Usagi smiled contentedly as the guizuishou glowed in tune with the insignia on her forehead as she her energy was replenished, recovering slowly from the damage that had been done. She suddenly shivered convulsively as the guizuishou stopped glowing and an explosion of light hit the room, escaping through the window into space. Luna and Artemis covered their eyes with their paws with their bodies crouched close to the ground. For a brief moment, it seemed as though the gravity of Earth had lost the battle with the Moon’s magnetic pull as the Earth’s objects slowly began to levitate about the ground. The pull of the Moon snapped as suddenly as it had occurred and the world returned to normality with a loud thump with the re-contact of the world’s object and the ground. The culprit responsible for the abnormality revealed herself once the glowing stopped, Usagi’s aura shone brightly on her forehead, sparkling lightly, then fading back into her skin. Luna climbed onto her owner’s pillow and stroked her forehead gently to ease the glow, whispering into her ear while doing so, “Princess Serenity, you mustn’t play with your powers like that, you could expose yourself and get everyone into a lot of trouble.”
The bedroom door was flung open with a new force, Luna and Artemis made a show of whimpering like scared kittens as the Tsukino family poured into their daughter’s room, evidently shaken by the recent incidence of the loss of gravity. “Usagi!” they screamed.
“Huh?” Usagi sat up quickly from her bed; she stared at the faces of her family with puzzlement, it was soon replaced with that of comprehension, then horror as complete realization dawned, “Ohmigod! I’m late to school again! Haruna-sensei is going to kill me for that! And I forgot to finish my homework again!” She leapt from her bed, and stormed through her wardrobe for her uniform then tripped on her own feet, landing on her backside with a loud bang.
Her family stared at her, sweatdropping, wondering how their daughter had managed to sleep through the sensation of floating about the earth, her mother smiled, “Usako, its Saturday today, we just had the strangest feeling, but…, where did all your friends go?”
“Err… well, we kind of had this fight, and Rei and the others went home and err…”
“They left by the window?”
“Well, they err… didn’t want to disturb you about it, so err… they left through the window, and err… we’ll talk tomorrow, but geesh, it’s 3 am! *yawn* Why did you wake me up ota-san (mother)? I think I’ll go back off to bed, night!” She turned her body swiftly, and pushed herself onto her bed, pulling her covers over her head.
“That girl, what are we going to do with her?” Kenji shook his head as he left the doorway of his daughter’s room.
As soon as the door slid shut, Usagi crawled out from under her covers, “Ami’s been freed, they should be coming back soon,” she whispered.
“You mean, you were faking it just then, that thing about being late school?” Both Artemis and Luna asked their princess incredulously.
“Of course, I wasn’t sure how to explain it to them, I thought that me being the silly daughter would work… you know… like the klutze I usually am? Anyway, I think that Ami is safe, and everyone’s going to be just fine.” As if to prove her point, she pressed a button on the communicator, a split second later, SailorMercury’s face appeared, “I’m better now, thanks for sending me back! I felt you pulling my energy though.”
SailorMercury smiled sheepishly, “well, we kind of needed you to end the whole Kuriverse system, but we missed the Kurai-Ousama, so, um, its just the Kuriverse-Go we managed to destroy.”
“We started floating!”
“Really? We must have increased the magnetic pull of the moon when we were taking your energy at the same time as your healing, if only I was around to take that data down! Anyway, everyone is safe now, all the people who have been kidnapped are going to come back; they won’t remember a thing.”
“Wow! So Asuka Akiyama’s coming back? Oh, and that guy, Saito-Sato person, what about him, was he taken by…”
“We’re trying to heal Asuka-kun now, he’s got a chip implanted, we need to get it out before he returns to normality… as for… as for Kunki-kun… he… he was Avarice… I killed him… I… it… it was me.. it was all my fault… I… k-k-killed… him…” Tears began to stream down SailorMercury’s face, Usagi saw her being hugged by the rest of the senshi and wished that she were with them. Mercury pulled herself together quickly and smiled brightly, “we have to work on Asuka-kun now, we can talk when we come back.”
“Why don’t you bring him back, we can work on him together, as a group? I miss you so much!” Usagi suggested.
“NO!! STAY WHERE YOU… umph umph!!” Luna struggled with Usagi’s hand over her mouth.
“Be quiet, my whole family will hear you!”
Luna was finally released, she spoke firmly into the communicator, “Mercury, we have been monitoring your health while you have been away, you are carrying a virus contained and controlled in the Kuriverse. Once you return to Earth, it will spread even quicker in your body, you will have to ask your mother and see if there is something that she can do, but it is not a common Earth based disease. If you return with Asuka still needing your help, his soul will be lost in believing himself a slave of the Kuriverse with no master, not to mention that there is a possibility that you will spread it to the whole society, do you understand me?”
Mercury bit her lip and nodded, “yes Luna, I’ll get to work now.” She quickly ended the communication, as though afraid that it would pass through the oxygen and hoping to hide her disappointment.
As soon as Usagi was sure that the communication had ended, she whipped around and held Luna to eye level by the scuff of her neck, “how could you have done that?”
“Done what?”
“You just hurt Ami’s feelings! How could you have been so harsh to her? Didn’t you hear what she said had just happened? I can’t believe it, can’t you be more sensitive to her feelings? You made her feel so unwanted, and that wasn’t right!”
Luna lowered her eyes in shame, before her was not the Usagi of the past, but the Usagi, Princess Serenity of the future, as each of the senshi grew and developed with the specially formulated tests, Usagi was slowly learning to stand on her own two feet, gracefully falling into her future self. “I… She is a medical, scientific thinker, I thought that maybe the truth would suit her a bit more, that she understands the scientifical analysis of her physical condition.”
“Well, you thought wrong! She doesn’t live in a laboratory, she lives with humans, she is flesh and blood and she is just as sensitive as anyone of us, she has a scientific mind, but it doesn’t it mean that she is cold and unfeeling. You know that just as well as me, you didn’t think Luna, you didn’t think,” she muttered, “and you hurt her feelings.”
“Usagi… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize me! Tell her!” Usagi looked at her advisor with a newly found fierceness and commanding attitude. As tiredness overcame her, she yawned, losing all of the graceful authoritative manner she had gathered in the short time, she giggled, and flopped back onto her pillow, trying to look stern, she waggled her finger at Luna, “as soon as you see her.”
“Mercury, you alright?” Jupiter said with concern in her voice as she watched Mercury in full concentration, her eyes straining at the visors, her fingers taping at the mini-computer keyboard slowly and deliberately.
“I can’t save him…” her voice faltered.
“What do you mean Mercury?” Venus stepped forward to steady her friend, “why can’t we save him? What’s stopping us?”
“It’s an invisible chip that they have implanted into him, we have to physically cut his skull open to get the out of him, but doctors can do it because they can’t see it, and I can’t… I can’t make him my guinea pig for my first operation.”
“What about your mum?” Venus asked.
“She can’t help us, we have to do it ourselves, somehow, she isn’t supposed to help us. If we can’t get it out of him, it means that it wasn’t to be.” Tears wet the invisible ground that they stood on, frantically, Mercury typed in her computer once again, “I have to do it, I have to, I can’t lose him, he’s my friend, I’ve already lost one of my best, I can’t lose another one, not now, not ever, I can’t…” She babbled on, exerting herself as she tried to find a solution.
Mars could feel Mercury’s worry, and fatigue as she was being worn down by her own wounds and the continuous application. Along with the waning strength, came the deepening groove between her brows, her lips paler by the second, the visor began to flicker and disappear, but Mercury pushed on, touching her ear, willing the visor to once again appear. “That’s enough, you have to rest.” She said sharply.
This seemed to have caught her attention, for Mercury looked up at them, the visor disappearing from view, although her anxiety remained, in the brief moment, her body seemed to be quickly recharging itself. “I’m quite alright, really, I have to do this before the Kuriverse virus strikes me down again. You should stay away from me, I don’t want to pass it on to you.”
“We’re fine, we’re worried about you.” Jupiter said, taking yet another step forward.
Mercury smiled at them unconvincingly, forcing her eyes to keep their focus, unsuccessfully, as her pupils dilated and stared into space. “I’m… I’m fine.” She lost her footing momentarily and fell into the arms of Jupiter, she felt the spark of pure energy that radiated from her touch and immediately sprang back onto her feet. “I’ve got it! Jupiter, you do it!”
“WHAT??”
Setsuna sat opposite Someieichi-kou sitting tea at the office desk, “are you planning to help her ma’am?”
“My dear Pluto, I cannot be biased, that is the first rule, she may be my daughter, but if I helped her…” she answered as she looked into her companion’s globe of time.
“But surely you don not plan to allow her to operate, she may never recover from the shock should the poor boy dies.”
“I believe that she has something else in mind.”
“Jupiter.” Setsuna merely stated. She was awarded with an absent nod of the head from Someieichi-kou, Setsuna smiled and dipped her head in assent. Setsuna lifted her cup in the air as though she was toasting, Someieichi-kou smiled and did the same in return.