I'm borrowing Sailor Moon for my own devious purposes. But it doesn't belong to me, and I didn't get the owner's permission. So is that stealing?
The harsh winds kick up sand, blowing it forcefully at her. So strong is the force of the winds that each grain of sand cuts through her skin and into her muscles, which scream in agony. Face contorting in pain, she moves a hand to shield her eyes from the sand, but she is too late; the sands reach her eyes and bite into her corneas, embedding themselves deep within her eyes. Her vision flickers, darkness eating at its corners, and her mind screeches in pain.
"No," she despairs, taking care not to move her lips much for fear of the sands, "no... this isn't supposed to be this way."
The sands eat away at her flesh, which is riddled with millions of punctures. Biting back a scream, she yells, "Monster! Show yourself!"
She thrusts her bleeding hand out in front of her, and the winds cease.
All falls silent.
The dead sky burns a bright red, its expanse split in two by a hole that seems to be made of darkness itself. In the distance, something red descends from the maw of the darkness, and as she stares, fear pierces her heart.
It is then that she notices her surroundings. She is standing in the ruins of Tokyo, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of statues that all look like people. She glances at one to her left and does a double-take.
They are not statues, she realizes as she stares at its twitching brown eyes. They are people.
And the monster touches the world.
A tsunami roars, interrupting the numerous questions she had about the statues. She turns her head sharply to look at the water, which is so loud that she cannot hear anything else, save for the beating of her own heart.
The tsunami dwarfs even the skyscrapers of Tokyo, almost eating at the sky. Compared to it, she is naught but a speck of dust. Yet her own heart beats strongly in her ears.
She screams finally, and the water rushes toward her. It engulfs her. She drowns.
And she wakes up, covered in sweat.
Haruka looks at the clock and shakes her head, trying to shake the image of the statue's twitching eyes from it.
She lays back down, but does not fall back asleep the rest of the night.
Pain lances through Michiru's hands—both of them—and she knows there will be a daimon today.
Wary, she goes through school as normal, waiting for the inevitable attack. And it does come eventually, in seventh period.
It is the usual sort of thing; someone touched an infested object and it came to life and attacked them. Slipping into a bathroom, Michiru transforms into Neptune.
And that is when she realizes, thanks to her heightened senshi senses, that the daimon attack is not here.
It is at Nishimachi.
She rushes from the bathroom, throwing the door open so forcefully that it slams against the wall, and into an adjacent classroom. The students watch in shock as she jumps on a table and into a window, shattering the glass into millions of pieces. There are many embedded in her body, but she doesn't care; all that matters now is getting to Nishimachi in time.
"I won't let you die," she growls through her teeth as she leaps over cars and past staring pedestrians. She runs, runs faster than she ever thought possible. The seconds tick away. Her eyes narrow in determination.
She arrives five minutes later and finally allows herself to stop in order to pinpoint the daimon's location. But she soon finds that it is unnecessary; a large beaker with legs marked Sulfuric acid bursts from the building. Inside of it is, presumably, the acid, along with a bright shining something. The Pure Heart.
"DEEP..." Michiru says, aiming for where the daimon will be in a few seconds, "...SUBMERGE!"
The ball of energy bursts from her hands, hitting the daimon square in what she presumes to be its chest. Its legs give out from under it and it tumbles to the ground, nearly spilling its contents. But it jumps back up quickly, soon spotting her. "VASO!" it yells, before it adds, "MAKE SURE YOU WEAR AN APRON WHEN HANDLING DANGEROUS CHEMICALS!"
Acid shoots from its face at her, hitting her left hand. Immediately it begins to eat away at her glove, quickly burning a hole in it—and some of her skin, as well, as sharp pain shoots through it. The scars burn unbearably as she jerks her hand back.
Leaning back, she roundhouse kicks the daimon's face, causing its glass to crack just enough for the acid to start leaking out. It falls in tiny droplets onto the grass, which withers wherever the acid touches.
The daimon screeches. "DON'T FORGET ABOUT YOUR EYEWEAR!" it yells after it recovers, spitting acid at her eyes. But this attack she manages to dodge and the acid only scrapes her cheek, which begins to burn not long after. She ignores this and instead focuses on attacking it; if she can crack it enough to make the acid drip out of it, she figures, then she can get the Pure Heart. She whirls around and kicks it again, causing it to stagger back and the crack to lengthen.
But the daimon finally sees what she is doing; it glances down at the crack in its glass and back to Michiru.
It turns tail and runs into the street.
The Pure Heart sloshes about in the acid, and as Michiru sprints after the daimon she silently hopes that it will somehow fall out of the beaker. Something does fall out of the beaker, but it is not what she wants; instead of a Pure Heart, acid spills on her heels, beginning to eat away at her feet. She stumbles, and trips, but quickly gets up and begins to run again. Her heels fall off—the acid had eaten through their straps—and she leaps from them, her feet screaming in agony.
"I won't let you die," she growls again, pumping her legs faster. But more acid sloshes from the daimon's lid and onto her bare feet, eating away at the muscle there.
She looks down and sees bones—sees bones and her beating blood vessels.
She feels no pain; the acid has eaten her nerves. She doesn't feel anything, actually; where her feet should be, she feels nothing. As if she had only stumps there.
As she pounds her feet against the concrete, slowly catching up to the daimon, something cracks loudly. Her feet suddenly give from under her, and she collapses onto the sidewalk. As she looks back, she sees that her toes—or rather, the bones of her toes—have broken off.
But she claws at the concrete with her hands and pushes herself up. The acid in the beaker-daimon is almost gone—she can see it—and perhaps if she catches up with it now she can retrieve the Pure Heart.
Her bones scrape against the sidewalk as she forces herself onto her feet for one last try. Steeling herself, she sucks in a deep breath, her bones dripping blood all over the pavement, and she begins to run.
She runs harder than she has ever run before, and with the loss of blood and muscle, it is extraordinarily difficult. Lightheadedness comes quickly, along with the telltale sound of bones shattering, but she catches up to the daimon.
She grabs hold of the beaker's lip, and the daimon turns, shocked. "YOU NEED TO WEAR CLOSED-TOED SH—" the daimon begins.
Michiru cuts it off. She grabs its glass face and rips it from the body. Reaching into its corpse, she grabs hold of the daimon egg with her gloved hand and shatters it, making sure she has no shards embedded in her hands, and finally grabs the Pure Heart.
And she runs as well as she can back to Nishimachi.
She is greeted with an ambulance when she arrives. A crowd is gathered around it, all chattering excitedly. But they all fall silent as she steps toward the ambulance and stare at what used to be her feet in horror.
Stumbling toward where the daimon's victim is strapped to a gurney, she takes a look at him. He is a young boy—perhaps fifteen or so—with thick brown hair and strong features. His face is ashen grey.
She wonders if it is too late, but she holds out the Pure Heart. It drifts toward the boy before disappearing into his chest.
And nothing happens.
The crowd watches in silence as her eyes widen. "No," she says, grabbing his shoulders. "No. No, you can't die on me. Don't you die on me." She shakes him forcefully. "Wake up!" she yells, slapping his cheek. "WAKE UP!"
She puts her ear to his chest, desperately checking for a heartbeat that is not there. "NO!" she sobs, slamming her fist onto the gurney. Tears trail down her acid-burned cheek. "I-I didn't just save you for you to die!"
His heart remains silent.
She walks back to her apartment.
When the bones of her feet break apart, she crawls.
She refuses to walk inside the apartment lobby as it is, so she scales the building using just her hands. Her legs dangle precariously in the strong wind of the evening, but finally she makes it to her window. She reaches in with her free arm and unfastens the latch, opening it and tumbling inside.
Finally, she detransforms.
She drags herself to the sofa and sits down. On her coffee table is a large canvas, along with some painting supplies—she had wanted to get her creativity flowing yesterday, but couldn't think of anything.
Now she has the perfect picture.
She stretches her arm out and grabs her paintbrush and palette, dipping into her blue paint first. She traces a single stroke over the beautiful blank canvas, leaving a shining hint of what will be a tsunami.
ReaderMarz: Sorry about the lack of girl-with-girl interaction here-that's coming up, though. We're through the least romantic chapter in the entire story (so far), and Haruka and Michiru are going to interact more starting with the next chapter (once Michiru recovers, of course), so you'll get your girl-with-girl eventually.
imjce: Pluto really is shaping up to be kind of creepy, isn't she? First she kisses Michiru, then she appears on her balcony and watches her sleep before giving her a magic stick, then she appears as Michiru's nurse and tells her to cut open her own hands, and I was actually planning to have her materialize in the middle of Michiru's apartment in the last chapter. (That got cut, though.) And I'm pretty sure Serenity provides same-sex benefits, considering that all of the most popular couples are lesbian couples.
FaintFiction: Thank you!