A/N: Huge thanks to those who'd read, reviewed, faved, and added to alerts! Hope you enjoy this chapter as well.

Chapter 2

"Alright there, Mizuno-san?" Haruto asked, giving her a friendly tap on the shoulder.

Stifling a yawn, she straightened up her back and gave him a solemn nod. "Yes, of course."

Haruto laughed, mirth swimming in his eyes. "You don't need to be that uptight around me, you know that. I just find it weird that usually attentive Mizuno-san seem to be daydreaming."

A faint blush appeared on her face as she gave him a nervous smile. "I guess I was a bit tired out by last night's party."

Haruto gave her a strange look. "But you went home early—oh!" A look of realization dawned on his face and he smiled. "I guess you're just not used to these kinds of partying, are you? Though I would've thought otherwise from your costume last night. Unless you were hurrying to get to another party last night?"

The thought of last night's costume made her grimace before she forced out a laugh, albeit a nervous one. "Oh no! I …"

She allowed her words to trail off. Usually, she probably would've made an effort to explain herself, worried that there would be rumors being spread about her. However, according to one goddess of love and beauty, rumors were a good thing, especially if they had something to do with promoting how "fun-loving" and "wild" Ami Mizuno was. She supposed party-hopping should count as being "wild", right?

That and because it really wasn't Haruto's business in first place. Was it her imagination, or was Haruto getting nosier and nosier? Not to mention the fact that if she shot down his presumption, she would have to explain why she was tired.

He really didn't need to know that she stayed up until four in the morning thinking about her conversation with a certain silver-haired Shitennou and worried that she might've somehow made a deal with the devil.

Haruto looked at her questioningly, as if he was waiting for her to elaborate. However, she was saved from answering when another voice called out her name.

"Mizuno! There you are!" Riku appeared around the corner and his face lit up when he saw her.

She was pretty certain a look of surprise appeared on her face when she saw how amicable he was being, but if he noticed, it didn't show.

"Watanabe-san …"

"I'd been looking for you all morning! Follow me," he said as he gestured for her to follow him.

Before she could answer, he'd already turned on his heel and walked away. Her heart gave a jolt, and she glanced at Haruto with question and worry swimming in her eyes. Unfortunately, Haruto looked every bit as confused as she was, and she doubted she would earn any favors with Riku if she allowed him to wait for her. Therefore, giving Haruto a wobbly smile, she hurried after her supervisor, worried about what was about to come.

~-0-~

She supposed that things could've been worse. Maybe. Like if the Shitennou appeared out of thin air and started stealing energy from everyone while mocking about how stupid she was to trust them again.

That, or if one particular, strawberry-blond Shitennou showed up at the hospital.

So really, she supposed that staying in the presence of Kyosuke Takayama while he was having a "meeting" of some sort with her supervisor wasn't the worst thing that could happen. Though the fact that Riku kept sending her cryptic glances was quite disturbing.

"Perhaps you would like Mizuno to show you around the hospital? To see that the money you'd donated was being placed into good use?"

And so were none-too-subtle suggestions. Disturbing, that was.

She fleetingly tried to imagine the expression on Minako's face if she saw this scenario. She reckoned that the Venusian soldier would either be highly amused or annoyed. She was betting her whole fortune on the former.

"Hm … while Mizuno-san is quite an interesting person, I doubt my … friend would appreciate me spending so much time with such a lovely young lady."

She was certain that she didn't imagine the amused glint that flashed through his eyes. Neither did she doubt she was wrong in assuming that said "friend" must be his brother, the one that she was doing her best to avoid.

Nonetheless, Riku obviously got the wrong idea in regards to whom this "friend" could be.

"You can be quite assured that what happens … I wouldn't rat out a friend if I weren't given explicit permission to do so," Riku said.

The smile on his face was equal parts disconcerting and bootlicking, and Ami felt bile rise up her throat before she forced it down. She'd imagine that if Makoto had been in her shoes, Riku would've had his nose flattened into the nearest wall. Though she supposed Makoto's methods had their merits when she heard the next words out of Riku's mouth.

"It'll be our little secret," Riku continued to say, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Kyosuke looked as polite as ever, but she theorized that the extra tiny quirk of the corner of his lips and the slightly raised eyebrows suggested condescension.

"Are you always this … accommodating towards the patrons of the hospital, Watanabe-san?" Kyosuke asked.

Either Riku didn't hear the sarcasm or he chose to ignore it. "Of course not, Takayama-san! I have no idea why, but from the first time I saw you, I just felt this closeness towards you, as if I'd seen a family member or a long-lost brother!"

Ami's eyebrows furrowed at the display in front of her. She knew Riku had a long history of kissing up to people of importance, but this was going a bit too far. Momentarily, she glanced at Kyosuke, wondering just how influential he really was if Riku was practically tripping over himself to flatter him.

"Is that so?" Kyosuke asked, almost conversationally. However, Ami was pretty sure she hadn't imagined that spark of disdain in his eyes when he looked at the overly eager supervisor.

"Of course!" Riku exclaimed, completely oblivious to how he was accomplishing pretty much the opposite of what he had been setting out to do.

At that moment, another young nurse ran up to Riku. "Watanabe-san, your wife is on the phone."

A fleeting frown found its place on Riku's face before he squeezed out that over-enthusiastic smile again towards Kyosuke.

"I'll be right back," Riku said. Glancing at Ami, he gave her a sharp nudge in the arm while Kyosuke wasn't looking.

It took no small amount of effort for Ami to resist the childish move of making faces behind Riku's back as he hurried away towards his office.

"I guess that's the cue for me to offer you a cup of coffee," Kyosuke said, a stoic mask over his face.

"As delightful as that suggestion is, I'm afraid I will have to decline," Ami replied dryly.

"As delightful as that supervisor of yours?" Kyosuke asked, humor fracturing the polished surface of his facade and causing a small grin to appear on his face.

Ami gave him a firm shake of her head, the corner of her lips quivering despite her best attempts at keeping a straight face. "I'm afraid that there aren't many things that can quite compare to the epitome of charisma that is Watanabe-san."

"You wound me, Mizuno-san. Here I am, believing that I am charming you with my wit and good looks, yet you proceed to compliment Watanabe-san instead," Kyosuke deadpanned.

"My sincerest apologies, but you still have a long way to go if you wish to reach his league," Ami said as she sat down on the bench for visitors, crossing her feet at her ankles.

A small chuckle escape his lips as he took a seat on the bench opposite of hers and crossing his arms over his chest. "You've changed."

She tilted her head to one side, a questioning look on her face before she realized that he meant in comparison to Mercury. She raised an eyebrow at him. "We've all changed."

Perhaps he knew that she hadn't finished, but he remained silent as she pulled and readjusted the white coat she was wearing. The silence was a comfortable one, and the atmosphere was amicable. She reckoned that if she were to close her eyes, she could almost pretend that they were inside a library or something similar.

"We're not carbon copies of who we had been, Takayama-san," she said quietly.

It's really not a topic she enjoyed, but it wasn't enough to disturb the comfortable casualness between the two of them. After all, she wasn't being nastily surprised by having a possible former enemy pop up in front of her, and if to be quite honest, she knew that this would come up in conversation again one day or another.

"Similarly, I could say the same about you," she continued to say. "That's precisely why I was willing to go through with our deal."

He leaned forward, propping his elbows up with his knees as he gazed at her above his clasped hands, a smile lingering on his lips. It was strange, but at that moment, Ami could almost understand why Venus had been so enamored with him, despite the many suitors lining up for her hand.

"Regardless of how much a person had changed between lifetimes, I still find it hard to believe for Mercury to go back on her words."

For a moment, she was afraid that someone might've heard what he'd said, but then she remembered that he was also an expert with magical force fields, and though she detected nothing with her naked eye, she was willing to bet that he had done something to prevent others from hearing their conversation.

There was more curiosity than malice in his words, and for that reason, Ami decided to keep her voice as gentle as possible, even though she knew her words were anything but.

She lowered her head, and out of habit, she twirled the piece of loose strand of thread at the hem of white coat around her fingers. "Mercury does like to keep her words, but if the Shitennou weren't changed men, I daresay that she wouldn't hesitate in using everything to her advantage." Tilting her head to one side, she gazed up straight into his eyes. "After all, the Shitennou of the past weren't very keen on keeping their promises."

"Touché, Mizuno-san," he said, leaning back against the wall again. "An eye for an eye … perhaps one hasn't changed that much after all."

"I would like to believe," she said, "that we'd all learned from our past mistakes and had changed for the better."

He gave pause when he heard her words, and Ami wondered if he thought that she'd meant the relationships between the Senshi and the Shitennou.

"Are you speaking for yourself or on behalf of others?" he asked, proving her intuition.

His voice was still casual, but his eyes took on a business-like glint.

She was never one to trudge down pointless endeavors, so she didn't bother to correct him. Ever since she'd known about the relationships between the Shitennou and the Senshi, she'd labeled them as a mistake, so it really didn't matter that she hadn't been thinking about them when she mentioned "mistakes" at the end of the day.

She gazed at him in silence for a short moment before answering, "I'm not speaking on behalf of anyone. Just the simple truth." Taking a deep breath in, she continued, "Takayama-san … I acknowledge that you may be a changed man, but I also think that it may be better for everyone if we looked at everything from a more realistic point of view. My parents weren't the same ones as Mercury's. Serenity's mother isn't Queen Serenity. Though I love my Princess and would lay down my life for her, my whole life didn't revolve around training to protect her. We are who we were, but we don't have to follow the same destiny we had in our previous life. You can't expect us to follow the same destiny. We don't have to choose the same relationships we had in our previous life."

He stared at her, and she looked right back at him, almost daring him to contradict her. To be honest, it was odd, bizarre even, to her how adamant he seemed to be about pursuing what had been. Though Mercury had developed somewhat of a friendship with Kunzite and she'd known about his relationship with Venus, she'd always seen him as someone who was cold and unemotional. At the time, she hadn't thought much about it, since she'd assumed that what had happened between him and Venus was precisely because they were so different. Opposites attracted. However, it seemed that she had been wrong, somewhere down the line. It seemed that Kunzite was just as invested in their affair as Venus had been, though he didn't show it very often.

That, in and of itself, made the whole situation quite a bit more delicate and a whole lot stickier. She felt as if there was an anvil being hung right above her head and would come crashing down on her, should she say something wrong. However, she wasn't in a situation where she could keep her mouth shut and not say anything.

"You've always been more logical," he said, his voice peaceful, almost scarily so. "So logical that it was often hard to persuade you that real life situations don't necessarily always followed numbers and statistics."

Now that was an unfair assessment. She was immensely tempted to snap back at him, but she managed to keep that urge at bay, opting for the level-headed route.

"Au contraire," she replied. "If I were to follow numbers and statistics, I would've deemed it impossible for us to sway away from the relationships that were predestined from our previous lives. Additionally, I would've assumed that the Shitennou would be doomed to fall into the hands of evil once more."

"But isn't that precisely why you're afraid of letting my brothers meet the Senshi? Isn't that precisely why you are determined to stay away from Zoisite? Isn't that why you're afraid of falling in love with him again? You assume that we're going to turn evil again, so best prepare yourself for the worst. If the Senshi never invested their emotions in us, then it would be so much easier to kill us when the day comes, wouldn't it?"

Each of his words were like cruel threads of steel, pricking into her mind and heart, and though he was sitting feet away from her, she felt as if she'd been slapped. Even though what he said wasn't the complete truth, it was enough for the hot flush of embarrassment to color her cheeks, and she realized belatedly that she should've known that he was moving in for the kill after attempting to lull her into a false sense of security.

"This has nothing to do with Zoisite and me," she said quietly. It was half of the truth, and that was all she wanted him to know.

"You'll excuse me for the fact that I find your statement highly unconvincing," he said. "You spoke as if you are speaking for your sisters, while we both know that you are making decisions without their knowledge or consent. You never even hesitated to wonder if they might actually want another chance with my brothers nor did you bother to ask for their thoughts or opinions."

"They're happy the way they are right now. They don't need the Shitennou barging into their lives and changing everything for them," she said.

"You see it as 'barging into their lives', yet you never stop to wonder perhaps we can be assets to their lives, to your life. Change is never necessarily bad," he countered. "Mercury's initial impression of Zoisite was horrible, but I recall you mentioning later on that spending time with him was the happiest memories you'd ever had. Or was that a lie?"

"It wasn't a lie, but it was a mistake, a mistake that doesn't need to be repeated," she retorted.

"That is precisely why I said that you're already assuming that we would turn our backs on Endy once again. You're already preparing for the day when the four of you will need to kill us," Kyosuke said.

His eyes were like dark steel, piercing into her eyes and giving her the intimidating feeling that he was staring into her soul. The feeling was so suffocating that she was forced to looked down and away.

"We're going in circles. We had this conversation last night, and I'm not about to keep repeating myself a thousand times again today," she said, suddenly tired.

"You know you will need to face your fears sooner or later. You can't keep running away from trouble and pretending that it will resolve itself if you don't look at it, as if Zoisite would suddenly disappear if you don't see him."

"It's not about Zoisite!" she snapped.

"Then what it is about?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes at her.

And with that question, she felt the strength rush out of her like air from a balloon. Why was she even arguing with him? It wasn't even worth proving to him that she didn't give a damn about a certain green-eyed, handsome Shitennou (he could go burn in hell for all she cared; she'd probably buy front row tickets if she had the option to do so). Let him believe that it was because of Zoisite. It would save everyone the trouble, and she didn't need to explain that she couldn't have him marching into Minako's life days before her wedding.

"It … it doesn't matter," she said, shaking her head, staring off to the side. "You're right. I'm afraid that if my sisters were to reignite whatever they had with the three of you, I would be forced to be in his presence. Now, if you would be so kind as to acquiesce to my request of staying away from all three of them, you would have my utmost respect and gratitude."

He remained quiet for seconds after she'd finished speaking, and if she weren't so preoccupied with waiting for his answer, she would've noticed that his wards also prevented sounds from the outside from reaching them. However, the silence was unforgiving this time. It fueled her curiosity and heightened her anxiety, and nervously, she took a peek at his face.

If she'd found his failure to answer her request unnerving, she would have to categorize that impassive expression on his features as chilling. For some reason, it worried her more than words could describe, but before she could say something, a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes appeared.

"As you wish."

~-0-~

After that very disconcerting meeting with Kyosuke, Ami was left with even more sleepless nights.

The girls had chalked it up to her being busy at the hospital. However, she, of course, knew better. Kyosuke's parting words had seemed to ominous to her, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking, nor could she accuse him of anything because really, what was she going to ask him? How she'd managed to mess up and let something slip that she wasn't worried about Zoisite?

Thankfully, Minako's wedding date continued to crawl closer, and the next couple of days passed without anything suspicious happening, unless she counted that one time Makoto managed to burn one batch of cookies. It was rare for Makoto to be distracted while she was baking, but the girls had assumed that it was normal. After all, accidents did happen to everyone, didn't they?

If Kyosuke didn't do anything by now, everything should be okay, right?

She would've probably been comforted by that if she didn't know Kunzite as well as she did, and from the two times she'd conversed with him, that sneakiness and treating every encounter as if he was in some victory-deciding battles were things that hadn't changed much between his two lifetimes.

"Ami-chan!" Minako called out in a sing-song voice as she slung one arm around Ami's shoulders. "Are you bringing anyone to the wedding?"

Ami snapped out of her reverie. "What? Wait. No and no."

The smile on Minako's face faltered. "I only asked one question."

Makoto, who was testing out cake batter by the oven, sniggered. "She probably already knows that you're going to try to set her up with someone."

"That's not fair!" Minako pouted. "Touma-san is such a lovely young man, too—"

"Ha! Ami-chan was right. Or for that matter, all three of us," Rei said as she drank her tea in front of the television.

"You gotta stop trying to set us up with random men that you find 'lovely', Minako-chan," Makoto said, shaking her head as she added some more sugar to the batter.

"But Koichi-san loves to eat, Mako-chan!" Minako exclaimed.

"Righhhhhht, that's the recipe for a perfect match. One knows how to cook, and the other knows how to eat. The latter is so hard to find these days," Rei said with a roll of her eye.

"Oh, don't worry, Rei-chan! I hadn't forgotten you. Taiga-san loves to meditate, and he's so handsome. The two of you would make such a lovely couple," Minako gushed.

"No," Rei replied without looking at Minako.

"But—"

"No," Rei repeated, taking yet another sip of tea.

"Rei-chan! Come on. You hadn't even seen the guy yet!" Minako heckled.

"I don't need to see him, neither do I need you to meddle with my love life," Rei said, a disgusted look on her face.

"But—"

Her next argument was cut short by the ring of her cellphone, much to everyone's delight.

"Hi! Minako-chan speaking!" she bubbled into the phone before mouthing towards Rei, "We're not finished yet."

"Does anyone have Ace's phone number? I'm going to offer him a hundred thousand yen to keep her so busy that she won't have time to play matchmaker," Rei said, after Minako left to speak in another room.

"I'll chip in," Makoto offered.

"Me too," Ami sighed. "Between her and Usagi-chan, I'm starting to get a bit scared whenever I get a call to 'meet up'."

"Hear, hear," Makoto agreed, placing the cake she was making into the oven before setting the temperature and time. She paused for a second before adding, "The last guy she tried to set me up with was also looking for a chef."

Ami and Rei both looked at her, knowing that she wasn't quite finished with her tale.

Placing both hands on the island counter, amusement and helplessness swam in her eyes as she looked at two of her dearest friends. "He needed a nanny to take care of his children so that he could take his wife on a second honeymoon."

"Are you serious?" Rei asked, scrunching up her nose.

"Dead serious," Makoto said cheerfully.

"At least he didn't spent three hours telling you about how many awards he was going to get on his yet-to-be-finished research," Ami said.

Makoto and Ami both looked at Rei, waiting for her to share a tale of her own. Instead, the Martian princess shrugged.

"I don't have those kind of tales to share, unfortunately," she said. "Most of them clam up after I glared at them." An annoyed frown appeared on her delicate features. "I'm almost tempted to tell Minako that I'm getting engaged with Yuuichirou just to get her to stop."

"I'm actually quite surprised you hadn't," Makoto confessed, "both for real and as an excuse. I thought you found him at least tolerable."

Rei shrugged again and leaned back into the sofa, but before she could answer, they heard Minako's frantic voice moving towards where they were sitting.

"—be right there," she said as she hurried into the living room.

The three of them stared at her angry face in surprise and she gazed back at them, no longer the bubbly young woman who was about to get married.

"I need to get going," she said.

"Uh, okay, why?" Makoto asked.

"I need to get some business settled," Minako said, her voice calm, a deep contrast to her expression.

"What happened?" Ami asked.

An incredulous laugh escaped Minako's lips. "Ace just got thrown in jail. Apparently, he's being accused of drug possession and a hit-and-run case."

Ami shot up from her chair.

"What!?" she and Rei exclaimed at the same time.

"Precisely," Minako fumed. "I know Ace well enough—checked him up—made sure that there was nothing wrong with him—there's no way in hell he would do something like this—"

Subconsciously, Ami felt relieved that Minako had run a background check on Ace beforehand, but at the moment, she was more concerned with the fact that Ace had been thrown in jail, and she was betting her bottom dollar that it had something to do with Kyosuke Takayama.

"—and I'll make sure those sorry asses know who they're dealing with," Minako finished off before grabbing her stuff and rushing out of the door.

A nervous laugh escaped Makoto's lips as she watched the door to her apartment slam shut. "I … actually feel a bit sorry for the people who'd thrown Ace in jail now."

~-0-~