A/N: A bit of language in here. It would have been worse, had I not wanted to maintain a T rating (and even this may be pushing it a bit). Enjoy.
Trials
"Wakey, wakey, Mars!"
Mars shot up in bed, her hand summoning a flame, ready to throw it at whoever had woken her. Then she blinked, and with a frustrated sigh, let the flame in her hand go out.
"What are you doing?" she asked roughly, having half a mind to just ignore the blond before her and to flop back down and go back to sleep. She was not awake enough to deal with this right now.
"It's time for training!" Venus said, smiling. The blond was sitting on the edge of Mars' bed, bouncing up and down. Why she was bouncing, Mars didn't know. It was probably to annoy her. The Venusian was good at that.
"What?" Mars repeated, having not heard the question. She wasn't a morning person.
"Time for training!" Venus repeated. Mars noticed that, although the girl put on an air of excitedness, there was a weariness hidden beneath her airs. And the performance was slightly off; Venus' smile wasn't full, and her movements seemed forced.
"You're not really a morning person, are you?" Mars asked. Venus blinked in surprise.
"I… you can tell?"
Mars rolled her eyes and stretched, ignoring the way the Venusian's eyes lingered on her. "You're sluggish and not as annoyingly sweet as usual. So you're forcing it, right?"
Venus sighed. "Yes. I'm not a morning person at all, really," she admitted. "But I have to pretend. I've gotta motivate the troops."
"What are you doing in my room?" Mars asked, narrowing her eyes at the blond.
"Waking you up," Venus said, a genuine smile turning the corners of her lips upwards.
"Get out," Mars said. She wasn't awake enough to deal with the Venusian's shit right now. She needed to get some more sleep, and then she could deal with the walking, breathing, talking annoyance.
"Nope! We've got to start a strict training regimen if you're to be a Senshi."
"I'm going back to sleep," Mars said, flopping back down and pulling the blanket over her head, which wasn't an easy task, since Venus was sitting atop the covers.
"Mars!" Venus cried. When Mars didn't react, the blond crawled up the bed and began shaking Mars' shoulder. "C'mon, wake up! I took time off my duties just so I could train you! That's a big deal! There are a lot of soldiers depending on me. I'm not wasting this. Get up!"
The girl was really trying Mars' patience. It was taking all of Mars' self-restraint to keep from physically throwing the girl out, burning her, and screaming at her. Gods, this girl was annoying.
"Mars! I'm serious! Get up! If I have to get up early to do this, so do you!" Venus began poking Mars through the covers. "Get. Up. Mars. Or. I'll. Pour. Ice. Water. On. Your. Stupid. Face." Each word was accompanied by a hard poke to Mars' ribcage.
That was it. Mars, thoroughly angered by the girl, shoved her off the bed. The unexpecting Venusian toppled over, landing roughly on her back. Mars rolled over and glared at her.
"I'm going back to sleep," Mars said. "Get out of my room."
The Venusian glared up at her from the floor, rubbing her back. Something flashed in her eyes; Mars was too tired to pay it any heed. The Martian rolled back onto her pillow and snuggled under the warm blanket, her mind already drifting back into blessed dreams, where there was a sweet absence of a certain Venusian. Mars fell eagerly back to sleep.
She was brought quite rudely back to reality by a bucket of ice-cold water dousing her. She shot up and hopped out of the bed, shivering and gasping for air. The Martian was stunned for several moments before she regained her senses. She was furious.
" I'm going to fucking murder you. Get the hell out of my room!"
Venus was glaring right back at Mars. "I told you several times to wake up. I told you I'd pour water on you if it came to that. And it did. So congratulations on thoroughly getting on my nerves."
"Getting on your nerves? Getting on your nerves? Who the hell has the right to be upset here? Because the way I see it, I was sleeping, you barged in, I went back to sleep, and then you threw icewater on my bed! Get the hell out of my room, damn it!" Mars scarcely cursed. On the rare occasions when she did, however, she was pissed. This was by far the most furious she had ever been in several years.
"Well, from my perspective, I took off time from my job to train you, I woke up early to get you up to train you, and you don't care one bit! So I think I'm perfectly justified in making you care! If you want to get back at me, we can have a sparring match during training. Now get your lazy bum downstairs, Mars. I'll be waiting in fifteen minutes. Do not be late." With that, Venus turned, her blond hair swirling, and stomped out of the room, slamming the door closed.
Mars clenched her hands at her side, glaring at the door through which the Venusian had disapperead.
Fuck you, Venus, she thought angrily before rushing to her drawers and pulling out dry clothes to change into. The day before, they had formed a mutual peace, though it was unspoken. She had assumed that it would translate to today, too. But no—of course not. Nothing went they way she expected it to when Venus was involved. And the temporary peace they had established yesterday was gone, washed away in a cold flood.
She had to hurry if she wanted to make it downstairs in time. That damned Venusian is going to regret this, she thought angrily.
A/N: Not an altogether long chapter, but there's going to be a bit more action next chapter, since they're going to be training and all that. I'm a few chapters ahead, and I've decided that-at the part of the story I'm currently writing-I'm going to try to up the pace of the story a bit, since it's sort of slowed to a crawl as far as progression of plot.