Episode 105

Recap: Makoto's been having trouble fighting, so she goes to train in the mountains. She takes herself very seriously, but a monk there, Kakusui-san, teaches her that relaxing and working with other people can sometimes get you further than your own raw power. So then Makoto beats a Daimohn BY HERSELF (yep, Usagi does nothing!) which is pretty sweet. Also, Usagi tries to meet up with Mamoru, who has a summer job at a nearby hotel. It doesn't work out, of course, but perhaps this will… *mysterious music*

Alright, so I'm cheating a little. This takes place after the Daimohn battle but before the girls go back home. Kapeesh?

"Usagi!" said Ami sternly. "Geometry is not spelled M-a-m-o-r-u!"

"How is geometry spelled?" Minako mused thoughtfully, gnawing on the end of her pencil.

"Don't do that," Rei snapped, yanking the pencil out of Mina's mouth. "You'll ruin your teeth."

"And then you'll have to go to the dentist!" Usagi cried in horror. "And they might have to do surgery, and they might hurt you!" There was nothing more terrifying than a dentist armed with sharp, shiny, silver tools. Absolutely nothing. She'd take Eugeal and her Daimohns any day of the week.

"And the Pythagorean Theorem has nothing to do with Tuxedo Kamen and these stupid little hearts!" Ami continued, her cheeks flushed with impatience as she bent over Usagi's work. The pages were covered with doodles of Mamoru's various aliases, many squiggles, and the occasional sketch of a poorly-drawn right triangle.

"Ami-cha-an," Usagi wailed. "It's not fair! You know I don't get this math stuff, and I'm too distracted! I can't see my Mamo-chan and know he's so close without going on a date!"

"You can do this, Usagi-chan," Ami insisted, shoving her notebook under Usagi's nose. "Look, it's really not complicated. I know it seems abstract when it's just written A squared plus B squared equals C squared, but all you have to do is apply that to the problems. If you just draw out your triangle…" She made a quick, precise sketch and labeled the sides with their corresponding measures of 7 and 12. "See, now you know that the hypotenuse, the side directly across from the right angle, is C. So you square 7 and square 12 and add those, and then take the square root."

Usagi gazed at her blankly. "Hm?"

"U-SA-GI!" Rei shrieked, cuffing the blonde on the head. "You need to snap out of it! You're a fantastic daydreamer, but you need to stop putting up the stupid charade. We know you're not dumb. You're just lazy and it's going to catch up with you. It's the studying you do now that will determine whether Neo Queen Serenity can write in kanji or not, isn't it?"

Usagi blushed deep red while Minako laughed. "I'm not pretending to be stupid, Rei-baka, I'm just thinking…"

"About Mamoru, I know. And wouldn't he be proud to hear that instead of mooning over him, you were learning very basic geometry that you should already know?"

Usagi's lower lip quivered. "That's not a very nice way to say that, Rei-chan…"

Minako laughed suddenly. "That was funny! 'Mooning over him,' get it, because Usagi-chan is the Moon Princess?" She looked around excitedly at the other girls.

"Yes," said Rei gruffly, "I get it. Very funny."

Minako shrugged one shoulder loftily and went back to her work. "Ami-chan, what's the square root of 169?"

"While Minako, on the other hand, really is dumb…" a certain ebony-haired girl muttered.

Minako smacked Rei on the back of the head with her notebook. "I am not!"

"You always say mean things, Rei," Usagi piped up in Minako's defense. "And the square root of 169 is 13."

"Finally," Rei groaned. "She admits she knows something."

"And that's all there is to it," Ami said. "Now, applying it to this proof, you know that the measures of the legs have to be shorter than –"

"Usagi-chan!" Makoto stuck her head into the room, dripping with sweat in her training clothes. "You've got someone here to see you!"

"Hm?" Usagi looked up, her brow furrowed. "But I…" Comprehension dawned with a zesty vigor on her face. "Mamo-chan!"

Makoto grinned as Usagi raced past her, through the door, and down the steps to the landing where the shrine opened out onto its wide, stone-covered landscape, surrounded by a quick plunge into forested mountains. A tall, dark-haired man (or was he still a boy? The debate was endless in her mind) stood by the edge of the stone platform; his figure cast a long shadow into the twilight-tainted trees.

"Mamo-chan!" she repeated, her pigtails flying as she zoomed straight into his back, her arms wrapping tight around his middle. "You came to see me!"

He flinched at her sudden attack but quickly pried her arms off of him, turning to face her. "I had to return the gesture," he said; the fiery sunset caught suddenly in the glint of his sapphire eyes, and her stomach rolled like a jellyfish. "You came to see me, didn't you? Very subtly, at that." He snickered and put on a high posh voice. "'Oh, Mamoru, imagine seeing you here, of all places!'"

"I did not sound like that!" She pushed her fist toward his stomach.

Like lightning, he deflected the halfhearted punch and cupped her cheek, kissing her quickly. "I've missed you," he said. "No one's run into me in days except the receptionist, and he's fifty years old. Without odangos."

The image of a middle-aged man with blonde odangos flew into Usagi's head, and she giggled. "Poor deprived you."

"Absolutely. My center of gravity is so normal when you're not around, it's driving me crazy."

"So you like to be thrown off guard," she suggested cheekily, biting her lower lip.

"Sure," he agreed with a twisted smile that made the stomach jellyfish flop again. "It's exciting."

"Before you flirt too much," Makoto's voice said firmly from behind, "I have two messages. One is from Ami and Rei, who want you to know that you do have plenty of studying to get done so don't take too long, and the other is from me, and it's 'Don't shoot the messenger'."

Usagi glanced over her shoulder to scowl at Makoto, who was stretching her thighs, with one hand balanced against the stair wall. "You can tell them to keep their noses out of my business," she replied huffily.

"Don't you glare at me either, Usa. If you care so much, tell them yourself." She swung her arms behind her experimentally. "I've got to keep going. Ja." And she sped off down the pyramid of steps, bounding in huge leaps over clusters of three or four at a time.

"Isn't that kind of dangerous?" asked Usagi, anxiety leaking into her voice, as they watched Makoto disappear down the rocky path beyond the stairs. "To jump down the stairs like that?"

"No," Mamoru scoffed. "Easy."

"Says Tuxedo Kamen." She paused. "Chan."

"Usako! Do you mind with that?"

"Oh, sorry, Tuxedo Kamen-sama."

"That's just as bad," he complained, his eyebrows tilting fretfully. "Chibiusa actually means it whenever I show up, she doesn't even realize you're making fun of her…"

She shuffled her feet in discomfort. "Well, sometimes in the heat of the moment…"

"Ha! You really mean it, too, don't you? I knew it." The triumph in his voice was sickening.

Usagi's eyes narrowed. "Mamo-chan," she grumbled. "Maybe you should go back to work."

He checked his watch quickly. "Actually, I have another shift starting up soon. I just wanted to come by and say hi."

"And make fun of me," she added, still wounded.

"What would be the point of coming if I didn't?" He gave her a bright grin. "What else would we say, anyway? 'Hi, Usako, I love you, your hair is luminescent like the sunset, your eyes are bright as cornflowers' and so on and so forth… How boring is that?"

"I don't know." She scowled. "Sounded pretty nice to me."

"Says the one who can't stop calling me Kamen-chan."

"Because it's a-dor-a-ble!"

"If by that you mean re-pug-nant, than yes, by all means, it is. Look, you try saying something non-argumentative and see how it goes for you."

She stared up into his glinting blue eyes and found herself rather at a loss for what to say. "Oh, fine, baka. You win this time."

"She admits victory!" he cried to the open air. "The stars have aligned!"

"Mamo-chan…" she muttered, slightly put off. "You're so weird."

"Tuxedo Kamen-sama!" he mocked dramatically in response, and she barreled a successful punch straight into his gut. He only smirked. "Abdomen made of steel, Usako."

"That's Superman, baka."

"I could probably take him on, don't you think?"

"Mamoru," she groaned. "You came all the way over here to talk about Superman? And you wouldn't stand a chance against him."

"You're the one who brought it up. And you're probably right. I don't have laser vision."

She gazed up at him with the iciest eyes she could muster. "Maybe you should stay at this job all summer. It'll save me a lot of trouble."

"But what about my center of gravity?" he reminded her. "It would be so average."

"That's true," she sighed. "I guess you need me."

"USAGI!" It wasn't Rei's tone that made her recognizable, exactly, so much as the general fury she emanated. "WE DO HAVE WORK TO DO! ENOUGH MAKING OUT!"

Mamoru looked down at her with wide puppy eyes. She melted only slightly. "We haven't even done that yet," he said sadly.

They had a brief stare down, each daring the other to instigate such a task. It ended when he gave in, leaned down, and kissed her slowly – a single, gentle caress that he managed to draw out over a good few seconds. Usagi's jellyfish grew rather weak-kneed, but then she remembered jellyfish didn't even have knees. If Rei could have read her mind, she would have yelled about that for one reason or another.

"How's your center of gravity?" Mamoru rested his forehead on hers; his eyes were so close, swelling dark and gorgeous right before her, that she could practically feel his lashes mingling with her own.

If she admitted that it was rather unsteady, she would feel like a complete wimp. But it was true, so she said it. Truth slipped out of her easily when she was around Mamoru, whether she liked it or not.

"Well," he conceded, "yours is always off, isn't it?"

"Usually," she admitted, though grudgingly.

"I've got to go," he said, his forehead not leaving hers.

"Me, too. Rei's going to yell."

Neither of them budged.

"USAGI!"

She sighed, but perked up abruptly with a sudden idea. "Mamo-chan, do you think that you and I, transformed, could take the three of them?"

He laughed, his fingers twisting around her hair. "Hard to say. I bet they have forums online where people analyze that sort of thing."

"Really?" Her eyebrows rose. "People know that much about us?"

"You'd be surprised." He pressed his lips into her forehead and pulled away with a wink. "I'll come pick you up soon as I get home, alright?"

"Okay," she said, trying not to pout. She clung to his fingers as he moved back.

"And until then, make sure you only bulldoze really ugly guys." His eyes were glimmering with humor and a tint of sincerity.

"I'll try," she said, equally as frank. He laughed, kissed her hand, and released her. "Ja ne, Usako!"

He made a perfect silhouette, sauntering into the growing darkness, one hand resting on his thigh, the other casually draped in his pocket.

"How's your center of gravity?" she mimicked him, unable to resist.

"Ridiculously normal!" he called over his shoulder. "I won't be able to stand it!" A spurt of laughter burst out of him when he realized his pun.

"I love you, Mamo-chan," she said quietly, as he disappeared into the dusk. Then, with a girlish giggle, she hopped back up the stairs and rejoined her friends.

"Took you long enough," Rei said shortly. "Ami's practically finished the book."

The blush on Ami's face was enough to tell Usagi that it wasn't far from true. "Sorry. He wouldn't shut up." She sat down next to Ami and pulled the problems onto her lap. "So what were you saying about this proof, Ami-chan?"

I feel like I should have some sort of comment or apology or whatever to put in here, but my mind is blank. Eh... sorry? :\

Thanks for reading! And special thanks to my dutiful reviewers! I owe you my sanity (or whatever's left of it). :)