Fear of
Flying
by Joshua Falken
Thanks to BenRG for beta-read this chapter :-)
Chapter 2
A battle of wills was in progress in the Crown Arcade. Andrew Hawkins, one of the staff, observed with worry the discussion between Serena Moonlight and Lita Maxwell. The two girls had locked gazes defiantly. Of course, neither one wanted to give up.
He noted that they hadn't even touched in the two chocolate sundaes in the tray that he had taken to them. For Serena, this was unprecedented.
Lita drew in a deep breath. Trying to convince Serena that she was pursuing a bad idea was not easy when the blonde girl was in her 'hurricane-state - but she had to try. "Serena, I know that you want to help me, but I don't want to go on any course to beat my fear of flying!"
"But why not, Lita?!" Serena exclaimed with emphasis.
"Well... because... because I don't want it!" The tall girl exclaimed desperately. Serena closed her bright blue eyes and banged her head against the table. It was in that state that their friends, Amy Anderson, Raye Schelle and Mina Love found them.
"Hey, what's going on?" Amy asked the two girls.
Raye, noticing the state of their leader, smirked. "What happened, Ondango?" she asked ironically. "No money for the video-games?"
Serena looked up at the black-haired novice priestess and stuck her tongue out. "No, Raye. It is that I am trying to convince this young lady to..." The blond girl pointed at the place where Lita was a few seconds ago and then realised that the tall brunette had disappeared. "Hey! Where is she?" The other three Inner Senshi looked around themselves in shock. They hadn't noticed Lita's departure either.
"Do you mean Lita?" Andrew asked.
"Yes. Did you see her?"
"Well, while you were talking to Raye, she picked up her purse and left slowly and quietly."
Serena sighed. Amy, trying to understand what was happening, asked. "What were you and Lita talking about?"
"Nothing at all. It was just something between us." Serena didn't want to betray the trust that the Senshi of Lightning had put in her. "Well, I'm going now. See ya!" She said, getting up from behind the table.
"Hey, Serena! Aren't you going to eat the sundae?" Mina asked in surprise. The leader of the Senshi just couldn't resist chocolate!
"No, you can eat it," Serena said in a distracted tone of voice. With that, left the Crown Arcade at full speed.
For a long moment Amy, Mina and Raye looked at each other, trying to understand what they had seen. Amy pulled out her miniaturised computer and pressed a few buttons. "Yes, that was her," she said at last. The three friends looked at each other again, shrugged helplessly and then Mina and Raye began to eat the two untouched sundaes.
"It would be a waste to let it to melt," Raye commented to Amy, who just looked upward in disbelief. When the two girls were ready to leave Crown Arcade, Andrew presented them with a piece of paper.
"What is that?" Mina asked.
"The bill for the two sundaes."
"What?!" Andrew leaned away from Raye's furious shout. For a few moments he was sure that he saw flames dancing in the black-haired girl's violet eyes.
"Serena and Lita ordered them but they didn't eat them or pay for them. Since you two ate the two sundaes..."
Amy Anderson covered her eyes with the hand, when seeing her friends react in surprise and disbelief. She sometimes had the impression that even God was surprised with the predicaments in which they managed to get...
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Later in that day, Lita had arrived in her apartment. She closed the door and leaned against it. It was getting more and more difficult to escape Serena. All right, she understood that her best friend and princess wanted help her, but even so...
She shook her head and decided to see TV. Who knows? Seeing some Love Hina might distract...
"Oh no!" Lita exclaimed when seeing what was showing on the TV.
"Are you afraid of flying? Can't you even think of boarding an aeroplane?" the narrator said, while in the screen appeared the image of a Lockheed L-1011 Tri-Star soaring into the distance, beautifully back-lit by the sunset. "We, at CrossPacific Airlines, have the solution! In our "Fear of Flying" course, you will finally..." The brown haired girl turned off the TV set, congratulating herself at not using her Thunderclap Zap attack to blow the treacherous appliance into shrapnel.
It was too much coincidence!
Lita laughed. "Come on, Sailor Jupiter! Serena would not be able to do that!" Then her laughter was substituted by a concerned expression. "I mean, I don't think so..." She looked over her shoulders, half-expecting to see Serena standing on the balcony of her apartment, grinning at her.
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"A penny for your thoughts." Darien Shields said in ear of his girlfriend.
"Huh?" Serena Moonlight moved her eye from the eyepiece of the telescope and turned to look into her prince's blue eyes.
"Well, love, I only wanted to know what is happening. First, you ask me to go to the Tokyo International Airport so that you could check something. Then, we came here, in the Tokyo Tower for a date. But since we arrived here, you have just stared into the distance with that 'overloaded auto-exchange' expression, that you always use when you are planning something in your beautiful little head." He calmly explained.
"'Overloaded auto-exchange expression?'" She asked, divided among confusion and surprise. Luna, who had insisted on accompanying them, smiled.
Darien smiled his dangerous devilish smile that was guaranteed to make Serena's knees feel weak. "When you are like this, we have to call several times before we can get a connection with you." Now, Luna laughed openly - well, as openly as was possible in the Observation Deck at the very top of Tokyo Tower, which was full of tourists.
The blond girl decided to play the offended one. "Well, in this case perhaps you should wish for a dedicated satellite 'phone line," she snapped waspishly and turned her back on him.
Darien knew the mercurial moods of his love very well. He also knew very well how to change her mind. He hugged her kindly from behind and whispered smoothly into her ear provoking a burning blush on the girl's cheeks. "I don't think so; I wouldn't change this connection for anything in the world."
Serena smiled and turned to kiss Darien. An old security guard at the side of the elevator smiled before the scene. "Yes, the Tokyo Tower is indeed a place for romance..." he thought, recalling the time that he kissed his wife in that same place...
"So, what is worrying you, Serena?" Darien asked.
She sighed. "It's Lita, Darien." Serena explained everything about the fear of flying of her friend and how she wanted to help. She even showed a pamphlet that had got in the airport.
He was silent for a while, before replying. "I understand what do you want for Lita, Serena. But you can't force anybody to take a treatment that they don't want."
"I know, Darien." she said sadly. "It is that I wanted to do some thing for Lita. I know that cannot turn back the clock and save her parents - I don't need Christina to tell me that. Then I thought that perhaps..." She stayed in silence and turned in direction of the illuminated city.
Darien kindly lay her head on his shoulder. He was thoughtful for several minutes, before speaking. "Perhaps there is a way."
Serena looked at him in surprise.
"Why is it that those words scare me...?" Luna thought uneasily.
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One week later, in the Crown Arcade, Lita Maxwell was the target of the implacable will of five girls, three young women, a young man and two cats. The objective of the verbal artillery was to convince her to take that course. In a heroic effort, the target tried a last defence.
"But. people... that course must be very expensive, and I don't have that money!" Well, now I want to see how they will rebut that argument!, she thought.
But they rebutted. "Well, we got half of the money and Darien agreed to pay the other half." The only man of the committee thought that that was one of the few moments that being the heir of a publishing corporation was useful...
Recognising defeat (after all, the continuos attack of the 8 sailors, Darien, Luna and Artemis were irresistible - even for somebody with iron will as Sailor Jupiter), Lita picked up a white napkin of the table and shook it.
Everybody cheered their victory at the same moment, making everyone else in the Arcade stare at their table.
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"I don't believe that I agreed," Lita thought in astonishment. Here she was, in a special room in own CrossPacific Airlines' headquarters, in downtown Tokyo, awaiting the first class of the Fear of Flying course!
She looked around the room: it had more or less 20 people. A man, a little overweight, was chain-smoking his way through a pack of cigarettes. An old lady held a small cross in her lap and was fiddling with it nervously. A young man was quickly tapping his right foot. "Well... at least I'm not the only one who wants to run from this room," she consoled herself.
The door of the room opened up and two people entered. One was a short black haired woman with grey, confident eyes, with the blue, green and silver uniform of flight attendant of the company - she reminded Alex, in Lita's opinion. The other was a woman with long red hair and serene green eyes, wearing a conservative blue suit with the symbol of the airline company. The redhead went to the front of the room and spoke, while the other woman handed out a small book to each of those present.
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the CrossPacific Airlines Fear of Flying Course. Our company is happy in help you in your decision of facing your phobia. I'm Dr. Kasumi Kanawabe, psychologist. My function is helping you to face your fear of flying with relaxing and encouraging techniques. My colleague, who is giving the books with the course schedule is Chief Flight Attendant Veronica Archer. If any of you have any doubts about the practical aspects of the flight, she is the master of the subject."
The flight attendant smiled at the psychologist as she went to the front of the room. "Well, before everything, " Archer said, "I think that is better we get to know each other. Let's start with you" She pointed at the chain-smoking man.
" Well, when in Rome..." Lita thought, resigned.
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In the middle of the darkness of a universe where life as we understand it could not exist, a negative universe, a Negaverse, a very tall man in a blue military uniform strode down a black glass hallway towards his destiny. His face did not show the fear that filled his dark heart.
"General Darkblade!" a seductive and soft, but at the same time, cruel and implacable voice made him stop in his tracks.
The man, General Darkblade of the Negaverse, perhaps the best strategist of that realm, immediately knelt and looked downwards. Before him, the shadows that were the essence of this unnatural place seemed to take a solid form before him. It was Tenebra, the Shadow-Woman, the Negaverse's ultimate leader - or more accurately the living embodiment of the Negaverse itself! She calmly walked over to her servant, who continued to look fixedly at the ground. Each of her steps sounded like one of a high-heeled shoe, and cracked the glassy floor beneath her feet.
"My dear General Darkblade, your attempts in taking the vital energy of the human beings of the dimension that mirrors our own have not produced the results that you promised me."
"I regret that, my Mistress." Darkblade replied, sweating in terror. "I don't understand how the Senshi could have..."
Tenebra gently touched the man's back. Instantly, unimaginable agony filled every nerve ending. The shadow woman watched for a few moments, smiling in pleasure at her servant's pain, before finally releasing him. "I am not interested in your excuses! I want that energy... NOW!"
"Yes, my Mistress, I understand. I have a new plan to capture their vital energy."
"A plan?" There was a great deal of irony in the demonic woman's voice. "I am curious to know it."
"I noticed that was repeating the mistakes of my predecessors. We have tried to extract the energy of several human beings by creating extreme situations of psychotic behaviour or the energy of an only human being was taken through an obsession pushed beyond the limits. In all these cases, there were signs of our influence that our enemies could identify. But, if we extracted the vital energy during a situation in which they spend this energy naturally, they won't suspect our involvement."
"General Darkblade, I hope your plan has success, but if you fail..." In that instant, the glass floor shattered under the man's feet and he had to grab the broken edge so as not to fall into the abyss of Negaverse. Tenebra calmly stepped onto his hands and ground the sharp point of her high heels into his flesh. "If you fail, you will beg me for death before the conclusion of your punishment. Do you understand?"
"Yes!" Darkblade nearly shouted.
"Continue with your plan." Tenebra simply turned and walked away, each step cracking the glass, without any hint that she cared about her General's precarious situation. When he finally managed to clamber back into the glass hallway, Tenebra had disappeared, melting once again into the fabric of the Negaverse.
Darkblade looked at his bleeding, lacerated hands.
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One week later, at Haneda International Airport, in Tokyo, two air stewardesses of Southern Asia Airways talked waiting for the call for their flight. "Patricia, I have go to the bathroom, ok?"
"Ok, Lenore, I'll catch up with you on the 'plane."
When she entered the bathroom, the stewardess didn't notice that a woman in a red dress and with a cruel smile who had followed her, closing the lock of the door of the bathroom. The stewardess only had time of seeing two red shoes below the door of the stalls cubicle before the intruder kicked the door.
"Hey! Who are...." The woman in red clamped her gloved hand over Lenore's mouth. And then transformed in a monster.
The young stewardess didn't have time to scream, before the creature sucked out her life-force...
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Patricia saw her friend ran onto the plane.
"Lenore, where were you?! We are ready to take off!"
"Sorry!"
"OK. Close the door."
Patricia didn't notice the cruel smile on Lenore's face as she closed the hatch. Nor, the unnatural purple light in her eyes.
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Serena and Darien read the front page article of Tokyo Daily News: Aeroplane Crashes in Hokkaido - 78 killed. According to the article the Southern Asia Airways Flight 516 had crashed in Hokkaido island killing 78 people and hurting seriously other 23 passengers.
"My God, what a terrible thing!" Darien murmured.
"Do they know what caused it?" Serena asked.
"No. The investigators are in the dark: they only know that the aeroplane lost communication, made several abrupt manoeuvres and finally crashed. They are still searching the black boxes."
"Boxes? I thought that the aeroplanes had just one black box."
"Actually, they have two: flight data recorder - FDR - and the cockpit voice recorder - CVR." A voice said. The couple looked up to see Lita Maxwell sitting opposite them. They immediately hid the newspaper.
With a great droplet of sweat appearing at the side of her face, Serena turned to her friend. "So, Lita, how is the course going?" Lita had already been attending the course for about a month and a half.
"It's going well," Lita replied nonchalantly. "We're going to the airport to see a Boeing 747-400 tomorrow. And Serena, I already know about yesterday's accident."
"Really?"
"Yes, really." Lita sat down at the table. "The instructors talked to us about that."
"I understand."
"But this accident is very strange!" The brown haired girl affirmed. "Aeroplanes with problems don't make the manoeuvres that the flight 516 did! Those abrupt ascents and descents were 'porpoising'... They don't make sense." Lita shook the head.
"Porpoising?" Darien asked, confused.
"It is a technical term," Lita said in a detached manner. "It is when an aircraft suddenly keeps ascending and descending. Something like that could, and usually does, create structural loads that can rip the wings off or cause the fuselage to break in two. I have heard of several cases where instrumentation problems caused it to happen, but this happened in clear air in the broad daylight. Any decent pilot could have prevented it."
Darien was impressed with her knowledge of aeronautical engineering. "Perhaps that aeroplane hadn't been maintained properly." Serena suggested.
"Perhaps..." Lita didn't seem convinced.
Darien closed the newspaper, before reading that they had found stewardess Lenore Castela, that should have been in the Flight 516, in a comatose state, in one of the bathrooms of Tokyo International Airport. The case was particularly puzzling as the same woman was listed amongst the dead and missing of the air crash.
To be continued
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