Episode 113 Recap: Mamoru confronts the Outer Senshi about fighting with the Inners; they say they're more powerful, and Sailor Moon's gang just drags them down. Usagi and Chibiusa visit Hotaru – a woman mysteriously similar to Kaolinite answers the door – and then take her along to a book signing, where Mimet has targeted the author of a popular manga. The Outers save Usagi from the Daimohn (who tells everyone to meet their deadlines. Thanks for that) but then the Inners team up to defeat the Daimohn and Mamoru gives Uranus a Smug Look. (I chuckled.)

Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning's flagons up
And say how many Dew,
Tell me how far the morning leaps —
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadth of blue!

~Emily Dickinson

Mamoru liked everything. Poetry, physics, chemistry, history, languages, calculus, even grammar, for God's sake. The chill he got from reading a particularly well-formed sentence was like no other, but still bore some similarities to that which he received from solving a lengthy and twisted equation. Unfortunately, this same aptitude for scholarly pursuits did not in the least carry over into the social world, where he tended to flounder and flail like a fish out of water, or dive behind a cold, polite mask.

In other words, Chiba Mamoru was a first-class geek.

Tsukino Usagi hated everything. Everything academic, to be precise, or anything that required a certain level of intelligence. She was good at very few things, and those at which she excelled generally involved basic survival instincts, such as eating and sleeping. She was also good at crying, laughing, brownnosing, worming her way through school with very few passing grades, bickering with Rei, gossiping with Minako, and on very rare occasions, saving the world.

To put it lightly, Tsukino Usagi was the blondest of the blonde, who only made it out of situations alive thanks to one particular moon wand.

Mamoru and Usagi were, undeniably, two polar opposites. He was refined and mature, she young and childish; he was tall, dark, and mysterious, she tiny, fair-skinned, and bubbly; he was book smart, she street smart, if in any way at all; he flinched away from contact with the world on account of a dark past while she forged ahead, unbidden but unafraid, letting the trials of her life bounce off her very skin; he was sin and she redemption; he was pardon and she mistakes; he was loneliness and she companionship; he was forethought and she impulsivity; he was silent and she raucous, he composed and she unstrung. He was shadow, she radiant light; he was deep, damp earth, she a luminescent moon.

Put them together (or so the fates did), and they were inseparable.

"Maaa-mo-chan," Usagi sang shrilly. "I'm bored." She was lounging across his couch, her head dangling off the cushions, eyes glazed over as the TV glowed in their reflections.

"Mm," said Mamoru comprehensively. He flipped the page of his poetry anthology.

"I want to do something."

"Hmmm."

"What are you reading?"

"Yeah."

"MAMORU!"

"Whaaa?" He jumped, the book slipping down his lap. "Sorry, what?"

"You're not listening to me," she growled through clenched teeth. Her head bobbed once in an indignant nod; her odangos wobbled, their pigtails zigzagging like loose blonde snakes across the carpet.

"No," he agreed drily, "I'm not."

"What are you doing?" she repeated.

"Reading…" He glanced up at her skeptically. "I would have thought that was obvious to the naked eye." He nibbled pensively on a knuckle. "Or even a clothed eye…"

"Baka," she grumbled. "What are you reading?"

"Currently?"

"No," she drawled, "four days ago."

He snorted. "Emily Dickinson."

"Who?"

He cleared his throat and read to her, translating as he went: "'Bring me the sunset in a cup'…"

"Oh. That kind of thing." She huffed dismissively and dangled her tongue out of the corner of her mouth.

Mamoru watched her wryly. "That's cute, Usako."

"Shut up." But she drew back the tongue. "I'm bored."

"I was trying to read you some really good stuff. Maybe if you paid attention you might actually enjoy it."

"It's foreign, right?"

"You're foreign," he muttered.

"That's mature, Mamoru." Suddenly the spitting image of elegance, she turned herself right side up and crossed her legs delicately at the knee.

"Mm, you're right. I ought to be more like you." He smirked.

"You should," Usagi agreed, nodding imperiously. "I don't make stupid jokes."

"Oh, that's right," said Mamoru with a sarcastic air of sudden recollection. "Yeah, that one you told to Minako the other day about the dolphin buying squid was hilarious…"

"It's irony! They're both sea creatures!"

"That's not irony, Usako, that's idiocy."

"How so?"

"Because it's absolutely the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" His glasses slipped off his nose in desolate chagrin.

"Just because you don't appreciate high comedy…"

"High comedy?" he cried. "Are you honestly that disillusioned?"

"Maybe," she sniffed. "Maybe not."

He settled back into his chair with a dark chuckle. "Do you have any inkling what 'disillusioned' means?"

She sniffled in a superior sort of way. "Why do you say that?"

"Trust me, odangos, you give yourself away." He winked at her.

"Hmph." She waited two seconds before she began again. "Mamo-chan, I'm bored…"

"Heh," he replied, with something of an evil glint in his eye. "'Bring me the sunset in a cup'…"

"No, no," Usagi sighed, flapping her hand, "I already said, no poetry."

"Maybe it's not just poetry," he said with his most mysterious voice. "Maybe it's… advice."

"Right, because that makes sense," said Usagi. "I'll be on my way, then, and…" Her eyes went wide and blank for a moment. "Oh!"

"Eureka?" he teased.

"Um… I'll be back soon!" She scurried away into the kitchen.

Shrugging to himself, Mamoru returned to his poem.

'…Reckon the morning's flagons up/ And say how many Dew,…'

Usagi dashed back across the room, odangos trailing yellow ribbons behind her.

"Usako?"

"I said I'll be back soon!" she called over her shoulder, and she disappeared onto the balcony.

Instead of reading on, he found himself watching her – not in a weird sort of way, he reminded himself sternly, just watching. Admiring, perhaps, but not… not ogling, per se. Just looking at the way her ankles crossed between the shadow of the railing, how her slender feet rubbed together in thought, how her knees hit and her thighs touched and how he couldn't quite see anything beneath that little skirt as she leaned over slightly…

He grumbled to himself for being a pervert, but he was a man, wasn't he? He couldn't help himself, really. And she was his – or so he liked to think – wasn't she? She seemed to elude all possession, somehow, and despite all of her sunny smiles and sweet kisses, she seemed perfectly liable to dash away from him in a flicker of light, just on a whim, on a fancy, on someone newer and fresher and brighter than he…

She glanced back at him surreptitiously, and giggled when she saw him looking at her. He smiled and shook his head at his poetry.

'Tell me how far the morning leaps –'

Argh, he couldn't focus. Not with her, out there, basking in the boorish blue-black cityscape, harsh and geometric against a softening summer sky. The streetlights seemed to part for her; the sun seemed to zone in a spotlight of pure and glowing beauty, between the buildings, weaving through the streets, and there was nothing obstructing that view of the world, of the sunset, of the stars hiding behind the lingering light, of the moon riding the wind around his planet, and it was her, it was always her. It always had been. It always would be.

And she grew brighter still, a subtle but insistent glow flooding from her toes, from beneath her clothes, from her eyes (but he couldn't see them) and her hair, billowing out in a breeze that may or may not have been there just for her, just for her magic –

But all at once the sun died out and the stars popped into view and Usagi turned around with her hands cupped around something he couldn't see (but he could have sworn there was sunlight blooming from between her fingers).

"Mamo-chan?" she said when she stepped inside once more.

"Yes, ma'am?"

Biting back a grin, she hopped over to him and kissed his forehead. "I brought you the sunset in a cup," she whispered. Her hands parted…

And a tiny star exploded from the depths of the opaque shot glass she held in her palms.

His face erupted into a huge smile. "Usako," he murmured, "how - ?"

"You experiment," she said loftily. "Why can't I?"

"It's amazing," he whispered. "I can't believe…"

But it was her magic, all along.

"What happens if you let it go?" Mamoru asked after a moment.

"Dunno." Her expression was impish. "Let's see." Grasping the glass firmly in one hand and his wrist in the other, she dashed back out the balcony; he tripped along in her wake. "It's like a little firefly," she crooned to her captured sunset. "I wonder if it would become…"

"Go ahead and see," Mamoru urged.

So she raised her arms above her head and released the light, and it shot high up into the cloudless atmosphere to join the stars.

"I made a star," she said softly, and she looked up at him with a gaze full of wonder, with a tear trickling down her cheek. "Mamo-chan…"

He wrapped her up tightly in his arms and kissed her insistently, and knew he could never let go of her, never, not for a sunset, not for the earth, not for the cosmos. And she kissed him back, and he knew she would stay.

Okay... alright, I'm really sorry about that. You all know I like to play around with their powers but this was a little... uh... "Hello, SB, ever heard of something called CANON?" Yeesh. So I apologize. This is why I write fantasy.

HAVE SOME COOKIES. *cookiessss*

Love, SB