Just before they arrived, Usagi slipped off to the ladies' room. In actuality, she just wanted a private moment alone to call the girls. All that referencing to what her Senshi were going through had reignited her fears and she knew she wouldn't be able to relax until she knew they were doing better. Sending up a prayer that she wasn't about to disturb them in the midst of slumber - it had after all been many hours - Usagi keyed in on the communicator.
It was with delighted surprise that she got every single one replying back to her summons.
"Oh, it's so relieving to hear your voices!"
"We're doing okay. It's... kind of like being in the beginning stages of a cold. A little slow-going, a little groggy... some body aches... but we're powering through," Ami reassured her. "In fact Rei-chan and I are getting ready to head home."
"I'm needed at the shrine," Rei hopped in. "My grandpa's new apprentice Yuichiro says he's been off the rails today. He's running around hitting on every woman he meets and trying to perform dangerous acrobatic tricks. Yuichiro thinks he's having some sort of mental break but I tried to tell him, he's usually not quite all there even at the best of times." Usagi could hear the eye roll in her voice. "Anyway I have to go talk him down from calling the hospital or something. Ojii-chan will be fine once I'm home and can shout some sense into him."
Usagi chuckled at the outrageous tale; she was well used to Ojii-chan's lovable if not rather eccentric antics. Poor Rei had her work cut out for her.
"What are you up to, Usagi-chan? Aren't you supposed to be with Mamoru-san?" Makoto inquired.
"Oh, I am! I just stepped away for a minute to make sure you guys were okay. We're actually on a train on our way to Chigasaki... a mystery location!"
There was a strange note in Makoto's voice as she repeated, "A... mystery location?"
"Well, he won't tell me where exactly, it's a surprise. We're skiving off... don't tell my mother! Er, or Luna. I don't know, I guess he saw I was a little out of it today because of worrying about you guys and he wanted to take my mind off things," Usagi explained, just the memory coaxing a happy smile onto her features. She was a bit confused when she was met with a few rather lengthy moments of silence. "What...?"
"Nothing!" Makoto hastily answered. "It's just... well, he's sure skiving off with you an awful lot of places. First the carnival, now this mysterious location in Chigasaki..."
The knowing and insinuating tone was not lost on Usagi, and it immediately sparked her ire. "He's just being nice!"
"Uh huh."
"Ugh!" Usagi huffed, retorting in a curmudgeonly grumble, "You sound just like my mother. Good-BYE, guys! I'm glad you're better now."
"Bye, Usagi-chan!" they chorused, still tittering away. Usagi punched the end-call and shook her head in exasperation. Oh yes, they were definitely back to their old selves!
oOo
Mamoru's unexpected inability to answer her question about the newspapers gave Usagi much to ponder over, but her mind didn't quite know how to wrap itself around the conundrum and anyway, she was soon thoroughly distracted come time to depart. The second they stepped off the train, the salty tang to the air was unmistakable. Usagi didn't have to think hard to correctly infer the truth of this mystery.
"The ocean!" she gasped, breathing deep.
"Bingo," Mamoru said, nudging her towards the direction of the beach. "If your ankle starts hurting at all, you let me know and we can rest, or simply head on back. But I figured a change in scenery would help brighten your mood. Nothing gives me peace of mind like the sound of the surf!"
"I love the ocean. I haven't been for months now!"
The blustery breeze wreaked havoc on her hair as they walked, but Usagi didn't care. She relished in the sunshine that negated any of its chill. It wasn't long before they were trudging through thick pockets of sand; with a giggle Usagi kicked off her shoes and slung them over her shoulder. Beside her, Mamoru followed suit. She noticed that the closer they got the louder things became, from squawking gulls to crashing waves. Mamoru had to raise his voice to be heard as he informed her they'd have the beach almost entirely to themselves. The only other people here were an elderly couple camped out under a well-loved and shabby old umbrella. Mamoru inconspicuously angled her in the right direction so they could give the pair a friendly wave.
"What a dream! When I'm retired I want live in a peaceful oasis like this and spend every weekday at the beach," Usagi sighed.
"That would be amazing. Save some room for me in that dream!" Mamoru chuckled. He grabbed Usagi's hand, tugging her towards the water, but she was still reeling from the surprisingly not unpleasant image of her and Mamoru, wrinkled and gray and laughing up a storm as they flicked sand out of their seaside picnic. She was even more startled when the image gave her a weird sense of deja vu.
Impossible. She'd never been to the ocean with Mamoru before.
The water was like shoving her feet into a vat of ice cubes, and very quickly it bubbled and frothed up to her knees. She shrieked and ran, thanking providence for having the inadvertent foresight to not wear pants. She wondered if Mamoru had rolled his own up. She danced around in the mud of the shore.
"Ooh that's so coooold!"
"You just have to wait it out!" Mamoru called up to her, clearly made of braver stuff than she. He kicked around in the water. "Soon as you go numb, it's just fine!"
"Oh yeah," Usagi guffawed, even as she tossed the shoes she'd been carrying aside and inched back down to dip her hands in. She gave them a tentative swish around. "Fine, until you realize you lost a few important toes!"
"You're ridiculous," Mamoru chortled, sounding as if the accompanying grin was so wide it wanted to abscond from his face. "C'mere, I'll teach you a trick how to adjust quicker."
Usagi raised a brow, feeling her way towards his voice. She yelped and shivered and flailed her arms as waves sent another current rushing through her legs. She reached Mamoru's side with a grimace. "W-what's your s-s-secret then, oh cold-blooded one?"
"Oh, just a little something I like to call..." Mamoru leaned down nonchalantly, "Sneak attack!"
"Ohhh you jerk!" Usagi cried, getting a full frontal spray of icy ocean water. She retaliated with enviable speed; Mamoru didn't stand a chance. "Take THAT!"
Mamoru shrieked in a hilariously unmanly way but his peals of laughter quickly overtook his shock. The splash war that followed was fierce and there were no winners at the end, only two fully clothed participants who trekked back up the beach completely drenched and trembling with the force of their mirth, or perhaps it was the pervasive chill still deep within their bones. Usagi lamented the undoubtedly hopeless state of her odango, wringing out as much of the sea and its surfeit of salt as she could. Mamoru's voice was soft as he assured her she looked just perfect.
"Except this little piece right here; it's trying to escape." He reached out and tucked an errant flyaway strand back behind Usagi's ear. She swore she stopped breathing and didn't resume until he had forged ahead of her, as if he himself could hardly believe what he'd just done. His voice was almost startlingly loud again when he pointed out a neat cluster of tide pools off in the distance, nestled between the rocks.
"If we go exploring, the sun will have time to dry us off."
He helped her pick her way through the veritable obstacle course and to avoid anything jagged. She still refused to put her shoes back on.
"I want to feel the sand between my toes!"
Mamoru made an excited noise soon as they bent over the first tidal pool, and he asked Usagi to hold out her hand. She squealed when something slimy and rough was deposited into her waiting palm.
"Don't drop it now! Any guesses?"
Usagi used her other hand to feel this creature; she knew it had to be alive because it was squiggling. The body was rippled with ridges and she quickly discerned five disparate appendages... "Starfish!"
"Yep! Or, an echinoderm to be more exact. Of the class Asteroidea."
The words were like gibberish and Usagi barely contained her snort - he was as book nerdy as Ami! But as she gently stroked the echinoderm, she could understand his fascination... "It's so beautiful." With utmost carefulness she then lowered it back into the water. "Will it be okay here?"
"Oh yes. As soon as the tide comes back in, it'll be swept out to sea," Mamoru replied, a subtle undertone of... was it awe, she detected lurking in his voice? Usagi blinked, thinking she must have heard wrong, because that made no sense. Her fingers trailed the surface of the pool, searching for new textures to appease her curious fingers. Mamoru noticed and he supplied, this time with a conch shell. Usagi delighted in pressing it to her ear but truly, the whooshing illusion of ocean it provided was no comparison to the raging beast beside her. She tossed the shell aside preferring to enjoy the real thing.
Mamoru wandered off to go find other tactile and sensory-friendly objects, while Usagi did a little meandering of her own. It was sweet really, she thought with a private smile, that he would go out of his way like this for her -
Usagi's bare foot suddenly exploded in pain, ceasing whatever mental track she'd been on. She cried out.
"Owwwww!"
The feeling was like two pincers searing into her flesh, the tight grip focused on the area just below her big toe. Her breaths came in scared, stuttered gasps and she felt again the unfulfilled desire to bawl her eyes out. Somewhere in the distance she heard Mamoru's racing footsteps and she tried her best not to move despite the throbbing pain, not even when he skidded to a panicked halt alongside her and exclaimed a word she'd never heard before...
"Usako!?"
"...W-what?"
For the second time that day, she couldn't breathe, and her heart began to pound with a vengeance. Her confusion was such that it drove her temporarily out of the haze of agony.
What did he just call me?
Damn.
Damn, damn, DAMN!
Mamoru couldn't believe his stupid mouth. He wanted nothing more in that instant than to chop off his tongue for betraying him and letting slip the cutesty nickname he'd just recently started playing around with, whenever his mind started fixating on the blonde who snuck so thoroughly into his heart. It had been for his enjoyment only; never would he have shared it with Usagi but something about her pained yell had the ability to wipe all sense and rationality from him; he hadn't even realized what he said until she pointed out his gaffe.
Oh god. He couldn't deal with this right now. How was he to explain?
Mamoru decided in a snap of judgement that he simply wouldn't. He'd gloss right over his faux pas and hope that in the heat of the moment she'd simply forget, or assume she'd heard him incorrectly. There were more pressing matters to contend with, anyway.
"Hold still! A hermit crab's got you." With nimble fingers he snatched the offending crustacean and pried its angry claws from off of Usagi. The second she was freed the fifteen-year-old stumbled down onto her backside, sniffing voraciously, leg raised so as to keep her injured foot out of the sand. Mamoru tossed the crab off towards the water.
"Is it gone?" Usagi warbled, hiccuping on an incompleted sob.
"It's gone," Mamoru soothed, now coming to crouch beside her. His brain was transitioning into med student mode. "He was a nasty bugger, huh? Can I take a closer look?"
"Mm-hm," Usagi sniffled.
Mamoru took tender possession of her foot and that's when it happened.
As soon as his hands wrapped around her heel, he felt that power deep inside himself - the one that had resided with him since childhood; the one that allowed him to heal at random - waking up and flowing forth. He tried to stop it, but it was nigh unto impossible - like trying to stop the tide from rushing out. It recognized something in Usagi. There was no doubt in his mind that she evoked his abilities far more than anyone else he'd ever encountered; than even he himself. He knew because the closer he became with her, the more attuned this strange power seemed to become with her in turn. He felt it stir that first lesson in the garden, and then again more powerfully the day at the carnival - the day he completely without meaning to, managed to heal her twisted ankle.
And now it was happening again.
Directly in front of her, with no pandemonium, no frantic escape from danger, to distract from the truth of what was he was - accidentally - doing.
He healed her injury, the wound knitting together and sealing shut until it was nothing more than a serrated line on irritated skin. He watched as her eyes widened and she stared at him, right at him, the blue saucers blazing questions, so many questions. It was too much. Too much for a man who hardly understood what had happened himself. This was one of his most closely guarded secrets, next to moonlighting as Tuxedo Kamen. His oldest secret, by far. An ability that, at low times in his life, had made him feel like a freak; an abnormality...
And now she knew.
"M-Mamoru-san..."
There was nothing more terrifying. He dropped her foot and shook his head; shook it in complete denial, glad she could not see the way he was teetering upon a total breakdown.
"What... what was that? Did you... did you do that?"
No. No.
He heard the tremble in her voice; he knew the fearfulness that would follow if he admitted to this unexplained power, and he couldn't lose her, he couldn't. And so with force of will he hadn't even realized he was capable of in his current shaken state, Mamoru replied with a neutral, if not slightly bemused tone -
"What are you talking about, Usagi-san? Your foot looks fine. Didn't even draw blood."
She blinked, again and again. Her eyes glanced from him to her foot, him to her foot. He wondered again how it was that she was finding him with her gaze with such accuracy. The demanding irises seemed as if they pierced his soul. "But..."
"You're all right, Usagi-san. Really. Aside from having some major bad luck with that foot! Isn't that the same one you fell on wrong in the fun house?"
The subtle misdirection in topics seemed to work for the moment, because Usagi let her protests drop, much to Mamoru's immense relief. He felt the tension roll off his shoulders and it was like he could finally breathe again. He was safe... for now.
But he could tell Usagi was still unsettled.
They barely talked the entire train and car ride back, her eyes a million miles away, but when they surfaced back to the present they were almost always shooting him a surreptitious glance from out the corners. He didn't know what to say either... he didn't want to reignite her suspicions. But he could tell they were there nonetheless, gnawing like persistent flies upon a compost heap, refusing to give her rest. He wasn't going to lie... he was scared.
Had she figured him out? If she had, what did she think of him now? Would the truth completely change her perception of him? Would she be afraid of him, because he was different?
That was what rattled him most of all...
Change.
He didn't want anything to change between them.
She meant too much.
If Usagi was foolish enough to believe she had a lot to reflect on before, well, it was nothing compared to the maelstrom she found herself reeling within now. Amidst the torrent of thoughts and emotions, three words in particular resounded loudest of all...
It was Mamoru.
That gold she had been picking up on? The flashes and the aura... it was him. He was causing it. The revelation hit her like a ton of bricks. He had... powers!? Healing powers, of some sort. He had to - it was all coming together now. Her burnt finger that mysteriously became smooth after she shook his hand. The ankle that didn't hurt as much anymore after he carried her out of the fun house. Both times, she had detected a strange warmth - a golden warmth - and shortly after noticed the coinciding increase of his aura. But she hadn't been able to put the pieces together until today, when he put his hands on her and she felt the literal transfer of power, flowing from him into her. He could excuse it away until he was blue in the face... it wouldn't change the fact that her pulsing pain had lessened to a dull ache on the spot. The fact that as she watched, his aura grew the brightest yet. A shining spark of gold set directly in his chest; so bright it almost lent definition to the rest of his features. Almost. True sight was still not within her reach; partial sight still only available in hazy black and white form as Sailor Moon. But she knew now, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was the reason she was seeing colors; the reason she was able to discern the planetary signatures of her guardians.
His power was... fueling hers.
Strengthening it.
She was sure it was all somehow connected; that while she did possess her own measure of Senshi awareness, he was the one who was responsible for bringing it out in her. But the question remained...
Did he know?
Was he aware of his own abilities - what exactly were they - and... did he have control of them, or was he a floundering greenhorn just like her?
Was that why he was collecting newspapers about her alter ego, and so tight-lipped as to the reason? She didn't think he was a threat. She didn't get that vibe at all. The possibility that currently made the most sense to her was that he sensed a comraderie between himself and the tabloid heroine. That perhaps... he was so interested in Sailor Moon because he too had powers, but wasn't sure what to do with them? She could definitely commiserate with the overwhelming fear that came hand-in-hand with this discovery of untapped potential; this unknown scope of magical ability. Enough that he wouldn't want to share his secret with another soul.
It was crazy to think that Luna's theory yesterday had been right; she just hadn't given any credence to the idea of Mamoru having powers too, just like the rest of them.
Mamoru.
Having powers!
It was all so much to process, and Usagi could feel a rather intense headache coming on, fiercely though she was fending it off. She knew the surplus of information was making her quiet, and she tried not to be too awkward with Mamoru, but it was a momentous effort and one she was sure she was failing. It didn't help that there was also that other matter of what exactly was that name he called her, why did it fluster her so, and... should she confront him about it? But no, that was such a tiny fish in the pond; she could hardly stop to consider the flower when there was a whole garden demanding her attention.
The garden...
Maybe that was a suitable place to bring up some of the bombshells that had been rained down upon her today?
Usagi was still lost in a tsunami of thought when Mamoru pulled away, countenance laden with concern... and, if she'd been able to read him with eyes that worked, a generous dollop of fear. She was already back up in her bedroom when she realized her communicator had been beeping.
She stayed silent as Rei's voice resounded breathless and tinny in the small space, listening in to the summons for aid Rei was currently giving to the Senshi at large.
"It's Zoisite! He's at the shrine and he's after Ojii-chan! I need back up NOW!"
There was what sounded like an explosion in the background before Rei's transmission went dead. Usagi's throat seized and she - for the third time that day - struggled to acquire the oxygen she needed. It was happening again... People she loved were in danger. There was no hesitation in her mind... only a firm resolve.
The time had come.
Sailor Moon was about to rejoin the fray.
"Moon Prism Power... MAKE UP!"
Her red boots had hardly touched ground when a voice suddenly exclaimed from the doorway,
"What the hell are you doing!?"
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author's Note: *cracks knuckles, stretches neck* Holy moly. Bit of a longer one for y'all this time. I'm pretty proud of it, and thank god it didn't involve any computer crashes along the way! I did re-write the last Usagi POV about fifty times over though. Her stream of consciousness was a tricky beast to tame, but in the end I like how it turned out. She's ALMOST there but our girl just can't equate Tuxedo Kamen with Chiba Mamoru yet. The two have had such disparate personalities for so long... but times have changed... if she stopped and really thought about it, Mamoru is not treating her all that different than Tuxedo Kamen would anymore ;) There's also the fact that she didn't know Kamen had healing powers! So... answers are at last being delivered maybe not to completion but getting closer! I'm afraid the train to Dramaland has only just begun! Buckle up folks! *cheesy villainous cackling*
GUYS. Your response last chapter FLOORED me once again. I SO appreciated your kind words of encouragement and was truly humbled by the stories I heard, particularly from those of you on the front lines. YOU ROCK, you are the ones truly keeping us afloat, and it's just so amazing to me that you'd spend your day SAVING LIVES and still have time to reach out to little old me? GUH. Blessed, I tell you! We're all in this together and we'll make it through one day at a time. Until then I hope fanfiction is as much your escape as it is mine :) LOVE to Astraearose-silvermoon, Jwalla1986, lolopptt, Guest (x2), aldoraspritelette, SereStarOfGaea, Sesshy's Rose, TheMunnin, AimlesslyGera, Sonata IX, TinkStar87, Moon Bunny, Serenity Red Eclipse, NikkiBC, karseneau1, chimichurri, Tina Century, Ruk, James Birdsong, Rufael, MyIndy13, Oreo596, Daire123, dayfreshie, CassieRaven, and lisasailor. My SINCEREST gratitude for turning a crappy weekend upside down ;)
Until next time,
AngelMoon Girl