2. Tracking
''Amy can you get any reading from your computer? Rei asked while she mopped the sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt. The humid air was even worse than on the Moon during the warmest days in summer. Even Mars which was the warmest planet in this solar system did not have this kind of humidity. Had it been heat she could cope.
''No, no reading.'' Amy replied. Her eyes did not leave the screen of the pocket size computer, nor did her deft fingers stop their tapping on the keyboard.
Rei shook her head and looked up towards the top of the tree. ''What about you Lita? Any sign of anything?'' She had to squint her eyes against the hard glare of the sun to see her friend who was perched at the highest branch of the great willow. Even then it was hard to really see Lita as she had chosen to wear green clothes that blended her nearly perfectly with her surroundings.
''Not counting the animals there's no sign of life as far as I can see.'' Lita shouted down to them. She swore and smacked herself on the neck to get the mosquito that was catching his midday meal. Only two hours on this planet and she was already starting to hate this place. Has this place been infested with all the mosquitoes and bugs of the entire galaxy? Even back in Jupiter, her home planet which is known for its greenery did not have this kind of buglife. Unconsciously Lita started to scratch at her forearm.
Amy gave off a satisfied sound. Rei who had been leaning on a treetrunk quickly straightened and ran to her side. ''What? You found her?''
''Not really but there's suppose to be a large city about twenty miles from here. I think we might be able to find her there.'' Amy told her with a smile. Absently she slapped at her cheek. Of course she did not catch the annoying flying thing but then again Amy did not have the heart to kill it to begin with.
''Are you sure?'' Rei asked with hesitation. ''I can't feel her.''
''It's the most logical step. You know how Usagi loves food. As far as my computer is telling me that is the closest civilization around here. She will have to get there if she wants to find food.''
''You know I won't argue logic with you, Ames. But we also know that ditzy can get herself lost in her own closet. What's not to say she heads off in the total opposite direction?''
Ames grinned. ''Her sense of smelling.''
Rei stared at her and the burst out laughing. Amy was right, Usagi's sense of direction might be horrible but she can smell food from miles away.
There had been one incident in their training when Artemis and Luna had dropped them in the middle of the nowhere and told them to find their way home each on their own. Of course that had been a test of their survival skills. For Lita who was the best tracker in Jupiter, it had been no sweat at all. She had come first. Amy had her computer and Rei her special gift. Mina and Usagi had not shown up for a long while that they had started to worry. But then right before dinner, Usagi dirty and tired had come stumbled around the corner and demanded food. She said she could smell it miles off. That had sent them in to peals of laughter. Mina had the only one who had not gotten back to the goal. She had just calmly sat herself down by a waterfall and waited for them to get back for her, which she had known Artemis and Luna would have done by nightfall. Being the only one who was rested, clean and filled, Mina had proven herself the smartest. While the rest of them had been forced to stay in bed or hobble around the rest of week because of their blisters she had run around laughing and playing and having the time of her life.
''Lita, get down here. Ames find a town. We're heading there.'' Rei called up to her friend.
Lita let out a whoop of cheering and started to climb down the tree quick as a squirrel. Rei tried not to look too closely at her or think of just how many feet there were left between Lita and the hard ground. She might not have Amy's fear of heights but at that distance and the careless way Lita seemed to be swinging herself down branch after branch, was setting her stomach into queasiness.
''So, where are we headed?'' Lita asked once she jumped down to ground from the last branch and brushed the dirt off her hand and pants.
They told her.
''Well if she was hungry enough she would have definitely have gotten herself there.'' Lita mused after they were done. ''Goddess knows she won't be able to eat anything here even if she had known how to cook.''
That was true enough. They've all had rather memorable experiences with Usagi's cooking, a lot of them involving leaning over a sink later. From what they could see of this forest there was not many edible things around. Not even fruit or berries. Fortunately they had brought along rations as they had not been sure where they would end up once they were on the other side of the teleportation device. Even Lita with her forest lore was not sure if the plants were safe to eat. Since they did not know what awaited them they needed all their strength just in case.
They hiked their backpack and started walking with Amy leading the way using her computer as a compass. It was not an easy hiking. The foliage was rich and often they found their path barred either by rich impenetrable green or a cliff that they had to either climb up or down. Some times they still cut across and sometimes they had to find another path around it. All the while the sun climbed higher and higher on the sky, frying them with its heat.
''How far is it left, Ames?'' Lita asked during one of their breaks. She was half sitting and half leaning against a rock while she took out her water bottle.
'' We probably won't reach it until tomorrow. Thanks, Rei.'' Amy gave Rei a grateful smile at the wetted piece of cloth that the other girl handed her.
''Tie it around your head.'' Rei instructed. ''That's what the nomads in the desert on Mars do. It'll make you less vulnerable to the heat.'' She took out another piece of cloth and did the same with it before she tied it around her forehead.
With a green wet cloth already around her temple, Lita looked up at the sky. ''We should probably think of finding a place to camp soon. I don't fancy walking around here without enough light to see by.''
The other two girls agreed with her. Amy recalled the chasm they had crossed two miles back by walking on a log that had fallen right over it, with nothing to hold on to and shuddered. She did not think she would like experience that again any time soon. She'd rather take the longer path by walking around it.
Sensing the other woman's slight distress, Rei changed the subject. ''I wonder how Mina's doing.''
''Yeah I feel a bit bad about that. Dumping her there all by herself to handle things.'' Lita agreed.
Amy sighed. They've had this conversation not to mention argument more than once since they discovered Usagi's disappearance two nights ago. ''Lita, we did not have a choice. Besides if she wasn't needed to stay behind and pretend to be Usagi she would have come too.''
Lita snorted. ''I am well aware of that. You two convinced me remember?''
She had first suggested that she alone went after Usagi. She was the best fighter as well as tracker among them. Whatever problem she could handle it. Then Rei had asked how she was going to find Usagi if had arrived in a town or a city? Those places left little tracks for her to follow. She's going to need Rei's clairvoyant abilities to track Usagi down. Amy had pointed out that they weren't sure how well Rei's abilities were going to work on Earth. She has never been there before and they knew very little about the place aside from the fact that it was a land with little magic. On the other hand, Earth was known be a very high tech planet and of all of them Amy was most skilled there. In the end Mina had decided that all three of them would go.
So far Amy's skills had been most helpful in trying to find Usagi. There had been something in the Earth atmosphere that seemed to disturb Rei's abilities and Lita had not been able to find any tracks at all of Usagi. Of course Amy had reminded her that the teleportation device won't take them to the exact place it took Usagi but only close enough. How close they were not sure.
Lita smacked against her arm. ''Well whatever she's doing, she can't be in more misery than us.'' She said referring to Mina. ''Can you imagine her in a place like this?''
The three girls looked at each other and started giggling. The giggles quickly turned into peals of laughter as they imagined their leader who was used to luxury and loved her pampered life, walking around in the middle of nowhere with dirty clothes, mosquito bites and not to mention twigs sticking out of her hair.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Millions of miles away in the sunlit palace of the Silver Kingdom, Mina was walking down the hallway on her way back from a stroll in the garden when she stopped and sneezed. It must be the pollen in the air outside, she thought absently and sneezed again.
For the maybe millionth time that day, she wondered how the others were getting along with the search. She really hoped that they were successful in finding Usagi. The sooner they got the princess back the better for all of them.
Pretending to be her cousin without the help of her friends was not an easy task. This morning, Luna had arrived to her quarters without warning and Mina had been so scared that she had dropped the pitch of water she had been pouring on herself. Fortunately for her, her cousin was an accident prone person and it had not awaken any suspicions from the otherwise very astute guardian. Mina was not sure how she was going to get through the rest of this day. She might be able to fool Luna and Artemis and only because she had bathed in lilac water, the scent that Usagi prefered but Mina knew that she would not be able to fool the queen very long.
Queen Selenity was born a clairvoyant just like Rei. Though not as strong as Rei in that area, she does have the ability to be able to read people's aura in a way that had nothing to do with the powers from Silver Crystal. When they had been children, no matter how many times Mina and Usagi had tried to trick Rei they had never been able to fool her. Rei had said that the two of them might look alike but their auras were completely different. Usagi's aura was silvery soft while Mina's was fiery golden a clear proof of their different personalities. If the queen used her abilities she would spot Mina for a fraud immediately. Fortunately for all of them the queen was off on state visit in Pluto and was not due to arrive back home for another week.
Most of the other rulers of the inner planet had gone there as well, including Mina's mother. Otherwise they would have a hard time explaining how princess Mina, who was suppose to have gone home to Venus for a short summer holiday never arrived. Nor princess Amy for that matter. It would take a while to notice Lita's and Rei's disappearance as the former was known to disappear into the thick woods of Jupiter seeking solitude without anyone seeing her and the latter did not have a family to notice her missing.
As she walked towards the southern gallery where a seamstress had been hired to create a new wardrobe for the princess Serenity to replace the last batch that she had more or less ruined by climbing trees or carelessly ripped by letting it get caught in something, Mina wondered about how five princesses with so different personalities and pasts could have became friends. The answer to that was so simple. Serenity or Usagi as her friends and family called her. That was how.
Usagi might no be the brightest person in the world. Yes she was a klutz most of the time and often got herself into trouble and brought the rest of them along as well. But she had a heart that was as big as the galaxy itself. Slowly and gently she had befriended each of them and brought them together as friends - and sisters. Mina had two younger sisters that lives back in Venus but none of them were as close to her as Usagi, Rei and the others. They were her true sisters by heart.
Of course their paths had not been an easy one. They all had issues that needed to be dealt with first. Amy's I-know-it-all attitude and lecturing tone that drove the other five girls crazy. Rei's antagonism and fear of letting people get too close to her. Lita's intimidating and almost violent personality and of course Mina's own snotty airs.
Mina couldn't help to smile when she remembered what a horrible brat she had been at that time. According to her friends her younger sister, Elyse was the exact copy of how she was. If that was true then it was no wonder Lita had tried to drown her at the pond back then. Whenever Elyse pulled that her snotty princess attitude of hers, Mina had an urge to slap her around the castle and then around the courtyard just for the principle. But of course she would not get away from unscathed either as Elyse would no doubt squeal to her mom and the queen of Venus would descend on Mina like an angry goddess. Elyse was the jewel in queen Aphrodite's eyes.
As always in the recent years when Mina thought of her mother she felt a bitter ache in her chest. She and her mom used to be very close. Mina remembered taking trips to town in her mother's spectacular carriage to get new wardrobes made. Trying them out in the giant private parlor of the rulers of Venus, dancing and pretending that they were at balls and laughing. Yes, the most strongest features she had was the laughter. Even the sudden addition of Elyse had not been able to break that bond as Elyse had still been too young to join them. But then at the age of nine Mina was sent to the Kingdom of Moon to start her training as the senshi of Venus. Since she was only able to return during summer breaks and special holidays, Mina did not see her mother that much the last six years. Even as she grew closer to her friends and aunt on the Moon, she grew further apart from her mother. Though Mina knew her mother loved her, she was old enough to know that they were not as close as they used to be. Her mother's easy acceptance that Mina will be postponing her trip home was proof of that. Years earlier when Mina had suggested going with the other girls to spend some of the summer break there had been met with adamant no. No, she will just have to accept the fact that she was no longer number one in her mother's heart, Elyse had taken over the place and she herself will have to settle for the second place. That she supposed was the price that came with being a senshi.
As a senshi, Mina's first duty was to her liege, Serenity the next ruler of the Moon Kingdom, and second to Venus, her home planet. It was not a choice but a fact of life and one that Mina accepted without question. She loved Serenity as a sister and protecting her was Mina's life and she knew that Rei, Lita and Amy all felt the same way. It was what they were born to do, what they had been brought together and trained to do. Of course none of them had ever guessed that they will have to take on their duties quite so early as this summer.
Oh Usagi, please be safe. Luneir, please watch over her and protect her until we find her.
''Amy can you get any reading from your computer? Rei asked while she mopped the sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt. The humid air was even worse than on the Moon during the warmest days in summer. Even Mars which was the warmest planet in this solar system did not have this kind of humidity. Had it been heat she could cope.
''No, no reading.'' Amy replied. Her eyes did not leave the screen of the pocket size computer, nor did her deft fingers stop their tapping on the keyboard.
Rei shook her head and looked up towards the top of the tree. ''What about you Lita? Any sign of anything?'' She had to squint her eyes against the hard glare of the sun to see her friend who was perched at the highest branch of the great willow. Even then it was hard to really see Lita as she had chosen to wear green clothes that blended her nearly perfectly with her surroundings.
''Not counting the animals there's no sign of life as far as I can see.'' Lita shouted down to them. She swore and smacked herself on the neck to get the mosquito that was catching his midday meal. Only two hours on this planet and she was already starting to hate this place. Has this place been infested with all the mosquitoes and bugs of the entire galaxy? Even back in Jupiter, her home planet which is known for its greenery did not have this kind of buglife. Unconsciously Lita started to scratch at her forearm.
Amy gave off a satisfied sound. Rei who had been leaning on a treetrunk quickly straightened and ran to her side. ''What? You found her?''
''Not really but there's suppose to be a large city about twenty miles from here. I think we might be able to find her there.'' Amy told her with a smile. Absently she slapped at her cheek. Of course she did not catch the annoying flying thing but then again Amy did not have the heart to kill it to begin with.
''Are you sure?'' Rei asked with hesitation. ''I can't feel her.''
''It's the most logical step. You know how Usagi loves food. As far as my computer is telling me that is the closest civilization around here. She will have to get there if she wants to find food.''
''You know I won't argue logic with you, Ames. But we also know that ditzy can get herself lost in her own closet. What's not to say she heads off in the total opposite direction?''
Ames grinned. ''Her sense of smelling.''
Rei stared at her and the burst out laughing. Amy was right, Usagi's sense of direction might be horrible but she can smell food from miles away.
There had been one incident in their training when Artemis and Luna had dropped them in the middle of the nowhere and told them to find their way home each on their own. Of course that had been a test of their survival skills. For Lita who was the best tracker in Jupiter, it had been no sweat at all. She had come first. Amy had her computer and Rei her special gift. Mina and Usagi had not shown up for a long while that they had started to worry. But then right before dinner, Usagi dirty and tired had come stumbled around the corner and demanded food. She said she could smell it miles off. That had sent them in to peals of laughter. Mina had the only one who had not gotten back to the goal. She had just calmly sat herself down by a waterfall and waited for them to get back for her, which she had known Artemis and Luna would have done by nightfall. Being the only one who was rested, clean and filled, Mina had proven herself the smartest. While the rest of them had been forced to stay in bed or hobble around the rest of week because of their blisters she had run around laughing and playing and having the time of her life.
''Lita, get down here. Ames find a town. We're heading there.'' Rei called up to her friend.
Lita let out a whoop of cheering and started to climb down the tree quick as a squirrel. Rei tried not to look too closely at her or think of just how many feet there were left between Lita and the hard ground. She might not have Amy's fear of heights but at that distance and the careless way Lita seemed to be swinging herself down branch after branch, was setting her stomach into queasiness.
''So, where are we headed?'' Lita asked once she jumped down to ground from the last branch and brushed the dirt off her hand and pants.
They told her.
''Well if she was hungry enough she would have definitely have gotten herself there.'' Lita mused after they were done. ''Goddess knows she won't be able to eat anything here even if she had known how to cook.''
That was true enough. They've all had rather memorable experiences with Usagi's cooking, a lot of them involving leaning over a sink later. From what they could see of this forest there was not many edible things around. Not even fruit or berries. Fortunately they had brought along rations as they had not been sure where they would end up once they were on the other side of the teleportation device. Even Lita with her forest lore was not sure if the plants were safe to eat. Since they did not know what awaited them they needed all their strength just in case.
They hiked their backpack and started walking with Amy leading the way using her computer as a compass. It was not an easy hiking. The foliage was rich and often they found their path barred either by rich impenetrable green or a cliff that they had to either climb up or down. Some times they still cut across and sometimes they had to find another path around it. All the while the sun climbed higher and higher on the sky, frying them with its heat.
''How far is it left, Ames?'' Lita asked during one of their breaks. She was half sitting and half leaning against a rock while she took out her water bottle.
'' We probably won't reach it until tomorrow. Thanks, Rei.'' Amy gave Rei a grateful smile at the wetted piece of cloth that the other girl handed her.
''Tie it around your head.'' Rei instructed. ''That's what the nomads in the desert on Mars do. It'll make you less vulnerable to the heat.'' She took out another piece of cloth and did the same with it before she tied it around her forehead.
With a green wet cloth already around her temple, Lita looked up at the sky. ''We should probably think of finding a place to camp soon. I don't fancy walking around here without enough light to see by.''
The other two girls agreed with her. Amy recalled the chasm they had crossed two miles back by walking on a log that had fallen right over it, with nothing to hold on to and shuddered. She did not think she would like experience that again any time soon. She'd rather take the longer path by walking around it.
Sensing the other woman's slight distress, Rei changed the subject. ''I wonder how Mina's doing.''
''Yeah I feel a bit bad about that. Dumping her there all by herself to handle things.'' Lita agreed.
Amy sighed. They've had this conversation not to mention argument more than once since they discovered Usagi's disappearance two nights ago. ''Lita, we did not have a choice. Besides if she wasn't needed to stay behind and pretend to be Usagi she would have come too.''
Lita snorted. ''I am well aware of that. You two convinced me remember?''
She had first suggested that she alone went after Usagi. She was the best fighter as well as tracker among them. Whatever problem she could handle it. Then Rei had asked how she was going to find Usagi if had arrived in a town or a city? Those places left little tracks for her to follow. She's going to need Rei's clairvoyant abilities to track Usagi down. Amy had pointed out that they weren't sure how well Rei's abilities were going to work on Earth. She has never been there before and they knew very little about the place aside from the fact that it was a land with little magic. On the other hand, Earth was known be a very high tech planet and of all of them Amy was most skilled there. In the end Mina had decided that all three of them would go.
So far Amy's skills had been most helpful in trying to find Usagi. There had been something in the Earth atmosphere that seemed to disturb Rei's abilities and Lita had not been able to find any tracks at all of Usagi. Of course Amy had reminded her that the teleportation device won't take them to the exact place it took Usagi but only close enough. How close they were not sure.
Lita smacked against her arm. ''Well whatever she's doing, she can't be in more misery than us.'' She said referring to Mina. ''Can you imagine her in a place like this?''
The three girls looked at each other and started giggling. The giggles quickly turned into peals of laughter as they imagined their leader who was used to luxury and loved her pampered life, walking around in the middle of nowhere with dirty clothes, mosquito bites and not to mention twigs sticking out of her hair.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Millions of miles away in the sunlit palace of the Silver Kingdom, Mina was walking down the hallway on her way back from a stroll in the garden when she stopped and sneezed. It must be the pollen in the air outside, she thought absently and sneezed again.
For the maybe millionth time that day, she wondered how the others were getting along with the search. She really hoped that they were successful in finding Usagi. The sooner they got the princess back the better for all of them.
Pretending to be her cousin without the help of her friends was not an easy task. This morning, Luna had arrived to her quarters without warning and Mina had been so scared that she had dropped the pitch of water she had been pouring on herself. Fortunately for her, her cousin was an accident prone person and it had not awaken any suspicions from the otherwise very astute guardian. Mina was not sure how she was going to get through the rest of this day. She might be able to fool Luna and Artemis and only because she had bathed in lilac water, the scent that Usagi prefered but Mina knew that she would not be able to fool the queen very long.
Queen Selenity was born a clairvoyant just like Rei. Though not as strong as Rei in that area, she does have the ability to be able to read people's aura in a way that had nothing to do with the powers from Silver Crystal. When they had been children, no matter how many times Mina and Usagi had tried to trick Rei they had never been able to fool her. Rei had said that the two of them might look alike but their auras were completely different. Usagi's aura was silvery soft while Mina's was fiery golden a clear proof of their different personalities. If the queen used her abilities she would spot Mina for a fraud immediately. Fortunately for all of them the queen was off on state visit in Pluto and was not due to arrive back home for another week.
Most of the other rulers of the inner planet had gone there as well, including Mina's mother. Otherwise they would have a hard time explaining how princess Mina, who was suppose to have gone home to Venus for a short summer holiday never arrived. Nor princess Amy for that matter. It would take a while to notice Lita's and Rei's disappearance as the former was known to disappear into the thick woods of Jupiter seeking solitude without anyone seeing her and the latter did not have a family to notice her missing.
As she walked towards the southern gallery where a seamstress had been hired to create a new wardrobe for the princess Serenity to replace the last batch that she had more or less ruined by climbing trees or carelessly ripped by letting it get caught in something, Mina wondered about how five princesses with so different personalities and pasts could have became friends. The answer to that was so simple. Serenity or Usagi as her friends and family called her. That was how.
Usagi might no be the brightest person in the world. Yes she was a klutz most of the time and often got herself into trouble and brought the rest of them along as well. But she had a heart that was as big as the galaxy itself. Slowly and gently she had befriended each of them and brought them together as friends - and sisters. Mina had two younger sisters that lives back in Venus but none of them were as close to her as Usagi, Rei and the others. They were her true sisters by heart.
Of course their paths had not been an easy one. They all had issues that needed to be dealt with first. Amy's I-know-it-all attitude and lecturing tone that drove the other five girls crazy. Rei's antagonism and fear of letting people get too close to her. Lita's intimidating and almost violent personality and of course Mina's own snotty airs.
Mina couldn't help to smile when she remembered what a horrible brat she had been at that time. According to her friends her younger sister, Elyse was the exact copy of how she was. If that was true then it was no wonder Lita had tried to drown her at the pond back then. Whenever Elyse pulled that her snotty princess attitude of hers, Mina had an urge to slap her around the castle and then around the courtyard just for the principle. But of course she would not get away from unscathed either as Elyse would no doubt squeal to her mom and the queen of Venus would descend on Mina like an angry goddess. Elyse was the jewel in queen Aphrodite's eyes.
As always in the recent years when Mina thought of her mother she felt a bitter ache in her chest. She and her mom used to be very close. Mina remembered taking trips to town in her mother's spectacular carriage to get new wardrobes made. Trying them out in the giant private parlor of the rulers of Venus, dancing and pretending that they were at balls and laughing. Yes, the most strongest features she had was the laughter. Even the sudden addition of Elyse had not been able to break that bond as Elyse had still been too young to join them. But then at the age of nine Mina was sent to the Kingdom of Moon to start her training as the senshi of Venus. Since she was only able to return during summer breaks and special holidays, Mina did not see her mother that much the last six years. Even as she grew closer to her friends and aunt on the Moon, she grew further apart from her mother. Though Mina knew her mother loved her, she was old enough to know that they were not as close as they used to be. Her mother's easy acceptance that Mina will be postponing her trip home was proof of that. Years earlier when Mina had suggested going with the other girls to spend some of the summer break there had been met with adamant no. No, she will just have to accept the fact that she was no longer number one in her mother's heart, Elyse had taken over the place and she herself will have to settle for the second place. That she supposed was the price that came with being a senshi.
As a senshi, Mina's first duty was to her liege, Serenity the next ruler of the Moon Kingdom, and second to Venus, her home planet. It was not a choice but a fact of life and one that Mina accepted without question. She loved Serenity as a sister and protecting her was Mina's life and she knew that Rei, Lita and Amy all felt the same way. It was what they were born to do, what they had been brought together and trained to do. Of course none of them had ever guessed that they will have to take on their duties quite so early as this summer.
Oh Usagi, please be safe. Luneir, please watch over her and protect her until we find her.
