AN: I'm SORRY! I didn't MEAN to take four months! I SWEAR I didn't!

Planet Names:

Suisei: Mercury

Kinsei: Venus

Kasei: Mars

Mokusei: Jupiter

Dosei: Saturn

Ten'ousei: Uranus

Kaiousei: Neptune

Meiousei: Pluto

Disclaimer: I own only the Guardians and the families—minus Queen Serenity—of the Senshi. Nothing else.

Chapter Six
Mistakes

"Bye, Mama Sere! Bye, baby!" Titan called, waving to the High Queen before racing down the hall. Queen Serenity stared after the seven-year-old. Baby? What was that about? Did Titan know something she did not? It was possible, given what the girl's powers were, that she could see if someone was pregnant. I hope it's a girl, Serenity found herself wishing. The Moon Kingdom, as well as the other seven planets under Serenity's rule, was matriarchal, so the women ruled, rather than the men.

Making a mental note to ask Queprur about the twins' abilities to see souls, the High Queen re-entered her chambers to get ready for dinner.

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Akari sighed as she entered the classroom. Quiet Mercury and her in-training Guardian, Marina, instantly began to babble out apologies. Really, she could not find the heart to blame the four-year-old or the six-year-old. Marina had only recently begun to explore the areas of using her magic beyond seeing other people's magic and testing if ice was thick enough to be safe. Mercury had only recently been told how to see magic using her own.

Truly, it was a miracle that they had only frozen over the room and had not also frozen every wire within the consoles.

That would have destroyed all use the classroom had, except perhaps as an ice box or storage room.

"Do you know what you did?" the Queen of Suisei asked patiently as she slowly used her magic to peel off the layers of ice, which coated every square inch of the room. It began to amaze her as to just how many layers the girls had made without a drop of training in this area—and how thin these layers were!

"Not really," Marina whispered, her sapphire hair sprinkled with ice crystals. "We were talking and something happened… There was a loud crash and a bunch of smoke came in the room. We got really scared, and I felt funny. Mercury's head glowed a little bit. Then there was ice everywhere and you came in. I don't know how we did it. I just know that we did."

"How did the smoke get in?" Akari asked, truly worried. The room had no windows. Maybe one of the consoles had overheated? But none of them had been used that day, so how…?

"The door was open a little, Mommy," Mercury explained. "I saw the smoke start coming in. That's when we got scared. Did my head really start glowing?" she queried, turning to her playmate.

"Yep," the older girl said with a nod. "Right here." She put her finger on the middle of Mercury's forehead, right where Akari remembered the Suisei planet symbol glowing moments after Mercury's birth.

Had Mercury's Senshi powers been awakened?

The thought frightened the girl's mother, for the princess' control was chancy at best, even just for the latent magic the girl housed.

She murmured a prayer and knelt in the middle of the room.

"I was going to teach you something different today," she began. "But since you decided to do some experimenting on your own, we're going to learn how to peel off the ice and make it change forms. Ice is frozen water, you know."

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Queen Eris of Kasei groaned and began pounding her head against the stone wall. "Why me?" she moaned, all the while knowing the answer. "What did I do to deserve this?"

Phobos and Deimos were standing in the center of the room, draped in tongues of fire. The flames were like eager, little puppies before an indulgent master, doing everything to please.

Unfortunately, the fireplace was built back into the wall farthest from where the Coronis twins were standing.

"Phobos, Deimos," the Queen scolded. "Put the fire back where it belongs before I pry it off you." There was an undercurrent of steel in her voice; she was not to be disobeyed.

Go back to bed, Deimos told the flames silently. You aren't supposed to come all the way over here.

You need to stay in bed, Phobos added. You might hurt people when you're not in bed.

But we aren't hurting you, the fire retorted.

We're special, Deimos answered. Most people get hurt by fire. So go back to bed.

Grumpily, the fires slowly unwound themselves from the twins and retreated back into the fireplace.

"Thank you," Eris sighed. "Now put the fire out and open the windows. We're going to air this room out and then the two of you are going to explain to the entire castle why the halls are drowning in smoke."

The girls paled slightly and went for the water buckets. Their control was not fine enough yet for them to use their magic to put out fires.

"No more practice for either of you," the raven-haired woman added. "You're going back to studying theory."

The twins groaned as they doused the fire.

Reading textbooks was so boring.

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Four-year-old Maggie of Kinsei sighed as she wandered through the halls.

Venus was busy in her class, learning how to count, so Maggie had no one to play with.

Everyone else had been paired off with a teacher for a special "practice" class, and she had not been paired off with anyone because her mother was sick and the Queen of Kinsei was taking care of something at home. The training master had looked at her for a moment and told her that she had the day off.

That had been fun… for maybe twenty minutes, when she realized that everyone else was in lessons.

Her attention was caught by the murmuring of voices in the shadowy corner at the end of the corridor.

Two voices, she decided. One man and one woman. They're looking for somewhere more private than the hall. Why, Maggie could not tell. Her ears could not make out any words; only the rising and falling of the voices: it was her magic feeding her this information.

Tiptoeing down the hall until she could just make out the two people in the shadows, she concentrated on that fizzing in her bones she had come to call her magic. You have the power of Love, she remembered her mother telling her. Shuddering slightly from the effort of keeping her magic from bursting out of her skin, Maggie sent a thin thread of her power down to the couple and wrapped it around them.

Go to your room, she told them silently. Your room is private. No one will look for you there in the middle of the day. It seemed that the couple had gotten her message as the man murmured this into his partner's ear. Maggie carefully strained to unwind the chain connecting her to the couple and pull her magic back inside her skin.

Succeeding as the man's door clicked shut, the young girl sat down and pressed her hands against her temples.

Stay inside, she begged her power. Stay inside me. Go back to sleep. Those people don't need your help anymore. They have their own Love. Go back to sleep.

But her power refused to obey.

It got louder and more insistent, screaming inside her, pounding against her control as she tried to force it back into its resting place.

The child did not notice as a scream ripped itself from her throat, so overwhelmed was she by the flood of power she was fighting.

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Saturn and Titan, having finished their afternoon lessons early, were talking to Aeolus by the gym when they heard the screams.

"It's Maggie," Titan said instantly, her face paling.

Neither Saturn nor Aeolus questioned this: the time for inquiries was later.

The three girls raced toward the source of the screams, the two children quickly falling behind the Senshi of Wind.

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AN: Um… What do you think? Am I forgiven for taking so long? Is this good?