. Wires and thorns sliced at her flesh but she kept pushing after them, kept reaching for them, kept trying to get to them. She needed her friends.
"IIE! Douzo! Douzo!!! Give my friends back to me!! Douzo, my friends, douzo, just return them to me!! My friends!"
And then she was wrenched from the grasp of the nightmares, sitting straight up, feeling herself being taken into a warm, comforting, familiar embrace. Her gasps and sobs seemed unnaturally loud in the dark room, shadows moving about her, muffling the quick, rapid sounds of her sharply inhaled breaths.
"Sssh, .. sssh... Usagi-chan, don't cry anymore.. It's all right Usagi-chan.. I'm here for you. I'm right here, and it's all right. We're together now and not even she can stop it..." Usagi buried her head into that warm embrace and just sobbed, strong warm arms holding her safe against the nightmares, safe against the eyes.. Safe against the whisper.
Slowly she fought back her tears, pushing them back into the dark recesses of her mind and body, getting them out of her eyes and out of her mind. Her sobs slowly turned back into regular breathing, only the occasional sharper inhalation of breath any indication she was still fighting the tears.
And slowly she raised her tear-stained face, one finger brushing over her comforter's cheek, pushing dark hair out of dark eyes.
She sobbed. "Rei-chan... Rei-chan I thought you were dead... Oh, kami, Rei-chan... you're alive..."
"Ssssh, sssh,... I'm all right, I'm here now and you're going to be all right." The smell of fire clung to her skin, and somehow the heat underneath her skin in her muscles didn't seem to be just body heat. It seemed to lick and to leap at her, as if she herself were the very embodiment of the fire that should have killed her.
"But.. but how? The news.. the Shrine... the fire.... They said .. they said you were dead...."
Rei's eyes hardened , snapping, crackling flames leaping in her dark eyes, her gaze scalding and hot, anger burning in every fiber of her body. Usagi had always thought of Rei as firey, but she had thought of Rei as a living flame in a human body. Yet that was what she thought of now: Rei was the fire. Rei no longer just controlled it; she was it.
"It was Shisouno."
"Mikazuki-san??" The familiar hate and mistrust that she'd always felt around the girl came back to Usagi with a surge of vengeful reminders, and Usagi's whole body stiffened. Rei nodded mutely, her eyes flame filled.
"Hai. I.. I was sleeping when I heard something in the Sacred Fire's room. I went to see who it was...." Rei's hands curled into angry, balled fists. "She was waiting for me. She was staring out the window, at the full moon." Here Rei seemed to get an almost mystified expression. "Funny thing.. I'd never realized until that moment that.. all of the.. the attacks.. all of the deaths…. They all took place under a full moon. She must have planned that."
She shook her head violently. "I asked her what she was doing, wondering if perhaps something had happened and she needed someone to listen to. It.. It was like there was someone .. someone else inside of her body. It wasn't Mikazuki-chan!! It was like Mikazuki-chan's body was there, but Mikazuki-chan was somewhere else, and this.. this MONSTER had taken over her body, taken control of her. She turned to me. Her eyes were glowing. I .. I demanded to know what was going on. She smiled almost pitiyingly and said to me... She said 'Rei-sama, I am truly sorry, but... Shi wa tsuita.'.. Then.. then the whole place seemed to become an inferno, just like that, and she was gone."
"I thought I was going to die, Usagi-chan, .. but the funny thing is... In the midst of it, in the middle of all the pain and the fear, I wasn't.. I wasn' t TRULY afraid... It was like there was this hidden part of me, just lying dormant, and the heat of the fire around me awakened it." Rei looked at Usagi, and Usagi's heart leaped, for Rei's eyes were confident, cocky almost. "She was really stupid. She tried to use fire to kill a fire goddess.. Instead, she only helped me reach my true potential."
Rei held out her hand, and Usagi gasped. Flames leaped off of Rei's hand like off of a log in a fireplace, blazing merrily. Usagi could feel their heat, their light dancing across their faces and across the walls of the room. "I guess she was getting arrogant, and she got stupid. She should have tried to drown me or something. But instead,.. I escaped. And now, Usagi-chan, now we can take her down."
She seized Usagi's hand with an almost painful force, and Usagi stared back into Rei's eyes, stunned and hypnotized by the change in her friend. "We can take revenge for our friends, for Mamoru-chan, Makoto-chan, Minako-chan, and Ami-chan.. We can take her sorry ass and pin it to the wall. She's not going to get away with messing with the Sailor Senshi. Not when I'm alive."
Usagi curled her hand around Rei's, her blue eyes hard as her friends. "Not when I'm alive, either."
"Then that's it. Tomorrow we head to Tokyo... To kill Shisouno Mikazuki."
"Hai. To kill her."
Shisouno Mikazuki -- shadow of death of the new moon
Maboroshi -- Illusion
by Amby-chan
** Welp, it's me again! Hai, your lovely wonderfully depressing but always happy ending author! You don't look excited.... Oh well. I am!
I'm getting better! This one has two chapters and an epilogue, and that's it! So, read on, try not to tar and feather me, and ENJOY. Remember to critique me as well! Either review, or drop me an email at amby-chan@sailormoon.com!!!
Now sit back, let your mouse scroll swiftly, and enjoy….**
Chapter One:
She tucked a strand of ebony hair behind her ear. Tucked it behind her ear and stood. Stood and looked around. Looked around and wept. Wept tears of blood. Her tears slipped down her cheeks like rain, looking out over the starry expanse, dotted with what had been her home, but what was now nothing more than chunks of rock and debris obscuring the surface of that beautiful planet from her black eyes.
When she was sure all of her tears had fallen and that she had no more tears to give, she straightened, wiping the tears from her cheeks, brushing them aside, forgetting that she had ever shed them. Her eyes, red with the tears she had shed and cast into oblivion, focused on that shining beacon, that light that, despite being dimmed with clouds of black ash and debris, shone with a never-ending light.
It had no light on its own. It was a pretend -- a fake. It stole this glistening silver light from Sun, the sun whose warmth bathed the Beautiful Planet in golden heaven. It stole this light, it twisted it, it perverted it, and it shone that perversion on the Beautiful Planet.
Sun's light was warm, life-giving.
Moon's light was cold, distant.. arrogant. Moon's light brought the death. It had brought the death to her home, and now it would bring it to the Beautiful Planet.
She could be said to be a cold woman at times, but there was one thing that was sure. She loved the Beautiful Planet more than life itself. She loved the green hills and the deep, shadowed valleys. She loved the high coldness of the mountains and the deep coldness of the seas. She loved the blazing heat of the desert, the scorching heat of the volcanoes. It was a planet brimming with life.
Moon was dead, except for a small kingdom kept alive only by one mortal's stubborn insistance. Moon could not flourish like the Yochi no Junbi, her Beautiful Planet. Moon would not flourish; she knew it in her heart, and in her mind, because the clouds covering Moon's surface were not just from the debris of her home.
They were the dark forces.
She brushed her hair out of her face, straightening herself, the tattered remains of her fuku blowing around her, determination and cold light shining in her eyes. Her eyes never left Moon, not to look around, not to look back. There was nothing more for her here. All she had, her sole purpose in life, was shining in her eyes, heavy and cold..
.. hated.
Without a backwards glance, she let herself drift from the remains of her home, let herself be caught up by Moon and pulled into the heart of the storm, into the heart of the dead planet, into the heart of her worst nightmares.
She had come to Moon -- to kill and be killed.
She would leave with neither accomplished.
But she would not forget her goal. No, she had too much in her heart and in her soul to forget her sole reason to exist so easily. She would not ever let go, so she locked her secret deep in her heart, to be released when the time was right. And only then.. when the time was right....
"Got it!!"
The tall blonde leaped straight up and spiked the ball, listening to the twack! it made when it hit the gym floor on the other side of the net with a small smile of satisfaction. She landed, light as a feather, on her feet, grinning widely as she straightened, only to be bowled over by another blonde, who had tripped on her way to congradulate her and fallen over.
"US-A-GI-CHAN!!!"
Usagi pushed herself to a sitting position, giggling embarassedly as she regarded her friend, Minako, who was slowly straightening herself up. "Gomen, Minako-chan!!" She giggled as an even taller brunette bent over and easily picked her up, setting her on her feet. "Arigatou, Makoto-chan!" She smiled as Makoto simply smiled, trying not to laugh at the expression on Minako's face.
"Ok, that's it with the volleyball. That's the third time you've knocked me over!!" Minako glared at Usagi, who sweatdropped, as the team they had been playing against, consisting of a red head, a raven haired, and a blue haired girl, ducked under the net.
"If we're done with volleyball, why don't we try some acrobatics, Usagi-chan?" The red-head smiled at her friend, knowing Usagi would be pleased with the suggestion. Usagi, normally a very ditzy, clutzy girl, was one of the most graceful on the balance beam, surprisingly to all. It wasn't surprising to her friends, however...
"SUTEKI!!" Usagi leaped straight up in the air and almost knocked over the red-head. "Naru-chan, you always have the greatest ideas! Let's go!!" The five girls sweatdropped as she nearly ran towards the gymnastics half of the gym, slowly following her.
She was already doing some tumbling, this time on purpose, on the mats when they arrived, and they paused to watch her slim body as she completed complicated back flips and half twists with an ease bodering on boredom.
"Go Usagi-chan!" Naru called with a smile, the girls all smiling as Usagi continued to have some fun on the mats.
Ami was taking off her knee-pads when the sound of someone on the balance beam caught her attention. She paused, raising her eyes to look, and gasped in surprise and amazement. A girl their age was exercising on the thin beam, doing many of the same moves Usagi was doing on the floor on the barely-inches wide beam. She made Usagi look like a clumsy duck out of water. A flash of black hair whipping out to one side as she flipped backwards, landing easily, greeted Ami's eyes.
"Wow!" Ami turned slightly to see Makoto standing there, hands on her hips, eyes slightly wide. "That's amazing!"
"Hey, what's everyone looking --" Usagi trailed off as she came over to the little group, all of whom had forgotten Usagi to watch the girl on the balance beam. Her eyes widened in surprise and also, Ami thought, a little bit of jealousy. "Yeah.. she's good..."
The girl planted her hands firmly on the balance beam and pushed off, twisting in the air to pin a perfect landing, both feet planted firmly on the floor. At the sound of the girls' applause, she seemed to stiffen, as if she'd been so absorbed in her gymnastics that she hadn't even realized they were there. She didn't turn around immediately, but bent, reaching next to the balance beam's supports for something. A necklace, apparently, for she hooked it around her neck, grabbed her towel, then turned around.
Usagi's mouth dropped open.
It was like looking into a mirror. They were the same height, with the same lithe body and wide eyes. But where Usagi's hair shimmered gold, the other girl's glistened with a blackness that made the color of Hotaru's hair look grey. Her eyes, too, seemed to be the exact opposite of Usagi's, for her eyes were a matching, chilling black. But, perhaps even more unusual, was the fact that her hair was pulled up into two odangoes on either side of her head. Two strands of hair drifted down by the sides of her face, but the rest of her hair was captured firmly in the two buns.
"By the kamis..." Usagi muttered, stepping back, just as her friends stepped forward. "Nani?" She straightened up, blue eyes darkening in confusion. It was like her friends didn't even see the uncanny similarities between them, like they just didn't notice the icy coldness of the energy that oozed from every pore of her.
"That was amazing! Where did you learn to move like that?" Minako asked as she handed the girl a water bottle. The girl accepted it with what Usagi saw as a condenscending smile, nodding her head mockingly at Minako. Usagi rubbed her eyes when she saw Minako smile as if this was pleasing to her. What was going on with her friends?
"I.. I don't know. I guess I've just always known.." The girl's voice was like she, full of vibrancy and life, pitches and nuances, but all colored with an icy coldness that seemed to dark even the light hearted meaning of the words, giving them an almost portentious feeling.
"Maybe you could teach me sometime," Ami suggested and Usagi was bewildered. They'd had to wheedle and connive Ami into coming just to play some volleyball for fun, and here she was, wanting to learn from this girl?
"I'd like that.. I don't have many friends. I'm new here. My father and I just moved from upper Tokyo to here. He says he wanted to get me out of the heart of the city..." The girl smiled and Usagi's heart clenched inside of her. Dimly she heard the girls introducing themselves, volunteering to show her around, giving tips on where the best buys could be found and where the best place to hang after school was. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her breathing constricted. A nameless fear gripped her heart, threading up from the deepest place inside of her. The world bucked and swayed around her.. except.. except for the girl's black eyes, staring at her with an expression of hatred and yet sympathy at the same time.
Then she realized she was on the floor of the gym, her head in Makoto's lap, staring up at the ceiling. She moaned and heard her friends exhale in relief. Raising a hand to her forehead, she slowly sat up, moaning at the headache that throbbed in the back of her eyes.
"Nani?... What.. what happened?"
"You fainted, Usagi-chan," Ami said gently. "You must have been working too hard on the mats. Just lie back and take it easy for a few minutes." She pressed her friend gently back and Makoto helped by pulling Usagi's head back into her lap with a firmness that erased any thoughts of protest from Usagi's mind. "You hit your head when you fell, but luckily it wasn't hard enough to cause a concussion. You're just going to have a very bad headache..."
Usagi closed her eyes and obeyed Ami for a few minutes, letting the world around stop tipping and spinning. What had happened? Usagi wasn't one to just faint for no reason.. Clutz out, yes, but faint? No.. All she could remember was a nameless fear gripping her, a sense of doom so thick it seemed she would drown in it.
Suddenly, a quiet, rough voice broke into her thoughts. "Night has fallen.. Twilight arrives, Moon child... Shi wa tsuita!" Usagi sat straight up, startling Makoto, her hand reaching for her brooch before she even realized what she was doing.
"Usagi-chan!!"
She found herself staring into those dark black eyes, those eyes that reflected herself back at her, seeming to throw her own frightened image back into her face mockingly. The girl stumbled back in surprise, her arms raised slightly, almost defensively. And for once, for once she looked as confused and scared as Usagi herself.
For a moment, silence reigned as the two girls stared at each other, emotions chasing each other across their faces. Fear, confusion, anger, hatred, sympathy... They all dwelled and then slipped away, only to return minutes later.
It was like they were locked in the moment.
Then Ami coughed gently, breaking the spell. Her eyes were dark, worried. "Let's get you home, Usagi-chan..." With her quiet authority, she went over and helped Usagi to her feet, subtly staying between the two girls. Makoto caught her eye and Ami mouthed softly "walk Mikazuki home"..
Makoto nodded and moved to the other girl, who was looking as pale and bewildered as Usagi herself. "Come on.. I'll walk you home..."
Mikazuki was at their school the next day. They could never be sure if she'd always been there and they just hadn't noticed her, or if it was her first day and she simply went unnoticed. Whatever it was, she appeared as part of the school as simply and naturally as if she'd been going there longer than Usagi herself. When Usagi asked Naru about her, the red-head grew silent for a moment, perplexed, then burst into laughter.
"Oh," she said. "I guess she must have always been here!"
It was like that with everyone. No one could recall ever having seen her before, yet they seemed to think that she'd always been there, always been a part of their world. And she began to move into the Senshi's world with the same kind of murky transition. None of the Senshi could really put a finger on the time when she began to hang out with them. It seemed natural, right, that she would spend more and more time with them, become more and more a part of their lives.
The only one who resisted this was Usagi.
The other Senshi could never understand quite why the usually-friendly Usagi grew so stony and cold around the small, pale girl. They couldn't see any reason why Usagi acted as she did -- Mikazuki had never treated Usagi with anything less than respectful friendliness. Even when cornered, Usagi herself couldn't really tell them why she disliked Mikazuki so much. She just did.
Their friendship began to grow more and more strained. Usagi would be all for a trip to the mall until she saw Mikazuki coming to join their group. Then she'd grow painfully silent and angry, and suddenly realize that she'd "forgotten to do something". She stopped hanging out at the temple with them because Mikazuki was there. When Mikazuki quite naturally was invited to their annual sleepover parties, she began to find reasons not to be able to go.
Not even Usagi knew why.
It was getting to the breaking point. More and more the unspoken ultimadum was growing clearer. "Her, .. or me." With no enemy after the defeat of Galaxia, there was no fight to bind them together, no enemy to keep their friendship strong. They were drifting apart in the peace that followed their final, great fight.
And as the tensions grew between them, the tension told more and more clearly on Usagi. She began to eat less, sleep restlessly or not at all. When she did sleep she was haunted by nightmares of black eyes and the endless repeating phrase that echoed around and around in her head.
"Shi wa tsuita."
Death has come. ... It had come for Usagi.
She softly shut the door, breathing quietly simply because the silence was too precious to break. She always enjoyed her silence, this quiet emptiness in the high of the night, when it seemed like the merest breath would shatter the world around her. Perhaps she valued the silence too much; she could never sleep at this time of night.
Especially lately. Before, she used to wake up for a few minutes, listening to the silence, before drifting back into peaceful dreams. It had been that way ever since she was a child. It was a nightly ritual that never failed to calm and soothe her. But lately it had seemed to grow with urgency. The wakefullness would come upon her with a shock like a bucket of cold water, driving her from her bed and out onto the patio, underneath the starry sky. It didn't matter whether or not she could see the stars. As long as she was under the sky, the driving need would abate into a dull ache that would stab at her for a while before slowly fading away.
Tonight it was particularly bad, a stabbing need deep inside of her that sent shivers of black nighttime down her spine.
Brushing a tendril of ebony hair out of her ebony eyes, she looked towards the sky, leaning on the balcony and simply looking. At least tonight was warm out and she wouldn't freeze. Truthfully though, she hardly ever noticed the temperature, her preoccupation with the sky and this aching need was so strong.
"Dark of sky and black of night, hinders eyes and frees all sight. Star crossed paths and twisted ways, we wait for night all of our days..."
She smiled softly, feeling complete as she murmured her time honored prayer. One night, when she was young, her mother had found her repeating it to herself, over and over again. Since that night, she'd never forgotten it, and, one way or another, it always got whispered to the sky before sleep conquered her completely.
It was her oath, not to forget something that she'd sworn to complete. An irony, because she could never remember exactly what it was she'd sworn not to forget. It bothered her, night and day. What was it? What was it that she'd sworn her life to?
What was she forgetting??
"Do you like looking at the moon?"
Mikazuki looked to her side, fear thumping at her heart before she recognized the tall, dark outline of the man's face, his ebony hair falling over sky blue eyes. She smiled softly, feeling her heart do the familiar skip-a-beat at his smile. She knew he was off limits.. He was Usagi's, and she didn't want to do anything to make Usagi hate her even more, though she didn't know what she'd done in the first place to gain the blonde's animosity.
She turned back to the sky, afraid that if she stared at him any longer she'd start blushing and stuttering. She was standing at the base of the apartment building in which she lived, the one three buildings down from Mamoru's apartment. She'd been out late -- at the movies with Rei and Minako. However, hurrying home she couldn't help but feel that overwhelming urge to stop and whisper her vow to the sky, right then and there. It was so irrational...
"Iie... I like looking at the blackness around the moon." It was a strange answer, from a strange girl, Mamoru reflected, looking down at the small slip of a girl, her dark hair and dark eyes seeming part of the dark sky above her. She was eldritch -- other worldly. Almost scary.
"Why the blackness? Why not the light of the moon?" He gestured up at the silver orb, full and heavy in the sky.
Mikazuki's eyes followed his gesture, and a frown crossed her face. She stared at the moon for a moment, feeling that .. that SOMETHING, right there, within reach if she could just snap her hands out and grab it --... She shook her head. Now she was being silly.
She looked at him, and smiled slightly. "Because the moon has no light. The moon steals the light of the sun and perverts it. It's not truly a source of light."
Mamoru stared at her. He had never heard anything so untrue, so wrong in his life. He would never have expected Shisouno Mikazuki to ever say anything like that. She was the same girl who loved kittens and puppies, who couldn't decide if she like tulips or daffodils better. She was sweet, and kind, and playful. To hear something so .. wrong come out of her mouth was like a blow to the gut.
Mikazuki was watching him, her long lashes covering ebony eyes. Ebony, empty eyes.. Eyes that seemed to reach for him, grasp at him with icy cold fingers, spreading numbness through his soul. She didn't seem to be herself; her hair was blowing and her eyes glowing with a dark, black light. When she spoke, the words were like the voice of the devil's itself.
"Shi wa tsuita..."
Mamoru stepped back, reeling in surprise. He'd been out taking a late night jog when he'd saw Mikazuki, and, since he was rather fond of her in a big brotherly sort of way, had stopped to say hello. Now it seemed he was not talking to Mikazuki, but rather to a being of the evil, dark forces herself.
"Shi wa tsuita, Mamoru-san.. Join me."
Then she reached out her hand.
Mamoru's world went black.
"Wh-.. what?" Usagi's hand scraped at the desk top beside her, seeking some purchase, some finger hold that would keep her upright and talking, keep her ear to the phone and her world intact. Her heart stopped inside of her chest, and for one long moment it seemed as if she would never breathe again. Then, with a heart-wrenching agony that seared her soul and left her numb with pain, it began beating again, but Usagi knew that it wasn't whole. Her heart was lying in a thousand pieces next to Mamoru.
Those pieces would follow Mamoru into the grave.
"I'm so sorry, Usagi-san. There was nothing the doctor could do for him. I.. I thought you should know. Ami-chan said you were quite fond of him."
This isn't happening.. This can't be happening... I'm dreaming. I must be dreaming! He can't be dead! Mamoru! Mamoru can't be dead! I refuse to let this be!! Usagi realized she was gasping for air, one hand gripping her shattered, empty chest with an almost fanatical fervor. No tears came.. She couldn't cry when she couldn't even believe it.
Ami's mother's voice came over the phone again, asking if she was all right, saying that if she needed anything, to simply call. Usagi stuttered out a reply and hung up without waiting for one. She was still concentrating on simply breathing.
Then her hand lost its grip on the desk and she reeled to the floor, crashing against the wall without evne feeling the pain. She was dimly aware of the fact that someone was trying to restrain her, that someone's hands were on her upper arms, holding her down, but it was like she was watching from a million miles away. No, she really wasn't there. She really wasn't that screaming, keening girl, that teenager who was beating her hands into a bloody pulp against the wall while her parents tried to restrain her.
No.. that wasn't her.
It wasn't her.
It wasn't
The day of Chiba Mamoru's funeral was one of those days that was neither sunny nor cloudy. There were clouds, but they weren't enough to block out the sunshine that seemed to dance along the ground, as if suggesting they throw off their black mourning robes and dance, careless and free, along the dewy grass with it.
Usagi hated the sight of it.
All she wanted to do was stare at the black casket that sat above the hole in the dirt, the gaping darkness that seemed to reach, to yearn for the body of her beloved. They hadn't opened the casket for viewing. Ami's mother had said that the damage to his face had been so severe they hadn't been able to reconstruct it She didn't want them to have to see Mamoru like that.
It had been Rei, strong, proud Rei, who had first asked what had happened, as if that would give them some sense of meaning, some reason for the loss of their friend and future king. The police detective who had come to talk to them had twisted his cap in his hands, looking as if he was going to be sick.
"I've been a police officer for twenty four years... And.. And I have never, EVER seen anything remotely like what we found there. It was like he'd just been.. ripped apart. We think it was a serial killer... the sick bastard..." He'd given them his promise that they'd do everything in their power to bring the serial killer to justice, then left.
Usagi hadn't seen him leave. She'd been in shock, staring, simply staring at the wall across from her. She hadn't said or done anything. Just stared.
One thing that she was ever so grateful for was the fact that Shisouno Mikazuki wasn't there. It would have been the last, most painful straw, because it would have reminded Usagi of what her last words to Mamoru were.
She had been upset and lonely. The Senshi and Mikazuki had gone to the mall, and she had, once agian, been left behind. So she'd gone to the one place she'd hoped she could find some sympathy. But Mamoru had looked at her, as if he didn't even know her. She'd known that she would not find arms to cry in here, not tonight.
"Why do you hate her so much, Usako? Is it simply because she is so much like you? Are you threatened by her? What is it?"
"I.. I don't know..." Usagi had pleaded with her eyes, pleaded with open hands and open heart for him to believe her, because it was the truth. She didn't know why she hated Mikazuki, only that she did and it was the only thing she could do. She would never forget the look in his eyes, his dark, lovely blue eyes, as he turned away from her.
"My Usako would never have hated anyone... Even if she did have a reason."
Usagi had reeled as if struck and fled. She hadn't gone back. And now.. now she would never be his Usako again. She would never clutz out only to find herself caught, safe and sound, in his strong arms. She'd never know the feeling of cuddling up to him, or his loving, amused grin as she make a fool out of herself by pigging down on thirty ice cream floats. She'd never hear him sigh "oh, Usako..." in exasperation when she acted like a little child anymore. She'd never love again...
She'd never live again.
"Your hold on that Beautiful Planet is gone, Moon. You will not hold the Beautiful Gem of the Heavens captive anymore and you will not ever be allowed to spoil it again... It was just the first step today, Moon. Your time will come, and I swear, I will make you pay for every wrong you have brought upon this Planet. I will make you weep for every time death came because of you..."
Her dark ebony eyes raised to the heavens.
"I will not let my home go in vain."
Her eyes closed, her body swaying slightly with her loss and her anguish, a soft sound of mourning coming from her throat, losing itself in the darkness around her.
"Shi wa tsuita."
"Mikazuki-chan!! Mikazuki-chan wait up!!" The dark haired girl paused and waited for the blue haired girl to catch up with her, smiling warmly in greeting. She stepped off to the side so Ami could stand out of the way of traffic, a soft smile on her gentle face.
"Breathe, Ami-chan. We don't need you fainting on us. Not today.." Mikazuki smiled warmly as Ami grinned, excited in her anticipation. Mikazuki held up a hand, forestalling whatever it was the blue haired girl was going to say. "Wait, wait.. I know what you are going to say.." She adopted a pensive, thoughtful look, as if she were thinking very hard, while Ami smiled in quiet amusement. "Could it be.. that you made it into your college?!"
Ami lost whatever shred of self-control she'd had before.
"HAI! HAIHAIHAI!!!!!" The two girls shrieked in joyous laughter and hugged each other tightly, laughing at the young genius's good fortune. She'd made it into the most competitve secondary college in Japan, the one school that even geniuses sweated about getting into.
"I'm so proud of you, Ami-chan!!" That set them off again, and they hugged and laughed and even shed a few happy tears. Ami had been working so hard to get into the college; she'd been up all night researching the ten page application paper that the college required all applicants to submit. She must have written the paper itself twelve or thirteen times before she was finally satisfied.
"When do you start?!"
Ami smiled happily. "Three weeks."
Mikazuki's eyes were a little bit sad at the thought of only three weeks left with her friend, but she smiled anyway, happy that all of Ami's hard work had paid off. "Well, we'd better make these last three weeks ones to remember, ne?"
She grinned widely. "Let's go find Rei and get some sundaes!!"
"Miss Tsukino, that looks wonderful. Keep up the good work."
Usagi turned her head slightly to look at the professeur over her shoulder before returning to her painting, leaning forward, concentrating hard on the tip of her paintbrush. Carefully she added just the right amount of paint, using her pinky to smear it just so. Nodding to herself, she sat back and studied the picture. It was a picture of the cherry trees in full bloom in the spring. Each bud and petal had been painted with painstaking care. The whole picture had taken her nearly a month to complete.
But then again, you could take a month to complete a picture when they were selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars at art auctions all around the world.
Usagi had never thought of herself as talented at art. She hadn't thought she had the dedication or the seriousness to make something beautiful out of a blank sheet of canvas and some colors. And probably, in her younger days, she hadn't. However, she wasn't so young anymore, and now she had less distractions than she'd had when she was fifteen.
She was eighteen now, and fresh out of highschool. And already famous. As Minako had said strainedly when they'd last saw each other on graduation day, "You made it, Usagi-chan. You beat us all to it.. Now.. enjoy it."
She'd left her home and came to the Japanese College of Fine Arts where she got in on a full scholarship. The fact that she didn't have any loans to pay off freed up her time for painting and photography, another one of her skills. She was happy in her penthouse suite with just her cat Luna to keep her company. She didn't miss anyone. There was no one in Tokyo for her to miss anymore.
Luna would sometimes look at her and sadly say, "Usagi.. why won't you go home?"
Usagi would look away and shake her head. "This is my home now, Luna. If you want to go back to Tokyo, you can go ahead. I'm not ever going back there."
After Mamoru's death, things had gotten better. She'd had a hard time of it, dealing with bouts of depression and even an attempted suicide. But after the suicide, things had looked on the bright side. She found herself smiling more, and had even gone out on a date with a classmate. Even though it had meant nothing to her, she still considered it a big step in the right direction.
Then, three years later, Makoto had disappeared. The police told them that one of Makoto's crazy, long lost aunts had showed up, and kidnapped Makoto. They still didn't know whether she was dead or alive, but it was assumed that she was not the latter. She would have contacted them, Usagi knew. Sailorjupiter would never have allowed herself to be caged or held hostage. Usagi had, hauntingly, not been as affected by this. She blamed the fact that Mikazuki's prescense had strained their relationship to the point that they weren't even on speaking terms.
Desperate for an outlet, Usagi had taken up painting and discovered that she had a rare talent for it. Her first, unsure paintings had been bought by a local college. Her fame had only grown from there, and soon she was making a fair amount of money just from her paintings alone.
Two years after Makoto's disappearance, in Usagi's junior year at a local college, Minako had been shot by a deranged fan. He had apparently thought that she was SailorV, and, when she refused to get in the car with him to go see his son, he had pulled out his gun and shot her. She had died instantly and without any pain.
And so it went. Usagi went on, her heart numbed and hardened. Somewhere, in the depths of her soul, she had always blamed Mikazuki. She had lost three of the people most important to her after the appearance of the strange, haunting girl, and had basically lost the other two. They never spoke to her anymore or even acknowledged her prescense. It was like the Sailor Senshi had never existed. Not even their memories of saving the world together could keep them from slowly and surely drifting apart.
Usagi was on her own.
"Miss Tsukino, you've done it again. That is absolutely breath-taking."
Usagi looked up from her painting to see the professeur standing in back of her, his eyes on the truly awesome painting she was nearly finished. Every detail had been carefully and meticulously included, and the scene seemed so real he felt as if the petals were going to blow out all over the floor of the art studio.
"Amazing..."
Usagi turned away from him, staring at the painting, without ever really seeing it.
"And in front page news today, the Cherry Hill Shinto Temple mysteriously burned to the ground, killing only one person, a young woman who was working at the temple. Investigators are not sure as of now what caused the blaze that leveled the small shrine and sent two people to local hospitals with severe burns, but they are being quick to say that there is no evidence of arson. Police Comissioner Katesu Koori said that the fire was most likely started by the Sacred Fire, a flame that was kept burning for twenty four hours in the main room of the shrine. All three people involved in the fire were at home when the blaze started. Two of them apparently made it out of the blaze alive, but the third, a young woman who was apprenticed to the caretaker of the Shrine, was trapped when the main roof collapsed. Her body has not yet been recovered. The survivors, an elderly gentleman and his young apprentice, are in intensive care but are expected to make a full recovery in time."
Usagi stared at the television, her hands gripping the back of the couch in front of her she was sure her fingers were going to dent right through the material and wood. Colors swam in front of her eyes, her breath coming in short little gasps. NO, her mind was screaming. NO, not so soon!!! Not so quickly, please!!! It's only been three months.. please, at least let me have more time!!!
"Usagi-chan..." Luna stared sadly up at her protegee, watching the pain swim across her young face. She knew that Rei and Usagi had not been talking, but Usagi had loved Rei as a sister and her dearest friend, and not even pain and anger could erase that.
And it had happened so soon...
There had been three years between Mamoru's death and Makoto's disappearance. Then there had been two peaceful years until the day when Minako had been shot on the steps of her own house. But now.. There had only been three months between the carwreck that killed Ami and the fire that killed Rei. It was all too much, too fast, and Luna was mortally afraid for the young woman who now slouched against the couch, sobs wracking her frame.
It could have all been coincidences. It could have been just twists of fate that had killed everyone that Usagi held dear, but Luna couldn't, in her heart of hearts believe that. Was it coincidence that their deaths had all been so innocent, so accidental or so easily explained? Luna didn't have the answers, and felt that she never would.
All she could do now was help Usagi pick up the broken pieces of her life.
Usagi went to bed early that night, wanting to surrender her tears to the pillows and blankets that had absorbed so many tears previous to this last, fateful night. Her bed had always been her refuge. She could, and would, curl up into a little ball, letting the tears flow over her cheeks and into the waiting fabric of the bed below her. The bed would take the tears and Usagi would never see them again. It was a comforting thought.
But while the bed in that role comforted her, it held its own terrors for her. If one thing could have been granted to Usagi, she would have wished never to have to sleep. For in her dreams came the eyes, those dark, black, empty eyes that stared at her balefully as she relived the good and the bad times, when her friends and her love had been alive and she had felt that it was all worth it, that some day she would have a happily ever after.
"Shi wa tsuita" those eyes whispered at her. "Shi wa tsuita." It was like a doomsday chant.
Tonight was no exception. The eyes stared at her, and she tossed and turned, seeking desperately to escape that gaze, that empty void behind those long black lashes. All the while they whispered at her, mocking and taunting. She couldn't escape them, couldn't escape the faces of all those she'd lost. She only had Luna with her now, for Artemis had pined away after Minako had been shot and eventually gave in to the eternal slumber. Over and over she kept seeing them, hearing them, reliving them. Over and over she kept losing them.
Reaching out for them, she screamed their names out until she was hoarse, until she could no longer make any noise, yet still she kept screaming for them. Wires and thorns sliced at her flesh but she kept pushing after them, kept reaching for them, kept trying to get to them. She needed her friends.
"IIE! Douzo! Douzo!!! Give my friends back to me!! Douzo, my friends, douzo, just return them to me!! My friends!"
And then she was wrenched from the grasp of the nightmares, sitting straight up, feeling herself being taken into a warm, comforting, familiar embrace. Her gasps and sobs seemed unnaturally loud in the dark room, shadows moving about her, muffling the quick, rapid sounds of her sharply inhaled breaths.
"Sssh, .. sssh... Usagi-chan, don't cry anymore.. It's all right Usagi-chan.. I'm here for you. I'm right here, and it's all right. We're together now and not even she can stop it..." Usagi buried her head into that warm embrace and just sobbed, strong warm arms holding her safe against the nightmares, safe against the eyes.. Safe against the whisper.
Slowly she fought back her tears, pushing them back into the dark recesses of her mind and body, getting them out of her eyes and out of her mind. Her sobs slowly turned back into regular breathing, only the occasional sharper inhalation of breath any indication she was still fighting the tears.
And slowly she raised her tear-stained face, one finger brushing over her comforter's cheek, pushing dark hair out of dark eyes.
She sobbed. "Rei-chan... Rei-chan I thought you were dead... Oh, kami, Rei-chan... you're alive..."
"Ssssh, sssh,... I'm all right, I'm here now and you're going to be all right." The smell of fire clung to her skin, and somehow the heat underneath her skin in her muscles didn't seem to be just body heat. It seemed to lick and to leap at her, as if she herself were the very embodiment of the fire that should have killed her.
"But.. but how? The news.. the Shrine... the fire.... They said .. they said you were dead...."
Rei's eyes hardened , snapping, crackling flames leaping in her dark eyes, her gaze scalding and hot, anger burning in every fiber of her body. Usagi had always thought of Rei as firey, but she had thought of Rei as a living flame in a human body. Yet that was what she thought of now: Rei was the fire. Rei no longer just controlled it; she was it.
"It was Shisouno."
"Mikazuki-san??" The familiar hate and mistrust that she'd always felt around the girl came back to Usagi with a surge of vengeful reminders, and Usagi's whole body stiffened. Rei nodded mutely, her eyes flame filled.
"Hai. I.. I was sleeping when I heard something in the Sacred Fire's room. I went to see who it was...." Rei's hands curled into angry, balled fists. "She was waiting for me. She was staring out the window, at the full moon." Here Rei seemed to get an almost mystified expression. "Funny thing.. I'd never realized until that moment that.. all of the.. the attacks.. all of the deaths…. They all took place under a full moon. She must have planned that."
She shook her head violently. "I asked her what she was doing, wondering if perhaps something had happened and she needed someone to listen to. It.. It was like there was someone .. someone else inside of her body. It wasn't Mikazuki-chan!! It was like Mikazuki-chan's body was there, but Mikazuki-chan was somewhere else, and this.. this MONSTER had taken over her body, taken control of her. She turned to me. Her eyes were glowing. I .. I demanded to know what was going on. She smiled almost pitiyingly and said to me... She said 'Rei-sama, I am truly sorry, but... Shi wa tsuita.'.. Then.. then the whole place seemed to become an inferno, just like that, and she was gone."
"I thought I was going to die, Usagi-chan, .. but the funny thing is... In the midst of it, in the middle of all the pain and the fear, I wasn't.. I wasn' t TRULY afraid... It was like there was this hidden part of me, just lying dormant, and the heat of the fire around me awakened it." Rei looked at Usagi, and Usagi's heart leaped, for Rei's eyes were confident, cocky almost. "She was really stupid. She tried to use fire to kill a fire goddess.. Instead, she only helped me reach my true potential."
Rei held out her hand, and Usagi gasped. Flames leaped off of Rei's hand like off of a log in a fireplace, blazing merrily. Usagi could feel their heat, their light dancing across their faces and across the walls of the room. "I guess she was getting arrogant, and she got stupid. She should have tried to drown me or something. But instead,.. I escaped. And now, Usagi-chan, now we can take her down."
She seized Usagi's hand with an almost painful force, and Usagi stared back into Rei's eyes, stunned and hypnotized by the change in her friend. "We can take revenge for our friends, for Mamoru-chan, Makoto-chan, Minako-chan, and Ami-chan.. We can take her sorry ass and pin it to the wall. She's not going to get away with messing with the Sailor Senshi. Not when I'm alive."
Usagi curled her hand around Rei's, her blue eyes hard as her friends. "Not when I'm alive, either."
"Then that's it. Tomorrow we head to Tokyo... To kill Shisouno Mikazuki."
"Hai. To kill her."
Shisouno Mikazuki -- shadow of death of the new moon
Maboroshi -- Illusion