Author's Note:
Yes, another fanfiction. As before, the disclaimers go as follows:
My email address is Guardian4@atlantic.net. If you want to email me about my story, please put fanfiction in the subject line. Sailor Moon was made by Naoko Tacheuchi, I don't own it.
Also, Rei and Mamoru never went out, k? And Kunzite and Zoisite are not lovers. I also used the relationship between the Shitennou from the manga, not the anime, which means they don't hate each other. I also use only the manga attacks for the Senshi. (Since in the Manga, Mars doesn't have Fire Soul and only talismans in the first season, I'm going to borrow a second season one, even though she doesn't have her Star Power transformation.)
Hidden Truths
Chapter 16
Makoto rolled over in her sleep and buried her head under her pillow when the noise interrupted her. She knew it was her telephone and not her communicator; long ago, she'd learned to distinguish between them.
She opened an eye and looked at the clock. Nine a.m. Saturday. No reason to get up. Then her answering machine clicked on and she nearly had a heart attack as she listened to the dispassionate voice speaking her death sentence. They had found her.
"Kino Makoto, this is from the Social Services department. We have been informed that you are 16, and living without parental supervision. The money that you have been receiving from your parents insurance will be held back until such time that we find you a suitable home for you to live in. We will be by in two days to pick you up."
Beep.
"My GODS!" she screamed, panicking. "First Beryl and now this! My life sucks!"
She snatched up the phone, still wearing her pink and green pajamas, and punched in one of four different numbers that came into her head.
"Moshi Moshi?" asked a sleepy voice.
"Usagi-chan!" Makoto whined into the phone, her voice gone to new octaves in her distress. "They're going to take away everything! I can't pay my rent without the check and now they won't send it to me! You have to help me, Usagi-chan! Please!!"
By now, Usagi was thoroughly alarmed. "I have no idea what you're talking about Mako-chan, but I'll get the girls and we'll be there soon!"
Makoto paced nervously until the Senshi burst in through her window, ready to fight. While she was still upset, the irony of it all amused her. "As much as I'd like to see you all fry the Social Services department, I don't think the Senshi are that necessary."
Mars glared at Moon. "She said we had to be here pronto, that you needed help."
"I do," Makoto said, her amusement dying a quick death. "Listen!"
And they listened as they detransformed. "Oh, Mako-chan," Ami whispered as the beep sounded the end of the message.
"What am I going to do? I can't pay my rent without that check!"
"Have you really been hiding from them? For how long?" wondered Minako.
"Ever since my parents died. I was in the orphanage for a while, but when I turned 14, I sent a letter to the insurance, telling them to send the check to a new address and I moved in by myself. I've moved and hid carefully because the Social Services won't let their claws out of you until you're 18. They'll put me in a foster home, perhaps somewhere far away, and then I couldn't help you fight Beryl."
"It's true," Mamoru said quietly and his Shitennou looked at him in surprise. It was obvious they had not been told of his past, living in the orphanage. "They won't let you be until you are 18 and considered legally an adult."
"What do we do?" Rei asked at large.
"We can support her, money wise," Nate said hesitantly.
Makoto shook her head. "I don't want to do that, not if I can help it. I mean, I've been living on my own for a long while and I would like to be able to keep standing on my feet by myself. It's not that I don't appreciate the help, really I do, but…"
"You've made it so far by yourself, accomplished so much as it is, that you don't want to feel as if someone is taking it all away," Mamoru responded.
Makoto nodded, relieved that he could put her feelings into words.
"How do you know that, Mamoru-kun?" Jason demanded.
"Because I lived in an orphanage when my parents died."
"You never told us that!" Zale blurted out.
"I don't like to talk about it," was the short reply. His Shitennou wisely dropped the subject, though by their hard eyes Makoto knew it would be brought up again later that day, when the five men were alone. They really knew nothing about their prince, she thought.
"But what do I do now?"
"One of the men could play an uncle that you found," Usagi suggested.
Makoto shook her head. "They know I have no living relatives; they checked when my parents died, trying to put me with them instead of putting me in an orphanage."
"What about the Senshi visiting the…Well, that wouldn't work," Minako muttered.
"There's no way out of this. Even if I took financial support from anyone else, they would still look for a home for me and come get me anyway."
"Well we just have to hide you again," Jason said slowly.
"But without the check, I can't afford another apartment."
Rei put her hand on her shoulder and gave her a sad, wary look. "Mako-chan, I know you want to stand on your own feet and live on your own, but we need you to move so you can hide again. If you don't have the check, you'll have to accept help from Nate. None of us can afford for you to be placed in a foster home; we NEED you to fight with us against Beryl. But more than that, we need you with us as our friend. Who knows where they would put you if you were in a foster home."
Makoto sank down onto her sofa and put her head in her hands. "I know, you're right. I just didn't want…want to accept there was nothing I could do on my own."
"I understand how you feel, Mako-chan," Mamoru told her, "but I had to move on, realize I needed help and a new apartment, when the guys came. With all the attacks by Beryl, I don't have time to get a job, the one I lost when I was in the Dark Kingdom. Nate is supporting all five of us. I realized I needed help and when I accepted that help, nothing really changed. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages." He smiled at his newfound friends and guards.
"I guess if you put it like that…but how am I going to move all my stuff into a new apartment, let alone find one, in two days?"
"Come on, Mako-chan," Minako said brightly, "we're Senshi; we can save the world. Do you think we can't find you a place to live and move in, in two days?"
Makoto shrugged, not hoping. She should have had more faith.
The green Senshi fell full on her bed, thinking. Minako had been right, though by millimeters. They had really pushed it and found her a nice, low paying apartment in half a day, mostly because of Ami and Nate. They had spent the other half of that day and the next day dragging every single bit of furniture to that new apartment, setting record time for any moving crew.
Of course, that still left getting the stuff INTO the apartment, and a lot of her furniture was old and heavy and not even the five guys could carry it up the stairs, since her sofas and bed wouldn't fit in the elevator.
So when night had fallen, the Senshi and Shitennou had arrived to help out the struggling humans. It had been a fairly simple, but still heavy, procedure by the Shitennou and Tuxedo Kamen standards. They had ended up caring all the big stuff up 15 flights of stairs and to her new apartment. The other girls had brought the boxes and such up after.
She had tried, then, to convince them to go home, but they had insisted on staying and fixing up the apartment. The guys had moved furniture to her desired places while the girls unpacked and plugged in stuff as fast as they could.
But even with all the speed they had had, it was morning by the time they were done. It was also Wednesday, a school day. The girls had detransformed and jumped into cars to take them to their school. It had been a close call and they had barely made it on time. The day before, the girls had made a round of phone calls to parents saying sleepover at Rei's. Suspicious, Minako's father had called the Shrine and Rei's grandfather had covered for them when they had explained what was going on.
Of course, Luna had informed Makoto, Ami, and Usagi at lunch that the guys had immediately went to sleep when they got home. Artemis had been sent to Rei's school to inform her that Jason would not be picking her up that afternoon, as he was currently dead to the world in his bed.
Even studious Ami had fallen asleep a few times in class, nearly giving one of Usagi's teachers a heart attack. She had certainly fainted dead away and had had to be awakened by the principal himself.
As they had been leaving school and met up with Minako and Rei, another attack by Beryl in front of the TV station had forced them to fight. Makoto had to hand it to Jupiter and that strange but wonderful fuku. The girls had nearly been dead on their feet, but when they had transformed, it had given them a little energy in which to fight. They also had had to fight on their own because the guys didn't answer their communicators or show up.
But what was even worse, for Minako, Rei, Usagi, and Ami at least, was that they couldn't just sleep when they got home. It would be extremely suspicious if they had a sleepover the night before and didn't seem to sleep at all. Makoto, of course, had no such problem.
Yet when she had come home, she was too full of leftover energy from Jupiter to sleep it seemed, though her body pointedly refused to move at all. Her communicator beeped and she sluggishly managed to grab it. "Yes?" she mumbled into it. If Beryl attacked again, Makoto was ready to just let her have the goddamn world; she didn't care, she was so tired and she refused to get up, period.
"Makoto?" Nate's voice asked. "Are you all right? Sorry, none of the guys heard the communicator when it went off. Luna and Artemis just told us about the battle. Are you all fine?"
"Perfectly," she muttered, yawning and giving Nate a good view of her molars. "I'm just going to sleep now. You can have night watch if you don't go to bed tonight."
"All right. Get some sleep Makoto; we did a good job."
"Tell the other guys I said thanks for the help," she said before clicking off and falling asleep.
Nate tossed the communicator on the coffee table and looked up at his friends. "The only one I got on communicator was Makoto. I couldn't get a hold of any of the other girls, but Makoto said they were fine. She's going to sleep now because she didn't get any before. She also said to say that she thanks us for helping fix up the apartment."
"She's entirely welcome," Zale commented and sat down in one of the easy chairs.
"Nate, can we ask you something?" Jason said suddenly.
Nate then looked at them for the first time it seemed. They were in a semicircle in front of him, each watching him soberly. "Sure. Is something wrong?"
"Um, answer this: how do you feel about Makoto?"
The brown-haired Shitennou looked long and hard at Zale. "What do you mean?"
"He means how do you feel about Makoto," repeated Mamoru, not clarifying anything.
"Well, she's nice and all, funny, pretty I guess…"
Keagan sighed exasperatedly. "What he means is do you like Makoto?"
"Like as in like how you like Minako or like as in a friend or person?"
"Like as in how I like Minako," he said, nodding.
Nate colored a bit. "Well, I never thought about it. Why do you ask?"
"Just answer the question first," Mamoru practically demanded.
He thought a bit at how he felt when he was around her, the respect he felt for what she had done when they had just been released him from Beryl's control. "I…I do."
"Then why don't you ask her out?" asked Jason.
"What if she doesn't like me like that? I don't want to destroy what we DO have."
"Look, Nephrite," Jason said seriously and sat down next to him, "you'll have to take your chances. Look at me and Rei; if I hadn't chanced it to come to her school to pick her up, we would never have become friends and we may never have had this relationship that I don't want to think about living without."
"But you and her are different than me and Makoto," he protested.
"How are you so different from them?" asked Mamoru simply.
Nate opened and closed his mouth several times, but nothing came out, no good reason. Only stupid and weak excuses. "I'll ask her tomorrow."
"Good," Zale said, "now I suggest we go back to bed because I'm STILL tired."
Good-natured laughter filtered between them and slowly they moved back to their separate bedrooms. Yes, Mamoru was right, Nate thought as he fell asleep, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
End Chapter 16.