"Pick up! Pick up! Dammit! Pick UP!"
Minako was practically cracking the handset of her cellular picture phone/communicator as she listened tensely to a shrill ringing. Finally the screen in the center of the phone lit up and she was face to face with the one she'd called.
"Rei-chan! Thank kami-sama! I need to call a senshi meeting at your place, ASAP!"
The raven-haired priestess, still in her crimson and white robes, frowned at her friend. "What's the big deal, Minako? Now's not really a good time…"
"It's an emergency. We need to meet at your house. I already called Usagi and she's probably on her way to the temple now."
Purple-violet eyes widened in complete surprise. "I suppose…" Rei muttered weakly. A commotion had her setting down the phone for a moment. From her end Minako got a great view of the ceiling beams as she heard Rei screech at someone, probably Yuichiro, "Put the damned scrolls down before I hit you with a broom already!"
"I'm sorry," Rei grumbled, picking up the phone again and shoving tangled hair out of her face. "Like I said….a bad time."
"Well, I'll be there soon, so deal with whatever it is. This is important. The kami-cursed Shitennou are back!"
Seeing the color drain from her friend's face, Minako disconnected her call and punched a specially marked blue button on the phone.
Back at the Hikawa shrine, Rei turned to face an azure-eyed, blond man who had finally stopped meddling with antique religious artifacts and was holding her willow broom up out of arms reach, flashing a taunting smile. The smirk wilted as he took in her bleached complexion.
"What is it Firebird?"
"Hell!" she muttered, making his golden eyebrows shoot up toward his bangs. "We've got a problem. Imminently."
"Did I miss something?" he asked, lowering the broom and taking her in his arms.
A strident ringing that wouldn't quit had Ami flicking the button on her own phone. She looked rather disgruntled, however, making Minako assume she'd interrupted a study session. When Ami realized who was on the other end, though, she blinked and violently shoved something down out of line of sight. Her face went incredibly red, making her look like a sunburned tomato. Normally it would have made Minako wonder, but not that night.
"Minako-chan?"
"Ami!" Minako barked, sounding faintly unhinged. "Emergency senshi meeting in half an hour at Rei's." At Ami's mystified blink, she said just a bit more. "Shitennou. Back. Be extra careful! 'Nuff said. Gotta go."
As the tiny screen on Ami's phone went black, she stared down at the startled green-eyed man who had so unceremoniously been dumped off her couch when the call came in. He was shaking his head as she helped him back up. "This is not good…not good at all."
The green button had been depressed, but the communicator merely continued to buzz sullenly. Pacing, Minako clawed at her hair, raking her fingers through the golden mass as she hollered into the device.
"Pick up! Pick up! Dammit! Pick up! Pickuppickuppickup! Call me immediately if you get this message! Dammit, Mako-chan! I'm gonna hot glue your communicator to your hand."
An agitated Minako scowled furiously, snapping her phone shut and hurling it into her bag. When a gleaming yellow sports car slid up along side her, its engine purring like a cat, and the door opened, she did not brighten. She merely slid in and buckled up, looking grim.
"I got here as quick as I could. Michiru's out of the country on tour and she's got Hotaru with her. They'll teleport back if they have to, though." There was a pause, just long enough for the light to change. "To the temple?" inquired the driver, since it would affect they direction they turned at the intersection.
"No…to Mako-chan's." At Haruka's arched brow, Minako scowled blackly. "I couldn't get a hold of her and she's not answering her communicator. I'm really worried. With those men on the loose, it's not safe. Not even for someone as strong as Mako-chan. So we'll go there and fetch her personally, if she's there. I've got a key…"
The chill tone of the Venusian's voice indicated that there would be hell to pay if Makoto was at home and choosing not to answer her communicator for any reason.
"We'll be there in no time," Haruka said, gunning the car's motor. "Hang on tight."
They arrived in record time and Minako was soon unlocking the thunder senshi's front door. "Mako-chan!" she called out. The small apartment, which could also have doubled as a greenhouse, was still. Experimentally she pressed a button on her communicator phone, then frowned as a tinny, electronic version of 'Candyman' softly chimed forth from the depths of large crocheted handbag which was slung haphazardly on the back of an overstuffed floral-print chintz armchair. Only Mako-chan, Minako thought disgustedly, would have THAT song as a ringtone.
Otherwise, though, the apartment appeared completely normal except for some wrinkled clothes scattered around on the living room floor. Mako-chan's sickeningly neat standards must be slipping since she went back to school full-time, Minako thought. She never used to leave stuff lying around.
"Well…if her purse is here," Haruka said, "it's encouraging. She's probably not lying dead or mugged on the streets of Tokyo. Check her bedroom. It's pretty late. Maybe she's asleep and didn't hear it ring."
Minako nodded, shoving open the bedroom door. Seeing a long tangle of wavy brown hair just peeking out from beneath a fluffy rose print comforter, she sighed with relief, letting out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Oh good!" gasped Minako, "You're not dead."
She barged into the room, resetting her severe leader's frown in place as she opened her mouth to issue a none-too gentle wake-up call.
She let out a stifled yelp of startlement a half-second later, whirling as a hand landed on her shoulder from behind just as she was about to jerk away the bulky comforter from the sleeper. Her eyes shot wide as Minako realized she was staring at an equally wide-eyed, very bare footed and dewy fresh Makoto, who was wrapped in a damp apple green satin dressing gown and had a wet towel draped over one arm and a shower cap in hand. She smelled of lavender and talcum powder and her red-brown curls hung in wild corkscrews around her face and clung moistly to her neck. She had clearly just emerged from the steamy confines of the en-suite bath.
"Minako," whispered Makoto furiously. "What the HELL do you think you're doing barging into my bedroom unannounced?!" When she noticed the taller, older blonde woman also staring into the room, she felt a hot, mortified color stain her cheeks. "And what did you bring her here for?"
"Mako-chan," gasped Minako, looking from the woman to the brown-haired body which was beginning to stir in the bed. "Waitaminute! If you're here, then who is that?" she demanded, pointing.
The brunette's blush went from merely hot to scorching and had moved down from her face her neck, then further until she started to look reddish all over. "Get out, Minako. Now."
"Hrm," drawled Haruka, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the doorjamb in a studiedly casual manner. Her gaze, though, was anything but casual. Her eyebrow was arched and she looked distinctly disapproving, making Makoto writhe uneasily. "I think I'd like an answer to the question myself."
"Haruka-san…" protested Makoto, moaning faintly. She slumped onto the edge of the bed because it felt like her legs weren't going to hold her up much longer.
Growing up without parents to oversee her adolescence, Makoto had never experienced a sensation quite like the one she was now feeling, but when she looked from one accusing blonde face to another she was pretty sure that this was very similar to being caught in a lover's clinch by one's parents. It was humiliating in the extreme. It was a nightmare.
Of course that was nothing compared to the situation a moment later when a strong tanned arm snaked out from under the covers and wrapped around her waist as a satisfied-sounding male voice rumbled, "That was quick, sweetheart. Come back to bed…"
Minako's lapis lazuli eyes shot so wide open that her face started to resemble that of a kewpie doll. "I know that voice…Shit!"
Haruka's hands clenched into fists and she uncoiled herself from the doorframe, sliding into a fighting stance. She'd recognized it too.
"Oh Zeus," Makoto muttered in strangled tones, hiding her flaming face in her hands. She'd gone past red and her face was starting to move toward a rare shade of heliotrope. "Just go! Please…"
"What's the matter, love?" murmured Nephrite a bit sleepily, when he realized how unusually stiff Makoto was in his embrace. He shoved back the pastel coverlet and sat up, only then realizing they had company. Very familiar-looking and irate looking company at that.
"You bastard!" Minako hissed, so scandalized and flat out mad that she completely ignored the loving emotional currents that were rolling off the two in waves, despite embarrassment. "Kunzite was supposed to keep up his end, damn him, and keep you away!"
A dull brick-red flush stained Nephrite's cheeks as he jerked the comforter back up, making sure it decently covered everything critical. There was nothing, however, he could do about his bare chest. "Oh crap!" he mumbled to himself in horrified realization. "I'm a dead man…"
"You got that right, buster!" A white-knuckled hand thrust an orange and gold henshin wand skyward.
Nephrite quickly thrust Makoto behind him, shielding her body with his, the protective action one which had Haruka suddenly shooting out a hand to grab the senshi leader and jerk her back an instant before she could attack the unarmed man.
"Leggo Haruka!!!" hollered Minako, wriggling frantically as the taller, stronger woman bundled her into an unbreakable bear hug. "I'm going to see to it that he dies and stays dead this time! He seduced Mako-chan again, the evil bastard!"
Wrestling the henshin wand from Minako's grip, Haruka gave the smaller woman a brutal shove, sending her stumbling back out into the living room. By the time she picked herself up off the floor, the bedroom door was again closed and firmly locked this time, leaving her to only hammer at it furiously with her fists. "HARUKA! DAMN YOU!"
"So," said Haruka, leaning lazily back against the door as if they, and all of Makoto's neighbors, could not hear Minako's voice and thudding hands plainly through the thin wooden panel. Her razor-sharp gaze locked with Nephrite's and despite a lack of a shirt, he clearly felt like his collar was much too tight. Makoto had buried her face in a pillow, whispering something about putting Minako on meds, so he was on his own now. The senshi of the wind looked from the woman who was probably the closest thing Haruka had to a little sister to that same young woman's lover, then grinned shark-like.
"Nephrite-san, can I trust that your intentions are entirely honorable…?"
