Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Forget-Me-Not ❯ Chapter One: Mamoru's Memories ( Chapter 1 )

Forget-Me-Not (revised)

By: stefani teee a.k.a. Koneko ^Å^

Koneko-chan says!

I ask apologies from all of you for my lateness in this first chapter. I'm sorry! I truly am sorry! But there were exams, then a summer of nonsensical crap that I had to go through. but… um… this chapter's done? And my other unfinished fics are going to be finished soon, if everything goes according to plan (meaning my muses don't walk out on me) so please be patient! Merci!

Chibi-Relena: *whispers* We can stage a walkout?

Nanashi: *normally* And get beat down by Angel when she sees us?

Chibi-Relena: *shivers* I pity Seifer-chan. (K: Seifer-chan is my friend Angel's (sexyangel^Å^) muse)

~*~*~*~

(Chapter One)

"Mina... Minako!" gasped the golden-blonde finally, holding her sides as she gasped for air after a fit of laughter, her face crumpled in mirth. The girl in question simply tossed her hair, grinning maniacally.

"Well it's true!"

"Quiet!!" someone roared suddenly, causing every female in that room to suddenly leap several feet in the air. "This is a temple! It must remain peaceful!!"

An old man stuck his head in the room, "I'm talking to you girls, understand me?"

Ami, the blue-haired one, covered her ears at this point, continuing to read from the heavy blue textbook in her lap, avoiding the fact that she'd jumped as high as any of the rest of them, and her glasses had been knocked askew.

Dark-haired Rei rushed over to the old man, "Now, now Grandpa, we'd better go and get your medicine..."

"I don't need my medicine! I can--!"

With a roll of violet eyes, she shut the door behind them, cutting off her grandfather's loud protests.

Minako's head, having been flattened by one of Ami's textbooks when she'd jumped in surprised, had no scruples about shrieking her pain out for the entire world to hear once the crazy old man was gone. "OWWWWWWW!!!!" she howled, rubbing the large bump already appearing on her head and swatting at her friend with the other. Ami looked up as serenely as possible from the textbook she was reading, lowering her spectacles with a reproving look at her friend. A small smile was the only thing that hinted of humor in her eyes, "Now, now Minako... you know it's not polite to go about screaming in a house that is not yours."

Rei reappeared finally after a full ten minutes once the resumed ruckus has ended. She dropped to the floor in front of the small table and groaned, slumping forwards onto it, nearly upsetting a cup of tea. "I thought Grandpa would never settle down..."

Usagi leaned over her friend. For a moment, it looked like she was reaching out to pat her friend comfortingly on the shoulder. The moment she reached past her and snatched up the last cookie, shoving it into her mouth gleefully, Rei looked up, glaring at her. "You are such a pig!"

Usagi glared back at her from around a mouthful of cookie, "Oh thutwup Wei!"

She took another moment to swallow and repeat the phrase again in normal speech, ending it by sticking out her tongue.

Chibi-Usa, off to the side, giggled despite herself.

Usagi was her mother all right. Even back home, the woman-child that the servants had long since recognized was the real queen always stole the last of any cookie stash. And the first too, obviously. And... oh, no, she'd be there to steal all the cookies. Chibi-Usa liked to join her mother in pilfering such goodies too. She liked cookies. And ice cream. And cakes. And... well... food.

A soft beeping interrupted the 'productive' study session as everyone present (minus Chibi-Usa) groped for their respective 'watches', and flipped the covers open. There, in the tiny screen was the rather bedraggled face of Sailor Neptune. "There's a youma at the park near Crossroads. It's not doing anything... just waiting. And a Dark Warrior... he's here too. He wants Sailor Moon. We can't do anything to it. Or to him. Neither of them are dying!"

The girl stared at each other in confusion, wondering firstly how in the world the Outers had found out how to connect to their communicators and secondly, why they wanted Moon.

"Right... well... we'll be there."

Neptune's lovely face disappeared as she nodded once. The girls exchanged another look in silent depression. One look out the screen door made all things clear. It was raining. And raining hard. And despite their lack of love towards their studies, they were reluctant to leave Rei's warm, dry room. "Why can't we be paid for this job?" muttered Makoto, standing up and straightening her long limbs. "It interferes with my regular one after all. And I don't risk my life baking cakes now, do I?"

"Because no one would give a damn if several teenagers were to suddenly walk into the police station demanding payment for the job they should be doing." Usagi sighed, shrugging off her new pink sweater, not wanting it to get soaked in the rain once she slipped out of the transformation, shivering with the sudden lack of fabric on her arms, dressed as she was in a baby-T. It was a hard decision to decide against bringing any protection from the weather with them. But as Venus so readily pointed out, no one would respect Sailor Senshi clad in raincoats down the streets.

With several various words for transformation spells, the schoolgirls raced out, clad in a medley of colors, white predominating. Down several streets of people they had to rush through, causing people to turn and stare, and some even to attempt to follow. Mercury was finally forced to cast a thick fog to hide the way they were headed.

It was only when they neared Crossroads that they noticed the flares of turquoise, golden-orange and lavender magic tingeing the air. They broke out into a faster run.

The moment they came upon the scene however, several of them stopped short in shock. Never had they ever seen such a sight. The monster was large, and armored, armed with razor sharp claws and fangs to match. Nothing entirely out of the ordinary. It was the man that was with it, currently engaging in combat with Pluto, handling a rather wicked-looking scimitar.

Already, upon their arrival, a streak of turquoise, planet-shaped magic had already hurtled towards it, with a swipe of a clawed hand, the thing seemed to have caught it, amazingly enough, and crushed it. Smoke appeared as the raw flesh sizzled, but the monster didn't even seem to notice.

With a series of half-finished attack names, then Inners plunged in. Sailor Moon however, took a different direction, going instead for the man whom Sailor Pluto had been fighting. Or had been fighting against… the green-haired woman did not appear to be in very good shape after this encounter.

Grimacing, she reached them just in time to catch the crumpled figure of the lady, laying her down gently on the cold asphalt before quickly standing up, summoning a swift frown to her facial features, glaring up at the man who was them both with a cool gaze.

"She was an easy fight," he told her nonchalantly, "Not very powerful, is she?"

She said nothing, not exactly comfortable with the idea that this man might've hurt Pluto so easily. The others were still concentrating on that youma... perhaps it wasn't a good idea to come running to the rescue.

He shrugged at her silence, brandishing his scimitar, "Well come on then," he told her, grinning, baring teeth that had been filed to points. Or perhaps they had always been like that. You could never really tell with demons.

"What do you want?" she asked him, almost conversationally. It had always been her way to be light in times of crisis. He didn't answer at once, the scimitar instead seemed to fly right out of his hand at her head with such deadly accuracy that only by falling to her knees on the ground did she avoid being decapitated.

"Hey!" she yelped, startled by the abruptness of his attack, "What are you doing?!"

She'd more than half-expected him to start throwing fireballs at her... not try to hack her limb from limb.

"My orders were to find the Silver Crystal, little girl, and the princess that wields it and to bring them back with me..." he grinned, exposing those dreadful pointed teeth again. "They didn't contain in what condition I should bring them..."

She grimaced, not liking the sound of that, but, "I don't think I'd be of any use without my head." She commented, seemingly lightly as she parried a blow from his scimitar with her Moon Wand, sending shock waves down the entire length of her arm, nearly making her drop the wand. She let out a squeak, holding on with both hands. Come on Scouts, where are you?

"Sailor Moon!"

Ah, the cavalry had arrived. The others came running, having turned the youma into so much dust by the combined use of a Planet Attack (Mina later informed her gleefully that the Outers had never actually done this properly and had been more than a little mystified as to what they had been bundled into).

The man had lost whatever patience he had with watching Sailor Moon's desperate antics and lunged at her again with his blade, with good assurance that the next blow would land her dead. His plans were knocked askew, quite literally, when a red rose with a sharpened tip of a stem was flung by an unseen hand. It pinned the scimitar down to the concrete for a brief moment in a whirl of crimson and black steel, before the entire thing shattered, so that the glittering bits of blade and rose petals littering the ground at Sailor Moon's feet.

She yelped, leaping back, since many of the pieces were still sharp and she looked up reprovingly. However, the moment she caught sight of the black cape and top hat along with the domino mask and tuxedo, she was charmed all over again as she stared dreamily up at her prince on his white horse.

Actually he was not mounted this time, though he had been several times in the past when he'd appeared, but he was holding an elegant black umbrella over his head as if loathe to relinquish his mystery by getting soaked in the pouring rain like the other bedraggled scouts.

The demon looked ready to spit fire, glaring at the dashing image Tuxedo Kamen cut in silhouette as he leapt lightly down from the lamppost with catlike grace, facing off with the other man, rattling off a customary impromptu speech that accompanied any appearance.

"You idiot!" roared the demon after half-paying attention to his rant, "The King will have my head if he doesn't get what he wants!"

The man in the tuxedo raised an eyebrow behind the white domino mask. "And how is that any concern of mine?" he replied politely, ever the gentleman even when he was being insulting. He held his umbrella in hand as if waiting to use it in place of his cane.

Weaponless, the demon balked at the idea of fighting him one-on-one. "Get him!" he roared at his monster... which was currently swirling around the stratosphere as so much dust. For the first time, a look of irrepressible fear overtook him, which had nothing to do with the ridiculous man pointing an umbrella over him. Instantly, he disappeared into a smog of blackness so thick none of them could see where the gap between their world and his appeared, and was gone.

Tuxedo Kamen frowned, bringing up one gloved hand to remove the white domino mask from his eyes. "What in the world...?" he mused thoughtfully to himself, watching the place where the demon had previously stood.

~*~*~*~

"You... you imbecile!" raged Dark Endymion, leaping to his feet from his throne on the dais. "I give you this duty, this important duty with perfectly clear instructions and you come back... you come back... empty-handed!"

The demon prostrated himself before his lord, trembling, sputtering excuses. "But, my Lord, the monster was destroyed... I was weaponless--"

"I am not finished with you. Furthermore, reports, detailed reports have been brought back to me detailing your attempts at killing the princess." The young man seemed to have calmed down some, even allowed a small smile to flicker on his lips. This only made the demon ever the more terrified of his situation.

"Now, do tell me... what would I accomplish with a bit of shiny rock if I have no one to wield it?" this last, his calm broke and he roared. "She is no use to me decapitated by your foolishness. She is the only one, you understand me, who can wield that blasted piece of rock for my own designs. And yet you attempt to do away with her... while unable to kill, yes even with a monster at your side, to rid us of the others?"

"My King... please... forgive this Unworthy One..." the demon pleaded, his forehead to the floor, "I underestimated him, give me another chance, a one, please..." A pitiful sight to see, a demon of his caliber prostrating himself before a boy-king.

"You are useless to me, do you realize? Absolutely useless." His eyes still coldly blue, he held up a hand, and the demon cringed, waiting for the black flames to erupt around him, searing his flesh. Nothing happened. He looked up, hesitantly, to stare at the boots of several more of his companion demons, "Take him away. Deal with him." came the voice of authority behind the row of boots.

Although this version of death was much more preferable to the one that had been proffered him when he failed, at the hand of the king's torture implements, putting himself at the mercy of his former demon companions was not much better. He'd more than likely be torn limb from limb.

The King stood as the filth was dragged away, his black cape swept around his body as he pulled it out of his way, fitted out in black armor, made with detailed silver pieces accenting different parts of it, a frown still on his face. "If you want to have it done right..." he whispered to himself, "I suppose I'll have to do it myself." Especially if he wanted it done sometime in this millennium.

There was a soft sigh. "Angel." he whispered softly, thinking of a princess as beautiful as the moon, gorgeous and perfect in every way.

~*~*~*~

Aha! So our resident evil guy's got a soft spot! Well, I wonder how he'll take Usagi's metamorphosis from Moon Princess to just Moon Bunny? Well, we'll find out won't we? Email and/or (hopefully the former) review me!