Chapter 8:
Pure Water, Destroyer, Lightning, Deep Water, Guardian of Time:
Ami and Hotaru were becoming restless. It had been nearly two hours since they had crammed themselves inside this too big SUV and still there was no sign of the so called "near by suburb" Sunnydale! Ami was beginning to wonder if Hamara was lost.
Just as she was opening her mouth to speak, the short blonde haired woman snapped out, "I am not lost Ami!"
'How did she do that?' Ami asked herself while closing her mouth, knowing it better than having another flytrap in the car.
Hotaru beside her was dozing lightly, sometimes her face scrunched in pain or fear and she whimpered from the nightmares Ami knew the girl was having. She often had the same dreams on her restless nights. Ami sighed and turned to look out the window again. She was surprised to almost immediately see a sign that said, "Welcome to Sunnydale". Ami smiled.
'I just hope it doesn't take two hours every time to get from L.A. to this Sunnydale,' Ami thought.
"It wasn't getting from L.A. to Sunnydale, it was getting from L.A.X. to Sunnydale that took two hours!" Hamara snapped again. Ami realized that she had spoken her thought aloud.
"Sorry Hamara," Ami apologized in English.
"You're English is very good Ami," Trista noted as Hamara tried to find her way through the small town. "Unfortunately, Hotaru's is not, you may have to play translator. Uranus, Neptune, and I may be too busy dealing with finding out this threat to be much use in that regard."
"Don't worry Pluto," Ami immediately comforted, "I'd consider it an honor. And I've been helping both Rini and Serena with their English in anticipation of their trip here to the States. I don't think Hotaru will be any worse of a student. She might even be better."
There were soft chuckles of agreement throughout the car at that, and then silence returned. Until Hotaru started to whimper again. To take their minds off of shared nightmares, Michelle asked Hamara, "Do you know where we're going? You have the address, right?"
"Ofcourse I remember the address," Hamara answered immediately, speaking with a gentler tone than when she snapped at Ami. "It's the occult shop on South Main Street. Called "The Magic Box" right?"
Magic Box:
Serena and all the other girls gapped at each other, while Marise and Buffy and Darien looked confusedly back and forth between their friends on the stairs and Serena and Rini. Rini had gotten to her feet when Dawn had come into sight, while Serena had gotten up to better explain to her friends what she was doing here, because they already knew that she was going to be in the States.
While the other girls spoke in Japanese to each other, catching up, which the Americans and those still researching tried to tune out, Rini and Dawn slowly stepped towards one another. Nobody really noticed this as strange, since the two were closer to one another's age than any of the others that were forced to hang out with.
"Uh, hi, I'm Dawn," the youngest Summers introduced herself.
Understanding the greeting, and that Dawn was probably not as fluent in Japanese as her sister (since that had more to do with magic than anything else) Rini just smiled, waved and simply said back, "Rini."
"Uh, so…how old are you?" Dawn asked, hoping to strike up some semblance of a conversation.
Rini paused for a moment, rolling her ruby red eyes upward in thought. Finally, after a minutes time she answered, "12."
Dawn frowned. Seeing that she was running head long into the language barrier, she tried a different tactic. "So how long has your older sister been a super hero?" she asked, unintentionally stopping all other conversations in the room with that one question.
Rini giggled, and without even realized answered in her native tongue. "Since she was about fifteen. She's nineteen now, in High School. We're out for Summer break and wanted a break from daemon fighting too, so we came to America to "get away from it all." Oh, and Serena's not my sister! She's my mom. I'm from the future. The 30th Century to be exact."
"Cool," Dawn answered back, not missing a beat and understanding every word as though it were English. "My sister's been a super hero since she was fifteen too. But I'm only like…maybe a year old. I'm a mystical Key made into human flesh by these monks to keep me away from this demon bitch named Glory. She's dead now, but I'm still the Key. Not that that means anything."
"DAWN!" Buffy shouted across the room.
"RINI!" Darien and Serena shouted across the room.
"Oops!" the two girls winced at their blunders and turned to face the wrath of their peers.
TBC…