“Oh, I know you!  You are the guy who skate, well, I mean the figure skater, this champion skater person, err… Tsuzuki Asano, that’s it!  You were in hospital not so long ago, right?  Are you okay now?  Wow, we are getting a lot of skaters in here these days, first we have Asuka Akiyama coming in with some of our locals, and then with them is always Ami Mizuno, that’s our local champion!”
        His eyes widened at the mention of Ami’s name, revealing more of those red, bloodshot eyes, “who is it that you mentioned again?”
        “Ami Mizuno, she’s only been in the circuit for a little while, but still, she was doing really well out there…  See, we have these plaques here that our famous patrons have signed for us, we were going to get Ami to do one, but…” Motoki trailed off as he began to remember what had happened, “anyway, would you be able to sign one of our plaques, you know just to say that you’ve been here and all?”
        Rummaging around underneath the counter, Motoki was rewarded with finding a large felt pen and one of the large pieces of board that would later be laminated and framed after having found a celebrity.  He pushed it towards the disheveled Tsuzuki with a large smile, “here you go, that is if you wouldn’t mind of course.”
        Tsuzuki did not seem to see this and absent-mindedly pushed his long hair away from his face one again, “where is she right now?”
        “She’s disappeared, no one really knows,” Motoki lied, beginning to shake slightly because of the memories, then, deciding to once again change the topic, “you don’t have to write anything you know, just your name maybe, that’s all, I’d really appreciate it, look, I’ll make the ice coffee on the house.”
        “I’m not interested, and I don’t want your coffee, it stinks!” He replied flatly, pushing the paper and the pen on the floor, he then jumped off the stool just as four girls and a young man entered the café.  Without seeing them, he collided into them, specifically, a girl with dumplings for hair, “hey! Watch where you are going you odanga-dama (dumpling head)!”
        “Hey, don’t call me that!” Usagi replied, struggling to her feet with Mamoru holding onto her hand, “you watch where you’re going!”
        “Yeah, you bumped her down!  We all saw you!”  Tsuzuki found himself accosted by a bunch of strange people, and felt himself blinking out of reality once again until his legs failed to find solid ground.

Flashback
        “Princess Mercury, this is for you.”  Zoicite approached the Princess sitting at her throne timidly, his heart throbbing so loud that he was sure the people in the rest of the ballroom dancing must be wondering why there was drumbeats in ‘Blue Danube’.
        He was relieved when she took it from his hand, for he was sure that this Princess who spurned off prospective admirer and lovers just by running away embarrassedly, or hiding herself from the rest of world, would not accept the flower and excuse herself to find herself a ‘more suitable’ companion.  He had spoken to her a few times in the Mercurian Palace Library, and found her most outspoken when it came to playing chess, she became must less restrained and spoke easily.  In a ballroom though, it was not quite the same, she not only turned away from the center of attention, but politely turned back all affections and attentions of male guests, to the point that she rarely spoke to them.  However, his guess had been half correct, for after her receiving of the flower, she placed it by her side table and excused herself, rising from the grand throne of Mercury, she made her way to some of the peasant people who had been invited to the ball.
        This was an annual ball held in the Mercurian Palace that incorporated the rich and the poor, where the lay people of all the planets were given free invites, to enjoy the food and music that was provided.  As he watched her take the hands of such rough people, his heart trembled as he was touched by the scene, he saw her laughing when young children reached out to touch her dress, her hair, and little babies held by their mothers fiddled the little snowdrops (a type of flower) that had been fastened into her hair.  Children seemed to feel her aura of peace and glowed by it, pulling hand for her attention, and little boys pulling her into a dance.  She smilingly obliged them all, dancing a little with some of the children, taking some of the flowers from the vases at wall to adorn some of the girls’ hair, and politely making conversation with the older generation.
        This tranquil scene was interrupted by a sudden rushing of four women to join her and drag her to take part in a celebratory dance which was almost ending since they had only just arrived.  Luckily for her, the dance did not require partners, but a group of people dancing in any way that they wished.
        He seemingly zoomed in to see the five women and saw himself (for unknown reason he was floating above the air) walking towards them to claim Princess Mercury’s hand for the next waltz.  He couldn’t see what had happened suddenly, but felt a stabbing in his heart as the ballroom scene dimmed around him and screams were heard in a far distance as his consciousness drifted away.  He screamed within himself, he was not sure if anyone else heard as his mind left the room that eventful evening, “NO!!!!”

        As she began to hear a slight ringing in her ears, she could again hear this lady’s voice speaking, “so we meet, finally, you in your rightful place, and me in mine.  Now would be about the time to deal with you, it so sad, isn’t it, that I have only just welcomed you back, and you will be leaving again, so soon too, Sailor, Mercury, the weakest senshi of them all, the one who relies on her sponge to outthink the enemy.  You cannot outthink and outrun me, not here, I have the resources at my command, you, are nothing.  You have been taking a lot of things from me lately, and now, I am going to give you more of what is mine to take, and we’ll see if you live to receive them all.”
        Pulling the veil off her face, Lady Kimiko Akiru stood to face Ami, the fallen senshi who was sadly deprived of blood and energy.  Ami’s face became ash white once again as she saw the face and whispered, breathing heavily as she spoke, “Akiko Watenebe, you are Lady Kimiko Akiru, you are his fiancée, no wonder you managed to get in here.  Now, what do you want from me?”
        “I want you dead and disemboweled, does that count?  You injured my hand a few days ago, I don’t forget things like that, I never forget.”
        Holding up her hand, Ami examined the wrappings and could see that they were not serious injuries compared to her deep wounds that ached whenever she moved, if she could move at all, “I could say the same about what you did to me.”
        “But you are of no consequence, I, on the other hand, am the fiancé, the future, rightful, Lady Takeuchi.  We broke a mirror on that day, did you realize that in the confusion of our fight? Huh? Sailor, Mercury, oh smart one.” She said sarcastically.
        “I wonder who gets the seven years of bad luck then, you or me.”
        “No need to wonder, you.”
        “You have no proof of who I still am, I, on the other hand, still have your knife, with your fingerprints the handle.”
        “You have a knife with your blood on it, ooo, I am trembling with fear.” She grinded out sickeningly with that robotic voice of hers, “did I forget to mention that I don’t have any fingerprints, none of us from the Kuriverse do.  So you, have no proof against me either, and I would caution you about making false allegations, they are hazardous to your life.  I guess we are even at the moment, but it won’t be long until I gather what I need, now don’t you worry, I’ll make sure that you die as painfully as possible.  That would be the best I could do for you, for all my generosity, I won’t forget the past we shared on and off the ice.”  She laughed as she began to leave the room, with her hand on the door handle she turned back to look at Ami, “you won’t be seeing my fiancé for a while, not until your dying days through the glass case of the execution chamber, any messages I take?”
        “Damn you!” Ami spat out without even blushing for her usage of profanities.

        “NO!!!”  He sat up from the ground that he had fallen onto, and immediately noticed that he had only collapsed for a short moment since Motoki, the service boy had only just reached his side.  “I’m terribly sorry, I’m not in…” Tsuzuki suddenly stared at the people before him and gasped.

        The quintet struggled with their composure as they tried not to stare with him with wide eyes.  Before them, was Tsuzuki Asano, and to Rei, Usagi, and Mamoru, they suddenly recognized him as more than that, he was Zoicite, their once ally and also their once fierce enemy who had sided with Queen Beryl.  They had never noticed this before when they were watching the Figure Skating Competitions, but perhaps it was because their attention was drawn onto Asuka Akiyama thus an immediate dislike and disregard towards him.  They didn’t trust themselves to speak for if they did speak their mind, they would immediately give away their secret identities.  However, their efforts to hide their past proved to be futile when Tsuzuki gathered his senses and from his sitting position moved forwards to kneel at Mamoru’s feet.
        “Prince Endymion, it is I, Zoicite, your faithful but once misguided servant, I am here to serve you once again, if you will take me, one word from you and you will either silence me forever from this earth, or I will serve you with my life.”
        “General Zoicite?”  Mamoru mumbled, without being able to formulate full sentences quite yet.
        “It is I, my prince.  I dare not ask for your forgiveness, but only a chance to prove myself to you again.”
        “I forgive you with all my heart, you were under the influence of Beryl.”
        “My prince, princesses, will you not tell me where my princess is?”
        This was where the difficult part began, and luckily for them, Motoki was standing there, confused at what was going on, “who is your princess?”
        “Why, Princess Mercury of course!  And who are you?”
        Usagi, finding her senses, and drawing from the reserves of being Princess Serenity began to explain, “he is a friend, he knows of our identities.  Unfortunately, Princess Mercury has been captured by the Kuriverse, we know not of her fate at the present.”  She bit her lip knowing that she was lying, but she did not know how much she could trust this suddenly reformed Zoicite.
        “Yeah, she was taken from right this café too!” Motoki added.
        That proved to be too much for Zoicite to take all at one go, and seeing Motoki as a vent for frustration, he stood and rushed up to Motoki, ramming him hard to the wall.  Yelling with all his anger, he screamed, “taken?  What do you mean taken?  How could you?  Are you a man?  You let them just take her?  How could you have not protected her from them?…”
        The others immediately removed Motoki from his grasp and Motoki struggled for breath for a moment, the shock of it was getting into him.  Tsuzuki seemed to calm down, and then sat on the floor as he began to weep uncontrollably in a fetal position, repeating as though he was in a trance, “I’m too late, I’ll never see her again…”.

        Ami looked at the woman sitting at the foot of her bed sympathetically, Akiko had just told her that her children and grandchildren were about to be killed because of the words she had said, and Ami knew that those words which had been said had been because of her.  How Akiko had known what Miyuki had said was a mystery, but she could guess that it was a ‘bug’ that had been put into her room.  Signaling for Miyuki to be quiet, she signed for her to come over.  Miyuki immediately understood the sign, and came by her side without making a sound, Ami signed for paper to write on and paper appeared in front of her.
        “Help me to Lord Takeuchi’s study, I will tell him and try to prevent what Lady Kimiko is about to do.  I cannot let you suffer like this for what you have done for me.”
        Miyuki took the pen from her and wrote in a shaky hand, “milady, it is impossible, as it would only tarnish the protection that his lordship has over you if you are seen to be too close to him.  Her ladyship is extremely jealous, she will only destroy you if you are a threat.  Do not, for my sake, fall at her hands.”
        “Do as I say, let it be one thing that I do for you, as a token of my gratitude.”
        Miyuki looked at her mistress with shaking eyes, and blinked once, then quietly left the room to check for security.  Ami heard her directing the guards outside to get some things for her, and as she heard the scuttling sound of the guards, Miyuki returned.  Coming to her side, Miyuki carefully draped her mistress’ right (and unharmed) arm over her shoulder and helped her up slowly.  Ami gasped as the pain shot through her left side while she had got off the bed, not only did her arm feel like a dead weight, any movement augmented the pain that she was already feeling.  She smiled at her lady-in-waiting to assure her that she was not about to collapse as they began a long shuffled towards Lord Takeuchi’s study.
 

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