Episode 98

Recap: Usagi gets left behind at a motocross event and Haruka offers her a ride. Neptune is tracked by Kaolinite and the latest Daimohn, and Usagi sneaks after Haruka when she runs off to help. Chained together by the Daimohn, Sailor Moon and Sailor Uranus come to understand each other a little better, and are able to defeat the Daimohn and save Sailor Neptune.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this episode. It's always stuck with me as one of the best throughout all 200 of the episodes. There's just something about it… I really have no clue what it is.

By the by – Kaolinite is the most pointless villain EVER. Like, stop psychoanalyzing your enemies and actually do something useful for once, bitch. (Excuse my language.) Even the stupid Daimohns are more useful than you. All you do is throw people off of cliffs with your hair. Yeesh. Alright, I'm done.

"Now, Mamo-chan," said Usagi sternly, wearing her lecture face, "I will be sixteen years old very soon and I'm not entirely incompetent in the kitchen. Let me make some for you!"

"What's it called, again?" he sighed, scratching the back of his neck.

"French toast. And I've made it with Mako-chan twice, and there were absolutely no disasters."

"I hate to be the voice of pessimism," Mamoru drawled, "but your past record doesn't precisely scream positive recommendations."

"Mamo-cha-an!" she whined. "I can do it, I really can! If I burn them I'll just throw them out, and I promise to clean up." She leaned over him, her eyes big and wobbly and pathetic in his face. He groaned.

"Fine."

"Yay! You'll love it, I promise!" She kissed his forehead quickly and ducked off to the kitchen.

"You promised to tell me about your encounter with Uranus." He stood, stretched his shoulders the way he'd seen Luna stretch her own, and strode after Usagi. Depositing himself in a wooden chair, he watched with amusement as she trashed through his cabinets. "Looking for something?"

"Vanilla," she muttered.

"Next one over, to your right. Now what happened?"

"Aha," she murmured, seizing her prize. "Erm, well, if you have to know, I think Haruka-san is Sailor Uranus."

"What?" he yelped. Such an abrupt accusation from Usagi, so calm and decisive, was simply unthinkable. "What makes you say that?"

"They smell the same," she replied vaguely, bending to retrieve a mixing bowl. "And they have the same arms."

"The same arms," he repeated disdainfully.

"It's just a hunch, Mamo-chan, alright?" She twisted around to wink at him. "And it's just my opinion, anyway. I'm probably light years wrong. I usually am."

"So Tenoh Haruka and Sailor Uranus both smell like cheap men's cologne?"

"Actually, it's grown on me a bit," she mused. "Kind of pleasant, if you like something harsh and…" She scratched her upper lip, searching for the right word. "Biting?" Shrugging, she cracked two eggs into the bowl and whisked them together. "Which generally I don't," she continued, "but it's not bad. It's just different. Different from you, I mean."

Unsure of what to make of that, he said, "And that's all?"

"Oh, right, the story. Well, I got distracted and missed the bus, like you saw, and then Haruka-san offered me a ride home. But those men from before were in a huge truck and tried to run us off the road."

Unconsciously, he rose in his seat, leaning across the table. "They tried to kill you?" If any of them had laid a finger on his Usako, he would have… well, they'd have one angry Tuxedo Kamen to deal with, and one sharp swarm of roses coming their way. He gnawed on his lip distractedly; that didn't sound as intimidating as he'd have liked.

"I don't think they were trying to kill us," Usagi said nonchalantly, now pouring in drips of milk. "They could have, though. Haruka-san drove off the road and we hid in the bushes, and when they followed her tracks, she popped out and kicked them so fast – it was amazing! She's strong, Mamo-chan! And then she got a call, I think, although I couldn't really see her phone, but she said she had 'something urgent' and told me to take the bus…"

"And you followed her," he supplied, relaxing once more.

"Yes," she said stiffly. "I did."

He massaged his eyebrows together. "Usako, that's not… smart, to just run into potential danger, you know."

"What would you have done?" she said, dipping bread into her mix.

"Mh," he said. She had him there.

She chuckled. "See? So when I got there Sailor Neptune was tied up and Kaolinite was there, and then Sailor Uranus and I got chained together by the Daimohn, and Neptune ordered us to run – just before she got thrown off a cliff by Kaolinite." She sucked in a tight breath. "So we ran to the cave, and she was wounded, and I cleaned it…"

"With what?" Mamoru interrupted.

"Water," she replied easily. "From the cave."

He smacked his forehead into his palms. "Usako! Do you realize how unsanitary that is?"

"It was really clean-looking! I wouldn't have used it if it was gross!"

"There could have been so many germs in there…"

"I didn't want it to get infected!"

"…and you could have infected her!"

She whirled around from the stove, rattling the frying pan that she was attempting to heat up. "We're not all medical students, Mamoru-baka!"

"Oh good Lord, it's just common sense!"

"Maybe I haven't got any!" she shouted.

"Obviously not!"

"Just shut up and let me tell the stupid story," she growled, turning back sharply. "There's an important part. She said there was silence coming, and in order to prevent it, she needed the three talismans from pure hearts. She's willing to sacrifice those lives to save the world, and she and Neptune made a pact to do anything to get those talismans."

Mamoru frowned at the table for a long time. "That's funny," he said. "I had a dream just last night about silence approaching the world, but I didn't take it seriously… you know me and dreams."

"'Too many, too often, too unreliable'," Usagi quoted him. "Yeah, well, added onto Rei-chan's dream, I think there's something pretty constituent there."

"Consistent," Mamoru corrected her absentmindedly.

"Same thing."

The scent of butter and cinnamon prickled his nose as Usagi flipped her chef d'oeuvre in the pan. "Smells good, Usako."

"I told you," she said triumphantly. "And I love how sweet it is. You'll probably want to douse it with grapefruits, you're such a downer, but I like powdered sugar on them."

"With grapefruits?" The corner of his mouth twitched.

"Because they're sour," she explained. "Would you get plates?"

He obeyed diligently, his mind lost in the murky remnants of his crimson-bathed dream. "It was like a rumble," he muttered to himself, "like a huge cloud that came over the Earth, and crushed everyone on it – like stifling dust, suffocating…"

"Don't break the plate," Usagi joked, and he realized his hands were trembling quite roughly.

"Right. Sorry." He paid little attention as she scooped two thin pieces of bread onto his plate.

"You can sit now, Mamo-chan," she ordered, exasperated. Again, he complied wordlessly.

That destructive red cloud, roaring without a sound – it had clenched that place in his chest where his instinct lay, that one little tender spot that ached when something went wrong: when Sailor Moon was in battle, when half the city was sick with the flu two winters ago, when the threat of an enemy drew close and dangerous. And last night in the dream, as he watched Usagi scream in silence and disappear into dirt and ash, that place in his heart had almost burst, as if an invisible hand had reached inside him and yanked.

It was that place inside him that told him when Earth needed him, its protector. But in that dream, there was absolultely nothing he could do.

"Eat," Usagi ordered. He took one bite diligently and gagged.

"Sweet," he spluttered, reaching for a glass of water.

Usagi patiently dumped a little white pile of sugar atop her toast. "Mamo-chan," she said, "sometimes, I really don't understand you."

"At least you didn't burn down the place," he said. "See? I'm an optimist after all."

I was looking at what episodes are up ahead, and seeing I'm only about nine months older than Usagi at this point in both of our lives, I felt rather akin to her and decided to have her make French toast just as I did for dinner. Sorry if that's absolutely a ridiculous thing to do in Japan; I figured there was a hefty possibility of that, but that's why it's fanfiction, right?

Thanks for reading! (: