The Million Dollar Grant
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The Sailor Scouts are in the business of saving lives. They've always been repaid with nothing more than gratitude, until one of the lives they save feels they deserve more. So how do the scouts react to suddenly having their missions backed by more than willpower and love?
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So, I wouldn't precisely call myself a Sailor Moon 'fan', but I'm amused enough by what I've seen of the show and fandom, and I wanted to try my hand at a story. So with that in mind, here we go with a little idea I had recently. Forgive any mistakes with regards to canon that I make, again, not the most familiar with Sailor Moon.
I'm familiar (mostly) with the US Dub so I'll be rolling with that general backdrop, which means American terms and terminology. I'm going to add a couple of fun little powers and abilities to the sailor scouts, just for the sake of variety. Maybe a slightly more realistic take on Sailor Moon, depending on one's point of view.
Beyond that, I don't own any of this.
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Chapter One: The Benefactor
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Uptown, March 29th, 11:13 PM
Serena peeked over the edge of the building, laying prone on the concrete roof that covered the salon. An icy cold wind slid over her backside, and a similar chilly feeling struck her stomach as she spied an unexpected variable down below in the parking lot.
Frantically, she pulled the flat, rectangular communicator from her belt and put it up to her mouth.
"Hey, Ami?" she whispered into the device. The response was nothing but loud static. "Ugh...stupid thing!" she hissed, lifting the device up towards the sky. "Hey, hello? Can you hear me?"
Nothing but a grating buzz. Serena grunted, giving the device a shake. "Of course, always, whenever I actually need it. Hello? Can you hear me?"
She thought she heard a faint voice through the static, but couldn't hope to make it out.
"Stupid piece of garbage," she muttered, standing up and sticking the device up in the air. "Amy!"
The static died down a bit, but still no reply.
"Amy!"
"You're not supposed to use my real name when we're on a mission."
Serena grunted. "Fine, Am-Mars, we have a problem. The parking lot isn't empty."
"I checked an hour ago!" Amy squeaked. "What do you see?!"
"Just one car...black sedan..." Serena looked over at the solitary vehicle on the other side of the lot from her. "But the headlights are on, and I'm pretty sure the engine is running. So there's someone in there."
"Oh, lovely," Amy moaned. "Where in the parking lot?"
"Far side," Serena replied. "Up near the strip mall. We might be able to keep the action away from it."
Over the past two weeks, the scouts had made a habit of forcing all their night fights into a parking lot uptown, which provided parking for the customers of a dozen small shops. It was routinely completely vacated after 10 PM, which few people in the area, making it ideal to avoid eyewitnesses and collateral damage. After some trial-and-error, the scouts had worked out a nice system, with four scouts working to box the enemy in and force him towards the lot, while one staked the area out and waited to spring a trap when they arrived.
"But whoever's in the car will get a nice view of the entire fight," Serena added. "So if there's a hiccup, you know what to do."
"Nothing we're not used to," Amy said. "We'll just have to get out of there as soon as the fight's over."
"Speaking of which, how far out are you guys?" Serena looked around, seeing no obvious disturbances around her.
"Uhhh...actually, I sort of got separated from the other three," Amy said quietly.
"What do you mean, you got separated? Find them!" Serena demanded.
"What do you think I've been trying to do?" Amy said. "I got hit by a a wayward attack and didn't see what direction everyone went! I'm sure they've got it under control."
"You're lead strategist," Serena reminded her. "You're supposed to coordinate the fight. Who knows what could happen without you!"
"I know what I am, okay?" Amy said. "They're too busy fighting to answer the communicator, so I can't track them. I'd say...some time in the next twenty minutes, you'll be seeing them?"
"Oh, thanks so much, Amy," Serena deadpanned. "Twenty minute window. May as well use smoke signals."
"Don't get mad at me," Amy protested. "Sometimes plans don't go perfectly, we'll be fine! Just keep your eyes open."
"Fine," Serena said. "Make your way over here and help me set up containment. I have to go, my arm's getting tired. And once we're done here, I'll have a few choice words about these communicators."
She dropped back down into a prone position, eyes on the sedan as the seconds ticked by. She thought about Amy's words of advice in recent weeks about thinking tactically and how the proper usage of timing and resources could multiply the effectiveness of a plan many times over. She was hardly a seasoned pro at such things, but was working on it.
"Okay...if they come from the south, I can jump it as soon as they clear the Subway," she muttered to herself. "Maybe I could jam part of it into the sewer drain, isolate him in one position, away from the car...if it sees the car, it might attack it to try to distract us..."
She looked around, trying to come up with another part of the plan. Nothing sprung to mind.
"Cut off the field of vision...lesse here...cut off the field of vision..."
She saw a sandwich board for the nail salon on the sidewalk. Glancing back and forth a few times, she quickly descended down the side of the building.
"Wait until Raye sees this!" she said to herself as she picked up the sandwich board and moved it twenty feet down the sidewalk. "And I came up with it all by myself!" She positioned it so that a generally-humanoid figure with a foot stuck in the sewer would be unable to see the sedan across the lot, tweaking the position a little bit until she was satisfied.
"And Raye said I could never get you to start thinking tactically."
Serena spun around, Amy running down the street towards her.
"So, lemme guess," Amy said, looking at the little setup. "You jump the negaverse stooge right here, try to jam him in the sewer grate, and the sign blocks his sight of the car?"
"Oh, Amy. You read me like a poem," Serena said. "And did Raye really say that?"
"Like a million times," Amy said. "Okay, you get back up on the roof, and I'll hide behind those trees. I'll distract the stooge, and you'll use the distraction to jump it. We'll just have to hope it gets close enough for the trap to work."
"Sounds like a plan to me," Serena said. With that, she quickly scaled the building again, using the sewer pipe to get back up to her hiding spot. Amy took her spot behind the trees.
They waited, for maybe five minutes, Serena hoping the car might pull out and leave the area before the fight started. But it stayed there, engine mysteriously left on, headlights on.
And then, a crash came from somewhere down the street. Serena peeked over the edge of her hiding spot. It was go time.
Lita hurled a humanoid brown figure down the street, using a couple bolts of lightning to send it flying several dozen feet more. Just a little short of the trap point. Mina emerged from a side alley, smashing the full weight of her body into the alien creature. It sprawled out on the sidewalk.
It was working...just a few more feet and Serena could jump it...
Lita advanced menacingly on the creature, causing it to back up and try to scramble to it's feet.
"HEY!" Amy screamed, jumping out of her hiding spot, fists clenched and glaring at the creature. It spun around, head turned away from Serena.
She pushed herself off the building, painfully aware that missing would hurt a lot. But it couldn't have been set up any better. It was right next to the sewer drain, completely ignorant to her presence.
She hit the monster right in the back, knocking it flat, right next to the drain. She grabbed the thing's leg and roughly jammed it into the gap between the sidewalk and street. She shoved it all the way up to the thigh, or at least what might have been the monster's equivalent to a thigh. She brought her right arm back, cocking it and preparing a fierce punch.
Unfortunately, the beast seemed to be capable of altering it's physical makeup, at least somewhat, and quickly squeezed out of the makeshift trap. Serena's punch connected, but the creature wormed out from underneath her and jumped into a standing position.
"Drat!" she muttered to herself. "Am-Mercury!"
On cue, Amy covered the area in a dense fog. Hardly ideal, but necessary. It cut off vision both in and out of the fighting area.
The monster was confused for a moment, and didn't even see Raye leap in to slug it right in the face (or, more accurately, face area), her fist alight with burning flames.
The strange, brown, slimy stooge fell at Serena's feet. She thought it might have been weak enough now, and reached up to grab her tiara. But it's slimy arm reached out and grabbed the sandwich board before Serena could complete the process. The thing smacked Serena upside the head with the wooden slab, knocking her onto the sidewalk.
It spun around violently, board out, nearly smacking Mina in the face as she ran in. He used the distraction to grab her by the collar and throw her violently into Lita. Raye was barely able to dodge another violent swing of the advertising board.
Serena got to her feet, and the monster turned towards Amy. Serena noticed it holding the sign like a frisbee, and immediately put two and two together. Her mind worked with speed that she only wished she could maintain during an exam. Amy would have no problem dodging the attack, there was plenty of time for that...but, although she wasn't the best at math, it looked like the cruel fates had positioned the two perfectly so that the attack would just so happen to be launched right at the black sedan.
The sandwich board suddenly started to glow a bright yellow in the creature's hands. Serena took off in a flash towards the car, her first idea would have to suffice.
She didn't bother trying to do the math on this one as she beat a trail towards the car. Amy had once told her that, in sailor form, she was capable of foot-speed of around 40 miles an hour. It would depend on the sandwich board's velocity.
She bent down slightly, reducing wind resistance, halfway to the car. She heard a little fwip from behind her, then a small shriek from Amy. The bogey was out.
As she approached the car, she quickly tried to process a plan. She could throw herself into the car, trying to knock it out of the path of the projectile, but there was no guarantee it would be enough to move it enough, or that she wouldn't just knock it into the path of it, or that her collison wouldn't hurt the person in the car as much as the board would. The windows were all closed, and the doors were shut. She could break the window, but would run the risk of hurting the person inside with the shards. She was about to accept that risk, when she saw a tiny wisp of smoke dancing up from the top of the car.
The sunroof! It was open! It was the best way, and in an instant she had leaped on top of the car, boots denting the roof. She reached her right hand down into the car, eyes quickly scanning the interior. Just one person, a man, at the driver's seat, who was just starting to react to the thud on his car's roof.
She grabbed him by the collar and whisked him out through the sunroof, lit cigar falling out of his hand and down by the pedals as she yanked him up. As soon as he was clear of the roof, she jumped off the car, looking down just in time to see the sandwich board slice neatly through the car and emerge out the other side. It may as well have been a laser, and would have decapitated the man just a second sooner. No one would notice the dents in the car roof, given the massive section of metal and glass that had been carved out of the doors.
She spread her body out and put the very confused man on top of her, so her body would cushion the impact with the asphalt. It would hurt a bit, but she'd live, something the non-powered human in her grasp might not be able to say.
Hands still on his collar, she jumped to her feet and leaped into a bush next to a Comic Book Store, a few feet from the ruined car.
"You okay?" she asked quickly, setting him down on the sidewalk, forcing him into a prone position.
"Uh...yeah-" he replied slowly. That was all she cared to hear.
"Stay down until this is over!" she instructed, launching herself back towards the fog barrier, feet almost leaving little imprints in the concrete with every step.
Fortunately, the situation had gotten much better since she left. The monster was on the ground, head pin between Lita's powerful thighs, a suffocating chokehold. To add injury to insult, she was pumping thousands of volts of electricity into the creature, until it started to smoke and stopped struggling.
No time for ceremony, Serena ripped off her tiara and flicked it at the monster as Lita swung herself up, vaporizing it.
"Phew!" Serena said, running over to pluck her tiara back up off the ground. "Okay, not a perfect takedown, but all things considered we did okay!"
"And the...the witness?" Amy asked, pointing her thumb in the general direction of where the sedan was.
"He's alive," Serena said. "Saw a little more than I would have liked, but we'll be okay."
"Witness?" Raye asked, watching the pile of dust that the monster had left slowly melt away into nothing.
"We had an unexpected night-owl across the lot," Amy said. "But if we leave now he'll probably think this whole thing was a dream."
With that, the sailors sped away, the fog dissapating, leaving no evidence of their presence or fight outside of a displaced sandwich board and an utterly destroyed E Class Mercedes Benz.
Or so they thought.
"
Serena's Bedroom, March 30th, 12:08 AM
"Oh dear, Serena," Luna said as the girl collapsed onto her bed. The feline immediately jumped up next to her and surveyed the rapidly reddening welt on her cheek. "That's not looking good."
"Oh really, Luna? Because it feels great!" Serena moaned, glaring at her advisor.
"What happened?" Luna asked, leaning in to glare at the injury.
"Smacked upside the face with a sandwich board," she groaned, putting her hand up to the welt. "Things didn't exactly work out like we wrote it up."
"Probably wouldn't have happened if you didn't insist on taking me out of the field," Luna said disapprovingly.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot, you have magic...sandwich board...proof...powers," Serena said. "You're too valuable to put in the field. You wouldn't have been able to do anything."
"I'll go get some ice," Luna offered, jumping off the bed.
"If you wake my parents up, I'm going to have a world of explaining to do," Serena warned. "How are you going to get ice anyway?"
"I'm more capable than you know," Luna countered patiently.
"If you want to help me, how about you fix these stupid communiators?" Serena said, reaching down towards her belt, plucking the pink rectangular device off, and setting it down on the bed next to her. "They don't work when I need them too, you can't use them in combat-"
"Well excuse me, Serena, the technology is a thousand years old!" Luna said, nose up in the air.
"Yeaah, I'm just gonna let you think about that line of reasoning for a few minutes," Serena said, standing up. "I can get my own ice."
"And if...no, sorry, when, you wake your parents up?" Luna asked.
"I'm a fake-sleepwalking pro," Serena said, walking over to the door. In a quick flash of dull colors, her sailor outfit was gone, and Serena was back in a casual green t-shirt and tan shorts.
She was about to leave the room when a dull thud from behind caught her attention. She spun around, arms up, but saw nothing.
"Uh...Serena..." Luna said slowly, eyes down at her feet. She looked down, eyes finding a small android cell phone right in front of her toes. The screen was black, a tiny green light blinking at the top. She bent down to pick it up. "That's not yours, is it?"
"Uhhh..." Serena said, thinking back to the events of that night. The sedan, the speeding sandwich board, a split-second decision to reach in and yank the driver out of harm's way...a cigar in one hand, he definitely dropped that into the car, she was sure of that...maybe a phone in his other hand? It had all happened so fast, she couldn't be sure. She tried to recall the events...yes. There was a phone. In his other hand. Maybe his grip hadn't let it go as quickly as he did the cigar. Maybe.
But had he let it go during the chaos that immediately followed? And had the device gotten stuck somewhere in her uniform? Maybe the boot? Maybe the belt? She surely would have noticed...although there was an awful lot going on...maybe it could have happened without her noticing.
"Oh...dear," she said, looking the black screen over with trepidation.
"
Cherry Hill Temple, March 30th, 4:02 PM
"You stole his phone?!" Raye asked, holding the android device up in her right hand.
"No, idiot!" Serena shrieked, hands curling into little fists at her sides. "It just sort of...fell into my-"
"Nice going, Winona Ryder!" Raye said, smacking Serena on the back of the head. "I know you're frustrated with the communicators, but this-"
"I. DIDN'T. STEAL. IT!" Serena shouted. "It fell in my boot when I was saving his life!"
"Enough with the blame game," Amy said, stepping between the two and holding her hands out. "We have to figure out how to get it back to this guy."
Mina rubbed her hands together. "Okay, okay...lemme see." She pulled it from Raye's hand. "Maybe we can figure out who it is by..." she clicked the button along the side, but her face immediately fell. "Password protected. Amy, crack it." She handed the device to her.
"Wh-no!" Amy said, refusing to take the device. "I'm not hacking into someone else's phone!"
"Hey Serena," Raye said, smirking. "Maybe you could go steal the password."
Serena scowled, hands shaking. "I-"
"Maybe we could go to the lot and get the license plate number from the car?" Lita suggested, trying to remove the fuse between Raye and Serena.
"They've probably moved it by now," Amy said quietly, hand up to her chin in thought. "You wouldn't happen to remember it, would you?"
Serena shook her head.
"Too bad you didn't steal that too!" Raye said. Serena lost it, pouncing on Raye and knocking her to the floor. One hand around Raye's neck, she made a fist with her right hand and cocked it back.
Just before she drove her fist into Raye's forehead, there was a light knock at the door to Raye's room. Everyone froze, Raye pushing Serena off her with a little thud.
"Shh!" Amy said, putting her index finger up to her mouth. "You expecting any visitors, Raye?" She whispered.
Raye shook her head in response.
The five glared at the dark imprint of a human figure standing at the door, vague shape visible through the paper walls. Lita tiptoed over to the door, looking for some way she might be able to peek out at the visitor without the visitor noticing. But there wasn't any option for that.
She examined his shadow against the wall. It looked like he was carrying something very large in his left hand, some sort of bag maybe. She took in a deep breath, grabbing the edge of the sliding door cautiously.
She looked over at the four girls, who all nodded. She pulled the door open a foot, reached out, grabbed the person by the wrist and yanked him into the room.
Serena gasped as he came into view. Last night had been a blur, and she didn't completely trust her judgement, but this guy sure looked an awful lot like the man she had saved the night before. She glanced at Mina, still holding the device in her right hand, then back to Lita, who had pressed the man face down into the floor, forcing him to drop what ended up being a massive silver suitcase on the floor, and wrenching his left arm behind his back and twisting it, planting her right bare foot against his shoulder for good measure. She shut the door with a loud thud.
"You have sixty seconds to explain yourself before I break your arm in eight different places!" Lita hissed as her unfortunate victim grunted in pain.
"LITA, NO!" Serena shouted, running over and grabbing her much larger friend. "It's okay, let him go!" Lita looked at her, not quite really to trust the intruder. "It's...it's his phone," Serena said quietly, pointing over at Mina.
"Oh, really?" Lita said. "This the first place you come to look for it, buddy?" She looked down at her prisoner. "Awful convienient, I'd say."
"Ugh," he grunted. "There's a tracking device in the phone."
"Come on Lita, let him up," Mina said, walking over towards the two, holding the phone out in her right hand. "He just wants his phone back!"
Lita reluctantly took her foot off his back and let him go, eschewing the courtesy of helping him to his feet.
"That's, uh...that's quite a finisher," he said uneasily to Lita. She gave no reply as Mina handed the phone to it's rightful owner. They finally got a good look at the visitor. He was very well dressed in what must have been a tailored suit, and was cute enough, though at least a decade older than the five girls, with short black hair. He dusted himself off and took the phone from Mina. "Thank you."
"Yeah, uh...really sorry about...last night," Serena said uneasily, scratching the back of her head. "Running into each other on the street like that, I had no idea that your phone-"
"Save it," he said, voice silky smooth. "I remember last night quite vividly." He bent down to pick up his suitcase. "Although I can't make much sense of it, I remember it."
Amy hung back, hand up to her mouth, staring at the visitor and looking as if she was deep in thought.
"What I can make sense of, miss, is that you, somehow, saved my life," he pointed at Serena. "The details, I don't know, and I'm not going to ask you to fill me in."
"U-uh, I don't know what you're talking about," Serena said, waving her hands in front of her.
"I'm not here to ask questions, don't worry," he said comfortingly. "It's better I don't know exactly what happened last night, I think. But I know enough. And I also know that I'd be dead right now if it wasn't for you." He stared at Serena with icy blue eyes. "And so, miss, that's why I am here."
"N-not to get your phone back?" Serena said uneasily, pointing at the breast pocket where he had deposited the device.
"I could buy a thousand phones if I wanted to," he said. "The phone is nothing." He chuckled. "I'm here for compensation purposes."
"Wait," Lita said, pointing at the visitor. "If you're here between you tweaked your neck when Serena was saving your sorry ass and you want to sue for damages, I swear to God I will put you in the ground-"
"Not at all," he said, smiling. "I just think the life of Daniel Tillerson is worth more than one android cell phone."
Amy gasped, jaw dropping open. Raye put her hand up to her chin.
"Wait...Tillerson, why do I know that name?" Raye mused. "Tillerson..."
"Ever been in a gas station?" he asked.
Raye gasped, realization smacking her right in the forehead. "Oh my god!"
Serena shrugged. "Calm down Raye, it's not a big deal. Gas stations are everywhere."
"Yeah, Serena-"
"Seriously, on every street corner," she added.
"Yeah, idiot, and his-" Raye pointed at Daniel "-father owns, like, all of them!"
"What?" Serena deadpanned, staring at the suddenly not-so-mysterious visitor.
Daniel took a small bow. "Son of Rex Tillerson, CEO and Chairman of ExxonMobil, at your service, ladies."
"No way!" Raye gasped.
"Yes way," Daniel replied, then cleared his throat. "In any case, Miss...Serena, was it? Yes, you disappeared before I could arrange anything, so it's good fortune that you happened to abscond with my phone."
Serena said nothing, voice catching in her throat.
"Now that we're here, I can settle the situation," he said, getting down on his knees and putting the suitcase down in front of him. He turned it to face her, reaching forward towards the clasped.
And then, Lita pounced on him, slamming his head into the floor and pitting it there with her right palm. She reached over with her left to grab his wrist, twisted it up into the air and raising it towards the ceiling.
"Not so fast, Danny-boy!" she said, squeezing him into the floor.
"LITA!" Serena cried, mouth agape. "GET OFF HIM!"
Amy finally moved from her spot in the back of the room, running over to Lita and grabbing her shoulders. "Lita, please, get up!" She tugged on her shoulders. "Please stop antagonizing the nice legacy child, who could have a dozen S.W.A.T. teams descend on us at any time and kill everyone we ever loved!"
Lita slowly twisted Daniel's arm back into a comfortable position, not getting up.
"Come on Lita, you don't want to mess with him! Do you have any idea how much revenue ExxonMobil had last year?" Amy said, trying to pull her up. Lita was not so ready to be trusting.
"No, actually, I don't," Lita replied.
"Like...four hundred and fifty three billion-" Daniel started, voice muffled by the carpet.
"Shut up!" Lita instructed. "All I know, is that is a big suitcase, of unknown origin and content! It could be a bomb, or poison gas, or...snakes, or...spiders, or-"
"Lita, come on," Raye said. "Why would he do that, get off him before you hurt him."
"If he wanted us dead, we'd already be dead," Serena agreed, grabbing Lita underneath the shoulders. "Now come on!"
Finally, she relented, releasing him and standing up. Amy quickly bent down next to him, hand on his shoulder.
"I am -so- sorry about our friend, she's...uh, fasting right now. Edgy," Amy lied.
"It's okay," he said, sitting back up. "I'm...actually pretty aroused right now." An awkward pause followed.
"Sooo, the suitcase?" Serena said quickly.
"Right," Daniel said, reaching over to grap the clasps again. The girls all crowded around, looking down as he unbuckled the flaps and pulled the top open.
As one, all five girls gasped as the contents of the case were revealed. It was more money than any of the five girls had ever seen, in person, at one time before. And that was just what they could see. The entire massive suitcase was packed to the brim with green bills, bearing the likeness of Andrew Jackson and with the number '20' in all four corners. The money was all tied together in little bundles. Forget the couple thousand dollars that the girls could see, the untold riches right underneath must have been more than any of their parents could reasonably expect to make in a year! A few years, even!
They stared in silence for several seconds. Daniel stood up, folding his arms over his chest. Slowly, Serena reached out, as if in a trance, and grabbed one of the bills. She lifted it up, the rest of the small bundle coming with it. She flipped through slowly, every bill a twenty. The little paper band that held the bunch together said, in cursive writing '$1,000', same as all the other bands.
"I thought twenties would be more appropriate," Daniel said. "Anything larger tends to be suspicious."
Raye reached forward, almost not daring to believe what she was seeing, and dug her fingers into the side of the suitcase. She pulled up several bundles, peering down. Sure enough, there were more bundles of cash underneath, going all the way down to the bottom of the case.
"This...this must be a...a..." Serena said quietly, holding the bundle up in front of her. "Must be a-"
"One million," Daniel finished for her. "Give or take a twenty. I told the secretaries to count fast, mistakes happen."
"Oh my...god," Lita muttered, sticking her fingers into a gap between the cash in the middle of the case, peering down into her self-made little gap to spy cash going all the way down to the bottom.
"Again, I'm not looking for answers, but I highly suspect you, and your friends, are engaged in some sort of...cosmic battle that I can't hope to comprehend," Daniel said. "Perhaps you can take this payment as a grant to further your efforts." He looked around the room. "No offense meant, but it doesn't seem to be a rather...low-budget operation."
No one said anything.
"Or you could just...buy jewelry, or cars, or start a college fund, do whatever. Up to you," he turned towards the bedroom door. "It's best we don't come into contact with each other again.
"W-wait," Amy said suddenly, springing up and walking over to Daniel. "Mister Tillerson, thank you so much for the incredibly generous offer, I really mean that." She walked between him and the door, holding her hands out in front of her. "But...we've been able to carry out our goals and intentions for many months now without money, and to be completely honest, it's was our-"
Fwap.
In record time, Raye had grabbed one of her bed pillows, run over to Amy, and slammed it across her face. She tackled her to the floor, holding the pillow over her face, muffling her speech. Amy struggled against Raye's weight, but it was hopeless.
Raye put her face up to the pillow, whispering harshly. "You shut your mouth, got it? You shut your mouth and you never, ever open it again!"
"I-ignore her, she's the...stupid one of the group," Serena said, coming up next to Daniel and patting him on the back. "Well, thanks so much, it was great meeting you, you have a wonderful day!"
"And I'm so sorry about the...shoulder thing," Lita said, coming up to the other side of Daniel. "I am just a terrible judge of character."
"Don't worry about it," he said, sliding the door open and letting himself out. "I'll see myself out."
He shut the door behind him, and Raye removed the pillow from over Amy's face. Amy coughed a few times, her face red.
"Do we understand each other, Amy?" Raye asked.
"Selfish human nature aside," Amy said, worming out from underneath Raye and getting up into a sitting position. "I'm right, and you four know it, even if you won't admit it. We don't need money."
"Need?" Serena repeated. "Who said anything about need?" She fell back to her knees next to the suitcase. "We-"
Thud!
Mina, who had been silent since the briefcase had been opened, finally gave her opinion on the whole matter by fainting right on top of the cash pile.
"Yeah," Lita said weakly. "Yeah, that kind of...sums it all up."
Suddenly, the door was pushed open a couple inches and the girls jumped. Lita threw herself on the cash pile, trying to cover it up with her large body. Raye made a leap for the door, trying to shut it before anyone could enter. But before Raye could get there, Luna scampered into the room.
"Right, so, I've spoken with my contacts, and the communicator problem can-" Luna started, but froze as soon as she actually took a moment to look around the room. Four girls staring at her, not moving a muscle. Mina unconscious, Lita laying on top of her, and a couple wads of cash visible from underneath Lita's body.
Slowly, Luna approached Mina and Lita, Lita trying to move her legs up to hide evidence of how much money there really was, but it was no use. Try though she might, Luna quickly got the picture that, for reasons she couldn't even begin to imagine, there were several thousand dollars, if not much more, on the floor of Raye's bedroom.
"Oh," she said in a monotone. Raye shut the door. "Oh. Oh, no."