Chapter 12 – Those Who Come By Night
Night brought with it a certain measure of calm, if not peace. Three senshi, doors and windows tightly locked with blinds and curtains firmly shut to keep out the unknown, slept fitfully, two dreaming of the far distant past and their leader tossing and turning, wondering why she couldn't. Their princess, though, with a ragged stuffed bunny snuggled under one arm and a black cat curled up at her feet, was sleeping the sleep of the angels, dreaming hopefully of a rosy future with her adorable Mamo-chan.
Her Mamo-chan, on the other hand, was not sleeping at all. Having slipped into his Tuxedo Kamen guise, he was leaping nimbly from rooftop to rooftop. Finally he reached the building he was searching for and scaled down the side of it like a human fly until he reached the tiny balcony he'd been searching for. There he waited until the light blinked off and then he waited some more until the moon was well in its nightly course. Finally he decided it was time.
Soundlessly sliding open the window, he gave thanks that it was a large one as tuxedos, even for superheroes, were not meant for clambering through tiny spaces. The window was actually almost as wide as the room itself. In the light of the moon he could see that a small bunk bed, bureau, desk and chair comprised its furnishings. Tuxedo Kamen flinched, feeling the fantods howling in his ear. None of his research had indicated his quarry had a roommate. Carefully he scanned the room.
A shaft of moonlight shone into the room over Tuxedo Kamen's head as the moon came out from behind a cloud. The gentle silvery light illuminated a face in the bottom bunk. He looked innocent as a cherub, eyes shut in slumber and soft dark golden locks tumbling around his face and onto the pillow like a halo. It was that very innocent expression that made a surge of rage and resentment bloom in Tuxedo Kamen's stomach. How dared a traitor sleep so soundly when he had caused nightmares for so many others?
He eased inside, listening for any hint of anything. Deep, regular breathing, punctuated by the odd soft snore was the only sound besides the soft humming of a computer. A glance at the monitor made him scowl blackly. If the screensaver, a compilation of lovingly rendered artist's images of Sailor Mars, wasn't a new addition, he'd eat his own top hat.
Once inside he let out his breath in a tiny, relieved puff. If the man had a roommate, he wasn't in tonight. Perfect. Sliding forward, he immediately stumbled over an untidy pile of recently acquired books on the Shinto faith that he hadn't seen stacked on the floor directly beneath the window.
The soft scuffling noise and muffled thump were all it took. The occupant of the lower bunk startled awake and sat bolt upright. A pulsating flash of blue-gold light filled the corner of the room. Behind his mask Mamoru flinched, feeling something in his chest resonate with the light.
Two warriors peered suspiciously at one another through the dim light.
"Who the hell are you?" demanded the blond man of his intruder as he tensed beneath his sheets and drew back further into the protective shadows, gripping a magicked dagger tightly in his fist.
"You have no rights to ask anything of us," Tuxedo Kamen hissed between his teeth with regal formality.
"Us?" the Warrior-King of the Far East asked, his lip curling in scorn. "I only see one of you breaking and entering, Tux Boy." The mention of the tuxedo made his brow furrow, an action which Tuxedo Kamen could just barely see.
"You," accused Jadeite, his eyes narrowing, "you're the one who carried off Jupiter. My friend is interested in some serious payback for that one, boy-o."
"Tell him anytime, anyplace," growled Kamen, not denying his culpability for a second. 'I will NOT let them hurt the senshi again.' After everything they had done for Serenity, protecting her, his protecting them from his former men was the least he could do.
"Look," Jadeite tried to be reasonable since from what he could see, it was way, way too AM to be getting into battles and he knew he could kiss his damage deposit farewell if they started anything in the little dorm room. "I don't know what your relationship is with her or the rest of the senshi, but trust me, it's going to be a lot better for your health if you just find someone else. Jupiter's totally spoken for and my friend is not going to budge on that. He's not understanding that way."
"I'd say that's not his choice," replied the tuxedo clad man, frowning. Jadeite's measured response, more in the nature of a friendly warning than any kind of threat, was completely unexpected. The blond man sounded so genuinely concerned that it was throwing him, but Tuxedo Kamen reminded himself firmly not to be taken in. If he'd learned anything over the years it was that evil could wear a thousand and one guises, the better to convince a body to let down his guard…and that was when it would strike.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded coldly.
"Well," Jadeite responded snidely, "I was sleeping until someone rudely came in without knocking. How about you? Breaking and entering to supplement your dry cleaning budget for the fine threads, hmm?"
Tuxedo Kamen suffered a moment in which he seriously wanted to knock his own head against the wall in frustration, and for reasons he couldn't elucidate, he was pretty certain that it wasn't the first time. The blond man was slippery. He would clearly have to be more direct…and a lot more precise. He could do that.
"How could you betray your oath and your prince?" The tuxedo-clad warrior's words were a pure challenge. They hit their target with the impact of a bomb. The words 'your prince' hammered in Jadeite's brain over and over again.
"The prince? Endymion… How in the hell do you…?" sputtered Jadeite, feeling like he ought to leap at the chance for information from someone else, anyone else who knew of the Shitennou's lord. But suddenly the rest of the question filtered through to his still slightly sleep-fogged brain and Jadeite's countenance darkened to an ugly beet shade.
"Okay…," he snarled, flinging back the sheets, regardless of the chill, and leaping to his feet in one swift motion. "That's IT! How dare you accuse me of betraying my prince, you overdressed housebreaker?!" Reason was going to have to go hang. Jadeite wanted blood, or at least pain, for that insult.
"So you deny it?" taunted Tuxedo Kamen, brandishing his cane at the boxer-clad man and beckoning. "Oh under-clad one?"
"You're goddamned right, I deny it!" bellowed Jadeite, no longer caring if he woke the entire dormitory. He hurled a balled up pair of winter wool gloves from his nightstand at the figure near the window, counting it as fulfillment of the age-old requirement of slapping one's opponent in the face during a challenge of honor. A coffee mug followed after just for spite. The softer missile flew past Kamen's head and out the window, while the mug smashed against the wall, fortunately missing both the window and its intended target, who had ducked. One of Tuxedo Kamen's especially lethal type of rose was hurled, dart-like, into the opposite wall when Jadeite dodged. "And I'm going to rip you a new one for that insult, you sonofa…"
"Ah ah. Temper, temper. Next story you'll be trying to tell me is that you never betrayed Mars either." Again the words were a challenge. Tuxedo Kamen's lip was curled. 'Come on, you liar. Spill your guts in a fit of temper. Give me something I can work with!'
"Are you the one responsible for poisoning her mind against me?" howled an enraged Jadeite, lashing out with his dagger. The slash was parried by Kamen's cane, and both men felt the impact reverberate up their arms. The blade left an ugly gash in the cane's ebony lines.
"What lies have you spewed, you bastard, that my own soulmate thinks I'M a threat to her? What did you tell her? By Terra, I'll hang you by your own cape until you tell me every slanderous word you convinced her of," Jadeite continued to rant.
"I said nothing!" The tuxedo clad man danced back, trying to control the jolt of power that had raced back to him, for what his psychic sense had picked up in that brief instant of contact made no sense under the circumstances. He'd felt nothing that even remotely hinted at evil. Rage, yes, toward the entity that was Tuxedo Kamen, and confusion, but nothing malevolent. Not toward either Endymion or Mars. Yet he knew Mars would not lie about her memories. Jupiter, for her part, was too forthright a person to effectively pull off such a deception, even if she had some bizarre reason for doing so, which he knew she did not. Yet she too had confirmed Mars' story, at least in part. What in the name of Terra was going on?
'I've got to get out of here to think!' Tuxedo Kamen nimbly evaded another swift lunge by Jadeite, though it came disconcertingly close to making its mark, and sprang out the window into the night.
Suddenly lacking an opponent, Jadeite blinked rapidly and raced toward the window. "Where'd the penguin-suited bastard go?"
He could see nothing…not one thing to indicate where his foe had gone. Frantically, Jadeite looked in every direction, yet there was nothing. The mysterious masked man had vanished. His burning need for answers left unassuaged, he could only let out a howl, like a predator denied its prey and slam the window shut in a rather Mars-esque fit of pique. He wouldn't be sleeping for the rest of the night.
It was really only right that Jadeite's rest be disturbed, however, for none of the other Shitennou were sleeping. Though one was seriously considering dozing off as he half-listened to the other.
"Uh huh," Zarek mumbled periodically into his cell phone as Neil babbled on at great length. If there was anything that the man, in any of his incarnations, had cared about nearly as much as Endymion or Jupiter, it was, Zarek knew, his communion with the stars. And evidently the man had gotten a little drunk with the joy of his own reacquired power, consulting them for several very intense hours and he now needed to talk about it with someone. Zarek was the only available one. Yet another reason, he though, to put Neil's and Li…that is, Makoto's relationship back on course. Then she could listen, because for the most part the topic bored Zarek silly. It was so unscientific and vague.
How the seer was going to stay awake the next day, Zarek was not sure, since he was probably going to crash soon, but he figured it was not his problem, and he himself was used to operating on fairly little rest, so he let the man yammer on, not paying too terribly close attention. After all, there were far more interesting things going on in the immediate vicinity.
If Zarek just stretched up a bit in his chair, he could see through one of the windows the top of a charming gamine mop of blue-black hair. She was, he knew, perched on her work stool, bent industriously over her notes. If he stood, he could even see her whole face as she worked, occasionally blowing her bangs out of her eyes with an exasperated puff of breath and chewing on her soft, pink lower lip in concentration. Imaginings of that maltreated lip and how he would choose to soothe it helped Zarek rather pleasantly pass the time as Neil blathered on.
She was now busily peering through a microscope at fibers (or were they hairs? Zarek wondered) and other slides that she'd brought with her to the labs. He would have to investigate, he thought. She was working on matters with a focus and intensity that he could see were well beyond her normal meritorious habits, not to mention that she'd come in well after normal hours. So whatever it was, it was personally very important to her and she didn't want to share it with others. She was, he noticed, even using her mini computer…and that, he realized, meant senshi business. Interesting.
She did look, adorable, though. She'd even perched the cute glasses that he knew she didn't really need on her pert little nose. Once, months before, he'd asked her why she wore them when she didn't need to. She had replied that they got her in the proper frame of mind to work. His amused double entendre of, "So they get you in the mood?" and saucy wink had made her blush a fascinating shade of crimson, though he'd regretted the words as soon as he'd said them, for she'd darted away immediately thereafter.
He idly wondered what she would do if he were to come up behind her and kiss the creamy exposed nape of her neck. He sighed. The answer to that was most probably that she'd scream, startled out of her wits. Right before she decked him. She was a senshi, after all.
"Are you even listening to me?" Neil finally barked, having wound down enough to notice Zarek's blasé non-responses.
"Of course," he answered smoothly, exercising his talent for sifting the grain from the chaff that had served him so well through his years of schooling. "You got no further word on Kunzite except that he's closer than we think. You got no further word on Endymion…something about things being in flux. The outside threat is still hanging over the senshi. You want to tell your lady, but you think it's too great a shock right now. You need to tell your mother soon because if you don't, she'll fly over here and kill you when she does find out. So everything's probably going well except for the women. You know…the major source of trouble in your life is women, my friend."
He smirked knowingly. Neil had to be grinding his back teeth. Sometimes it was so darned easy he just couldn't stop himself from tweaking the man's temper.
"Smug jerk," Neil snapped, unwittingly confirming Zarek's prediction.
"Look, Neil," Zarek pinched the bridge of his nose and prayed for patience. "I know it's hard, but you have to be patient with her. She's scared, mad, and, as I recall, she's always had a tendency toward unpredictability. Maybe you ought to stop chasing her, which only encourages her to flee. Maybe you ought to try getting her to come to you?"
"And just how am I supposed to do that, genius?"
"Well…you have her tiara, no?"
There was a slight cough followed by a moment of abashed stillness from Neil's end of the line. "Um…no," he finally answered. When Zarek remained silent, Neil hastened to explain. "I had to give it back to her. I was worried that pink freak's brothers would come back sometime, like he said they would, and she'd be completely defenseless. I can't always be there to protect her, so…"
"Let me say that, as someone who witnessed that little scene the other night, tiara or no tiara, powers or no powers, that woman is about as defenseless as a rabid badger," cut in Zarek, shaking his head.
Neil rumbled out a defensive growl that had the other man backtracking fast.
"Um…sorry. No offense meant. I just was saying that she's pretty capable of defending herself. I mean, hell, the info you asked me to dig up says that she got thrown out of more than one school for fighting when she was younger. Though, reading between the lines, I think that she was defending younger kids from bullies. But she was a little too effective at striking back and she didn't have parents to go to bat for her with the administration when the bullies' parents complained, so that's why she got bounced."
"That sounds like my Lita," sighed Neil, sounding as wistful as it was possible for a man with his gravely baritone to sound. "You know, even with the laws the way they were back when, I think it was easier then…"
"I know what you're thinking about and it won't work," Zarek insisted, shaking his head as he glanced back at Ami. "It wouldn't have been approved of then and it's just not done these days. Not to mention, it would make her mad as hell right now. I don't care if your people in this life are descended from wild and wooly Scottish Highlander types. You can't just drag her off over your saddle or…I guess in this case, your car."
The sound of a series of indistinct grumbling noises making their way through the phone made a smile curve Zarek's lips. "Look, I know how you feel, but…Waitaminute. Hold the phone."
Oblivious to Neil's protests, Zarek dropped his phone and hopped to his feet. Through the window he could see Ami had stopped her work, getting up and smiling welcomingly at someone, and her computer had, unsurprisingly, vanished. But from the angle he was at, he couldn't see who had come in.
Who else would be in at such an hour anyway? And why was Ami smiling at him that way? Poison green eyes flashed, displeased. He had no doubts whatsoever that it was a him that Ami was smiling at. The thought did not make for a pleasant or patient Zarek.
"Listen, Neil," muttered Zarek rudely when he again picked up his telephone. "I've got to go. Something's cropped up here. Whatever you do, get some sleep because if you don't, your woman won't even look twice at you. 'Cause as I recall, you always looked and acted like hell when you were sleep deprived."
He abruptly snapped shut his telephone, cutting off Neil's insulting rejoinder in mid-stream. Scooping up the soft lavender-blue colored coat and navy handbag that Ami had forgotten the night before, Zarek decided it was absolutely the perfect time to return said items and see who was receiving the gentle smile that should have been directed at him instead.
"…glad I could help, since it all affects my Hotaru too," he overheard a male voice saying as he pushed open the door to Ami's lab space. "Honored, really, under the circumstances."
"Well we appreciate any help you can give us, Doctor Tomoe." Ami answered softly, giving the distinguished professor's hand a gentle affirmative squeeze. "I've been testin…"
She broke off and glanced up as the door to the lab facilities squeaked loudly. "Oh, good evening, Veridian-san." She swallowed hard. "I thought I was alone in the labs tonight."
"You're not." His tone was intentionally deadpan, but he favored her with a mildly indulgent smile before turning an aggressive laser-eyed gaze on her companion. "Oh, Tomoe-san," he growled bluntly. "I didn't realize that you knew Ami-chan."
He had deliberately used the affectionate term, stepping neatly in front of Ami and shielding her from the view of the older man. It was, all in all, rather reminiscent of a buck cutting his chosen female from the herd, least another male encroach. Even the normally slightly absent-minded professor couldn't mistake it, though Ami did not notice in her upset at having been interrupted. Tomoe simply grinned, polishing his glasses.
"Oh, I've known Mizuno-san for some time now," he murmured experimentally, deciding to test the currents around him. "A fine girl and very bright. A promising future."
Zarek scowled in response…Ami's future was none of the man's business. Tomoe hid a smirk. Q.E.D. It was ironic, he thought, that the blond man's eyes were actually vivid green. If they hadn't been before, they certainly were now.
"Was there something we could do for you, Veridian-san?" interjected Ami, peeking around his shoulder and giving Tomoe an apologetic little shrug. The white-haired man nodded almost imperceptibly. Although he understood the little scholar's urgency regarding the work she'd called him in on, he was enjoying the show playing out before him. Theater was fun, wherever one found it, after all.
Zarek turned and for a brief unguarded second when he looked down at Ami, everything he felt for her showed plainly on his face. Realizing that Ami hadn't even noticed, Souichi Tomoe felt a sudden tinge of pity for the jealous younger man.
Ami rather reminded him of himself as a youth, so concerned with science that he rarely noticed what was going on around him. Fortunately, he reflected, a fellow researcher named Keiko had either the good fortune or, more likely, the good aim to upend a beaker of serum on him which had forcibly gotten his attention. She'd asked him out to dinner by way of apologizing for the destruction of his tie (the beaker's contents had permanently dyed its once understated burgundy silk a strange, blotchy heliotrope color) and that had been their first date.
They'd been married about a year later, and two years after that, Hotaru had come along. They'd been blissfully happy until his lab explosion, which had killed his sweet Keiko and wounded Hotaru.
That had been the start of the period of darkness and confusion, not all of which was clear to him even after the explanations that had been given afterward. Probably that memory loss was a mercy, he thought. Since he'd awoken in hospital to find the tall, mysterious green-haired woman standing over him, an infant instead of thirteen-year old Hotaru in her arms, he preferred especially to remember the good times. He felt he'd experienced a few lifetimes worth of darkness already.
He could never forget, though, that it was his Keiko who had first drawn him from the darkness within himself and kept himself from completely losing himself in solitude and science. Mizuno-san could use someone who would do the same, he thought. Souichi was amused to note that it appeared she already had someone who was more than willing and able to do the job.
If Souichi Tomoe was feeling kindly disposed toward the young man before him, however, said young man was not reciprocating the feeling. He was glaring at the man he considered a possible rival, daring him to say a word about his presence in Ami's lab.
Did Ami not realize that Tomoe-san was far too old for her? Zarek wondered furiously, his leafy green eyes snapping. Did she not see how ridiculously inappropriate it was for her to have called him to meet her at the labs so late at night? Princess Amilene of the Mercurian Kingdom would have had more sense. Had had more sense. She'd given him an excruciatingly polite little set-down when he'd suggested something similar during the Silver Millennium.
Normally Zarek was not one to judge. Gaia knew that he had been the topic of some discussion himself, his looks being rare and a little too 'pretty' for some people to deal with rationally, accusing him of being gay among other ridiculous notions. And everyone knew that academics could be eccentric at times. But the things he had heard about Professor Tomoe made him question where eccentric ended and crackpot began. If the rumors were true, he'd even played games of Twister in the lab and strung a Slip and Slide down one of the staircases once, frozen it, and tried tobogganing downhill a breakneck speed. Plus, he was a widower with a child. All of which made him, as far as Zarek was concerned, an unacceptable interest for his innocent Ami.
"Mizuno-san," Tomoe grinned, deciding to throw Zarek a bone. "I know you're anxious to get started, but I really ought to read through your notes and check the samples, and frankly, I do that best on my own. Perhaps you'd like to go get a coffee and properly caffeinate yourself…maybe get something to eat since I think we're going to be pulling an all-nighter here. I'm sure young…Veridian-san, wasn't it?" he glanced at the young man, whose irritable gaze had gone blank with sudden shock. "I'm sure he'd be willing to escort you to the all night restaurant a few blocks over. Because, of course, it's not safe for a young woman such as yourself to go alone."
Tomoe fought the urge to laugh at his own words. If it wasn't safe for a woman such as Ami, he knew, then it wasn't safe for anyone. But it was a good story anyway…and appreciated, he could see, by the young blond gentleman, who had suddenly grinned in gratitude as if he'd been handed a priceless gift. Which, of course, he had. Zarek Veridian was suddenly much more inclined to give one Professor Tomoe the benefit of the doubt.
Unaccountably, Ami blushed. "Well, I don't know…"
Zarek simply held out her coat for her to slip on, waiting expectantly. Tomoe turned away toward the microscope, dismissing them both with an airy wave of his hand. Left with very little choice, Ami sighed and slid into the comforting warmth of her own coat and then took the delicate handbag from him.
"Are you sure you don't mind?" She glanced upward at Zarek, who merely shook his head. "Thank you for keeping an eye on these. I had to leave so fast the other night, that I completely forgot them."
He bit back the urge to laughingly say, "I know, Mercury-chan", flashed her his most charming smile and simply slid an arm around her trim waist, ushering her out of the room before she could think up another protest.
As the young couple left the labs, Professor Tomoe grinned absently, sliding a pair of headphones from the pocket of his lab coat and popping them in place. There was lots of work to be done. He punched the button on his CD player and started singing along, badly off key but with impressive timing, to the showtune that had begun to play. He made a few name substitutions along the way, just because.
"Brush up your Mendel…start quoting him now…Brush up your Pasteur…and the women you will wow…"
(Author's Notes: The song Tomoe is murdering is 'Brush up your Shakespeare' from the musical Kiss Me Kate. Just thrown in because I just love the theatre and Tomoe is wacky enough that he'd probably enjoy it too. Substituting the names of famous scientists in for Shakespeare, of course. :-)