Chapter 6
Usagi looked around at the slow moving landscape,
they had caught a ride with a man who let them ride in his cart
and they were going about 5 miles per hour...fun.
"Wufei, we're never going to get there if this guy doesn't
hurry up." Usagi whispered.
"Usagi, you don't have to whisper, he can't understand
you." Minako said, Keika nodded and shifted around in the
hay.
"Onna, you shouldn't be complaining! Aren't you glad you off
that plane?" Wufei said, sounding a bit annoyed.
"Well, yeah, but we've been in this...cart for the last two
hours! How much longer?" Usagi asked, and Wufei sighed. He
then started talking in rapid Chinese to the old man who was
driving the cart, and then looked back at Usagi after the man
gave his answer.
"About 10 minutes. Can you live with that?" Usagi
nodded and sat quietly.
***
Haruka sighed, annoyed, and made a grab for the
remote. Once she had it in her possession she smirked evilly and
turned the channel from Duo's subtitled 'Veggie Tales' to the
news.
"Hey! I was watching that you meanie!" Duo yelled from
his position on the floor.
"Now we're watching this. Get over it."
"Rei...." Duo whined, Rei wrinkled her nose at him, she
was trying to concentrate.
"Why don't you just quit complaining and go back to the
Temple!?" Haruka yelled, holding on dearly to the remote.
"Because it doesn't have a TV!" Duo made a
wild effort to grab the remote from Haruka, but missed.
"I'm going back to the temple." Rei said, taking
Haruka's idea. "I have to do some fire readings
anyway...something feels odd."
"Could it be what Keika was talking about earlier?"
Haruka asked, surrendering the remote to Duo, who held it
happily.
"I don't know. It's strange..." Rei said, thinking a
bit, "but I haven't had any visions about what Keika was
talking about...nothing at all."
"That is strange." Michiru said from the desk.
"Are you having a mental block?"
"No, I have had visions...just not of that." Said Rei,
"Well, I'm going. Duo, you'll have to find your own dinner.
Haruka, tell Hotaru goodbye for me?"
"Sure," Haruka mumbled, crossing her arms and fixing
her eyes on a giant singing tomato. Rei opened the door and left.
Outside the wind was beginning to pick up, so Rei hugged her
small coat tighter around her. When she got to the house by the
temple she opened the door, seeing Ami studying at the table, she
quietly took off her shoes and changed them. Taking notice of the
phone messages, she changed into her temple robes and left
through the temple door to have a fire reading.
***
"Wufei, hurry!" Usagi yelled, jumping
off the cart.
"It won't get us there any sooner, Onna!" Wufei called,
thanking the man for the usage of his cart. He helped Makoto out
of the cart, and she continued to grasp his hand tightly even
after his attempts to get her grip off.
"So what are we going to do for housing, Wufei? We don't
have any Chinese money." Minako said.
"I know. But gold will buy anything around here." He
said and pulled out a little white sack.
"Oh."
"If we can find a little hut or something, we should be
fine. Since it's October, it will get colder faster."
"What if we can't fine 'a little hut'?" Keika
asked."
"We will. Trust me, the people here are very generous."
"If your sure..." Minako said, grabbing Makoto, who
whimpered a bit at the missed contact with Wufei's hand, but
stopped as Minako hushed her.
The group walked for almost a half hour before
they came into the main market square, Wufei immediately knew
what to look for, and before long he had made contact with a man
Usagi thought must be a salesperson. After about 10 minutes of
Wufei and the man's strange Chinese tones, Wufei scowled, but
pulled out his white bag and gave the man several gold nuggets.
The man smiled wildly, showing several missing teeth and motioned
Wufei to follow him.
"Come on, Onnas. This man is going to show us where we're
staying."
"You mean you didn't even get to see the place before you
bought it?!" Keika yelled.
"It's not how we do things here,"
"Isn't this a messed up Country..."
***
"What is it, Rei? You've been doing a lot of
fire readings lately." Ami asked, as soon as Rei came back
from the temple later that night.
"Something's wrong, but I can't put my finger on it."
"I know, and I think it has something to do with
Keika."
"You don't think she was telling us the truth...?"
"No...I don't."
...
"Hotaru!" Duo called from the kitchen,
"Do you know where Usagi put my game boy?! If she took it
with her, I'll be sooo mad!"
"It's in her room!" Hotaru yelled, sounding annoyed at
Duo...she was trying to get a good night sleep for once.
"Sure." Duo said, and walked into Usagi's dimly lit
room. It wasn't empty, Usagi and Keika's belongings were still in
their normal places...how was he supposed to find his freaking
game boy in here? The only light in the room was coming from a
drawer by Keika's bed. Being the curious Duo that he was, he
decided (against his better judgment, cough, cough) to open the
door and find out what exactly Keika did with her time.
What he saw when he opened it, however, was a perfect model of
the solar system as it was. Shining perfectly, it floated above
the bottom of the drawer, and turned and sparkled in
magnificence. The planets were there, each, a perfect sphere in
the model. Who was Keika exactly? The model started to turn and
twist until it was deformed, and the Moon was a dark shade of
gray, the other planets had lost their color as well, and the sun
didn't shine. The planet of ruin, Saturn, was glowing with a dark
light...Keika obviously wasn't who she said she was, but could
this be another prediction? Duo closed the door and ran out of
the room quickly.
"Hey Heero! H-heero Yuy, where the hell are ya when I need
ya?!" Duo yelled, while running around through the house. He
found Heero sitting in the livingroom watching the news by
himself -- Haruka had abandoned the TV. "Heero,
buddy..." Duo said, Heero tried to silence him with a hand,
he was intent on watching the news, but Duo persisted. "What
does 'Keika' mean in English...how is it translated
exactly?"
"Light of a firefly." Heero said, his eyes still on the
television screen.
"And 'Hotaru' means firefly?" Duo asked, and didn't
give Heero time to nod before the color drained from his face.
"Oh shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!!"
"Duo...what...?"
"I got to go, man...be back later!" Duo yelled and
headed for the door. "Shit...shit..."
***
"I have been having my own suspicions about Keika,
Rei." Ami said, and motioned for Rei to sit down. She turned
her computer around so it faced Rei. "See, Keika says that
she came from the Moon Kingdom. Well, she didn't say it outright
or anything, but that's what you gather from it, right?" Rei
nodded. "Well, Luna and Artemis...they didn't come from the
Moon Kingdom, they came from a different planet. Keika has told
us next to nothing about herself except for the fact that she was
here to protect Usagi. She hasn't said if she came from the
future, she didn't say that she came from the past, and she would
have found us had she been reborn with us...plus, when Luna and
Artemis were around, they didn't mention anything about
her."
"What are you saying, Ami? You think Keika could be the
enemy."
"Well, no...I'm not. There's no sufficient evidence that she
is, but nothing adds up. She told us about the vision that was in
Hotaru's room, and she says that she's here to help Usagi, yet
she didn't tell us exactly what the vision meant. Plus there's
that bit about her turning human that just doesn't make
sense..."
***
Usagi looked around the hut, which was lighted by only the
sunlight coming into the window. It was a three roomer. No, not
three bedrooms. There was one bedroom, a living area and a
kitchen...the bathroom was outside.
"We would do better to live in a tent..." Keika
muttered, sounding sour. Her purple eyes suddenly got black
clouds over them, that Usagi had never seen before.
"What is it Keika?" Usagi asked.
"Oh...I think I must have left something back in the
market....I need to go get it." She said and hurried out the
door.
"Suit yourself." Usagi said, and took another look
around. It looked rather cozy to her, and nice.
...
"What's wrong, Minako?" Usagi asked Minako about a
half hour later...Keika had still not returned.
"Something..."
"What?"
"Where did Keika say she was going again?"
"To get something she left at the market, why?"
"Usagi...Keika didn't bring anything with her." Minako
said.
"Then where did she go?"
"She went to find her firefly." Makoto said from the
floor, where she had been playing with a few pieces of wood and
rocks.
"Her firefly?" Usagi asked, looking confused. What
firefly?
"Yes, she went home to get her firefly."
"Home?" Minako said. "To Japan?"
"How do you know?" Wufei said, turning around from the
water pump, Usagi could tell that he was getting suspicious...of
what, she still had to figure out.
"Because I saw her cloud." Makoto stated.
"Cloud?"
"Yes! Her cloud! Kitty went home to get firefly!"
Makoto said, she was getting flustered, she couldn't describe
what she wanted to in the way she wanted.
***
Duo 'walked' into the door of Rei's house by the temple.
"She...she...firefly, light of a firefly..."
"What is it Duo?" Rei asked, her head in her hands.
"Keika means 'light of a firefly' in English!! Hotaru means
'firefly' in English...that's why Heero calls Hotaru
'Firefly'!"
"Great, you figured out what Heero's pet name for Hotaru
means,"
"No wait! I went into her room and I found this thing! It
was like a model of the solar system...but it changed! It messed
itself up, and everything started to get all gray and
stuff..."
"You found something in who's room?"
"Keika's, in her bedstand drawer,"
"Light of a firefly..." Ami said, and thought for a
minute. "That vision that Usagi and Hotaru saw must have
been staged...fake..."
"What are you talking about Ami?"
"Keika isn't really here to help Usagi, she's here to
destroy her...she's Hotaru's dark light!" Ami exclaimed.
"So good of you to bring it out into the open, dear
Ami." Said a voice from the doorway. "Unfortunately,
you won't live to tell the tale." Keika held a ball of dark
purple light in her right hand, and it pulsed when she moved.
"What is this, Keika?!" Rei said, standing up.
"Sit. You will know in time. But I can't have you running
off to tell your little friends about me, can I?" She said,
and a piece of light from her hand snaked it's way around the
other three in the room, entwining behind their hands and pulling
them together.
"You can't just leave us here without an explaination!"
"Don't worry, I intend to give you a full explanation before
I kill you."