The loud sound hurled her from her thoughts. Someone was stepping along the tables, shooting a gun into the air. Ami put her fingers into her mouth and bit them. Her breath seemed more like it was strangling her with each labored breath. She tasted blood and realized that she had bit on her fingers so hard that she had broken skin.
The gunman's feet stopped at the side of Ami's table and grabbed Miya's shoulder. The girl had tears streaked down her face, and didn't meet his eyes, as if he had slapped her across the mouth. The gun slid down and with a loud pop, Miya lay on the floor in a growing pool of blood. Ami simply stared at the body of her friend, and then began to scream.
Where?
Minako was lost in the squirming press of students. The gunman had moved off to another side of the school, but he could be lurking in the halls. This thought dully entered Makoto's brain, and then flitted away again.
"Ma…Makoto…"
"What?" Makoto looked about, holding her friend for dear life.
"What are we going to do? Oh, Minako! MINAKO! And AMI, Mako, AMI! Where ARE they? Oh God…God…" Usagi began to break down, falling onto her knees and burying her face in her hands. Her locket fell from her bow and landed with a clatter on the floor beside her. Usagi felt around for it and picked it up, grasping it as if it may be able to save her from the insanity around her.
Makoto tried to hold on to her thoughts, but they left her. She could see her parents, their smiling faces, their beckoning hands, her friends, the fights they had been through…..Ami, Rei, Usagi, Minako…..did it all come down to this? To be simply struck down and forgotten as you drowned in your blood and the blackness and the reality of no future?
Then death came rounding the corner.
Usagi looked up and shrieked. She stood, and lifted her legs to run. The gunman raised his weapon and shot, pulling Usagi back to the ground. Her arm fell out and the locket clattered loosely from her fingers, cracked round the pearly edges.
Makoto screamed out of anger and anguish. She grasped at Usagi, screaming and crying, Usagi's blood spilling over Makoto's hands and onto her school skirt. Makoto began to shriek and yell, her shrieks turning to sobs that wrenched through her body and shook her very being. Her cries for help echoed across the empty corridors, with no one to comfort her.
"Our future….our future."
Makoto reached over and picked up the locket and held it close, trying the hardest she had ever done to feel the presence and essence of Usagi, the Princess of the Moon, who was fading like the stars in the sky.
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A/N: Where's Minako? How will each of the Senshi handle this? Find out in the next chapter of High Velocity! Also, on a silly artistic note, I've been listening to "Ave Maria" by Charlotte Church while writing this story, and it gives it a very good effect, especially in this chapter. Sort of a little soundtrack, if I should say. It gives it a nice touch, and it's classical, so it's fairly easy to listen to while reading. Just a thought ^_^