Incident's Do Happen

by Kimra

Part 2

Usagi watched the tuxedo clad male as he started to move, clouds of dust and concrete puffing from his body and entering the air around her. She barely acknowledged it, ten minutes of almost asphyxiating on the airborne particles had given her time to faze out the feeling, her mind registering the gritty feeling in her lungs as yet another perk of being Sailor Moon.

Thinking of her alternate identity Usagi looked to her gloved hands and found that the palms of each had been grazed open as too had her flesh. She repressed the shudder, scolding herself that really she should be used to seeing blood by now.

An image of a bloody man filled her memory's and her body jerked with the sudden queasy feelings that settled in.

Only briefly was she distracted as her companion groaned but it was enough to return her thoughts to the trivial things they should have been occupied by. Her skirt was torn, probably indecently so, in other circumstances she would have been embarrassed, right now she was in too much shock to do more then acknowledge it.

Coughing filled the air and the layer of thick rubble that had settled over Tuxedo Kamen's body shifted and slid from him as he pulled himself to his knees.

"Careful." She warned as he straightened and struck his head on one of the larger concrete slabs that had become the makeshift roof. He grimaced and sent her a dirty look that seemed far too childish to belong to her hero and was gone before she could be certain of having seen it.

"Did you drop a building on me?" He asked in a tight voice, not the deep resonating sound of a man she swooned after.

She thought about the words, about the tones and a devious grin split her features. "Not quite, but I did try so very hard." Her voice was Usagi mock innocent, something rarely used in her sailor form but something in his tone brought forth the school girl not the heroine.

"Well next time do it properly or leave me alone." His tone was biting and she defended quickly.

"Next time don't hand out lame brained idea's that you've come up with on the spare of the moment." She was chafed that he had been so harsh, after all she had done for him. She had pulled him into this nice little room before the roof of the corridor had met the floor and he had been knocked down right after the corridor crumbled into the doorway. But for all he knew she could have done wonderful feats of bravery while he wasn't looking.

"Well next time don't be a moron and run from a crime scene."

"Oh well I'm so sorry if I like my anonymity."

"Oh don't be an idiot, one in ten of those people might have known, and I stress 'might', that what you did would not only require a level of flexibility equal to that of an Olympic gymnast but the strength of a man eight times your size." Well that explained how much he had seen. She squinted at him in displeasure, so the secret keeper, the disappear-before-the-end-of-the-battle man knew all her secrets… well most of them.

"One in ten hey?" She glared irately at him. "There where what? Two hundred people in that bank? So what only about twenty people might know who I am… oh how nice." The bitter tones in her voice where far from unnoticed and she saw his expression settle from that of a spoiled brat of a man to a much calmer sedate hero.

"I doubt they made the connection of a Jubaan high school girl being Sailor Moon, even though you reacted with strength and skill beyond a teenagers."

"So you know my school?" Usagi looked away. If he knew her school, then he could know her, and she did not want to see the expression on his face when the disappointment sank in. The silence that followed her question was an answer in itself. She knew without asking or looking that he knew her, or that he would soon. Using her anger as a distraction she defended herself, returning to the argument at hand. It seemed easier. "And of course, what human minds may have mistake a security tape or two would never reveal now would it?" The bitterness was settling in, she was not impressed by this days events, not even close.

She felt him staring at her and met his searching eyes with her angry ones. "You seem smarter today then you ever have before."

She wondered if he was referring to just her times as Sailor Moon. He knew her school, how much else did he know? "Peril and necessity are wonderful incentives." She threw her head back against the wall she sat against, her eyes coming quickly into focus on the roof that had shifted down lower then it should have.

Unable to help herself she looked the room over again. It was amazing that any light had survived the sudden destruction of the building but one or two dangled from the roof flickering with uncertainty. The rest of the room was a shambles. There was a wooden desk with a computer and files in the far corner o the room that looked surreally untouched, all other furniture had been thrown to the side or broken. The door way was blocked by layers of rubble and there where no windows.

With a sigh Usagi took her attention from the mess and lent her head back into the wall once more. Her eyes slipped shut as she tried to ignore her anger for the situation and actually come to grips with it.

"Are you okay?" His voice surprised her and her eyes jump open to see him. He was watching her cautiously, his left wrist held lightly in his right grip, a long cut ran down the length of his face a trickle of blood seeping out from it. He looked warn, the grey dusting across his black clothes adding substantial to the image.

"I'm fine." She brushed the attention aside as quickly as she could, letting her eyes close once more. She had to think of a way out of here.

"Really?" A shuffling noise roused her attention and brought it back to him, her eyes opened to find him crawling carefully over to him. The roof above them demanded that he crawl or do his head serious injuries. She noticed that he wasn't putting weight onto his left wrist and she realized that he may well have been hurt in the whole fiasco. She watched him silently as he crouched before her, and did not respond when he gently raised her hand to his inspection. She cringed at the jolt to her right elbow and he moved his attention to her arm examining more closely, carefully shifting her arm to test it's limits. She gave a start when the elbow bent to far and his concerned eyes jumped to hers.

"I think your arm's broken." He was frowning his hands still on her arm and holding it gently. She would have yanked the arm from his grip if she hadn't realized the frivolity of the action or the pain it would have caused her.

"It'll heal." She wasn't too concerned, the palms bothered her more because she could see the blood and seeing sometimes was far worse then feeling.

"Your very blasé about that."

"Don't sound so concerned." She snapped at him, a little upset because he seemed upset. She never liked to worry anyone. Taking a breath, realizing she had phrased it too harshly she tried again. "Hey. When you get as many broken bones as I do on a weekly basis you have to be blasé about it."

"That wasn't comforting." He raised a brow at her, visible behind the mask and she rolled her eyes at the expression. She could visualize the very look in his eyes right then, she had seen it far to often in other people to have a problem with imagining it.

She met his eyes again, her own free of mocking or disbelief. "It was honest." She told him firmly, feeling drained and weak. She wondered how long her transformation would last, it had never been pushed to it's limit for sciences sake and Youma attacks had never lasted more then an hour at most so she didn't know if it wore away.

"I never realized you where hurt so badly during battles."

She would have responded with something casual if her communicator hadn't begun beeping taking her attention from him. She pulled it from her sub space pocket and flicked it open. Ami as Mercury appeared on the screen looking anxious.

"Are you okay?" The blue haired girl demanded the worry in her eyes and voice taking any sting from the words. "The center of the building just caved in on itself!"

A shock of guild struck Usagi as she truly considered the repercussions of her actions. She forced the question that sprung to her mind out. "Was anyone inside?" she didn't breath as she waited for the genius's response.

"I don't think so. It's Sunday the office workers shouldn't have been there and the rest of the bank's still intact."

"Check." Usagi ordered and shut the communicator. Her pulse was uneven, the very possibility that someone else was trapped, injured, maybe dead bore down on her. Her thoughts went to the police who had pursued her into the depths of the bank. If they had been as close as she thought they had been then it was likely they where dead.

Her stomach clenched her mind spinning. Weight settled onto her shoulders and surprised she looked to find hands resting there. Her eyes traced the hands and moved up the arms attached until she meet Tuxedo Kaman's white mask.

"It'll be fine." He told her soothingly and she nodded her head in earnest unable to fight the strength of his voice or the comfort it was offering at that moment.

"What if I killed someone?" A flash of blood pressed into her mind "Again?" It hurt when she thought about it, when she remembered that she had caused death.

'If you hadn't reacted, he would have killed you, or Rei." He sounded reasonable but she didn't hear the reason behind the one important blaring name.

"You know her name?" She nearly chocked on the question, it was rhetorical there was no need for him to answer. "This is too much." She felt the tears falling down her checks, knew she couldn't stop them because she didn't really want to. There was no chance, none worth considering that he knew one of her best friends names, her school uniform and not her. "I don't want to be here."

"Hey. It's going to be okay. Mercury's going to call you back on that-thing," he paused for a second and she nearly smiled at his frown. "And when she does she'll tell us one way or the other, but you have to remember that this isn't your fault. Accidents happen."

"This isn't just an accident! Gods! People are dead! That man back there-he's dead!"

"That man deserved to die." His voice was steely.

"Who are we to decide? How can any life be taken away justifiably? Without even remorse or regret? We don't know anything about him. What drove him there? Did he need the money? What for? Could he have been helped?"

"Who cares? He was drunk, and he threatened you."

"But they where just threats. There's no way to prove he would ever have followed through."

"And no way to prove he wouldn't have!" He was getting angrier.

Sighing softly she looked away feeling weak and exposed. "Please don't hate me because I can't hate him." She didn't meet his eyes, didn't want him to see that even in a small way she did hate the man. But he was dead, and she couldn't justify any such emotion now.

The man took a deep breath, and shifted his to sit beside her resting his head against the wall. Then softy he added his final point. "He held a gun to your head, Usagi."

"You know my name." She whispered then with regret in her heart she closed her eyes shutting the world off. There had been such a slim chance before that he didn't know who she was, but now not even a breath of possibility existed and it crushed her inside more then anything else had.

She wanted to cry the emotions out, release her restraint and succumb to everything that told her nothing would be the same again and maybe nothing would be good again. Her communicator beeped and her attention shifted to it.

"Moon here." She felt despondent as she stared at the frantic image of Mercury.

"Where are you?" The girl sounded angry and scared, a mixture and strength of emotions that Ami rarely displayed.

Usagi took a breath and let her eyes wander the room again. The giving her friend a bemused smile offered her best guess. "Beneath what's left of the center of the bank?"

The words didn't seem to make Ami any less emotional. "Who's with you?"

"Tuxedo Kamen." She didn't look to him, refused to look at him. In some way not looking at him made it easier to believe he wasn't there and if he wasn't there then maybe he didn't know who she was. It was a vicious and pointless lie that she refused to let go until she had to.

Ami looked panicked still. Usagi waited for the damning words she had been anticipating. "Then besides you and Tuxedo Kamen there's no one else near the collapse."

"No one else alive? Or no one else?"

"No one else period. Bodies haven't been there long enough to have dropped much in temperature and besides you two there's nothing registering on my scans."

"Okay. Get the tapes and get out. Meet up with the others and call me back." Usagi sighed her frustrations. Her eyes drifted through the enclosed room once more heart sinking. "I'm not going anywhere."