The Senshi Fairy Chronicles
Chapter 4: Ocean Breezes; Haruka and Michelle's tale
Haruka Tanner liked the beach well enough, but it wasn't exactly her favorite place to spend an afternoon.
Despite being very athletic, her surfing skills were non-existent and she wasn't a very strong swimmer. She liked the sand between her toes and the wind tousling her hair. She liked the waves lapping at her feet and she definitely liked the notion of checking out all the pretty ladies in bikinis during impromptu games of beach volleyball, but she could see hot chicks in bikinis at her apartment's swimming pool or hot tub. While pretty, the beach didn't have anything that caused her to fall hopelessly in love with it. There were other, more exciting things to do in LA, after all.
That said, it was Michelle's turn to pick a date location and her girlfriend chose the beach.
She let her green-bordering-on-hazel eyes scan appreciatively over her lover's frame. If you looked up 'graceful' or 'elegant' in the dictionary, Michelle's picture would sit next to it. The bikini-clad beauty's pale skin was soaked through with ocean water, as was her unique hair. She spent most of her younger years dying it black, but now that she and Haruka were officially graduated from their private academy, Michelle was letting her natural color shine through. Black dye still clung to the tips of her wavy hair, but the rest of it was a beautiful shade of teal. Soaking wet, walking out of the waves like a runway model on a catwalk, Michelle Kyle looked like she belonged here.
Haruka, however, looked like someone who belonged at a motocross race or track meet instead. She looked terrible in a bikini—the result of having a lanky figure and breasts so small that they were virtually non-existent—and was often mistaken for a cross-dressing male while sunbathing. The fact that her name was rather ambiguous in its country of origin didn't help dispel that misconception in the least. But, Haru Nonaka had been the name of one of her father's best friends and would have likely been her godfather had he not died in a spectacularly tragic racing accident not long before she was born. She didn't mind being named in his honor.
With a bored sigh, the eighteen-year-old let her gaze drift over the other people gathered at the beach. In the absence of a beach volleyball game, there wasn't much to catch her interest out here today. Well, unless you counted the voices in the wind whispering in her ear. They had some very interesting things to say today. Apparently someone was coming to see her, though whether it was a good or bad someone remained to be seen (or heard, in this case). She closed her eyes, trying to shake the thoughts of the whispered premonitions out of her mind.
"Must you always look so serious?" Michelle teased as she walked up to her girlfriend, a light breeze tousling her hair. "It's a beautiful day. Even the wind is cooperating."
"Of course it's cooperating; I asked it to." The blonde smirked playfully. "Still prefer hot tubs to beaches, though. We can do so much more fun stuff in hot tubs." Partly because there were fewer people to walk in on them and partly because the sand got absolutely everywhere you didn't want it to go.
"You're impossible." The aqua-haired beauty rolled her eyes at her girlfriend's antics. "You have the mind of a teenage boy, you know that?" She asked playfully.
"I admit nothing and regret nothing." Haruka shrugged. "Although I'm pretty sure teenage boys don't get the dreams I've been having." And those were odd eff'n dreams. She kept picturing herself in a palace on a planet that clearly wasn't Earth, gazing up at Neptune in the sky. Sometimes she was in pant-suits; sometimes in dresses. In one rather memorable occasion, she didn't have anything on and was engaged in some rather adult behavior with a woman who looked a lot like Michelle. She saw faces of other women too, women she respected and trusted deeply, though she had never seen them in her lifetime.
"Mmm." Michelle hummed. "They are rather realistic, aren't they? Almost like we've lived them before." Some of them, anyway. Some of the other dreams she had were more like premonitions. Images of places she'd never been to before—some recognizable, some not—and people she had yet to meet, all in modern clothing rather than the Medieval-style clothes she'd seen herself and Haruka wear in other dreams. And distorted, as if viewed from underwater.
"I never bought into that past lives crap, but maybe they people that do aren't completely crazy?" The lanky teen suggested. It was the only explanation that made even a tiny bit of sense to her. Granted, that didn't mean she really believed in the whole old souls thing, but so far it came the closest to explaining their strange visions and dreams.
"Far from it, actually." The pair of lovers jumped, whirling around to see three strange women standing behind them. The two younger and shorter girls looked to be sixteen. One was a gorgeous blue-eyed blonde in an orange string bikini that made Haruka wonder if it had been painted on. Not that she was complaining; it was a very nice view. The other teenager had violet eyes and dark pink hair and wore a neon green zebra-print one-piece and a pair of black board shorts. Their companion—easily a head taller and a decade older—wore a black sundress that complemented her dark green hair and red eyes nicely. "It is not uncommon for old souls to be reborn into new bodies every few generations." It was the older woman who spoke.
"Sorry, we didn't mean to eavesdrop." The blonde girl blushed. "I'm Mina, and these are my friends Roxy and Setsuna." She pointed to the pink haired girl and the older woman in turn.
"Michelle." The still-wet teen eyed the pair skeptically. Something about Setsuna and Mina gave her a sense of déjà vu. "Are you some kind of past lives expert?"
"I suppose you could say that." A knowing smirk graced Setsuna's lips.
Haruka frowned. The darker woman looked familiar, but she hadn't been able to place where she had seen the regal creature before. A spark of a memory—or was it a dream?—lit inside her mind's eye. This woman stood regally in a meeting of some sort, an ornate black dress barely scraping the floor and large wings sprouting from her back. Wait. Hold on. In that memory, she and Michelle's look-alike had wings as well. "You!" Her frown turned into a snarl. "You were in my dream. You had wings!"
"All fairies have wings, my dear. You're no different." Red eyes focused on Haruka as if looking into her soul. "You both have at least suspected magic by now. How else would you, Michelle, control the waves of the sea? Or your girlfriend causes the wind to play with your hair?"
"And my skirts." Michelle added as an afterthought. "You have to admit, Ruka, fairy magic is the most logical explanation."
"What do you two know about it?" Haruka growled as the wind began to gust more violently. "Are you some kind of magic police, here to lock us up?"
"Ruka, no." Michelle hissed, alarm registering in her deep blue eyes. "Don't do this here!" The beach wasn't nearly as packed as it usually was, but people were still loitering around and chasing the beach umbrellas that the blonde girl blew away with her powers.
"I won't be locked away by some hacks!" Haruka roared at the other two girls as her eyes began to glow.
"If this is how it must be…" Setsuna sighed, looking to Mina as a swirl of navy and gold energy shrouded Ruka like a whirlwind. She'd sealed Roxy's Believix shortly before this trip, and the young Terran princess had yet to gain her base-level transformation.
"I guess I'm up, then." The blonde girl braced for a fight. "If you want a duel, you'll get one! Mina Magic Charmix!" The young Senshi cried out as an orange light hid her from view. The red bow in her hair turned a navy blue, and her swimsuit faded and morphed into an orange and navy Greek-inspired outfit with a gold chain belt around her ribcage, gold ties on the shoulder straps of her dress, and gold bands on her arms. Gold gladiator-style sandals wrapped up her calves and old-trimmed heart-shaped wings sprouted from her back and fluttered in the breeze.
The energy swirling around Haruka left with a violent pop as the lanky girl stretched her gold-tipped blue wings—shaped like those of a bird—out to their full length. A navy crop-top with two V-shaped cut outs paneled in gold covered her torso, with golden cords keeping the top of it from flapping down and flashing beach-goers. Two golden armored shoulder pads designed to resemble feathers were attached to the cords. Navy shorts with a similar gold-paneled V-cut-out in the front covered her butt and upper thighs, while navy boots reached just above her knees. A matching set of navy blue gloves adorned her hands and came about two inches shy of meeting the bottom of her shoulder guards.
As soon as Haruka saw Mina in fairy form, she balked, pointing wildly at the younger girl. "How?" She asked. "You're one too?" And a very familiar one at that; one of the mystery women in her dreams wore the exact same get-up.
"Mina Allen, Venusian Senshi of Love and Beauty, at your service." Mina smirked proudly, offering a short bow to the other teen. "Setsuna and Roxy are too, in case you were wondering. Set's a full-fledged Senshi queen, though. Roxy and I are just Senshi in training."
"What's the difference between a Senshi and normal fairies like us?" Michelle asked, curiosity sparkling in her eyes. She loved solving puzzles, and this whole past lives/fairy business definitely qualified as one. Any chance to gain little hints to the mystery that had stumped both her and her girlfriend would be most welcome, and if these strangers could provide them…
"Senshi are much stronger than an average fairy." Setsuna explained, going into what Mina dubbed 'Professor Mode'. "This is because they are responsible for ruling and guarding an entire planet and the moons that surround it and not simply fighting to protect its citizens from themselves. You two girls, like Roxy, will be full-fledged Senshi one day and will help restore magic to Earth and the entirety of the Sol planetary system."
"How do we do that?" Ruka frowned, narrowing her eyes at the trio of strangers. "How can we become strong enough to be full-fledged Senshi? I only learned to transform last week; Michi hasn't quite got it figured out yet."
"We train, of course." Roxy answered as if it were the most obvious response in the world. For all Ruka knew about fairies, it might be. "There's a school for fairies that can help with that, and Setsuna's been hired as a teacher, so she can help us learn whatever the general magic lessons skip over."
"I've never heard of Magix." Michelle pursed her lips, trying to remember the brief geography lessons they'd suffered through in high school. The teacher had been a complete ass and hadn't done very much teaching. "Is it located on this continent?" It sounded awfully foreign to her.
"No, it most certainly is not." Setsuna remarked. "It's another world and I can take you to it, if you wish. I feel it would do all three of you well to spend a few days in Magix City proper prior to the first day of class at Alfea College for Fairies." Deep inside, Setsuna prayed to the goddess Selene that the school wasn't painted pink. "How long will you two need to gather your things?"
"A few days, tops." The Fairy of the Winds sighed. It looked like she was going to magic school this year instead of a regular college or the concert tour circuit. Just when she thought her life couldn't get any stranger…
"Our cross-country tour can wait a year, Ruka." The aquanette smiled softly. "We wouldn't want to have a flare-up during a concert, would we?" Ruka snorted. She knew a rhetorical question when she heard one. "Besides, we can still get away from our parents for a year."
Haruka nodded and gazed out at the horizon. Her parents tolerated a lot of her odd activity choices, but her sexuality drove them over the edge. They refused to acknowledge that she felt serious about Michelle and insisted that she simply "hadn't met the right man yet". Michelle's family was a little more accepting of her dating habits, but balked when she announced that she intended to move in with Ruka following graduation. Things remained awkward in the Kyle house afterward, and that was nearly three months ago. "Fine. Not like we have much to lose for trying this." She remarked as her fairy form faded with a pop.
"Good." Setsuna nodded. "I will come to take you to Alfea in two days. Try to have everything you need packed by then."
"We haven't exactly unpacked since we got our apartment." Michelle remarked. "We'll be ready. Where do you want to meet us?"
"I can come straight to your apartment, if you wish." Set's red eyes sparkled happily. "Is ten in the morning a good time for you both?"
"It can be." Michelle smiled as Haruka snorted. On weekends she didn't have a race, Ruka notoriously slept until noon. "We'll be waiting for you at that time."
"Very well." The older fairy nodded. "Mina, Roxy, I do believe we have other things to attend to today." From the look in Mina's eyes, they were happy things. Both of the younger teens grabbed onto Setsuna, and in a flash of light, the three were gone.
"Think she can teach me how to do that?" Haruka wondered. Her girlfriend chuckled.
"That and more, probably. Now come on, I want to be ready to leave by tomorrow afternoon."
A playful smirk settled on the blonde's lips. "Does this mean we can spend tomorrow evening in the hot tub?" Michelle rolled her eyes.
"Yes, Ruka, we can spend tomorrow evening in the hot tub. And the shower to wash out the chlorine from your hair…and definitely the bed…"
"I love the way you think, Michi."