You know, I'm really getting tired of realizing I don't own any of the
following characters…but it could be worse I suppose…like waking up one
morning and realizing that none of the characters exist at all!
Gomen minna! This chapter will have a lot of um…explanations…between parties so it may not be very exciting, but I'll try! Boy, this story just keeps growing…it looks like another chapter before Relena's character turns sour. I promise to make the next chapter more entertaining, but this chapter does help the plot by kind of acquainting characters in the sense that they begin to understand why the other is the way they are. I also promise, that sometime within the next few chapters hopefully, Heero will get his revenge via the plot. (Just a few warnings as such)
On a side note, the timeline for SM is after Galaxia the fight with Chaos. Elements of both the anime and the manga will more then likely be mixed together. Also, she will be referred to as an eternal scout because her outfit toward the end of the manga is styled identically to Eternal Sailor Moon's…not because Lita is all-powerful.
Enjoy!
Lita woke up an hour or so later feeling quite groggy. "Oh, my head…" she groaned. "What happened?"
"You fell down the stairs," Wufei said, acting like she should have remembered.
"That's right…I was going upstairs…and I just blacked out…" Rubbing her head, she made a face.
"How do you feel?" Quatre asked.
"Tired…and my head hurts."
"Well duh," Wufei said, rolling his eyes. "You hit your head on the floor when you fell."
"Thank you for telling me." Lita said, quite sarcastically.
"Anyway," Quatre interrupted, "You will be staying in bed for a while."
"WHAT? I can't stay in bed. I have work to do and I'll fall behind at school!"
"We can bring you your work," Duo offered. "Besides, Quatre's right. You've been working too hard lately. Between studying and working, it was just too much. You need to recover before you do anything."
"Well…I guess I don't have much choice…." She yawned, and shook her head. "I'm sorry…I'm just so tired…."
"That's ok," Quatre said. "You should go ahead and get some rest now."
Lita nodded, smothering another yawn before she closed her eyes and slipped back into sleep.
Heero picked her up off the couch. "I'll take her back to her room." Then he disappeared toward the kitchen.
"What's up with 'Mr. Friendly' all of a sudden?"
"It's that onna. She's doing something to him, magic voodoo or the like."
"Duo, Wufei! We have other more important matters to discuss here. Like how we're going to take care of Lita," Quatre said.
"Somebody's going to have to stay here," Trowa pointed out.
"I agree with Barton. Somebody needs to stay behind and keep that onna in line so she doesn't do anything stupid," Wufei said.
"I'll do it," a voice said.
"Heero's…volunteering?" Duo looked at the returning figure quite astonished.
"Yes Duo, I am. It's partly my fault she's in this mess to begin with. We're all used to nights with little to no sleep so we take it for granted. I should have realized she wouldn't have been able to handle the load." He sat down on the couch.
"Is that the only reason…?" Duo promptly received the infamous Yuy Death Glare (patent pending). "Um, anyway…I don't think that's such a good idea Heero. I mean, what about Relena? How do we explain your absence to her?"
"Just tell her I've been temporarily reassigned. If she thinks I'm on a mission she won't come looking for me."
"Well, that's true…but are you sure about this Heero?"
"I wouldn't have said if I didn't mean it. As long as you pretend I'm on a mission everything will be fine. End of discussion."
Everyone sweatdropped, even Wufei, realizing they'd been given an order of sorts. So they all said goodnight and went their separate ways…that is everyone except Duo and Heero. Mainly because as Heero was heading upstairs, Duo grabbed his arm and made him stay behind.
"Duo…what do you want?"
"Just something I think you should know."
Heero rolled his eyes. "Trying to help again?"
"Just hear me out. There's something funny about that girl Heero. I know you told her you wouldn't pry, but I think you should try and find something out while you're here."
"What do you mean?"
"A few weeks ago, when we had that meeting about her going to school, I came down to get her and she was playing that Sailor Moon video game I have. She must not have realized I was there, because she was saying things about it, like she had first hand knowledge or something, like it was based of real life. I think that game has something to do with whatever her secret is."
"Ok…well, I'll keep that in mind." Inwardly, Heero was wondering if Duo had been into the sugar again. Sometimes his imagination went wild after a lot of sugar and this story seemed a bit outlandish. Then again, Heero had to remind himself, most of Relena's were pretty outlandish too. Shaking his head, he resolved to put the matter out of his mind for the time being.
The next morning, when Lita woke up, it was well past time for anybody to be in the house; and yet there were noises coming from the kitchen. Frowning, she hopped out of bed, cracked open her door and peeked into the kitchen.
"You're finally awake."
Startled, she almost slammed the door onto her fingers. Lita opened the door all the way and went into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Yeah, I'm awake. But what are you doing here?"
"We decided somebody should stay behind to keep you out of trouble."
"I think somebody should have stayed behind to keep you out of trouble," she said, looking around at the mess in the kitchen.
"Well we do have to eat you know. Quatre doesn't want you working again until you've completely recovered so I thought I'd try fixing lunch. Except I had trouble finding things and so…I kind of improvised."
"So I see…. I appreciate the thought, but I'm not really hungry right now anyway."
"Suit yourself. But that means you have to take it easy."
"Yeah, yeah…." Waving him off, she went back into her room and came out a couple minutes with some clothes. Then she headed to one of the bathrooms downstairs, one that Quatre had sort of designated as hers. After getting cleaned up, she headed back to her room and dumped her dirty clothes into a laundry basket, which she took to the laundry room.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Lita almost dropped the washer lid on her fingers. "Will you cut that out? I hate it when people sneak up on me like that."
"Whatever."
"And before you say anything about working, it's just laundry and I promise not to do anything else…but I do have to have some clothes…kind of important." She started putting things in the washer, when she realized she had forgotten something. "Say Heero, could you do me a favor?"
"What?"
"I left my uniform on the chair in my room. Could you go get it and bring it out here please?"
"Hn," he replied, then disappeared from the laundry room.
"I guess that means yes," Lita said.
A few minutes later he came back, holding the uniform out. "Here."
"Thanks," she said, turning around to take it. It was then that she noticed he was holding a picture frame. "What's that?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing." He turned the frame around so the picture was visible, displaying a group picture of the senshi. "I found it on your desk…."
"Damn it, I forgot all about that," Lita swore.
"A whole group of you who look like characters from that video game…either you guys are all so crazy you dressed up like the characters or there's a little something you're hiding…."
"You said you wouldn't pry!" Grabbing the picture out of his hands, she glared at him.
"It wasn't intentional. It was just sitting there on your desk in plain view. Besides, if that does have something to do with your so-called secret, I think we have a right to know who or what is staying here with us. Some psycho game freak, or something else…."
Lita looked at him. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me," Heero said.
"Alright, but don't say I didn't warn you…." She set the picture down and finished putting the laundry in, then picked the picture up and went back to her room.
Heero sat down on the desk chair, while Lita flopped onto her bed. "Well, where should I start…?"
"How about the beginning?"
"That could take a while…but I guess it's the only way any of this will make any sense. See, 1000 years ago there was the thing called the Silver Millenium…." She then proceeded to describe the entire tale, including the fight with Queen Beryl, their rebirth in the future, the enemies they had faced and all they had gone through. (Which I'm sure everyone is quite familiar with at this point). An hour or so later, including all the times Heero interrupted to get something clarified, she had finished the story. "Well, that's all there is too it."
"That's all? That was awfully long for being a 'that's all there is too it' story."
"So what if it is? It's all true."
Heero looked at her skeptically. "You're asking me to believe that you and those 8 others are reincarnations of princesses from other planets that lived 1000 years ago?"
"I know it sounds farfetched, but I swear it's the truth."
"Then prove it."
"How? I can't exactly show you a birth certificate from my past life you know."
"Oh really? How surprising," he said sarcastically.
Grumbling, Lita stood up and, through the magic of inter-dimensional pockets, produced a green heart-shaped crystal. "I didn't want to do this, but it seems this is the only way I can prove my story…."
Heero eyed this object suspiciously. "What is that? Some gem-producing laser you're going to kill me with?"
"Please! I told you we don't kill people." Lita rolled her eyes. "This 'laser' is what I use when I do this." So saying, she held the crystal in front of her and said "Jupiter Crystal Power!". There was a flash of green light, which faded away to reveal one Eternal Sailor Jupiter. She stood there in an outfit consisting of the normal white suit but with puffy sleeves, a skirt layered in 3 shades of green and white knee-high boots with gold crescent moons on the front. There was a gold tiara with a green gem in the center on her forehead, a pink bow on her chest, in the middle of which rested the green crystal, and long thin ribbons of the same sugar pink coming from the back. "Now do you believe me?"
"Not exactly…the outfits don't match you know."
"ARGH! You are so stubborn! It's just an older picture, before we got these transformations."
"If you say so."
Glaring at him, she reversed the transformation back to her "normal" self. "What, you think I'm gonna zap you or something?"
"You should be back in Juuban attending to your duties."
"Why? There's been no enemies for over a year now so none of us have had to use these powers." Lita set the crystal down on the desk between the two pictures. "This…break we've had since Serena defeated Chaos at the Galaxy Cauldron…it's given me a chance to change, to become different person…."
"You became a different person the moment you accepted those responsibilities and powers."
"Well, a little I guess. But I really changed a long time before that, when my parents died." Sighing, she looked at the other picture she kept on her desk. "I was upset, angry, bitter…I didn't understand why other children got to have their parents and I couldn't have mine. It got to the point where I was picking fights with people just because they looked at me wrong. Then, after I got kicked out of my school, I thought maybe at my new one I could fight to protect people from feeling hurt like I did…and that plan backfired too. Got kicked out of yet another school…but I just didn't care. I was alone raising myself. I didn't have many friends and I was horrid student. Then I wound up at Crossroads where I met Serena…well, I became less violent…but I still have kind of a bad temper when it comes to certain things…."
"I see."
"You see what?"
"You're coming here. You think you've failed at a lot of things and being leaving home you can leave those failures in your past behind."
"Now you're acting like a psychologist."
"Well, it's true isn't it? Though I have to say I disagree. Most people your age who have lived like that wouldn't have survived. But there's definitely something telling you you're a failure. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gotten into this whole bride thing in the first place."
"Well, that is one area where I have failed miserably. Every boyfriend I've ever had has dumped me for pretty much the same reason…I'm too much of a tomboy. Gets old after a while…I wanted to give up altogether, but being on your own for such a time can make you long for the company of others. That's why I got into this. I figured a 'blind date' type of husband couldn't be any worse then a loser boyfriend."
"That is logical," Heero answered.
"But enough about me…what about you?"
"Me?"
"Yes. I told you my secret, now I want to know yours. I have the same right to know who or what I'm living with you know," Lita said.
He looked at her a moment, then stated quite bluntly, "I'm a gundam pilot. All of us are."
"Gundam….gundam….oh, wait. I think I heard something on the news about them back home. Aren't they like big robots that blow stuff up?"
"Uh, I guess you could put it that way. But since we are what we are, your association with us makes you a target you know. We don't have many friends either. And especially if one of our enemies was to find out about your…abilities…you'd be a definite target"
"Oh geez…it looks like I've gotten myself into the middle of a nice mess now…."
"We shouldn't have any trouble as long as Relena stays in the dark about your staying here and you don't start glowing again."
"No, no more glowing. Unless absolutely necessary."
Heero raised one eyebrow and stared at her.
"Ok, ok…." She waved her hands in front of her. "Not at all, scouts honor."
"You don't believe me?"
"Let's just say I've heard that line before. Besides, I'm naturally suspicious. It comes with the job I guess."
"Well, that's logical. I mean, in a job like the one you have you can't be too careful," Lita said understandingly.
Then, almost as suddenly as Heero had turned …"friendly"… if you will, he turned back into his usual emotionless self. "You can never be too careful anytime or with anything. In order to survive there are things you have to bury and hide."
"You're still hiding something from me aren't you Heero?"
"And what if I am? I'm sorry I can't be as open as you are," he said harshly.
Lita was a bit taken aback. "I didn't mean it that way. And anyway, you shouldn't be sorry for who you are and you should take some sort of pride or something in what you've done."
"And you should follow your own advice," Heero countered before getting up and leaving the room.
Gomen minna! This chapter will have a lot of um…explanations…between parties so it may not be very exciting, but I'll try! Boy, this story just keeps growing…it looks like another chapter before Relena's character turns sour. I promise to make the next chapter more entertaining, but this chapter does help the plot by kind of acquainting characters in the sense that they begin to understand why the other is the way they are. I also promise, that sometime within the next few chapters hopefully, Heero will get his revenge via the plot. (Just a few warnings as such)
On a side note, the timeline for SM is after Galaxia the fight with Chaos. Elements of both the anime and the manga will more then likely be mixed together. Also, she will be referred to as an eternal scout because her outfit toward the end of the manga is styled identically to Eternal Sailor Moon's…not because Lita is all-powerful.
Enjoy!
Lita woke up an hour or so later feeling quite groggy. "Oh, my head…" she groaned. "What happened?"
"You fell down the stairs," Wufei said, acting like she should have remembered.
"That's right…I was going upstairs…and I just blacked out…" Rubbing her head, she made a face.
"How do you feel?" Quatre asked.
"Tired…and my head hurts."
"Well duh," Wufei said, rolling his eyes. "You hit your head on the floor when you fell."
"Thank you for telling me." Lita said, quite sarcastically.
"Anyway," Quatre interrupted, "You will be staying in bed for a while."
"WHAT? I can't stay in bed. I have work to do and I'll fall behind at school!"
"We can bring you your work," Duo offered. "Besides, Quatre's right. You've been working too hard lately. Between studying and working, it was just too much. You need to recover before you do anything."
"Well…I guess I don't have much choice…." She yawned, and shook her head. "I'm sorry…I'm just so tired…."
"That's ok," Quatre said. "You should go ahead and get some rest now."
Lita nodded, smothering another yawn before she closed her eyes and slipped back into sleep.
Heero picked her up off the couch. "I'll take her back to her room." Then he disappeared toward the kitchen.
"What's up with 'Mr. Friendly' all of a sudden?"
"It's that onna. She's doing something to him, magic voodoo or the like."
"Duo, Wufei! We have other more important matters to discuss here. Like how we're going to take care of Lita," Quatre said.
"Somebody's going to have to stay here," Trowa pointed out.
"I agree with Barton. Somebody needs to stay behind and keep that onna in line so she doesn't do anything stupid," Wufei said.
"I'll do it," a voice said.
"Heero's…volunteering?" Duo looked at the returning figure quite astonished.
"Yes Duo, I am. It's partly my fault she's in this mess to begin with. We're all used to nights with little to no sleep so we take it for granted. I should have realized she wouldn't have been able to handle the load." He sat down on the couch.
"Is that the only reason…?" Duo promptly received the infamous Yuy Death Glare (patent pending). "Um, anyway…I don't think that's such a good idea Heero. I mean, what about Relena? How do we explain your absence to her?"
"Just tell her I've been temporarily reassigned. If she thinks I'm on a mission she won't come looking for me."
"Well, that's true…but are you sure about this Heero?"
"I wouldn't have said if I didn't mean it. As long as you pretend I'm on a mission everything will be fine. End of discussion."
Everyone sweatdropped, even Wufei, realizing they'd been given an order of sorts. So they all said goodnight and went their separate ways…that is everyone except Duo and Heero. Mainly because as Heero was heading upstairs, Duo grabbed his arm and made him stay behind.
"Duo…what do you want?"
"Just something I think you should know."
Heero rolled his eyes. "Trying to help again?"
"Just hear me out. There's something funny about that girl Heero. I know you told her you wouldn't pry, but I think you should try and find something out while you're here."
"What do you mean?"
"A few weeks ago, when we had that meeting about her going to school, I came down to get her and she was playing that Sailor Moon video game I have. She must not have realized I was there, because she was saying things about it, like she had first hand knowledge or something, like it was based of real life. I think that game has something to do with whatever her secret is."
"Ok…well, I'll keep that in mind." Inwardly, Heero was wondering if Duo had been into the sugar again. Sometimes his imagination went wild after a lot of sugar and this story seemed a bit outlandish. Then again, Heero had to remind himself, most of Relena's were pretty outlandish too. Shaking his head, he resolved to put the matter out of his mind for the time being.
The next morning, when Lita woke up, it was well past time for anybody to be in the house; and yet there were noises coming from the kitchen. Frowning, she hopped out of bed, cracked open her door and peeked into the kitchen.
"You're finally awake."
Startled, she almost slammed the door onto her fingers. Lita opened the door all the way and went into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Yeah, I'm awake. But what are you doing here?"
"We decided somebody should stay behind to keep you out of trouble."
"I think somebody should have stayed behind to keep you out of trouble," she said, looking around at the mess in the kitchen.
"Well we do have to eat you know. Quatre doesn't want you working again until you've completely recovered so I thought I'd try fixing lunch. Except I had trouble finding things and so…I kind of improvised."
"So I see…. I appreciate the thought, but I'm not really hungry right now anyway."
"Suit yourself. But that means you have to take it easy."
"Yeah, yeah…." Waving him off, she went back into her room and came out a couple minutes with some clothes. Then she headed to one of the bathrooms downstairs, one that Quatre had sort of designated as hers. After getting cleaned up, she headed back to her room and dumped her dirty clothes into a laundry basket, which she took to the laundry room.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Lita almost dropped the washer lid on her fingers. "Will you cut that out? I hate it when people sneak up on me like that."
"Whatever."
"And before you say anything about working, it's just laundry and I promise not to do anything else…but I do have to have some clothes…kind of important." She started putting things in the washer, when she realized she had forgotten something. "Say Heero, could you do me a favor?"
"What?"
"I left my uniform on the chair in my room. Could you go get it and bring it out here please?"
"Hn," he replied, then disappeared from the laundry room.
"I guess that means yes," Lita said.
A few minutes later he came back, holding the uniform out. "Here."
"Thanks," she said, turning around to take it. It was then that she noticed he was holding a picture frame. "What's that?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing." He turned the frame around so the picture was visible, displaying a group picture of the senshi. "I found it on your desk…."
"Damn it, I forgot all about that," Lita swore.
"A whole group of you who look like characters from that video game…either you guys are all so crazy you dressed up like the characters or there's a little something you're hiding…."
"You said you wouldn't pry!" Grabbing the picture out of his hands, she glared at him.
"It wasn't intentional. It was just sitting there on your desk in plain view. Besides, if that does have something to do with your so-called secret, I think we have a right to know who or what is staying here with us. Some psycho game freak, or something else…."
Lita looked at him. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me," Heero said.
"Alright, but don't say I didn't warn you…." She set the picture down and finished putting the laundry in, then picked the picture up and went back to her room.
Heero sat down on the desk chair, while Lita flopped onto her bed. "Well, where should I start…?"
"How about the beginning?"
"That could take a while…but I guess it's the only way any of this will make any sense. See, 1000 years ago there was the thing called the Silver Millenium…." She then proceeded to describe the entire tale, including the fight with Queen Beryl, their rebirth in the future, the enemies they had faced and all they had gone through. (Which I'm sure everyone is quite familiar with at this point). An hour or so later, including all the times Heero interrupted to get something clarified, she had finished the story. "Well, that's all there is too it."
"That's all? That was awfully long for being a 'that's all there is too it' story."
"So what if it is? It's all true."
Heero looked at her skeptically. "You're asking me to believe that you and those 8 others are reincarnations of princesses from other planets that lived 1000 years ago?"
"I know it sounds farfetched, but I swear it's the truth."
"Then prove it."
"How? I can't exactly show you a birth certificate from my past life you know."
"Oh really? How surprising," he said sarcastically.
Grumbling, Lita stood up and, through the magic of inter-dimensional pockets, produced a green heart-shaped crystal. "I didn't want to do this, but it seems this is the only way I can prove my story…."
Heero eyed this object suspiciously. "What is that? Some gem-producing laser you're going to kill me with?"
"Please! I told you we don't kill people." Lita rolled her eyes. "This 'laser' is what I use when I do this." So saying, she held the crystal in front of her and said "Jupiter Crystal Power!". There was a flash of green light, which faded away to reveal one Eternal Sailor Jupiter. She stood there in an outfit consisting of the normal white suit but with puffy sleeves, a skirt layered in 3 shades of green and white knee-high boots with gold crescent moons on the front. There was a gold tiara with a green gem in the center on her forehead, a pink bow on her chest, in the middle of which rested the green crystal, and long thin ribbons of the same sugar pink coming from the back. "Now do you believe me?"
"Not exactly…the outfits don't match you know."
"ARGH! You are so stubborn! It's just an older picture, before we got these transformations."
"If you say so."
Glaring at him, she reversed the transformation back to her "normal" self. "What, you think I'm gonna zap you or something?"
"You should be back in Juuban attending to your duties."
"Why? There's been no enemies for over a year now so none of us have had to use these powers." Lita set the crystal down on the desk between the two pictures. "This…break we've had since Serena defeated Chaos at the Galaxy Cauldron…it's given me a chance to change, to become different person…."
"You became a different person the moment you accepted those responsibilities and powers."
"Well, a little I guess. But I really changed a long time before that, when my parents died." Sighing, she looked at the other picture she kept on her desk. "I was upset, angry, bitter…I didn't understand why other children got to have their parents and I couldn't have mine. It got to the point where I was picking fights with people just because they looked at me wrong. Then, after I got kicked out of my school, I thought maybe at my new one I could fight to protect people from feeling hurt like I did…and that plan backfired too. Got kicked out of yet another school…but I just didn't care. I was alone raising myself. I didn't have many friends and I was horrid student. Then I wound up at Crossroads where I met Serena…well, I became less violent…but I still have kind of a bad temper when it comes to certain things…."
"I see."
"You see what?"
"You're coming here. You think you've failed at a lot of things and being leaving home you can leave those failures in your past behind."
"Now you're acting like a psychologist."
"Well, it's true isn't it? Though I have to say I disagree. Most people your age who have lived like that wouldn't have survived. But there's definitely something telling you you're a failure. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gotten into this whole bride thing in the first place."
"Well, that is one area where I have failed miserably. Every boyfriend I've ever had has dumped me for pretty much the same reason…I'm too much of a tomboy. Gets old after a while…I wanted to give up altogether, but being on your own for such a time can make you long for the company of others. That's why I got into this. I figured a 'blind date' type of husband couldn't be any worse then a loser boyfriend."
"That is logical," Heero answered.
"But enough about me…what about you?"
"Me?"
"Yes. I told you my secret, now I want to know yours. I have the same right to know who or what I'm living with you know," Lita said.
He looked at her a moment, then stated quite bluntly, "I'm a gundam pilot. All of us are."
"Gundam….gundam….oh, wait. I think I heard something on the news about them back home. Aren't they like big robots that blow stuff up?"
"Uh, I guess you could put it that way. But since we are what we are, your association with us makes you a target you know. We don't have many friends either. And especially if one of our enemies was to find out about your…abilities…you'd be a definite target"
"Oh geez…it looks like I've gotten myself into the middle of a nice mess now…."
"We shouldn't have any trouble as long as Relena stays in the dark about your staying here and you don't start glowing again."
"No, no more glowing. Unless absolutely necessary."
Heero raised one eyebrow and stared at her.
"Ok, ok…." She waved her hands in front of her. "Not at all, scouts honor."
"You don't believe me?"
"Let's just say I've heard that line before. Besides, I'm naturally suspicious. It comes with the job I guess."
"Well, that's logical. I mean, in a job like the one you have you can't be too careful," Lita said understandingly.
Then, almost as suddenly as Heero had turned …"friendly"… if you will, he turned back into his usual emotionless self. "You can never be too careful anytime or with anything. In order to survive there are things you have to bury and hide."
"You're still hiding something from me aren't you Heero?"
"And what if I am? I'm sorry I can't be as open as you are," he said harshly.
Lita was a bit taken aback. "I didn't mean it that way. And anyway, you shouldn't be sorry for who you are and you should take some sort of pride or something in what you've done."
"And you should follow your own advice," Heero countered before getting up and leaving the room.