Ami and Usagi laughed, almost forgetting the tension that had been between them a few short hours ago. "Are you sure Usagi?"

With blue eyes tinted with silver, Usagi nodded and chose a booth near the entrance. "If Mamoru doesn't love me, that's fine, but he needs to have enough responsibility to tell me. I'm not fourteen any longer, but a woman who has patiently waited for someone to marry her."

"Is that an invitation," a soft voiced growled against her ear. Startled, she jerked her head and wished that she hadn't when she clutched it between her hands in a cry of pain.

'I will not cry,' she told herself silently, tears stinging her eyes.

"Usagi!" she heard Ami shout in alarm. Faster than either thought possible, the blue haired woman was beside and prying her fingers away to see the damage. On her forehead, a large knot was starting to form, turning a beautiful black and blue. "Wow, what did you hit?"

"Vegeta..." she whispered, still trying to keep her voice steady. Usagi remembered running into a lot of objects as a teenager, but it never hurt until she hit it against a pointy nose.

"She actually broke your nose?" an excited male asked, breaking through Usagi's fog of discomfort.

Vegeta's eyes were wide, surprised that someone so small could inflict so much damage. Blood seeped through his gloved hands, but every time he tried to grab his nose, he would let out a yelp of agony. "Make it stop!" he hollered at Kakarot.

"Oh my god!" Ignoring the wave of dizziness, Usagi stumbled to her feet and gently led Vegeta to the table, sat him down in their booth and applied paper napkins to the shattered cartilage. "Ami, what next!"

"He needs a doctor!" she commanded, taking control of the chaotic situation.

"Absolutely not!" Vegeta growled.

"What the hell is going on?"

Ami sighed in relief, "Mamoru, do you have your medical bag?"

"It's in the car."

"I don't need a doctor!" Vegeta started to struggle, when he noticed that Usagi was holding his nose with a dazed expression on her face, a trickle of blood sliding down the side of her face. If she broke his nose, he could only imagine how her head felt. "Kakarot!"

Before she could slump on top of him, his friend caught and leaned her against the cushioned seat. "What's wrong with her?"

"Let me look at her," a gentle voice said. Mamoru had returned from his vehicle and couldn't believe how badly the scene had progressed. After a few moments, he glanced at Ami in concern, "She's slipped into a coma."

"How?" she demanded.

"I don't know, but we need to get her to the hospital."

"No," Vegeta groaned, struggling to sit up. His vision began to blur and the last thing he remembered was a flash of silver light before he sank into darkness with Usagi protectively in his arms.

"Usagi!" Mamoru and Ami cried.

"Vegeta!" Kakarot tried to locate Vegeta's ki signature, but it had vanished completely, as if he had died.

Kakarot was about to fly out the door when he froze, feeling something in the shadows. Before he could locate the source, it disappeared and he almost thought he had imagined it.

"Mamoru, what are we going to do?"

"Call the other senshi?"

"What senshi?" Mamoru and Ami gasped in horror, realizing that their conversation had been overheard. "Who are you, what was that silver light and where did Usagi and Vegeta go?"

Ami didn't know what to tell him when her watch suddenly went off in alarm, as if fate were punishing her for betraying Usagi. 'She forgave me, but why do I still feel responsible?' Lifting her scared blue eyes, she dropped her trembling hands to her sides, "I don't know," she murmured sadly.

Answering her watch, "Ami, is Usagi near you?"

"She's gone," the woman sobbed, sagging to her knees. "Oh god, Rei! We have to get her back!"

"Meet me at the temple in ten minutes!"

Mamoru genlty picked her up, holding her trembling body agaisnt him. With tired and defeated eyes, he looked up at the tall man before him, "We owe our friend everything, but we always seem to fail her either emotionally or physically."

"I'm going with you."

"But..."

Kakarot's expression was set in determination, eyes cold as steel. "No is not an option."

Mamoru didn't have time to argue and nodded, his long strides easily matched by the silent warrior. He had felt a lot of aura's, but nothing compared to the angry fire blazing around Kakarot at that moment, his hair flickering between gold and black. 'I've seen this before, but where?'

"You were her boyfriend," Kakarot stated, associating his name with some of Usagi's and Vegeta's conversation when she was recovering at their house.

"How do you know that?"

"The important question is, how could you let her walk alone every night?"

"I didn't think..."

"Did you ever?" Kakarot growled, his anger rising. "Be thankful she still considers you her friends."

Rei was impatiently tapping her foot when they arrived at the temple and was slightly irritated when she saw that they were not alone. "You're late," she hissed, whirling on her heels.

They entered a large room with six women and three men sitting around a fire, their faces strained with worry and fear. When Ami, Rei and Mamoru entered they relaxed slighlty, but glared at the stranger behind them. "What's he doing here?" Haruka demanded.

"His friend disappeared as well," Mamoru quickly commented, not wanting to anger the man further.

Kakarot looked around, his eyes studying everyone and thing when his eyes fell on a woman with long green hair, a staff in her hands and a purple, green fuku on her slim body. 'She's the power I felt at the restaurant.'

"What happened?" Rei asked. "I had a vision of silver light and then everything went blank."

"That's what took them," Ami whimpered. "Please... we have to find her."

"Let's split up into groups," Seiya recommended. "Hotaru and I, Michuru and Haruka, Yaten and Minako, Taiki and Makoto, Rei, Ami and Mamoru."

"Have you forgotten someone?"

"You're going to help?" Michuru gasped.

"This wasn't suppose to happen!" she snapped.

"Who are you?" Kakarot asked, trying to remember where he had seen her before.

Garnet eyes connected with trembling black ones, "Have you still not remembered?" She started to head back into the darkness, but a tail shot around her waist and knocked her staff from her hands.

"Where is Vegeta and Usagi?"

"Not even I know everything."

"Where you go, I go," he commanded.

She thought about refusing him, her life always spent in solitude, but they needed Kakarot's help. "So be it, but you are to repeat nothing of what you see."

After they had vanished, all eyes turned to Mamoru and Ami, "Who was that?"

"Neither evil or good," Rei prophesized.

"Worry about it later!" Seiya ordered. Transforming, the senshi split up, hoping they would find their moon princess unharmed and safe.

Vegeta's mind was in turmoil, hating the loneliness that surrounded him. “Why couldn't someone look past my differences and mistakes and just love me?”

'Someone can, your majesty,' a voice sung.

“You again! Leave me alone!”

'I will when you remember. She suffers as do you, and will not be complete until you are one again. No love equaled what you two had.'

“Who are you talking about?”

'She's under your nose and now free to let herself look for the one she truly loves. She is no longer in love with a dream, but wanting to find the real thing. You must find her before it's too late. The danger that approaches, she will not be able to defeat alone.'

“Usagi?”

The voice didn't answer him, but he felt that she was the one that the voice spoke of. Ever since he arrived in Tokyo he had bumped into her. 'Why would a girl like her be interested in a murderer like myself?' The bitter and angry tears were threatening to come again. He tried to fight it, but his pain came to the surface and it was more than a physical pain. It was a pain of something he couldn't remember and somehow wanted to. “Why can't I remember?” Vegeta sank deeper into the darkness, his body and mind numb from the torment of his past and the hopless future.