Cats And Rabbits
I don't own Sailor Moon, or any of the characters, and all that fun stuff.
Thirteen:
Bunny slid into her seat at the servant's breakfast; the deep indigo of the sky hadn't yet been broken by the hazy grey predawn, and yet the dining area was alive with the friendly murmur of conversation. Here everyone got along, regardless of where they called home; Venusians joked with Plutonians, Lunarians flirted with Earthings, it was as though all of the trouble and intrigue from the outside died away.
When she had first ventured into this room Bunny had expected an uneasy murmur with chasms and divisions; the friendly murmur had thrown her off, thinking that the practiced court intrigue extended into the servants. It had taken a while for the blonde to understand that in the servant's hall no one really cared; they were all cut from the same cloth and happy to commiserate or sympathize. There was no room in the servant's hall for desperate grasping and maneuvering for power because this was a room full of the powerless.
Bunny sighed, feeling like an intruder, and ducked her head down to concentrate on the steaming porridge in front of her.
"Usagi-hime."
Bunny ignored the speaker, and grinned at her meal.
"Usagi-hime."
"You must have mistaken me for someone else." Bunny said idly as she continued to concentrate on tucking away her meal. "There is no Princess here, Matoko."
"Bunny, then."
The blonde looked up with a smile; a tall brunette stood, rolling her eyes, on the other side of the table. "Matoko! I'm so glad to see you, won't you join me?"
"I'd be honored." The brunette sighed dramatically, but gracefully seated herself across the table from the blonde.
"How is your sister?" Bunny grinned at the brunette.
"I have no sister." Matoko's face displayed genuine confusion.
Blue eyes rolled dramatically, "Gods you are so simple sometimes!" Bunny groaned. "Your twin, Matoko. How is your other self?"
Matoko's chin rose stubbornly as understanding dawned in her emerald eyes, "I'm not going to waste my meal talking to you about my other self! I'm here to talk about your other self!"
"I don't have one." Bunny's eyes hardened. "And even if I did, no one here has met her." She hissed.
"Fine then, Bunny-hime. I'm here to talk to you about you. I want to know what in Zeus's name is wrong with you!" The pair glared across the table at each other.
"As I said," Bunny hissed. "There is no Princess here."
Matoko dropped her green eyes to her own bowl, she looked as though she would melt the bowl to nothing with only the power of her anger. Bunny raised her eyes to look around the hall, watching as the hall's other occupants elbowed each other good naturedly. Her hard glare softened, "Do you ever feel as though we will infect them?"
Matoko looked up, confused by the blonde's regretful tone.
"Like we are intruding upon their peace, and we might end up rubbing our prejudices and mistrust on them? That one day we'll come down here, and they won't all be friends anymore? Like they would be better off without us?"
"You have to face reality; one day we will come down here and they won't be friends, but it won't be because we rubbed off on them. It will be because the royal families will tell them who to hate." Matoko propped her head up on her hands, "And it will be our fault; but you can only do so much to protect them."
The blonde groaned, suddenly more exhausted than she had been a moment before. She pushed her breakfast aside, and lay her head in her arms. "Look at them, Matoko; they are so blissfully ignorant, so free of prejudice. And I can't do a thing to protect that."
"You spend your life protecting them, don't judge yourself so harshly." Matoko reached across the table to squeeze Bunny's arm reassuringly. "And you are not alone. I am your friend. I will always be your friend."
"Thank you, Matoko." Bunny turned her head to grin half heartedly up at the other woman.
"Don't get me wrong, Bunny." The brunette continued her eyes hardening. "I may be your friend, but if you continue with this absurd plan to fight the Prince of the Earth I will have to hurt you... Not a lot, because you are my friend... But enough so that you will be unable to fight."
Bunny bit her upper lip, holding it between her teeth as she eyed the brunette. "I understand, but you must know if you try to stop me I will have to hurt you." She quirked an eyebrow in challenge, "Not a lot, because I like you, but enough that you will not be able to come after me to stop this fight."
"You know the prophecy as well as I do, Usagi-hime." Matoko whispered. "I cannot let the Earth and the Moon go into battle against each other."
Bunny ignored the fact that the brunette had called her Usagi-hime again. "That's what I am trying to stop, Matoko. The King loves his son; if I beat the Prince today then there is no way that the King will risk his son's life in a war against the Moon. It is the only way to make certain that the prophecy is never fulfilled."
"Is he your soul mate, Bunny?"
"No... No, of course not."
By the time Ami, Raye, and Minako left the Mare Serenitatis's apartments the sky over the palace was beginning to lighten with the breaking of a false dawn. They had spent the entire night sequestered in the Mare Serenitatis's study but hours of demanding, cajoling, begging, and pouting had left Ami no closer to understanding the Moon's wishes.
Now Ami was beset with the rather unsettling feeling that she had missed something important in the conversations more subtle undercurrents and foreign asides. The princess of Uranus had continued to look down upon the new trio as the result of her initial bad impression; most of her snide comments had been in the language Ami soon recognized as Neptunese, but Ami wasn't certain that not knowing was the best in this situation.
After parting with her comrades from Mars and Venus, Ami had begun to restlessly roam through the palace like a wraith.
She had realized in moments that Varrick Lunaris was not a Mare as he claimed, but rather the prince of the moon kingdom. At first it had seemed foolishly arrogant, and infinitely amusing, that the Moon expected its isolationist policies to result in complete ignorance on the part of the other planets. The name Varrick was common enough, but Lunaris was a last name that was particular to the Moon's ruling family. In a matriarchal society like the Moon the last name was passed from mother to daughter; Varrick would lose the name when he married, but at the moment the name branded him.
Her amusement at the paltry deception had stopped her mind, for a moment, as she relished the feeling of being the intellectually superior to the Moon's royal family and their advisors. It wasn't until later that Ami realized her mistake.
Lady Trinity, the Mare Serenitatis, and Varrick had manipulated the room with such amazing skill that Ami didn't even notice. The seemingly explosive tension between Haruka and Raye had acted with the heady feeling of being superior to distract Ami just enough. She guessed that Raye was distracted by her own anger and Minako was distracted by feeling completely inferior to the tall unbelievably stylish princesses from Neptune and Pluto. As it was, they asked only the questions that Trinity and Varrick wanted asked and thought only thoughts that were put in their heads through skillful maneuvering.
Outside the room, Ami was free to think and understand.
People who were so shockingly skilled at political posturing that they could dupe three planetary princesses into joining an alliance that they knew nothing about could not possibly be so stupid that they would overlook the importance of a name.
Ami tried to get her mind around a reason why the Lunarians would half-heartedly disguise the identity of their Prince. The only possible explanation was that the Moon Kingdom was hiding something bigger so that if someone poked around and was too close to discovering the secret the shock of the Prince's identity could distract the entire court from the initial investigation.
Guessing at what the bigger secret could possibly be was hopeless; none of Ami's theories could be reconciled with what she had seen and heard in the past few weeks.
The Lunarians could be hiding spies in their number, but that was hardly worth the risk to the Prince's life. If spies were discovered there were things that could be done, or not be done, to deal with the problem. Besides, any good spy would kill his or her self and make it look like an accident before being discovered. A dead body was not proof of anything.
The Lunarians could be moving into the final stages of preparation for a surprise attack on the earth. Ami discarded the idea almost before it had fully formed. A vision of a blonde maid glaring confidently across a dark storage room came to Ami's mind, "You should stand with the Moon because we do not want this war, we are here to protect the Earth, not invade it." The Blonde had seemed so sincere, it was hard to doubt her.
But the blonde maid was another one of the Moon's mysteries. Who was she? And how did she have the power to order around the sailor soldier of knowledge? How did she lack fear?
Something tickled the back of Ami's mind. She had done some quiet poking around and discovered that the maid's name was Bunny, that she was new, and that the Mare Serenitatis was very attached to her. It seemed important in some way, but Ami couldn't figure out how.
The roar of a crowd broke Ami from her reverie; she had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn't noticed that her feet had carried her out to the practice courts.
Taking in her surroundings made Ami cringe; the Earth had some of the most fantastic practice courts that she had ever seen, but she was forced to let her skills waste away because she way playing the part of helpless little princess. Now she would return to Mercury and have to work ten times harder to make certain that her skills were up to par.
Ami knew that she should continue her pretense of being a perfect princess, but she was inexplicably drawn to the crowd. In a testament to prevailing thoughts, no one gave Ami a second glance as she squirmed and elbowed her way into the center of the throng. On the practice courts she was not a princess because it was inconceivable for a princess to be near the practice courts, let alone squirming through a crowd in a most unladylike way for a better view.
By standing on her tiptoes and peering over shoulders Ami afforded herself brief glimpses of Prince Endymion. He was dressed in white linen pants and a plain linen tunic, and had a massive broad sword belted to his hips. Apparently, the crowd was responding to his hyper-masculine posturing.
Grinning Ami took the opportunity presented by another roar from the crowd to slip further in the crowd. It seemed as though she had accidentally stumbled upon the contest of skills that Minako had referred to the night before. She glanced over another broad shoulder and wondered which poor man was doomed to fight the Prince. Dressed so simply Prince Endymion seemed all the more commanding, he was more of a prince in the practice field that he was in the ballroom.
With another explosion of support Ami managed to free herself from the throng; she squeezed herself up against the practice ring's railing and took a deep breath only to have it leave in a rush when she surveyed the scene.
The sun was rising, a bloody red, in the cloudless sky. She knew that the morning star, her own planet of Mercury, was up there somewhere but the sun had already drowned out the light. In the west the half moon was clinging to the remaining darkness, colored a brilliant orange as it set.
The princess of Mercury desperately tried to keep her eyes studying the sky, watching as the dim stars died in the light of the sun, but her own curiosity dragged her eyes back to Earth.
Prince Endymion stood with the sun rise to his back, the red light glinting off of his black hair and white clothing. The figure that stood across from him was slight, dressed in black pants and a black tunic the sword belted to the figure's hips showed off an unmistakably feminine physique. Long blonde hair was bound into a bun at the nape of her neck. There was no mistaking this woman, even is she no longer wore a maid's uniform.
Bunny stood serenely gazing at the prince as the men around called to her crassly.
Ami bit her lip, wondering for a moment why everyone had assumed that the fighter from the Moon would be a male.
The first battle will be here, in our solar system.
"Princess Mercury! What a surprise!"
Ami raised a hand to her hair, self consciously when she heard Zoisite's voice. She suddenly regretted her decision. "My Lord."
"I'm surprised to see you here, Princess."
With her mind spinning behind her eyes Ami forced an uncertain smile. "I was attracted to the commotion, though I must say I'm a touch disappointed." Ami's eyes flickered back to the blonde in the ring, she knew that there was something important going on.
"I understand completely!" Zoicite murmured as he moved forward; everyone moved out of his way. "My cousin promised us some fun in this tournament, and now we discover that he is just going to beat up on a little girl. It's like shooting pet rabbits, where is the sport in that?" Ami noticed that Zoicite's smile didn't reach his eyes. "At least this one is aptly named."
Ami blinked. "Huh?"
"Her name is Rabbit... or Bunny... Or something strange."
"Rabbit?" Ami repeated, turning her eyes back to the blonde woman who was drawing her curved blade.
"Yeah. And what kind of a sword is that? My cousin will rip the paltry thing from her grasp in two moves."
"It's a katana." Ami responded vaguely; her mind was turning over the events from the past few weeks, rapidly moving over the way the maid had behaved and the way people had behaved around her. "Bunny." She looked around, feeling disoriented.
But if they fight it will bring ruin to the Solar System, because soul mates are not meant to be at war with each other.
It wasn't the hours spent quarreling in the Mare Serenitatis's rooms, or anything that anyone had said or done in the past weeks that made Ami understand. Everything clicked when she saw a distinctive aqua head squeezing through the crowd on the other side of the ring.
"Usagi means rabbit!" Ami's blue eyes snapped back to the blonde woman facing Prince Endymion. "Usagi-hime." Ami was frozen with awe, watching the Moon Princess move in slow motion. The glint of sunlight on naked steel brought her back to herself for the first time all night Ami knew what she had to do. "Zoicite, you have to help me stop them!" As Ami moved to climb over the fence a muscular hand caught her wrist.
"No."
If the Sailor Soldiers fail...
"What?" Ami's eyebrows drew together in confusion and anger as she tried to shake off Zoicite's hand. "We have to stop them! He'll kill her... He can't kill her..." Ami stuttered, her desperation making her unable to communicate.
A pair of steely arms wrapped around Ami's waist, pulling her away from the fence. "No, you can't stop him. This is the only way we'll get him back."
Panic burned Ami's eyes, she kicked back into her captors shin and smashed her elbow into his abdomen. "You don't understand!" She struggled away from the man who had grabbed her and started forward again, only to face off with Zoicite.
"No, you don't understand! Ever since those Lunarians arrived we have been losing him. He is going soft, and we don't need soft. He has the strength to take over everything, Beryl said so."
Ami took a step backward, momentarily taken back by the crazed glint in Zoicite's eyes. "He can't take over everything! All he'll succeed in doing is destroying the universe. You have to let me stop this!" She recovered from the surprise and moved forward again, only to be caught around the waist and dragged backward again.
"Stop fighting, Ami." Zoicite hissed. "He'll discover that those damn Lunarians are evil sons of bitches, and that life is either kill or be killed. He'll come back to us, he'll understand what his father wants. Then everything will be fine, and we can be together."
"No!"
So little one; should the Moon and the Earth ever meet in battle send for the Sailor Scout of knowledge as quickly as you can, because theirs is a battle to destroy the Universe.
Ami reached into her pocket and grasped a pendant, "Mercury... Planet..."
An anguished cry from the back of the crowd made Ami freeze as the clash of metal on metal rang through the court yard.