Happy Birthday to me! So while the world has gone crazy, I have a few things to celebrate. I'm in the clear! I'm 20 days isolated, so I've dodged my hot spot (I'm in New Orleans) and can provide care for my father who has COPD. And if anyone has been paying attention to the insanity of my life, besides a pandemic, I was in a car accident on Friday the 13th. Besides some insane bruises, I'm physically fine. My car, however, was T-boned and my household is carless.

This isn't a full chapter, but I did finish the draft of the next chapter! If I can keep my goals, then hopefully I'll have it to y'all in a week. I also have an Usa/Mamo exchange fic on the horizon, so look for that too.

A very special shout out to my beta emkyrialynch! I appreciate you so much.

Y'all, your comments have brought me so much light in this darkness. So, thank you moon romance, tryntee13, LokiGirl1221, Perfect Beauty, Beaucoup Riant, Princesakarlita411, Celestial Cat, Moon Bunny, merendinoemilliano, AshleyL, Rogue Cherokee, Ghost Man, Roxypockets1, La Pisces, LovetoRead613, AliceNotInWL, moonwrite, and princessserena27, from the bottom of my heart. So keep safe and enjoy!

Sailor Moon X by Starling Sinclair

Interlude: Ami's Discovery

March 31, 2020

XXX

As Ami walked home from the clock store, she had a hunch. Her computer compiled quite a profile on Tuxedo Kamen and something about him that felt familiar. She recognized those vitals. Her brain formed a hypothesis and a plan to test her theory the next day at work.

After getting to the office early, she planted her little Mercury computer on her desk behind her photo of Ryo. She adjusted the placement of the photo several times to achieve maximum concealment. It would spend the morning running a program she wrote last night that would gather Mamoru's vitals and bios and run it against the profile she gathered on Tuxedo Kamen. She only had to keep her cool and not tip her hand to Mamoru.

Once she felt the office was in perfect order, she sat at her own computer and started at her inbox, brain pondering possibilities while she waited for her partner to arrive at work. When the door opened, she put on her best poker face. However, she hadn't expected Mamoru to stumble into their office looking like a dead man. He hadn't shaved, a day's growth of stubble on his chin and his shirt wrinkled. His eyes were red-rimmed with dark circles. What the hell had happened?

"Mamoru." She walked right up to him but hesitating to touch him. "Are you okay?"

"Usagi," he said, voice cracking. "She left me."

Ami opened and closed her mouth like a glitching computer. What? Usagi was head over heels for Mamoru! Leaving him felt so out of the blue. Just what the fuck had happened in that Clock Store? Had she seen a future in which she and Mamoru were no longer together? Or perhaps some danger that would befall Mamoru? As her mind raced, something pinged the back of her mind, something she'd overheard Minako say. Oh no.

In a completely uncharacteristic and Usagi-induced habit, Ami pulled Mamoru in for a deep hug. She held her friend close, and he returned the embrace.

"If you need to take the rest of the morning off, I can handle our appointments," she whispered in his ear.

"No, if I go home, I'm just reminded of her. I just don't understand what went wrong."

Of course, he wouldn't understand Usagi's motive. How could she explain that the only thing he'd done wrong was earning her love? That his ex-fiance had planted a seed in Usagi's head that they couldn't be together. That it was dangerous for him. This wasn't fair. Everything in her gut told her this wasn't right.

The rest of the workday went on uneventfully. Mamoru stayed in the office, going over the mundane paperwork that Ami hated, while she dealt with appointments. When she came in just before her last round, she found Mamoru sleeping at his desk. She smiled softly at him then she realized this was the perfect opportunity to check her experiment.

Ami had used Ryo's help to rewrite the diagnostic program that determined a Youma's weakness before to help scan for Rainbow Crystal carriers. So it didn't take much to rewrite the parameters after her encounter at the clock shop to scan for Tuxedo Kamen. With a deep breath, she checked the results. With a one hundred percent result, Mamoru was Tuxedo Kamen.

Chewing on her lip, she looked at her sleeping friend. What to do with this information? It was extremely confidential; she couldn't go to the other Senshi. Besides, what did she know of her fellow warriors? Mamoru, she did know. He was her friend, her partner. He'd been with her in dark times, fighting with her to save a child's life. No, as much as Minako believed Tuxedo Kamen was an enemy, Ami knew this couldn't be true.

While she couldn't share his secret, she could share her own. Perhaps, she could bridge the gap between the two forces. And with that distance closed, maybe Mamoru could be with Usagi again.

He snored, breaking her from her musing. Clearly, this wasn't the time or place to bring this up. If anything, Ami was patient. She would find the right time to tell him.

XXX

When no right time presented itself and Mamoru's depressive state didn't get better, she decided to just get it over with. So, she invited him out to dinner after work. At first, he declined, but she insisted.

"There's something really important I'd like to discuss with you. Please."

She could see him struggling with an answer, then finally agreeing. Which is how she found herself at a little ramen shop nearby, slurping noodles in awkward silence, while she tried to figure out how to tell Mamoru she was, in fact, a Sailor Senshi.

She'd never had to do this before. Everyone who'd known this secret knew without her consciously deciding to tell them. Secrecy had been stressed. Besides Mamoru and Usagi, Ryo was the only one she confided in and he'd known her identity before she did. She'd never chosen to reveal her secret before.

So finally, after what felt like an endless silence and her ramen had grown cold, she blurted out, "I know you're Tuxedo Kamen."

He choked on his noodles, flustering for his handkerchief to wipe his mouth.

"What?"

Well, that was probably not the best way to do that.

She set her chopsticks down in front of her and took a deep breath. "Let me start over. I figured out you are Tuxedo Kamen."

He quirked his eyebrow. Not denying the accusation, not confirming it either. She pulled her little Mercury computer from her subspace pocket, displaying it so he could see the large golden symbol for Mercury emblazoned on it.

Mamoru's eyes widened. His mouth opened and closed as he looked for words, before finally getting out, "How?"

"How am I a Senshi, or how did I figure it out?"

"Both?"

"I'm not sure about the former. Something about past lives or something. It's all very surreal," she explained. "But I was helping… Moon at the clock shop and you… I had my suspicions, so I ran some more tests."

"Just when I thought that night couldn't get any worse."

Ami flushed. "Oh no! I'm sorry. I haven't told the others yet. I… You're my friend. And I wouldn't tell them if you didn't want to."

He breathed out a sigh of relief, looking down at his noodles, stirring the nearly forgotten noodles with his chopsticks. "Thank you. I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet."

"I'm assuming you saw Moon at the clock shop while you were on your way to meet me," Ami said. "It was near enough…"

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, appraising. Did he know that Usagi was Sailor Moon? Had he found out and not told her? Was that the reason they split?

"Yeah," he said. "Motoki knows, and I knew he'd cover for me. And Usagi wanted me out of the house… I didn't understand why at the time."

She frowned. He hadn't seen her transform. He didn't know she needed him out so that she could transform into Sailor Moon.

Ami placed her hand on his. "She didn't know, did she? That you were…"

He shook his head. "I was going to tell her when we moved in together."

"No offense, I'm not sure that would have been the wisest idea. That seems like something that should have been discussed before you moved in together."

"It doesn't matter," he answered. "I was… I was going to give up the cape for her. Give the Senshi the crystals and wipe my hands clean."

She blinked in surprise. He was going to relinquish the crystals? If he was going to do that then he wasn't their enemy. She chewed her lip. "And now you're not?"

"I don't know," he continued. "What does it matter? What do you all want with them anyway?"

Ami shrugged. "I think our biggest goal is just keeping them out of the Dark Kingdom's hands," she answered. "I don't understand Venus's grudge against you. Unless… You don't know who she is, do you?"

Mamoru frowned at her. "Should I?"

"Oh no. Just… a curiosity."

Silence lingered between them. She thought about what to do with all this information. Where did her loyalty reside? To the mission? To her partner? To Usagi?

"For what it's worth," Ami hedged, "I think it was a mistake that she ended it. And if you want her to, I think she'll come around."

She touched his arm.

"I… I feel like there's something I'm missing. Some piece of the puzzle that's keeping us apart because - this is so stalkerish - but I feel like we're meant to be."

Ami chewed her lip."I think you're onto something. And if we just keep working on the puzzle, we can solve it together."

She didn't know how she was going to do it, but she was going to help Mamoru and Usagi get back together.