Disclaimer; Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi. Not me.
Warnings: GirlxGirl. Extreme A.U, set in a Past SM Story-verse. There is no 'Serena gets in love with Endymion and they die'. Also, I know is not 'Bunny' but I like it better.
Let the flames begin;
Bunny glanced across the ballroom and caught sight of the keepers. The warriors. Soldiers. Everyone else seemed too focused on the music and the dance, glancing sideways to make sure no one else got more attention, lingering towards the prospect of an incredible night at the moon palace. She, at sixteen, was now tired of the fanfare, the lights and the faux amiability, and no longer sought for it. Any prince charming could try to grab her hand onto their special fairytale from there to sunrise, but she'll deny it. Don't forget to put the smile on, and bat your lashes.
The daughter of some baron or duchess will take the chance instead. She didn't care.
Alienated besides the enormous opened gates, each pretty soldier kept their pose at discretion, expressionless faces en void stares. Mostly were familiar. The contemplative look on Venus unfolded the image of a very stiffly yet undoubtedly beauty statue in Bunny's mind. The leader stood between Mars and Mercury. Jupiter, besides Mercury, leaned so slightly against the wall behind her it was impossible to tell if you weren't looking for it. Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (not to mention Pluto) where nowhere in sight, but it was to be expected. Due to their duties or a total lack of interest, they never attended the parties.
It was a real shame they weren't allowed to join in.
Nobody appeared to be as fixated on them like she, except maybe for those who'll shoot a wary glance towards them. That made no sense at all. Bunny took in each one, and she even dared to hold Mars' gaze until the sailor parted her fired-eyes away. The strength they irradiated whispered goddess, warrior, power. Why would someone want to put the chains on them?
A light glance above her shoulder, Bunny nodded to a cheerful man that passed her by, then returned to wander her scrutiny into the inner soldiers. Distanced not only by space but by an invisible wall of obvious distrust, there were the outsider soldiers as well. She caught shiny black, high heels, and leather. And before she could draw any face out in the gap between her and them, a wavy woman wearing a complicate hairstyle that went far above her head stepped in front of her line of vision.
"Lady Bunny" why did her jaw barely separated? The high pitched voice was the worse, it almost hurt. Politely, Bunny grinned. "Is a pleasure to meet you," she pointed the sentence vowing, and it was quiet a view because she had to grab her hair to do it. She gestured and the fine jewelry in her fingers shone in the light. "My son, here," the woman looked at Bunny's back, and she glanced at that direction. The young man smiled at her in a manner that should've meant to be attractive. "Erik. He would love to share a dance with you."
Bunny didn't gave Erik another glance, and denied, abstaining herself from showing the displeasure. "Thank you, ma'am, but I must decline."
Disappointed, the woman nodded once and walked away, followed closely by her son.
She doubted those proposals would end here, if anything, they just had begun.
Sighing, Bunny tossed a strand of hair above her shoulder in a delicate move, as she was taught. The thought of the soldiers came again, and it pulled the strangers forward in her mind. She found them in the exact same place she'd seen them a moments ago. The outsiders were from a distant planet, Kinmoku, which Bunny knew only by pictures of open fields colored by unnamed flowers and rivers that sparkled under a reddish sky muddy with stars. The alliance between them and the Moon Kingdom was the current reason of this particular dance, and it was attended by the Queen and King, their daughter and, of course, their sailors.
Oddly, there were only three of them. These peculiar warriors seemed misplaced put against the glassed wall. The dark material of their outfits contrasted heavily with the brightly ornamented hall, the shameless glowing smiles, gowns and jewelry. Bunny studied them reckless until she was caught by the sailor who stood between and a step onwards the other two. The leader, then. And when it happened Bunny smiled and mouthed a 'hello' under her breath. The soldier knit the browns in a furrow, but her hands remained clasped at her back.
Clearly, Bunny's actions were a matter of quizzical conflict. Bunny wanted to approach her and make all sort of questions. Ask about the planet she belonged to, ask about the role she developed in the defense as a sailor, ask who she is, and what her name is.
She shivered, cut off those thoughts by a silvery light touch on the shoulder, just enough to drag her attention into it. Bunny glanced up upon turning around to face the Queen. Respectfully, she tilted the head to one side, down and slowly, and then up. The Moon Queen, in all her almighty presence, twitched her lips in a delightful gesture, and spoke in a soft tone.
"My daughter, why aren't you dancing tonight? Is there something amiss, or are you ill?"
Bunny winced uneasy under the weight of the glance she received from her mother and throw a look around. Although it was a conversation meant only for the two of them, too many people had stopped and were indiscreetly watching their exchange, and was that what made her wonder how much real concern dictated the Queen's words. She licked her lips on purpose, and managed to smile surprisingly easy.
"It is nothing, mother. I only wanted to greet our special guests first" she said, properly tucking the labels in the skirt of the pinked dress she wore. She wasn't a liar, and didn't like to be one, but that was, at least, a half true. By the time the dance started she'd been watching the guests, but hadn't actually approached anyone, curiously taking in the way they spoke and in their manners. The Queen seemed adequately agreeable at Bunny's response, saying nothing of her behavior, because she nodded faintly and wished her to have fun. She walked away followed by a crown of people, mostly royalty, and Bunny stood there, thinking of how her mother was never left alone, and how sad it was.
The dance had been rejoined by those whom had paused to peek in their conversation, and the music flooded loudly reaching the ceiling above. Bunny straightened.
How was she supposed to 'have fun' when that was, nearly, the last thing she wanted to do?
She inhaled, holding the air within the confines of the corset. Yet again she was thinking about how unfair it was for the sailor to have the dances forbidden, and as an idea snapped in her mind, Bunny turned and brought a genuine smile to her face.
Okay, fine. The Queen wanted Lady Bunny to enjoy the feast. So, she would.
The gates were far but not unreachable. She headed towards them in a straight-as-an-arrow line. People lifted away to let her pass, and some of them kept a questioning grimace. As Bunny walked across the hall, the outsider warrior caught sight of her. She merely looked back, stoned-face. Bunny's eyes ne'er left the soldier's, and she put an extra effort in making her smile as suggestive as possible. It made the soldier shift, maybe finally uncomfortable or only upset by all the undesired attention she was getting, but didn't drop the gaze away. A common murmur began to rise like a bad signal in the radio.
Bunny, princess of the Moon, heir of its monarchy, stopped before the taller girl, a sailor, a warrior, a soldier. Closer now she had the opportunity to examine her properly. The lean body and the exposed skin. The muscles that seemed hard enough to be effortlessly strong but not in an exaggerated way. But, in fact, neither of these aspects had mesmerized her as much as the warrior's eyes. Tinted as if someone had let a denim shade of blue-drop dissolve into a glass of water, her eyes were as the oceans' tidal affected by the moon.
Bunny received a half-lidded stare, lashes flickering down to her. She held out a hand, aware of the close scrutiny of the other two sailors and of the rest of the people gathered there that night. The Queen's was the heaviest. "Would you dance with me?"
A common gasp of surprise asphyxiated the collective's breath around the hall after she spoke, but Bunny looked nowhere else. The girl crossed her entire body with an analytical stare, and ended up in her extended palm. She was puzzled, and it made Bunny laugh. "Please, I won't bite…"
Rationally, she expected an apology, a deny, a kind declination or an explanation, even, of why it was not appropriate. Logically, she'd already tasted the negative, the silent disapproval, a hard stare by all response. In a manner, she expected someone turning her aside, and when it happened in the opposite way Bunny found no boundaries against it, no excuses, to let it be. The gloved fingers stroked her bare hand, and she was pulled into the heat that the warrior emanated.
Bunny released a disengaged breath, suddenly feeling put off. Venus had somehow appeared near them, one hand resting casually at her side. Bunny shook her head minutely in an attempt to make her back off. The last thing she needed was the drama ensues. Another glance directed towards the orchestra put them into the opening notes of a Terran symphony she wasn't particularly fond of, but she shrugged mentally, distressed by their choice. Good as any other waltz. The sly smile she dedicated to the warrior seemed to ease her furrow, and Bunny dragged her to the center of the dance floor. As they walked, her gaze pinned anyone who dared to look back into their places, and by the time they stopped once again and faced each other under the overcast candelabrum, most of the people gathered inside the hall began to move, as if they had just remembered their ability to do it, or as if had been awakened from a long dream.
She'd done this countless times in the past, under the focus of a dozen of guests or with no one caring at all. Mostly with people she'd lost memory of right after the end of the song and the steps and the filtering smiles. This didn't have to be that hard.
In contrast, Bunny had the impression this one, particularly, was going to be a dance she couldn't forget for quite a while.
They summoned themselves in a simple choreography, common enough to all the universe, hands laced like the ivy pattern in a stone-wall. Absently, Bunny touched the soldier shoulder and traced the leathered edges in the top of her outfit.
Troubled glares from Mars and Venus scooted her, the pressed lips of Mercury told everything she needed to know. "So," she murmured. Jupiter gentle furrow made Bunny want to smile, say 'try it out, come one', but, as she and the sailor (didn't they call themselves 'Stars'?) rotated in their own gravitational axis, the instant was confused, lost, in another swing. Instead she went on, "Do you happen to have a name?"
Unerring, totally inflexible, "Fighter," the guardian said. It had an alien connotation in the syllables and at the consonants, too, which made that simple word sound as foreign as, in a strictly sense, melodic.
Bunny nodded. "Uh-ummm", answered, perky. "But I mean your real name." Maybe they had a hole in the translation from Kinmokian to the Standard language everyone under the Moon Kingdom monarchy used.
The warrior frowned, and they almost stopped. "I'm Fighter."
Bunny had the urgency to frown as well, but she preferred to clarify her point. Again. "Not your sailor one," she spoke very slowly. "Your civil one." It made sense some questions remained difficult to understand. After all, they had had lives apart with traditions not alike. "The normal one."
Fighter shrugged. "Is who I am."
Bunny laid eyes into Fighter's face and contemplated her. "Sure, Faitaa*."
*commonly way to pronounce Fighter in japanese.