"Sailor Angel and Sailor Phosphora: The Fight Against Catastrophe"
Chapter Twenty-Two
By Angel Sentier and M'Lila Cronk
The next morning, Zara awoke to the sound of her alarm clock beeping. No, wait... She didn't have an alarm clock. Fuzzily, her brain identified the sound as her communicator which she had left on the nightstand. She squinted one eye open and saw the red light flashing on the face of the device.
She really didn't feel like moving to turn it off, she was all warm and snuggly in the bed and more sleep was such a good idea... But if she just let it keep beeping, she'd eventually wake up all the way. And if it was her communicator, that meant that the senshi needed her for something. It could be something important, but nothing could really be too important before noon, right?
In the end, duty won out, and with a groan, she reached over to turn the thing off. Except an arm that didn't belong to her reached over and turned it off before she could get to it.
She was awake then. Moving carefully, she rolled over...
And saw Seiya snuggling deeper into the covers. "It's too early..." he mumbled, clearly going back to sleep.
However, the outraged scream of his bedmate woke up right up.
"Augh!" he groaned, covering his ears. "Keep it down, my head hurts!"
"That's not the only thing that's going to be hurting in a minute!" yelled Zara. "Get out of my room!"
"Your room?" He looked at her, confused, and then glanced at his surroundings, which seemed to make him even more bewildered. "What am I doing in your room?"
His confusion only served to make her angrier. "That's what I'd like to know! And didn't I lock my door? How the heck did you get in here?" She looked over at her door to see that she didn't have one anymore. There was a gaping hole where it should have been, big enough for a person to walk through, almost as if someone had... "Seiya! Did you use Star Serious Laser to get in my room?!"
Seiya was pulling the blanket over his head. "Don't remember..."
One solid kick and he was on the floor with a thud, pulling the covers with him. "Wake up, you jerk! You don't deserve more sleep!"
He pulled the sheets off of his head and frowned at her. "That hurt."
"You should consider yourself lucky that was ALL you got! Now, pull your brain back into your head and tell me what you did last night!"
He grinned at her. "I like your pajamas."
The pillow hit him smack in the face. By the time he'd recovered, Zara had pulled a robe over her silky camisole and pants ensemble. She stood, facing him, hands on hips, and scowled. "You'd better focus, or so help me--"
"Okay, okay..." Seiya's eyes rolled to the ceiling as he tried to remember the events of last night. "I remember the couch being really lumpy... I was barely awake, so it made perfect sense to find a more comfortable place to sleep."
"You couldn't have gone in Celeste's room?"
"Your door was the first one I came to."
"So you BLAST it open?!"
"Like I said, it made perfect sense at the time... It would have taken too long to find another bedroom..."
"UGH! I hate you!"
She regretted the phrase instantly, because the words seemed to spark another remembrance in his mind.
"Oh, that's right," he said, real awareness dawning in his eyes now. "I remember why I came here last night..."
She turned away then and sat down at the dressing table, beginning to rapidly draw a brush through her sleep-tangled hair. "Yeah, yeah, whatever... You can take it back now, you drunken slob."
She jumped as his hands suddenly came to rest on her shoulders. He smiled as she met his eyes in the mirror.
"Why would I do that?" he asked.
Shrugging away his touch, she went back to brushing. "Maybe because you shouldn't do things like that when you're drunk."
"Does that mean you'll respond better if I'm sober? Because I'm sober now..."
"You get away from me!" She brandished the hairbrush threateningly. "Touch me like that again and you'll have to deal with the entire Veidan army!"
He seemed unphased by her threat. Instead, he plucked the brush from her hand. "Speaking of Veida... Don't you have someone do this for you there?"
"Well, I have to... As princess, my hair reaches the floor. It's really hard to brush hair that long by yourself. I have no idea how Usagi manages it..."
He picked up a handful of her hair with one hand and began to brush it. "Allow me, then."
She squirmed, trying to get out from under the brush, but he kept a hold on her hair. "Cut it out."
"Why? It's nice to have your hair brushed by someone else. Do you think us Starlights do our own hair? We have to help each other every morning just so the ponytails are right."
She couldn't help it... The visual of straight-laced Taiki brushing finicky Yaten's hair for him was too funny and she laughed.
He smiled again. "Are you still mad?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "Don't think you're off the hook just because you made me laugh. You owe me a new door."
"Can't you just conjure one?"
"That's not the point."
"Oh, I see... This is your ploy to get me to come over here again." He raised his eyebrows suggestively.
"Once you're done with my hair, remind me to smack you."
The communicator chose that moment to start beeping again, faster than before, meaning the call was urgent.
"That's right!" said Zara, getting up from the table and going to the nightstand. "I forgot they were calling me earlier!"
She pressed the talk button and Minako's face appeared on the tiny screen. "Z! Get down here, now! Your friend is running a duck!"
"That's 'amok,' Minako-chan," came Artemis's voice from somewhere off-screen.
"Whatever," she said. "Just get here soon!"
"No problem," said Zara. "Seiya and I will be there as soon as we can."
"Seiya?" Minako asked, her eyebrows sky high. "He's there? At ten in the morning?" She sounded very excited.
Zara winced at her mistake. "Bye, V."
"Wait--!"
She pressed the end button before Minako could make anymore comments. "Damn..." she muttered.
"What?" asked Seiya.
"I'm going to have to give Minako the right to say 'I told you so.'"
"Huh?"
"Nevermind." She set the communicator back on the table. "I'm going to take a quick shower, then we have to get to the temple ASAP. Why don't you go make breakfast to start making up for my broken door?"
"Unless you want me to join you..."
Another pillow hit him. "Get out of here, you pervert!"
He bowed, smirking. "Yes, ma'am."
He walked through the door-hole and in a moment, she heard the sounds of pots and pans clanking around. With a sigh, she went into her adjoining bathroom, but didn't bother to lock the door. As she'd learned, locks didn't necessarily keep Seiya out.
To be continued...
