The senshi of the wind sat hunched up in a corner, bending over her pulled-up knees, attempting to breathe soundlessly from the thick, damp, scorching hot, pitch dark air. She felt an endless row of chilled sweat drip from her chin onto her bare knees, creeping down her thighs and being soaked up by the skirt. She held her gloved palms, through the soaked material, flat against her legs; her fingers kept clutching and releasing her flesh, impatience building up in them as she waited for her vision to get somewhat used to the lightless environment, if ever.
She didn't move for now. Not because she was frightened, because she wasn't, she always handled the adrenaline rise of battles with ease. But she did fear, which was a different thing in her mental dictionary. Fear was a thing of the body, precisely what she was experiencing now: the uncontrollable but ignorable vibration of your torso, and the cold sweat. Fright, on the other hand, was a thing of the mind, a sudden escape manoeuvre of the brain as it chose to cower instead of producing helpful thoughts. And hers was functioning fine. It did well at ignoring the uneven, sticky and mostly closed walls around her, the ground and the ceiling compressing her body into this unnervingly hunched position, the arched ending of this narrow tunnel soft to her back, the only exit being the invisible but remembered way stretching and curving endlessly in front of her, leading somewhere, places she had yet to explore.
A foreign shiver ran through her limbs swiftly at the thought, twitching her body; as if it hadn't been hers, as if someone else had been reacting instead of her. At the movement, the general scraping noise increased around her, and her mind attempted to run for a moment. To prevent it from slipping away from her, she decided to recall why she was here. It took a few hasty breaths to find a thread to start looking.
There was an enemy, the latest manifestation of Chaos. It appeared this summer, in the form of giant, shadowy arachnids, with a preference for tunnelling, attacking alone or in groups and dragging humans underground, where they would dip their fangs into them undisturbed and absorb their energy to the last bit. They were unable to be detected by human technology, and the Senshi's supercomputer couldn't keep up with their numbers.
From farther away, a specimen of this monster looked like a rolling marble. Its abdomen was human-sized, dark grey, with minute scales and a dull, leathery shine. It mostly kept its legs close to its body, only during fighting did it stretch at certain moments, and it spanned several metres, always longer than you expected. Those legs were thin, swift, untouchable, lightless, black. Just like the head, in the size of your two knuckles put together, its two fangs like your little finger, hiding in the flesh unless used. And the two additional pedipalps, thick, articulated, metallic tusks, they had a strong liking to dipping them into the soft waist area of the human body, to secure the prey.
They were soundless. Not only voiceless; their feet, the seemingly crusty double claws at the end of their legs ran on the pavement as if they wouldn't have touched it at all. The only sound Uranus had heard them make was a crunch as her Space Sword pierced through their skin, and a squelch as it spilled their inner fluids. Sometimes the air sang around their legs as they swung them around in a fight.
They rarely spun their silk over the ground; it quickly evaporated in sunlight. They surfaced to fight with their own bodies, and they lined the underground tunnels with the sticky threads, apparently. The silk's colour was hard to tell, it reflected light like mercury in the glass tube of a thermometer: sometimes visible, sometimes not. Most of the time, you could only feel it. Sticky, hard, one thread tore like cotton but a sufficient amount could keep you in place.
Like now.
She bit her lips to avoid whimpering in irritation. It was time to move on. She strained her trembling arm to reach her shoulder, ripping the cobweb piece by piece from her skin and the fabric of her clothes. The web was normally sticky, and it hardened shortly after something touched it. It seeped with dark energy, her senses could tell it, her light-natured soul abhorred from it. And it kept sticking back, the endless layers of cobweb never ceased to hold her down.
She would stay here forever.
Thirst to death.
Drive herself to death by madness.
Or found and consumed.
Or scream herself to death.
She felt herself gasp as she sat up, just as shocked from being able to move as the first time. Her hand still clambered for the light switch in a hurry.
"I'm here," she heard Michiru's dream-soaked voice mutter, and its placidity started the process of calming inside her. "You're alright, you're here with me."
Haruka touched her seeking hand in the harsh light of the room, their lower arms intertwined and stayed like that, sharing body warmth motionlessly for a while.
"Do you want a shower?" asked the violinist.
"Not worth it, it always comes in two parts," Haruka sighed, attempting an ironic tone.
"Then come here so I can watch over you."
The windsenshi smiled and shuffled closer before laying down, cuddling to the other half of her soul.
"Thank you for putting up with this farce," she breathed.
Michiru shifted her head to look into her eyes.
"It's not a farce, Haruka. You need to get it out of your system."
"Maybe I never will."
"You will. The dreams show that your mind is working on it. Give it time."
"I know. I'm just getting tired. How many times do I have to go back to that pathetic wiggling?"
"You saved the world. Without you, Sailor Moon would never have reached the Spider Queen. Remind yourself of the final victory, the Silver Crystal's benevolent light. Wasn't it worth it?"
A faint smile lingered on Haruka's face as she turned for a moment to switch off the light, and then she closed her eyes.
"It was. Maybe," her lips formed carelessly before they slumbered off.