Hey guys! I haven't had time to write recently, in case you haven't noticed. I'm still working on Monster of the Sands, yes, it's not a dead fic, so there. Classes suck up so much time.
Here's a silly little story that's not exactly written well for you. It's peppered with F-bombs, I warn you now.
Sickness of the Mind
or
Prepare for Trouble-Make it Double.
The only thing that registers in Amara's half-asleep brain is that someone is licking her nipple.
Eyes still closed, she moans slightly, reaching out and feeling around for whoever is doing this. One hand falls on long, silky hair; the other hand soon follows, and her fingers twist and knot themselves into the person's hair as they continue their ministrations. She arches a bit as the person begins nibbling their way down her stomach, alternating between sucking and licking on her sensitive skin as they reach her thighs, and finally—
"Oh, god," she swears, tightly burying her hands in their hair.
As soon as she says that, they stop, and lift their head from between her thighs. "Why are you speaking in English?" they say in an unmistakably female voice, tinged with a thick Japanese accent. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for the accent, the person would sound exactly like—
Amara opens her eyes to see the naked form of her cousin—her cousin—straddling her almost possessively. She opens her mouth to say something, and closes it again; dumbfounded, she reaches up with a shaky hand and points to her cousin's body. She points to her own body, which is very, very naked.
After a few seconds of being frozen, she pulls herself from underneath her cousin and sits up in the very rumpled bed. "What the actual fuck?" she finally manages.
"So I wasn't imagining the whole English thing," her cousin says in that funny Japanese accent again. "And, um. Are you feeling all right?" Michelle presses her body close, raises her lips to the hollow of Amara's neck, and the Scout of Wind simply stares for a few moments before she leaps out of the bed.
"What the actual fuck?" she repeats, grabbing the sheets to cover her nudity. "I—I—since when did you think it was all right to molest me in my sleep?"
Michelle blinks and looks off to the side, obviously feeling a little awkward now. "Since we got married," she says, and she holds up her left hand. A diamond ring shines on her ring finger.
Amara looks down at her left hand. Sure enough, there is a matching ring on her own finger. Her mouth falls open.
"They allow—oh my god, we're cousins and—"
"Haruka..." Michelle says in a strange tone, "since when have we been cousins?"
"It's Amara," the Scout of Wind snaps, "and we've been cousins since we were born, Michelle."
"It's Michiru."
Amara's eyebrows raise. "What sort of a name is that?"
Michel—no, Michiru laughs awkwardly and says, "What sort of name is Amara?"
"It's Greek," Amara says, staring at the still-naked woman. "Or something. My parents didn't really care about what language it came from. They just liked the name."
"Well," Michiru stretches out languorously as she speaks, "Michiru is a Japanese name, meaning to rise."
"To rise?" Amara blinks, staring at her face and not at her boobs or anything. "So your name is a verb. That's like if I was named 'To-Run' or something. That's really strange."
Michiru stares at her. "Says the woman who has magically replaced my wife while I slept."
The Scout of Wind shudders as Michiru says wife, looking away from her. "Dude. You're my cousin," she says. "Can you, um, turn around? I'm going to get dressed."
Sighing, the Japanese woman obliges, and Amara strides to what she assumes is this Haruka's closet. She opens it and rifles through the various shirts and pairs of pants for a few moments before selecting an outfit. "Where does Haruka keep her underwear?" she asks, the foreign name strange on her tongue. "If you know, that is... um..."
Still turned around, Michiru gestures to a nearby dresser. "Top right drawer," she says without a second's thought. Amara blinks, and walks over to the dresser. Opening the drawer, she grabs a pair of underwear and a bra at random and shuts it quickly. "You know," she says as she pulls Haruka's clothes on, "you're taking this quite well. I would be panicking if I found that my boyfriend had been magically replaced with a guy who looks exactly like him, but is my cousin."
Michiru looks at her from the corner of her eye. "Nothing's surprising any more after we adopted Hotaru."
"Hot..." The word dies on Amara's lips. "You adopted her? We left Professor Tomo to take care of her."
"Well," Michiru looks down at her nails, "a situation came up and she was forced to become Saturn again. And it's Tomoe, not Tomo. You're forgetting to pronounce the E."
Amara stops buttoning up Haruka's shirt and pinches the bridge of her nose, sighing.
Her bed is cold.
Haruka stretches her arm out and finds nothing but empty space. Strange; Michiru had promised to wake her up with some lovely morning sex, and Haruka desperately wants to collect on that promise.
"Michiru...?" she mumbles groggily, cracking open an eye. "Where's the tongue-fucking I was prom..."
She trails off as she finally sees that she is the only person in the bed. The sheets twist and coil around her as she sits up, rubbing her eyes. There is only one pillow on the bed, she notes, and as she looks about the room, she sees nothing of her wife.
"Michiru?" she repeats.
Sighing, she rubs her chin and reaches over to her nightstand for her reading glasses. "Where is she?" the Senshi of Wind wonders aloud as her hand fumbles around on the surface of the wicker nightstand. After several seconds, she looks down.
Her reading glasses, which had been a birthday gift from Ami, are not there.
She looks to the right of where her hand rests on the nightstand. Her wedding picture isn't there either.
Several thoughts run through her head at once, the most dominant one being Did she leave in the middle of the night? Did she take all of her things with her? Oh my god, am I not good enough?
She leaps out of bed, barely noticing that she is clothed in dark blue pajamas, and bursts from the room.
"Michiru!" she calls to the hallway. She opens every door along the hallway. "Downstairs?" she mutters, half-hoping that Michiru is still in the house, that the Senshi of Sea has not left her, that—
"Did you need something, Amara?" a voice asks in English.
"Wha—" she says, whirling around with her henshin stick out.
Michiru stands in front of her, holding a toothbrush in her right hand. She wears a light green nightgown that, for the life of her, Haruka cannot remember her ever wearing before.
"When did you get that?" she asks, pointing to the nightgown.
Michiru blinks and stares at her. "Did you have a bad dream or something? You're, um, speaking a foreign language," she says in English, obviously not understanding Haruka. The Senshi of Wind sighs.
"When did you get that?" she repeats, switching to English this time.
"Daniel bought it for me. Remember?" Michiru looks down at the nightgown. "What's with the accent?"
Haruka's eyebrows furrow. "I'm not the one who has an accent," she says, jabbing a finger to Michiru's chest, "you are. Since when do you have an American accent? And who the hell is Daniel?"
"My boyfriend," Michiru says, looking at Haruka as though it should be obvious.
A strange sense of panic comes over the Senshi of Wind. "You... your boyfriend?" she says, feeling her legs go numb. "And when were you going to tell me you had a boy... a boyfriend?"
"I told you last week, remember?"
"No..." Haruka looks down. "...why?"
"Why what?" Michiru asks.
"I... I thought we had such a perfect relationship," Haruka says, beginning to tear up a little. "And now you tell me you have a boyfriend? Michiru, our anniversary was next week..."
Michiru blinks. "Who's Michiru?" she says. "My name is Michelle."
And that stops Haruka cold. "You're who?" she says in disbelief.
"Michelle Kaioh. Like how you're named Amara Tenoh. Remember, you have a boyfriend, and his name is Colin...?"
"Amara? What? No, that's not my name!" Haruka shakes her head vehemently. "No, I'm Haruka. Tenoh Haruka. And I," she points to herself, "am your wife." She holds up her left hand, proudly displaying her wedding ring.
Michelle's face distorts into a cacophony of expressions that Haruka could never imagine Michiru making.
"You're my cousin, Amara," she says after several minutes. "I don't think they've legalized first-cousin marriages here in California."
Haruka blinks. "What the fuck?" she says. "I distinctly remember doing you last night, and you begged for more, and you pleaded with me, and it was so goddamn hot that I came from just listeni—"
Michelle's face is bright red, and Haruka soon realizes that she should shut up.
"Really?" Sailor Pluto says to the Space-Time Door as it coughs up some mucus. "This is what happens when you get sick? You break the dimensional boundary lines and accidentally switch a few people around? God, I really need to go get some antibiotics for you. I'll be back, okay? Try not to hack up a lung."
The Guardian of Time sighs as she finally realizes something. "And I have to go explain to all of the switched people what happened to them... shit, I hate my job sometimes..."
The door creaks open and Amara looks over. "Trista?" she asks, blinking at the tanned woman. "You know Michel...Michiru's naked, right?"
"She's used to it," Michiru pipes up from behind her, "and did you seriously just call her Trista? Her name is Setsuna, thank you."
The tanned woman holds up her hand before Amara can begin arguing. "I'm Pluto for now," she says to the Scout of Wind. "If you haven't figured out already, you're kind of in the wrong dimension."
"Oh, I figured it out when this woman who looks exactly like my cousin tried sexing me up," Amara says with a deadpan face. "So can you send me home? I really need to get back to my lovely boyfriend Colin. I'm sure he's worried sick about me."
Michiru retches behind her.
"Unfortunately, no." Pluto sighs, and for the first time, Amara notices the bags beneath her eyes. "The Space-Time Door is sick with some kind of viral infection, which means it went and switched a bunch of people from different dimensions willy-nilly. Thankfully, there are only two dimensions involved in your particular switch: yours and Haruka's, who is this dimension's version of you." She shudders. "Would have been such a mess if it was seven dimensions like that bit with the Handsome Soldiers... but, um, anyway, as soon as the Space-Time Door gets better, you'll be able to go back to your particular dimension."
"So wait," Michiru interjects, "Haruka is with another version of me who is her cousin? Or this one's cousin, anyway? And this other version of me likes men? And this one has a boyfriend?"
Pluto nods.
With that, Michiru stands up, the sheets whipping around her, and calls her henshin stick to her hand. "Neptune Planet Power, Make-Up!" she says, and she transforms in a flash of light into the Senshi of Sea. "We need to rescue her," the aqua-haired woman says urgently, "before this man can get to her. Colin, his name was?" She doesn't wait for Amara's nod, and keeps speaking. "I'm going to find him and crush him if he even lays so much as a hand on my Haruka."
Amara looks back at her. "You're kind of... possessive, aren't you?" she says nervously.
"Wha-what-guh-" Haruka says incoherently as the jock leans in for a "hello" kiss. Stepping back, she punches him in the face, and the boy stumbles away with a hand on his cheek.
"Babe, what did you do that for?" he asks, staring at her with disgustingly loving eyes. "Look, I know the sex wasn't all that great this weekend, but—"
He is interrupted when Haruka punches him again.
"Seriously, I don't know what the hell you're thinking," she says, "but I am not the person you think I am."
"Oh." He rubs his bright red cheek. "In that case, wanna fuck? I'm sure my girlfriend won't mind. Besides, you look exactly like her."
Haruka's jaw drops, but before she can sputter anything out, someone interrupts with a screechy high-pitched voice. "Oh, Amara! It's you!"
She looks down. "Chibiusa?" she mumbles.
The pink-haired girl laughs. "What sort of word is that?" she says, still giggling. "My name's Rini. You know that."
"What the hell sort of a name is Rini?" Haruka mumbles.
"What? I couldn't hear you. Oh, hey! Serena! Amara's over here, I know you wanted to ask her a question!"
The odango-atama runs over and stares with an open mouth at Haruka, who by now feels slightly unnerved. "Amara," she begins, "I need to ask you a question."
"Shoot."
Serena blinks. "What an interesting accent..." she says quietly, "but anyway, how do you, um, er, that is, what's your technique for..." she trails off and, looking a little red in the face, mimes sucking on something. "You know... when you want to please Colin..."
Haruka's jaw drops again, but this time, she turns firetruck red.
"Uh. Look, I'm not who you think I am. I'm not Amara," she says, feeling quite embarassed.
"Then why did you answer when I said Amara?" the rabbit of the moon asks.
Haruka opens her mouth to speak, but closes it again; she cannot find anything to say.
"Spending time in other dimensions," Pluto finally says as she turns to leave, "is going to have some strange side-effects. It's going to make you more like... like the original inhabitant of that dimension."
"So if I stay here long enough, I'm going to become exactly like Haruka?" Amara says flatly.
"And Haruka will become exactly like you." And with that, Pluto blinks out of the universe.