Tuesday 2:00pm
    Ami and Asuka walked side by side each other, leaving the exhibition center after the fabulous performance of Swan Lake. Ami felt like she could fly, the emotion of the whole ballet had gotten to her, and the fact that Asuka was somewhat back to normal cheered her up tremendously.
    “Well, what did you think?”
    Ami’s mind was on something else, without directly answering his question, she skipped forward a little way ahead and turned around in front of him. “I want to skate, skate like them.”
    Umm… in case the fact escapes you, I just wanted to remind you that those people up there weren’t skating, they were dancing, ballet.”
    Ami couldn’t help but grin at Asuka’s dismal attempt at being serious, “you can never dance like you are skating, but you can skate like you are dancing, and that is what I want to do, right now.
    Asuka smiled at her and looked at his watch, “but you still have like 3 hours until your training with Sensei, we can go for a coffee.”
    “Practicing a bit more can’t be a bad thing. Anyway, Sensei Narai might be at the rink now so we can make my lesson a bit earlier. I’ll see if she can take my lesson at 2:30pm.”
    “Are your friends coming to pick you up later?”
    “They’re coming at 4:00pm to see me during my lesson, to cheer me on. I want to give Sensei Narai a present, I want to give her a medal. And to give her some hope, I must show her that I can skate again.”
    “I’ll come with you.”
    “No Asuka, you distract me too much. Come at 4:00pm, I should still be there.” With that, Ami skipped away and disappeared into the crowd.
    A glint appeared in Asuka’s eyes as she said that, he was a happy man.

    “Did you hear that, the Senshi, all five of them are going to be at the skating rink today at 4:00pm, and that is when we will strike.” Avarice grinned at the news, the idea of striking them down excited him, once the operation was done, they would be Lord Takechi’s favorite, no doubt about it. Perhaps a few accidents might occur… in the end, he would be the only favorite.
    Ossify walked away from the shadows and took of his headphone, “we don’t need to strike, that is what our human will do. There will be confusion and we will win in the end. I will make sure that our human gets the energy required to do the job.”
    “I say, we just go and kill them. Us against them.”
    Avarice groaned at Animusor’s stupidity. “Ossify’s idea is good, but if it should fail we will have to go down and retrieve our little experiment. Animusor, you will go and distract them in that case, Ossify, you must bring the humanoid back, and any of the Senshis that we destroy. Is that understood?”
    The two creatures saluted awkwardly to their leader, “Yes.” Then turned away to get ready for their jobs.

    Sensei Narai slid towards Ami who was standing in the middle of the rink after a run of the routine. “Goodness Ami, I have no idea what happened between last night and today, but you have improved drastically. Your concentration levels are up, and your triple-triple landing was just a bit shaky. I think by tomorrow night in the competition, you should be able do it beautifully.”  She beamed at her student appreciatively. “I am glad that we moved the lesson forward by a few hours, you’ve just removed two and a half hour of stress from my shoulders.”
    Ami frowned and wiggled her index finger at her sensei seriously, “sensei, stress does not accumulate on the shoulders.” Ami face broke into a smile, happy that she had finally managed to please her, and for once, she felt the same confidence she had felt in the preliminary trails.
    “I won’t overwork you then. Let’s end our lesson here, don’t exert yourself any further, but if you want, you can stay on the ice and feel it, don’t try anymore jumps, is that clear?”
    “I understand you completely.” Ami leapt forward as best she could in skates, and gave her Sensei a hug, “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
    Sensei Narai’s pocketbell (the equivalent of a pager) beeped, she glanced down and smiled. “Get some sleep, and whatever it is that made you so happy, make sure that that person does it again.” Sensei Narai smiled, Asuka’s Sensei had just left her the message that Asuka was also back on track. Sensei Narai didn’t know exactly what had happened between the two of them, but she knew that the connection between the miraculous improvement of both students could not be by no mere chance.
    “I think I’ll stay here, my friends are coming to pick me up at 4:00pm.”
    “Don’t stay here for too long.”
    “Only for an hour more. I want to skate.” Sensei Narai turned away from her and left the rink, hoping that Ami’s good mood would remain intact for the competition.

Tuesday 4:15pm
    The music was on full blare, even from outside the door the strains from the classical piece “Emperor” could be heard clearly. A door banged the minute their hands were on the door handle to the entrance of Rink 1 and Asuka appeared in the corridor. “Hey, you guys, this way.”
    The four girls and Mamoru followed Asuka’s beckoning finger quietly, bursting with curiosity to know where they were being led to. A little way away, they saw a small narrow white doorway with the sign “Staff Only” on it. How Asuka had the keys to get into it was another mystery. But by now, they had given up trying to extract answers to mysteries from him. Asuka acted as if it was a normality, and once the door was opened, they were faced with the most intricate state of the art panel of computers and other controls for lighting, ventilation and music to Rink 1. “This way, be careful of those switches over there, if you hit those ones there, the fire-safety system might get triggered, and Rink 1 will be covered with chemicals, not the best thing for Ami’s skin.”
    “Rink 1? Where?” They frantically looked around for any signs of the rink in the room, it had not yet occurred to them that they were only in the control room.
    Mamoru smiled at the girls’ ignorance, “so, why are we here?”
    Asuka leaned forward to press one of the buttons tagged, “Screen”. The button lit up immediately, a hush spread across the room as a small whine of from the mechanical movement sounded. A wall in front of them immediately slid away revealing a small window. Music filled the room, the window exposed Ami skating to the same music, unaware that they looking at her. “This is the Control Room, when you go into Rink 1, we’re behind the mirror.”
    “Why can’t we go in?”
    “I don’t want to let you people interrupt her, her powers of expression are at their maximum right now, its almost like she is in a trance. We have to let her finish this without disturbance, otherwise she’ll never be able to express herself fully. Once she understands herself, she’ll be able to express herself at anytime, she’ll learn how to show her feelings through dance. Can you read what she is saying?”
    “What do you mean? It looks like a set of movements to me.”
    “No Makoto, look at her, it’s not just a routine set of movements. Like the way you speak, by emphasizing different words in the same sentence you can convey different meanings. She is sending out different vibes by moving her hand slightly differently in the same movement, emphasizing a particular action…” Asuka’s voice trailed off, lost in the beauty of what was before him.
    “…because she is dancing.” Rei interrupting his preoccupied state.
    Asuka’s head jerked up momentarily from the music, “yes, because she is dancing.”
    Mamoru slid his arms around Usagi’s waist. “The expression of confusion, sadness, love, yet innocent naivete. There is strength despite the weakness, she is sending a mixture of messages in the need of protection; both a need to protect and a need to be protected. She is here, but far away, she knows the reality of life, but she is lost in the same maze of life. This is mind of no one less than a confused and insecure woman.”
    Asuka smiled at Mamoru’s statement, his readings of her feelings. “That’s correct, you read her dance very accurately.”
    Usagi turned in Mamoru’s arms, “you mean you understood all of that just from her skating? You’re making this stuff up right?”
    He smiled down at the girl in his arms, “I’m not making it up. Isn’t it obvious? Her feelings are written all over her form. This is just like art appreciation, you have to let the artist sweep you into her world to understand her mind. When you look at paintings, you look into their world.”
    The music came to an end and Ami’s movement across the ice came to an abrupt stop with it. Usagi jumped in excitement and happiness. “can we go in?”
    Asuka placed a finger to his lips. “Not yet, wait for moment. Give her some time to reflect on the magic that she has just cast and understand how and what has happened. Look at her.”

    Ami took in a deep breath of contention. She couldn’t believe what had happened, in the brief 4 or so minutes she had been in almost a meditative state. The feelings that she had been trying to hide for most of her life were no longer locked in the depths of her heart, as she spun, her emotions became that of dust, drifting to the ice, falling from between her fingers, her palms and her fingertips.
    She could imagine that it was a golden dust, a speckle of life, her burdens, all floating free. She was embraced by her feelings, in the comfort of love and sadness.
    Like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, whose golden dust allowed her to fly and represented her feelings - when she was angry she lost more golden dust, when she was happy she literally glowed; Ami felt the same. The fine dust of emotion, as she let it leave her body, she could fly, a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders while she had been skating, like all the dusts of grief that she had accumulated over time.
    Her heart flew free now, lifted by the strong arms of the man in her mind. She realised what it was that she had been feeling for such a long time, it was love and adoration of her best friend. She had been confused until now, but she suddenly comprehended the rush of feelings, and she was sure that the feeling was mutual. While the rational side of her told her that he was not the man from her destiny and that the real Prince was someone else, this time, she wanted to let her heart lead her.
    There was happiness in her mind now, and happiness alone, all the sadness which had flowed through her veins had flown out of her body, on the trail that she had left behind. She felt the power of her skating, of her dance. Finally, Ami Mizuno understood what everyone had meant by expressing her feelings through her movements. Mizuno meant ‘friend of water’, but while she was the friend of mizu, she was also the friend of yuki, she was yukino, ‘friend of snow’, and thus ice.

    “That looked so good Ami! There is no doubt about it, you will win!”
    The dazed smile from her face immediately vanished at the sound of Usagi’s voice ringing from one end of the skating rink. Ami smiled kindly at her friends who had, somehow, witnessed her performance. “Don’t say that, nothing is entirely definite, something might happen and I might not win.”
    “You can’t mean that! Of course you will win, you’ll beat them by a mile.” Her friends rushed across the ice to hug her, she anxiously skid to the sides to meet them. Although this was not the rink they were due to compete on (that was in the Tokyo Athletics Stadium Ice Rink), she could not let her friends destroy the surface of the ice that she had just skated on.
    She was met by a enormous rush of arms and faces, and was surprised that Mamoru had joined in on this communal hug. Surrounded by her five friends, for a short moment she was lost in the raptures, but she quickly noticed that Asuka was missing. She wondered why he wasn’t with the rest of them. She remembered him entering the rink when Usagi had yelled over to her. She wanted to know where he was, and she wanted to tell him face to face what she had just felt. Ami pulled away from her group of friends and looked for him.
    He wasn’t there.
    She wanted to see him.
    And unfortunately, she would see him too soon.
 
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