Sparing Partners
The only sound left in the little corner gym was made by one Kino Makoto. She was in a battle stance next to the large and heavy punching bag. It was close to closing time and Makoto had been there for five hours now. She had done everything in the gym, as much of it as possible, and still wanted a better work out.
She stared at the moving red bag and as it rotated she brought her right leg up in a round house, sending the bag spinning faster and faster on its rotating suspension. A kick from her left leg sent the bag spinning just as fast in the other direction.
'Whoa, Kino, better relax. You don't want to break the bag again.' Makoto thought to herself as she brought punch after punch down on the aging leather of the bag. A cloud of dust could be seen around the young senshi as she was attacking the bag like it was a youma.
Behind her standing across the gym stood a tall blonde leaning against a support beam watching her with a concerned look on her face.
'Hm, she's been hitting that bag for the last half hour.' The gym had closed but the blonde had convinced the owner to let her and Makoto stay for while longer. Makoto for her part was completely lost in her work out.
As the blonde walk slowly and quietly closer to the tough warrior she heard little murmurs from the brunette.
"Stupid Makoto…What are you thinking…She won't like you…..she doesn't like you…get over it!" The blonde smiled as she heard this, it sounded like just the problem she could help work out.
Slowly the older girl stretched her arm out and rested it on Makoto's shoulder. Makoto was so caught up in her thoughts and her work out that she immediately swung with a well aimed round house at her attacker's stomach. Her victim was ready for her though and caught her leg before it could reach its destination.
"Haruka-san!" Makoto recognizing the older girl brought her leg down and hung her head, ashamed that she had attacked her friend.
"Mako-chan, how's the work out going?" Haruka questioned as if nothing was wrong.
"Um, ok I guess Haruka-san. I just don't think it's doing anything for me." Makoto confessed to her mentor.
"Oh, well would you like a moving target to attack?" Haruka asked her with her trademark grin plastered on her face.
"But we haven't seen a youma in three weeks. What do you want to do, hunt for one?"
"I meant me Mako-chan. You can be dense when there's something on your mind you know that." Haruka told her as she headed to get head gear for both of them. "I trust we don't need gloves. Now get over here and let's work out some of that frustration of yours." Makoto just looked at her for a minute. The last time she had fought Haruka, she had defiantly lost. She hadn't liked it then, and she wouldn't like it if it happened again now.
"You've gotten better since then Mako-chan. Trust me." Haruka seemed to know what the Senshi of Jupiter had been thinking. Makoto looked up at Haruka standing in the ring ready for the fight.
"Alright, but I don't want to hurt you." Makoto said even though she knew that she would come far from hurting the leader of the Outer Senshi.
"Don't worry, you won't." Haruka winked and tossed the head protector across the ring at Makoto. Once Makoto had the head gear on Haruka charged at her startling her a bit. Just as the racer was about to make contact with Makoto though, she moved out of the way, and whipped around waiting for Haruka's second attack.
"Nice, very nice. How long have you been here today?" Haruka had a mission from her princess and she also generally wanted to help Makoto with whatever was wrong with her. She blocked the right hook from her opponent and waited for an answer.
"Since two." Makoto sped up her punches and kept them coming. She was going to hit Haruka, she just had to.
"Oh, well, you should be pretty tired by now. What've you been doing?" It took Haruka quite a while to finish, since she had to dodge every one of Makoto's punches, which she noticed were slowing down already.
"Thinking" Makoto answered without even blinking. "About my fucked up life, what's new."
"Oh, well that must be nice. What's so wrong with your life?" They had switched again and Haruka was once again attacking Makoto with everything she had. Haruka had to give the younger girl some credit for being able to keep up with her in her tired state.
"Oh you know the usual. Love sucks." Makoto caught Haruka's leg and threw her backwards making her lose her balance and falling to the canvas.
"Love huh? Well, it must really suck to make you need to think so much. I heard you've been here everyday for the past week. Do you mind tell me who the guy is?" Haruka knew from the mumbling she heard that the person Makoto liked was more than likely a girl, but for appearance sake she pretended it was a guy.
"Um, well s-he is one of a kind." Makoto's eyes stared off into space and if they had still been fighting she would've been knocked to the ground like she was nothing more than a feather.
"One of a kind huh? Personally I've heard a ton of people say that, and there hasn't been anything special about their special someone." Haruka said very matter-of-factly.
"Well" Makoto said loudly in order to interrupt her uncompassionate friend. "She's amazing. I've never met anyone like her and if you think there is nothing special about her than we can just start fighting again!" Makoto put her fists up ready to attack Haruka for talking like that about the person she loved.
"Oh, so it's she is it?" Haruka had hoped that her tough love would infuriate Makoto enough for her to confess that it was indeed a girl that she liked. Haruka had guessed right, and by the look on Makoto's face she had not wanted anyone to know the true gender of the person. "Oh come on Mako-chan, it's me you're talking to. I could tell you all about the nights I spent at the gym before I finally confronted Michiru." It was now Haruka's turn to gaze into nothingness.
The other girl sighed in frustration. "Yeah, yeah, but Michiru adores you. Everyone can tell that! Even if they don't know you two are together!" Mako-chan just didn't understand how the two cases could be connected. The last thing she expected to hear from the other was laughter, but that's what was issuing from Haruka's mouth; loud laughter.
"Yeah, she adores me" Haruaka interrupted with a smug look on her face "Just don't let her hear you say that. You might end up very water logged. Michiru is kind of touchy when it comes to her feelings. She might adore me, but she would prefer if other people didn't know about it."
"But, other people do know about it. As I've said everyone knows you two are together!" Makoto was getting angry again, and was about to start the sparing session when Haruka spoke in her defense.
"Well, for that, it's not our fault. You just can't hide true love, even though we never noticed anything until this one day when we were taking a walk in the park. I remember it very clearly….." Any other time Makoto would have been disinterested about when Michiru and Haruka realized that they were perfect for each other. This time however, Makoto was trying to piece together whether the two cases could be similar.
"It was raining and Michi and I were just walking. She loves to walk in the rain; it must be something to do with her water powers. I personally don't like it much, but then again there isn't much I wouldn't do for her even then, before I fully knew why. Sure I knew that I was attracted, who wouldn't be." Makoto looked like she was going to answer, but Haruka didn't give her the chance. "So we ended up in this little far off gazebo, its got benches all around, and a little heart shaped design on the sides."
"Haruka-san! I don't really care what the gazebo looked like!" It had seemed that Haruka had veered off the road and was about to drive off a cliff. Makoto had to try and get her back to the highway toward their destination.
"Of course you don't. Sorry Mako-chan, I didn't mean to get lost in the memory." Haruka looked a bit sheepish, but then straighten up and continued with the story. "By the time we had reached this gazebo, we had been walking in the rain for a good hour, so we soaked! I saw it and started running, not too fast Michi can't keep up with me if I full out run. When we got to the gazebo Michiru just turned and stared at the sky. I don't know why she was doing it, but I think she was wishing to Poseidon for what happened that night." Haruka again got a weird look on her face, and Makoto hoped she didn't look like that when she talked about the person she loved.
Makoto wondered if she should hit Haruka to get her attention, then decided that would ruin the moment so decided on tapping her shoulder. Haruka shook her head "I'm very sorry Mako-chan, but I've never told this story before, so I guess I'm getting sucked into it."
"It's Ok Haruka-san, but could you please finish." So far Makoto was impressed with the story and was thinking about asking for some advice after Haruka finished.
"Sure, I'd love to finish. Actually there's not much left to the story." Haruka took a second to remember where she had stopped. "As Michiru was talking to the sky I decided to wonder over to the other side of the gazebo. I stared out, thinking about how beautiful she was, the talismans, and how I couldn't lose her.
As I was standing there I felt rather than heard her come up to my left side. She walked up to me and wrapped her arms around my waist. At that moment we didn't need to talk. Later she thanked me for walking with her even though she knew that I didn't like it.
How she knew that I couldn't have guessed. I hadn't even hesitated when she asked if I wanted to go for the walk. Hours pasted and we sat talking, the rain still pouring around us flooding the park in places." Makoto sat on the canvas of the ring listening to the quite tale her mentor was relaying to her. This was a completely different side of Haruka, that no one, save Michiru, got to see.
"Suddenly, we were interrupted by a loud scream. Yup, you guessed it, a yoma was somewhere near by. Michiru and I immediately dropped our conversation and transformed. As Neptune, and Uranus we ran through the downpour. The rain slowed me down, but didn't seem to affect Neptune at all. It actually seemed to help her dodging in and out of the branches. I jumped onto on particularly wet branch and lost my footing."
"Wa…" The thunder senshi had never heard of a time when the famed senshi of the winds had 'lost her footing'. It just didn't happen.
"Yes, that's right, I lost my footing. It was very wet you know. Neptune was miles ahead of me. I fell from the tree and I assume I was knocked unconscious because the next thing I remember is being back in that gazebo. Neptune was leaning over me. The rain had stopped, and she seemed to be holding something damp to my forehead. I realized later that she was draining her liquid supply in order to keep my temperature at a normal level. She couldn't take me to a hospital because for some reason my transformation hadn't worn off."
Makoto couldn't believe this. This story was so amazing. She couldn't believe that Michiru would do all that, although she was having trouble seeing how this fit into the fact that they were meant for each other. She was sure that being put in the same situation Ami would do the same for her, and they were only friends.
"That sounds intense. But I'm not getting what this story has to do with anything. I mean I'm sure Ami-chan would do the same exact thing for me, even though being that close to her would automatically rise my body temperature…." Makoto trailed off. She had slipped up. She had become so lost in Haruka's story that she had forgotten she didn't want people to know who the person she adored was.
"Oh…it's Miss Mizuno that has your eye huh?..." Haruka wasn't surprised. It just seemed right that the two fit together. Everything was telling them that they were the perfect opposites, Jupiter, the senshi of thunder and wood, and Mercury, the senshi of ice and knowledge. Ideal opposites, but yet without both the world would be lost. Without he forests the world would be gray, and without the annual winter the trees would have no time for rebirth. Two perfect opposites, working together flawlessly. As Haruka remembered, it was the same with her water nymph and herself.
"Um…" Makoto blushed. "I didn't really want to tell you, but now that you know. Yeah, it's Ami-chan. I can't get her out of mind. She's amazing, and just the most beautiful girl in the world, the only problem is I don't think she likes me back." Now that Makoto had expressed the fear that everyone goes through before knowing if their beloved cares for them back, she sunk even further to the canvas by lying on her back and staring up at Haruka. "So Haruka-san do you have anything that could help me?"
"Yeah, me. I'm all the help you'll need Mako-chan." The solemn expression she had had when telling her story vanished as she whipped out her cockiest stare toward Makoto. Even though Mako knew that Haruka was only showing off, it seemed as if this time she was right. The only person Makoto could rely on for help was leaning against the ropes of the ring at that moment.
"Ok. So what do you have up that sleeve of yours?"
"I thought you'd never ask. Now why are you so sure that she doesn't like you back?"
"Well, I guess for all the 'normal' reasons. We're just friends there is no reason she should feel like that for me."
"But you feel that way for her, and Michiru and I were friends too you know. The best of friends very close. Everyone knew we'd end up together, even if we didn't think twice about just how close we were." Haruka was trying to get Makoto to understand the whole thing. All Mako needed was enough courage to go up and talk to the blue haired genius.
"Well, I guess I could see the parallels, but I don't know!" Makoto had started to get more frazzled with each passing moment that they discussed her relationship with Ami. More than once Haruka had to tackle the younger girl to keep her from jumping up and beating the crap out of her. Finally Haruka seemed to be getting through that thick skull that sat on top of Makoto's shoulders.
"Look, just go up to her and invite her for a stroll in the park. I happen to know that water senshi love strolls in the park, especially if it's raining." Haruka was glad to see a kind of determination seep into Makoto's facial expression.
"Yeah, I think I'll try that. Who knows, I might have my own little story to tell about a gazebo." Mako had made up her mind. She was going to talk to Ami. She was going to tell her everything. The only problem was when. As she was thinking about this Makoto got off of the canvas and started hitting her fists together.
"Well, I'm glad that you've finally decided to listen to reason, know we should be-AH!" Haruka had been tackled and toppled over by none other than the one person who should be thanking her with all her heart.
"Thanks Haruka-san, but now that that's over. Let's spare some more. I think I can beat you this time." The competitive glare was back in Makoto's green eyes, and Haruka would turn down such a chance.
"Not possible Kino, not possible, but I'll let you try." Haruka stepped out of her corner to start the first round.
"Hey!" Makoto shouted during the round, stopping all other activities since Haruka thought she had hurt Makoto. "You never told me the end of your story!"
Disclaimer: I don't..repeat don't own Sailor Moon or any of the characters mentioned. They belong to Naoko Takeuchi.
I do however own this plot.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it R&R.