This is a bit of a different fanfic than I'm used to writing. I thought it was an interesting premise, so I decided to write it. Here go the disclaimers: I don't own Sailor Moon, so don't sue me, yada yada yada…

Anyway, if you want to email me, it's at Guardian4@atlantic.net. However, PLEASE put Fanfiction or something like that in the subject line. I get a lot of junk mail and I may just delete it without reading it otherwise, though I won't mean to.

Onto the story…

Angelic Embrace

Part 3

When Makoto woke up the next morning, it was with a contented but anxious feeling. As she got out of bed, she felt a sense of purpose, something she hadn't felt for a long time. She sighed deeply, but she was in no way backing down. She would find the house that the note said to go to and she would find her answers. She had to.

The door opened and Nick entered, a rather stiff smile on his lips. "Where are you going today?"

Makoto picked up the business card that was always in easy reach of her hand and showed it to him. "To that address."

"Why don't we come with you? We will, but we have to stop to see Kris's friend."

"I don't think so. We barely know each other after all and I was born here, even though I wasn't back for six years. I know where I'm going."

"It's not that we're trying to show you where you're going, but…" He trailed off.

Makoto's eyebrow rose a bit. "You really want to come with me, don't you?"

He shrugged, an almost helpless look on his face as he struggled to put into words his reasons for wanting to go with her. She relented. "I guess so, but what I do probably won't mean a thing to you."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," he muttered under his breath as he left, something she was not intended to hear, she was sure. She frowned. Now what was that supposed to mean?

They were waiting for her in the main room of the rented room they stayed the night in. "Unfortunately, even though we are to accompany you, you must accompany us first. To the hospital to see my friend," Kris said.

"I'm not sure I can wait that long," she said. "This is very important to me, where I'm going."

"This is important to me," he told her warningly.

She sighed. It had been ten years; she could wait a few more hours surely, couldn't she? She had thought so, until they were settled in Zale's car, heading, at the speed limit, to the hospital. As they walked to the room, she was on the verge of telling them she was just going to leave when she saw the man.

She gasped. Even though he much gaunter and paler, it was still him. The man in her dream on the plane and the dream she'd had last night. The same one, meeting with the man and talking again.

"You must hurry. Evil forces draw near to harm her. I cannot do anything. For ten years I've been trapped here, tormented with the nearness of her and being unable to comfort, touch, or even see her."

She found herself growing senselessly angry at this evil force that was coming. "Who is she?"

"You know who she is."

And indeed, Makoto found that she knew. The blonde-haired girl in the white dress, who smiled like the sun and loved all she met. The girl who called to her for help and who she would give her life for, to protect.

"Makoto? Makoto!"

Makoto started and looked at Nick, who watched her almost suspiciously. She found herself breathing heavily and her eyes again snapped to the man who never moved, always breathed easily, in sleep.

"What's the matter?" asked the distant voice of Jace. "You acted like you know him. Do you?"

It was so confusing. She felt as if she did, but long ago. Yet she'd seen him recently, but it was not him. She clutched her head in her hands. "I don't know," she cried softly. She took a deep breath and straightened after a moment, her eyes hard emeralds. "The only way to answer that question is to find my answers, the reason I came to Japan after six years and no plan to return in the near future before she came."

"Who?"

"You'll see if you 'accompany' me." She strode stiffly from the room and out to Zale's parked car. A moment later, the four men were there, watching her cautiously and with a gleam in their eyes. She didn't want to know the meaning of that gleam; she had too many questions as it was.

The house she came to was a relatively small house. It had a pale red roof with a large, stone wall around it. There was bronze gate that was closed with a very thick looking padlock. There was a garden inside that looked to be tended to lovingly. It was startlingly quiet.

Slowly Makoto got out of the car, the men following her example. She closed the door and pressed a ringing button on the wall on the right side of the gate. The brown door opened and a woman with long, dark blue hair stepped out, wearing a dark blue skirt and a white top with an apron over it. Makoto had the overwhelming thought that, while the clothing practically never changed, the woman had.

"Hello," she said, sounding neutral.

The woman walked closer to the gate. "Hello," was the wary reply.

Up close, the woman had dark circles under her eyes, a testament of long suffering grief and many nights crying. The tears had worn a path down her cheeks and under her eyes, like water wearing down rock.

"I was told to meet someone…around here. May we come in for a few minutes? I promise you we won't be here long."

She nodded and unlocked the gate. "My name is Tsukino Ikuko. And yours is?"

"Kino Makoto."

They entered the house, a somber group. In the living room, a tall man sat with dark brown hair reading a newspaper, graying much more than what Makoto should have thought he would look at his relatively young age, if it matched the woman's. Grief had made them both older, she decided. Whatever had happened had been so traumatic that it changed them even physically. She almost shuddered at the prospect.

Next to him, on the divan lounged a teenage man, verging on sixteen or seventeen, she guessed, perhaps more. With the grief aging everyone in the house, it was hard to tell ages. He had tan eyes, much more somber and suspicious than one should be at any age. He was a lanky fellow, practically sprawled across the green couch while the man who could only be his father sat in the matching chair next to one of the armrests.

"This is my husband Tsukino Kenji and my son Shingo."

The woman, Ikuko, had so quietly entered behind them that Makoto started nervously as she found the shorter woman standing next to her, which wasn't hard to do. She had had another massive growth spurt when she graduated high school. She had met very few adult men who topped her now. Nick did, as did the other three men, Jace nearly even with her though.

"Hello," she said dutifully, though in truth she was feeling the atmosphere in the house. It was full of sorrow and pain, a situation unresolved. Normally she wasn't psychic or anything of the sort, but even she could feel uneasy at the mental vibrations from the house. Something terrible and earth-shattering had happened.

Shingo stood up and he came to her chin, a not so surprising fact to her since he was quite lanky. "Hello. Who are you?"

His voice held slight suspicion hidden deeply. Makoto inclined her head toward him. "Kino Makoto."

"What do you do for a living, Miss Kino?" asked Kenji as he put down his paper, a very deep voice that seemed to be the age of father time though it gave the hint of being much younger years ago.

She shrugged. "The only thing that could be termed as a profession that I do, I guess, would be street fighting. I go all over the world and fight in tournaments. My pseudonym is Jupiter."

Shingo nodded. "I've heard of you. You're becoming quite famous in the fighting community."

A spark was in his eyes, the same with his parents. There seemed to be a lightening in the atmosphere, a tad bit of…hope? Why were they hoping for something? And did they think she could provide it?

"You said you go all over the world?" began Ikuko. Rather cautiously, Makoto noticed.

"Yes."

"You haven't seen a blonde woman with a strange hairstyle of odangos with two twin streamers falling down to her knees or lower than that now, would you?"

Makoto started at the description. She knew that description and knew the girl they were referring to. The woman in her dreams. "I…can't answer that right now. I might have…might have seen her, but until I meet with the person who I came to meet with, I won't have any answers, not for me nor you."

Most of the hope dissipated, but not all. There was a lingering bit that refused to leave. Ikuko begged of them to sit down and fetched some tea. They did so, talking of other things instead of the mysterious girl and the woman Makoto was to meet, though it was forefront in all of their minds.

Finally, Makoto stood up and wandered to a shelf embedded in the wall. She had never sat down well for long periods of time. She had always had the feeling that she had a place to go and sitting wasn't taking her anywhere. Maybe the reason I was always wandering over the world was not because of the championships, but because I was searching for the place that I needed to be. I never realized that place was the very place I left from.

She picked up a picture frame that contained four smiling people. Kenji and Ikuko looked much younger, Kenji have the barest strands of gray in his hair. Shingo himself looked to be no older than eight. And there she was, a much younger her, but still her. The girl in her dreams. The blonde girl who loved everyone, with the deep sapphire orbs staring at her with so much laughter and life.

"Is this your daughter? Where is she now?" Makoto asked, never taking her eyes off the picture. Perhaps if she could find their daughter, she would be able to find why she occupied her dreams and why she felt such allegiance to such a small creature who looked so delicate.

The stiff silence behind her made her turn. The family stared at her. Slowly Shingo stood up and gently took the picture from her hand. "That's my sister, Usagi. She's been missing for ten years now."

"Ten years…" she whispered, her eyes going unfocused. "Why does everything come to ten? What does it all mean?"

A hand gripped her elbow and brought her back to the present. Her eyes locked with Nick's and she felt the presence of the olive woman for barely a moment. It was unmistakable.

With a hurried 'excuse me', she burst out the door. The olive woman was nowhere in sight, but she hadn't left the tall woman bare-handed. On the pavement just inside the gate was a note. Slowly Makoto picked it up, feeling the stares of the four men behind her burning a hole in her back.

On the inside of the folded paper was a short sentence. 'Come to Juuban Park if you want your answers.' She turned around abruptly and stalked back into the house, seething with anger. How dare that woman! Leaving her clues like some kind of mad murderer leading on the police, taunting her!

She snapped up her bag and threw it over her shoulder. "I have to go now, to get my answers…and perhaps yours. I will be back. I promise."

They nodded, the Tsukino family, Ikuko's eyes shining with hope, Kenji and his son with suspicion and doubt. Slowly Makoto left the house and sat down in the front seat of the car while the men joined her.

"To Juuban Park," was all she said to them and her set jaw line prevented any kind of question.

End of Part 3