A.N.: Yes, yes, another story. Shut up. I'll get to the others soon enough.
Summary: Malachite has been reborn and is living a normal life, having completely forgotten the whole deal with Beryl or his previous life. Everything is going pretty well until he runs into this crazy blonde chick...who might just be stalking him. She won't tell him anything about herself and seems to hate him, though that doesn't stop him from falling completely head over heels for her. Soon enough, he's the one doing the stalking, and she's just waiting for an excuse to kill him.
"Waiting for an Excuse"
By Venus Smurf
It was one of those cloudless days that should have been warm but wasn't, the kind that heralds the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. The sunlight filtering through the trees seemed a little too pale, somehow almost fake, but now and then a lone bird still sang of summertime dreams. Mina paused every time she heard one of those solitary trills, cornflower blue eyes automatically searching the trees until she'd found the source. She watched each one for a moment, smiling softly as she followed their paths to nest or branch or into sky. She was a summer's child herself, and it was nice to know she still had a little time before the cold chased even the birds away.
Still, she couldn't help shivering slightly as a gentle but still far from warm breeze sifted through her hair. Summer's child or not, she was still practical when she had to be, and she'd dressed for the cold. She'd donned one of her lighter jackets, a smart leather creation that was really more for show than anything else. It still managed to take the edge off the chill, though, and that was needed today. Her slender legs were safely encased in a pair of absurdly expensive—but very much worth it!—jeans, and she'd completed the outfit by jamming a matching beanie over her blonde head. She'd shoved her gloved hands into her jacket pockets, wanting a little extra warmth on this deceptively sunny day, but she was smiling, too.
Another bird called out, and she paused once more, turning her eyes a little to her right. The bird was perched on a low billboard across the street, singing as cheerfully as though winter wasn't just around the corner. Mina's smile widened just a little as she listened, but then she glanced almost automatically to the billboard itself, and the smile was gone.
A dead man was looking back at her.
Mina's heart stopped.
The urge to flee was almost overpowering. Had she possessed even a little less self-control, it would have been. As it was, every muscle in Mina's body had stiffened with the effort of staying in place, and her fingers had clenched into bloodless fists at her sides. Her expression was tense to the point of pain, though all color had drained from her face the instant she'd realized just who this man was.
He's supposed to be dead. He is dead…so why isn't he dead?!
Oh, gods.
He was handsome, for a dead man, though of course she wasn't thinking about that. If she was thinking at all, in this moment and through the shock, she was only thinking how impossible this was…and how, given the way her life usually went, she probably should have expected it anyway. They'd only killed him twice, after all, and in her world, that obviously just wasn't enough.
Mina closed her eyes briefly, hoping he'd be gone when she looked again, knowing she was being illogical but unable to help herself. He was still there, of course, and as she continued to stare up at him, it seemed only right that she begin to curse…
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He hadn't really noticed her, at first. She was just another face in the crowd, and he'd had more important things on his mind at the time…like working out the topic of his next book, or thinking up ways to hurt his publicist for this latest stunt.
"I'm a writer, not an underwear model, you moron! My face does not need to be on a billboard!"
"…underwear model? You do realize that you're fully clothed on that poster, right? And only shown from the waist up?"
Malachite had lost that argument, of course, just as he lost most of his arguments with Zoicite. The man had an uncanny ability to talk others into doing what he wanted them to do, and his best-friend-since-childhood was certainly not an exception. To the contrary—manipulating Malachite had become Zoi's favorite hobby. He had it down to an art form, really.
He also had those photos from their college days, and the man wasn't above threatening blackmail if he thought Mal was going to be stubborn…
Malachite sighed, glanced again at the thrice-cursed billboard. He'd been standing across the street for nearly twenty minutes, staring up at it with absolute loathing, wondering how he could get rid of it without Zoicite noticing and giving him an earful.
It didn't help that he wasn't the only one staring.
There'd been women—lots of them. Housewives with infants or shopping bags, business women in professional suits with far-from-professional stars in their eyes. Women with short hair and women with long hair, young women, old women, in-between women. All of them stopping for a few seconds or a few minutes to stare with longing at the handsome man on the billboard.
He didn't even want to think about the schoolgirls. They traveled in packs and obviously had nothing better to do than make eyes at him and whisper excitedly to each other from behind their hands or their binders. He'd sent several prayers of gratitude towards the heavens, thanking whatever might be out there for the fact that none of them had noticed the real Malachite standing just a few feet behind them.
That would have been…bad.
Armageddon bad.
There'd even been two men, neither of whom had so much as glanced at the women surrounding them. They'd been drooling more than the teenagers.
He'd rather take on the schoolgirls.
And then she came.
He hadn't noticed when she'd arrived; that last pack of schoolgirls had almost caught him, and he'd ducked behind a tree to hide. He'd stayed there for a moment, a grown man openly terrified of teenage girls, waiting until he couldn't hear the giggles anymore. When he was certain they'd gone, he finally pulled away from the tree and turned to walk home. Enough of this. I could be hunting Zoi down right now...and I really, really want to hunt Zoi down.
She was standing directly beneath the billboard, frozen in place, head tilted up. He watched her for a second or two, wondering why her face was so pale, wondering if he'd mistaken what he'd seen in her eyes. He wasn't the most perceptive man, at least not when it came to the emotions of others, but he couldn't understand why her eyes had seemed wide with something more akin to shock than the blind adoration he'd seen in the rest of the women. What was so shocking about a billboard?
Her reaction had been…unusual, but he might still have dismissed her, had she not chosen that moment to begin swearing.
That caught his attention. He'd made plenty of women angry in his time, but rarely a complete stranger, and never like this. Was there something wrong with this woman, that she could say those things about a man he didn't think she'd met?
Then again, maybe she wasn't such a stranger, after all. It slowly occurred to him that her face seemed…familiar, somehow. Well known, almost. The girl was stunningly beautiful, so much so that she ought to have taken his breath away, but he found that he was reacting to her as though he'd seen her face a thousand times before. Did he know her? He'd met so many women, over the years since he'd started writing professionally, and perhaps she'd been one of them. She must have been, because he didn't think his reaction was normal if they'd never met.
She was still swearing. He cocked his head to one side, the faintest of smiles tugging at his lips as he listened. Not a lady, this one. She swears like a sailor. And, like any well-traveled sailor, she wasn't sticking to one language, either. Her words were a mixture of Japanese, English, and at least one other tongue that he couldn't quite place. He didn't understand even half of what she was saying, though from her tone of voice and the way she was clenching her fingers, it didn't take a genius to realize that it probably wasn't flattering.
And yet, in spite of that, he was still smiling—and this from a man who rarely did. Giggling school girl she was not, and rather than being offended, he found himself wondering only what he'd done to get such a strong reaction from her. He stepped forward, crossed the street almost without conscious thought, came to her side.
She didn't seem to notice him, at first, though at least now he could be certain that it was the billboard she was glaring at, and not something else. Her eyes were locked on his "face," her brows drawn together. Her face was still pale with shock, but the shock was wearing thin under what he thought was anger.
"Excuse me—"
Her head jerked around so quickly that he wondered if she'd given herself whiplash, and the swearing abruptly stopped as her eyes met his. Hers seemed to grow until they were half the size of her face, and though he hadn't thought it possible, she'd become paler still. Her mouth had fallen slightly open, and while it ought to have been unattractive, he recognized that nothing could make this girl-woman less than beautiful.
He gave another half-smile. "I didn't mean to startle you," he began, voice soft and amused, "but from the way you're reacting to that billboard, I'd have to say you know me."
She didn't smile back. She only stared at him, her entire body stiff. He would have sworn that she wasn't breathing, and his amusement faded as he watched two spots of color come out on her cheeks. "Are you all right?"
Silence followed his words. He opened his mouth to repeat the question, but something in her face made it stick in his throat. His eyes remained locked on hers, the question he hadn't asked heavy in his gaze. Then…
"Oh, by the gods," she hissed out, "why can't you people ever stay dead?"
What?
He didn't respond—how could he respond?—but she made her escape while he was still gaping at her. She spun, turning and practically running in the other direction before he could so much as blink. She was out of sight almost immediately, leaving a very startled and confused man in her wake.
A long moment passed before Malachite could close his mouth, and by the time he'd gotten control of himself and could think like a rational human being again, the fangirls had returned. A group of female adolescents were headed his way, and from the increase in whispers and high-pitched giggles, they'd already seen him.
He simply ran.
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Raye wasn't happy.
They could all see it—it was there, in the fury in her mulberry gaze, the tension in her posture. They'd been friends with her for too long not to know exactly how the dark-haired priestess was feeling at any given moment, and they could certainly tell when she was angry.
Then again, it was even less hard than usual to see the anger today, at least given the fact that Raye had just snapped yet another pencil in half.
The wood splintered in her hands, one of the pieces biting into the skin of her palm and drawing blood. She glared down at it, then unceremoniously tossed the pieces to the side. The blonde sitting next to her gave a protesting squeal as they struck her arm, though Raye didn't seem to notice. "Where is she?" the priestess bit out, fierce eyes impatiently scanning the room for something to wipe away the blood. "Doesn't it occur to her that some of us have lives and don't want to spend all day waiting around for her?" She snorted. "Some study session this is turning out to be."
The blonde—no longer sitting next to her—rolled her eyes and handed her a tissue. "Lay off, Raye," she snapped back. "She's not that late, and it's not that big a deal anyway." Her expression turned crafty, her voice suddenly becoming sly as only a sister's or a best friend's can be. "Why are you being so impatient, anyhow? It's not as though you have some hot date to rush out for, right?"
A tic was developing over one of Raye's eyes, but she only crossed her arms over her chest. "Serena…"
Her tone was far from friendly, though Serena didn't seem to care. She simply smiled--albeit a little mischievously--and turned back to the book she was supposed to be studying from, as immune as ever to Raye's perpetual grouchiness.
Amy started hiding the remaining pencils.
Silence reigned for a little while, broken only by Raye's grunts of irritation as her search for a new pencil proved fruitless. She glared at Amy for a moment or two, but since their resident genius was studiously ignoring her, she sighed and gave up. She was probably too mad to concentrate anyway. Some leader Mina is! She can't even show up for a study session on time. Probably stopped to ogle some stupid guy she met on the street.
Moments passed, and the tic over her eye grew. The other girls were carefully edging away from her now, trying not to be too obvious as they moved their possessions out of Raye's reach. The priestess wasn't above throwing things if she became furious enough, and they didn't want those things to be theirs.
"Where is she?"
Raye's furious question might have gone unanswered—none of the senshi were stupid, after all—had the door to Raye's bedroom not flown open almost the instant the question left Raye's lips. The prodigal leader herself fell through, stumbled on the threshold and collapsed next to Raye in a tangle of blonde hair and graceful limbs. She was panting heavily, though her face was pale beneath the flush of exercise. She didn't try to stand.
Raye pounced. "Where have you been?" she demanded, reaching down to shake her friend. She gripped the girl's shoulders with near bruising force, stopping only as she noticed the expression on Mina's face.
Bewilderment. Anger. Fear. Nothing that should have been there, nothing they usually associated with the ever-cheerful and ever-unflappable Mina.
Raye's fury instantly melted away. "What's wrong?"
Mina didn't answer immediately, choosing instead to keep her lips sealed and her head bowed. She was still breathing heavily, and that, too, was a cause for alarm. Mina simply didn't get tired, no matter how much she exerted herself. Why was she breathing so hard?
Serena had stepped forward, by then, coming to kneel beside her cousin-from-another-life. "Mina," she began softly, voice compassionate and completely free of the light-hearted immaturity of before, "what happened?"
The concern in Serena's voice seemed to bring Mina back to herself. Her breathing slowed, and after another moment or so, she finally lifted her head. She looked up into Serena's blue eyes, her own completely shuttered as she uttered the last words any of them would have expected.
"He's back," Mina answered, voice whisper thin and twice as faint. "Malachite is back."
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January 19, 2007
Venus Smurf's Quote for the Day!
Found this one on It's hilarious…though maybe only because I'm a Californian.
"Directions to Los AngelesGetting there by road: Don't. It's about as fatal as drinking arsenic.
Getting there by plane: The air below you, should you have been unfortunate enough to have looked down, is brown, hazy, only mildly translucent, and moving. Although, due to it's seriously fun geology, California moves alot, it-let's face it- doesn't actually move that much. (My saying that has just lost us our claim to tourism.) Don't look at the mountains, up against which the wind shoves all of Los Angeles's smog. It is actually layered. (Not the rock, the air.) It highly resembles coffee. Curdled coffee. Two year-old curdled coffee. Let me put it this way: You will finally understand, from personal experience, what those little bags are for. (And you will need to use about three of them.) Upon landing, you will probobly find your way into (L.A.'s largest airport (and one of the largest in the free world (if, under Bush, you can call America free))) LAX. There's a reason it's called this, just... don't ask. Not only that, but LAX is right next to Inglewood.
The best way to get to L.A. is just not to get there at all. You'll be better off that way. Trust me."
Hey, if y'all have any good quotes (funny, inspiring, whatever), send 'em to me and I'll include 'em in future chapters. This amuses me, and I think I'll keep doing it.