If the Future May Fade Ch. 05

. . .

My eyes open to a blinding brightness invading my vision. I blink a few times but it doesn't help. But I do notice a figure out of the corner or my eye. Pushing myself up, I realize it's Ikuko standing over me with her lips curled up in a half-smirk. "I tried calling up to you but you're almost as bad as Usagi!"

"A-almost?" I croak, stretching my arms out behind me. The blue haired woman jerks her thumb to the bed next to me. Usagi is fast asleep with her covers twisted around her legs and her pajama top hiked up to reveal her abdomen. Yet it doesn't look as if she is going to wake up anytime soon. Glancing at the clock on her wall, and I can tell that this is going to be a problem. She should be leaving in ten minutes or risk being late.

I sigh. Somethings will always remain the same even if everything changes. Apparently tardiness is a constant that I can always rely on.

When I turn back to Ikuko she smiles at me and it finally hits me why she woke me up this early. "Did you already forget, Nyanko-chan? It's your first day in your new school." Her finger points to the white and navy uniform hanging on Usagi's door. "I took the liberty of ordering the uniform your mother "forgot" about."

Of course she forgot about it. She didn't send me here. "So-rry," I whine, trying to pretend to be annoyed at my supposed mother's faults. It seems my acting skills are being thoroughly practiced here-Minako would be proud.

Ikuku shrugs and turns to the door. "Dont worry about it, Nyanko-chan. I expected as much from my sister. Can you just wake up Usagi-chan?" Her grin is devious as she shuts the door behind her. I can practically hear her snicker as she walks away though I am sure she's going to hold her laugh until she's down the hill. She knows very well what she just set me up to.

Usagi is pretty much impossible to wake up. Especially when it comes to weekdays.

"Usagi," I whisper. Shaking her shoulders, I raise my voice to a normal speaking voice. "Uuussaaggii!" My lips purse. Why is it so hard for her to wake up all the time? The only time I knew her to get out of bed was when Papa-I knew then exactly what I have to do.

"Usagi, I'm going to go tell Chiba-san you like him."

The blonde shoots up, nearly hitting me in the face as her eyes meet mine wide in fear. "You wouldn't dare," she breathes.

Smiling as I push myself from the beds and move to grab my uniform from the door I turn back to her. "Would I?"

. . .

Barely escaping the wrath of Usagi in her early morning rage, I leave the house with a large smile stretched across my face. I forgot how easy it is to get Usagi riled up. Maybe I'll have a little bit of fun with that now seeing I can't have much fun with her relationship with Mamo-chan. At least, not as long as he has a girlfriend.

Lucky for me, though, this high school I'm apparently "transferring" into (what school they think I'm transferring from is beyond me) is only a few blocks from the house and only a block and a half from Usagi's school. We would be able to walk together-if she, I don't know, actually woke up on time.

"You with the pink hair!"

My hand flies up to meet my hair and I stop at the sound of the girl's shout. Is she going to berate me for the color of my hair-it wouldn't be the first time after all. Except those jokes only went as far to point out neither my mom nor my dad had pink hair. It was all before I had my crescent mark and the legendary power of the moon. Nobody dares mentions that plot hole anymore and I can't even tell people with a straight face that I have pink hair because Mama wished it so. That's embarrassing, to say the least. I turn to face a trio of girls. All with different colored hair. All with equally large smiles on their faces. I guess they don't have very much room to make fun of my hair color.

If they make fun of my buns, though...

The girl with the purple hair steps forward first. "My name is Wakahisa Yua, one of your three new friends." I nod dumbly, waiting for the girl to continue with the 's the most I can possibly do in this situation. Nothing could have prepared me for this. Girls don't normally walk up to you and decide to be friends in Tokyo. Right?

"This is Akemi Midori," Yua motions to the girl with the green hair who offers me a cheerful wave. I bow slightly in return. She reminds me of JunJun. "And this is Doi Hana." She motions to the orange haired girl giving me the peace sign. I bow again, unsure of how to respond. Almost like Ves.

That's when my heart skips a beat. I swear to Serenity if these are the girls-I'm going to have to cry for only making it a week before they found me. But I stop the thoughts when I remember there are only three girls in front of me. They may be familiar somehow-but there is no way these are my four senshi. Maybe I should stop overthinking things. Those girls won't realize where I am until they confront Pluto but as far as I know she's dealing with some weird time threat. Whatever that means.

"Good morning, everybody," I murmur softly.

The orange haired girl, Hana, giggles into her hand. "You're so timid- don't worry, we'll break you from that habit!" Her laughter is magical, almost like a song. The song of birds in the morning. "Where did you move from?"

I freeze. I didn't think that far back. Damn. "Ky-Kyoto," I blurt, plucking out one of the few cities I remember that remained in the future.

"Really? Kyoto? You don't seem to have that dialect, though..." Midori points out, looking at me closely as her eyes narrow. My heart races as she studies me because of course I chose one of the few surviving cities that had particular dialects. I was never good at them to the first place.

"Midori-chan! You cannot just ask people why they don't have a particular dialect!" Yua scolds, slapping the girl's arm. The purple haired girl turns back to me and smiles apologetically. "What Midori was trying to say is how cool it is that you moved here. We're always looking for interesting people around here-not a lot of them seem to originate from here."

I nod slowly. "Interesting" people? What does that even mean? "Everybody seems to be interesting here. Nobody here is like how they are back home." Not to mention how back home is in a thousand years from now where I am a princess with a group of friends surrounding me as my royal guard. But nobody's asking, thankfully.

Yua purses her lips"Cute, but we can't be that different, can we?"

I smile. "Well you thought I was different, didn't you?"

The girls smile at my response and Yua grabs my hand. It's cold. "Come on, we're going to be late to class now!" She looks down at the watch fastened at her wrist before shrugging her shoulders. "We only have ten minutes to get to class. Have you been to the main office yet for your schedule?"

"N-No..." I stutter, my pulse racing. Only ten minutes? How long have these girls been talking to me?

Yua pulls me with her and motions to the girls to follow. "Come on, if we arrive in time we can say we just found her wandering in the halls!" Her words are dictated toward Midori and Hana-as if I have ceased to exist in that exact moment. They're really in sync, these girls. I stick out like a sore thumb

But all of a sudden the entourage stops cold in their tracks. My feet stumble and I end up plowing into the girls.

"S-sorry," I whisper, unsure of what just happened. There has to be a reason we stopped. "Is something wrong?"

She whips around and faces me, a stunned look spreading over her face. "I'm such an idiot! I forgot to ask your name! How are we supposed to be friends if we don't know your name?" She squeals and bows repeatedly toward me. "How rude of me!"

I can hear the other girls apologizing behind me and I feel the familiar protective aura of my senshi with them. But it's not possible possible, I deduce. They would have known my name straight off. "I-I-I am Tsukino Nyanko," I say quietly.

Squeals escape the girls when they each try their tongue at my name. "Nyanko-chan! How cute!" Hana flings an arm around my shoulder. "You're going to fit in with us just fine! You even have cool hair!"

Hana fingers a piece of my pink hair as if in a trance before Yua slaps the hand away. "This is not the time, Hana! We need to get Nyanko-chan into class!"

The orange-haired girl apologizes quietly before removing her arm from my shoulder to instead link arms and drag me forward. Midori links with my other side while Yua leads the pack. I blink I allow them to move me toward the school building.

I assumed we are making good time-until I hear the sound of a warning bell as we approach the school building. The pace of the girls increases and I almost feel as if they are flying me across the streets.

We probably would have made it in time, if it was not for our next detour.

"Well, look what we have here! The freaks found the newest freak to reside in Juuban!" A haughty voice laughs and I know very well who the voice belongs to. My eyes raise to meet the eyes of the one and only Chiba Mamoru. His arm once again wrapped around the mystery red-head who simply sneers at us.

I've only learned one thing about this new identity of my father and it disturbs me to no end:

Mamoru's a complete asshole.

. . .

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