These chapters are coming along nicely I feel like! I hope you all are enjoying the story. ^_^ Please let me know with some feedback!!
Disclaimer: I do not own any Sailor Moon characters
Chapter 13: Creation
Ami heard Rei sigh out loud as they sat in the large, dark tinted car. Rain was beating down on the thick windows as the inner scouts sat, staking out the house that Stella could have possibly been staying at. Ami had done some in-depth research and even hacked into a few personal computers in order to find out where her closest friends and relatives were staying. This was the last place they would have thought to look; her ex-boyfriend's house. This was the man she had been dating before she met Darien.
"You know she's not going to come out," Rei groaned as she closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window.
"I'm almost scared to be in a car now after what happened to Haruka and Michiru," Mina shivered.
"I thoroughly examined the area around us and made sure that there weren't any bombs or anything like that," Ami reassured her. Handing Rei the chunky binoculars, she pointed to the house, "Look. You can see two figures moving. He's there with someone. His file said he lived alone here at his house and the landlord even said he never really has family over. The only person who has ever been there is Stella."
"Then why don't we ambush them?!" Lita exclaimed as she leaned forward from the backseat.
"Because we're not certain it's her," she answered.
"What about a search warrant?" Mina suggested.
"Those take too long," Rei replied as she handed the binoculars back to Ami.
"So we've been dwindled down to a waiting game," Lita groaned, falling back against her seat.
"I'm getting hungry," Mina whined.
"Seriously guys, this will work," Ami protested as she turned her back to the house and looked at her fellow scouts. "We can't give up now."
"We don't even know if that really is her inside," Rei pressed on.
"Hey look!" Lita exclaimed.
They all turned their attention to house across the street to find a tall slender figure walking down the steps. The street light suddenly went out at the exact moment and person had their head lowered so the scouts couldn't make it out as to who it was. From the silhouette they made it out to be Stella, but none of them to tell for sure with the dark shadows cast all over her body. She looked as if she was carrying something big and heavy. She lifted up what looked to be a large rifle mixed with a bazooka and pointed it at the SUV.
"GET OUT!!" Lita screamed.
They all leapt out of their car doors and rolled away from the explosion. As the smoke cleared, they coughed a bit, got up to their feet and transformed into their sailor scout outfits. They waited for her to get out of the shadows, but she didn't move. Instead, she shot the gun again and Sailor Mars shot back with her own fiery bow and arrow, completely disintegrating the assault.
"Let's do attack G!" Mina ordered.
The rest of them nodded. Ami shot a wave of cold water toward the gun and it was thrown out of Stella's hands. Venus whipped out her chain and grabbed onto the weapon in mid air while Sailor Jupiter simply shot her finger toward Stella's ankles and hands causing electrical, short chain handcuffs to come up and tie her down. Rei caught the large gun and the four of them ran over to the fallen avenger. When they pulled her out into the light, they discovered it wasn't a "her" after all! It was her ex-boyfriend, Lucas.
"What the hell?!" Rei exclaimed.
Lita removed the wig he was wearing and yanked him up to his feet by his flaming red hair, "Where is she?! Where's Stella!"
He merely laughed in her face which caused her to sock him in the jaw. A little bit of blood dribbled from his lips as he continued to laugh and shake his head. While Lita tended to the pseudo interrogation, the rest of the gang went running inside the house searching for any sign of Stella. Looking upstairs in all of the rooms, bathrooms, and the living room and kitchen, they found it to be all clear. Mina did discover a note scribbled with loopy handwriting on the coffee table though.
"Dear scouts," she began to read out loud. "I saw you coming for me from a mile away. Luckily, Lucas and I were able to hatch a plan for my escape. Have fun with him. He's wrapped around my finger, you'll never find out where I've run off to. I wasn't that stupid to tell him my future whereabouts. Give my love to Darien and tell Neo-Queen Serenity that she can rot in hell with that brat in her belly. Xoxo, Stella."
"Well what the fuck do we do now?!" Rei asked, still holding onto the clunker of a gun in her grasp.
"Back to the drawing board," Ami shrugged.
"I hate the drawing board!" Lita complained as she walked up to the front door of the house with Lucas draped over her shoulder.
"Did you knock him out?" Mina asked as she crossed her arms over her chest.
"He fell over and hit his head on the light pole, I swear!" she giggled.
The rest of the scouts just rolled their eyes and waited as squad cars came to pick them up and retrieve the co-conspirator.
"Serena isn't going to be happy about this," Mina murmured as she got into a car with Rei.
"And in her condition too … we don't want her to be any more stressed out than she already is," she replied.
Darien slipped into the bedroom quietly and closed the door shut behind him as fast as he could. He didn't want any of the noises he knew were being made to get out in the hallway; the sound would bounce off the walls and someone other than himself would hear. He glided across the room and watched as Serena wriggled over to the center of the bed, her wails and sobs still filling the room like depressing music. He climbed in beside her fully clothed in his royal get up from the press conference he had gone to earlier that day.
"I hate my hormones," Serena cried as tears ran down her face.
He placed his lips against her ear and wiped away the tears from her blushing cheeks as he said, "Just a few more months, my queen. You can hang in there."
"I'm freaking out Darien!" she exclaimed.
"I know you are, but you have to believe in the scouts. They will get Stella," he replied. Smoothing her hair out with his hand, he murmured, "You really should be back at the Crystal Palace, Serenity. You'll continue to be stressed here and—"
"I'll continue to be stressed up there too!"
"But you're away from our daughter. You know how she gets when we're both away from her for such a long period of time," he dictated.
She patted her stomach and whispered, "Small Lady … and we're going to have another small creature. Darien…"
"Yes?"
She turned over and looked at him deeply in his eyes whispering, "I love you," before she pressed her lips against his. She pulled back and swiped a strand of hair away from his eyes, "Don't ask if I've forgiven you yet because I haven't."
"I wasn't going to," he lied.
Serena rolled her puffy eyes at him and sat up. Over her shoulder she told him, "I better go meet with the scouts and let them know I'm headed back to Crystal Tokyo."
Darien rolled onto his back, laced his fingers over his stomach and stopped her before she left, "Hey!" His wife turned around to listen, "I love you too."
She blushed like a school girl and walked out of the room with her heart beating faster. Their relationship was slowly getting back on track…
Rei sipped her tea in her temple-like room as she casually pulled card after card out in front of her, reading what the future had in store. It all seemed to point to one conclusion; a wild goose chase. She pursed her lips at the proclaimed future and wondered if all of this searching for Stella was really worth it.
A knock at the door made her snap out of her gaze and in front of her was Michiru, looking rather sullen and slightly depressed. She tilted her head and bid her fellow scout in. The scout of the ocean removed her shoes and limped inside.
"They still haven't healed that ankle for you?" Rei asked, pointing to it, seeing that it was clearly bandaged.
"I haven't finished the pills. By the end of the week, I should be walking normally," she replied. "Medicine here doesn't work as fast as it does in Crystal Tokyo."
"A lot of things don't move as fast here," Rei mumbled as she sipped her tea. "The security, the cops, ambulances, everything seems so slow on Earth."
"It must be the gravity," Michiru joked. She smiled in response and then offered her some tea which she gladly took. Looking up from her steaming cup, she said quietly, "Look, I wanted to discuss with you more deeply about the … the war. We never once brought it up, but I know how upset you are with me and the whole incident."
"We both took a toll during that time."
"But when he died—"
"When he died it was the last straw for sure!" she snapped, her eyes starting to get heated. "Michiru, I don't want apologies, I don't want sympathy, I don't want pity!"
"What can I do then? Every time you look at me, I feel like you want to kill me!"
"And every time I look at you, I see him dying in your eyes!" Rei let the tears fall against her will. She tried desperately to wipe them away, but they wouldn't. "I'm sorry we wanted your resources. We took it too far. Shikaru … he influenced a lot of the war so when he died, the war was officially over. There was no more fighting for that stupid miniscule gravel that was used in our technology. We should have just bartered or traded! I argued with him so much over that!" She felt Michiru's arms cover her shoulders as she continued on, "You know me, you know my planet. I'm the goddess of war. We symbolize taking action, not thinking about what comes next or who gets hurt. I never dreamed he would be killed. Ever. And all over something so stupid. He had more fire, more passion, and more drive than I did which is probably what drew me to him. He was a hard find."
Michiru started to pet her head as she replied with a cracked voice, "I know. It's hard to find the ones you really want to devote yourself to, especially since we're all spoken for by a current leading lady. To find a person who will stand by you and be there for you as you protect this huge figure is a big deal. That's why I'm so scared of losing Haruka, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I love her so much."
"I love you too darling."
The two parted and found Haruka leaning up against a crutch. Michiru got up to her feet all too quickly and limped even more heavily toward her injured partner. The color was back in her face, the sparkle was back in her eye, and she looked like after one more night's rest, she would start to get restless and want to fight.
"What are you doing here? They let you out?"
"Yeah they did," she nodded.
"Why didn't you call me?!"
"I wanted it to be a surprise! But when I got to our room, you weren't there. The queen said to look here." She looked over Michiru's shoulder and called out to Rei, "Which by the way, she wants to see you immediately in the conference room."
Mars bolted out of the room right before the two embraced in a quaint kiss. Michiru and Haruka limped with one another back to their own quarters, neither of them letting go of one another or letting go of the smile on their faces. Once they reached the bedroom, they both glanced at each other before doing their ritual race to the bed. As always, Haruka won and flaunted it in front of Michiru. She simply beamed at her and plopped down on their comfortable dark blue satin comforter with stitched in gold stars and turquoise moons.
"Are you and Rei all patched up?" Haruka asked, dragging a slender finger across her cheek.
Michiru nodded, "I think so. She just regrets going to war over something so miniscule. I think she blamed my planet for having the material in the first place and thus blamed me for being associated with it."
"Sounds like Rei," she breathed. "What about us? Are we all patched up?"
"We're bandaged up," Michiru smirked and her lover nudged her a bit in response. "No, but seriously … I … I want to say yes, but I know we have unresolved issues."
"Damn straight. What's this whole idea that I want to have a relationship with the queen?"
"You are always flirting with her, protecting her … I don't know, I've been getting jealous lately."
"Did you ever think that maybe the reason why I did that was because you were pushing me away?"
"Yes," Michiru nodded, closing her eyes for a second before opening them back up again; they were filled with tears again.
"Don't cry my beauty. I'm not mad at you or anything. I'm just saying that when you push me away for so long, so long, I tend to get a little more flirty than normal," she explained. "And by the way, I would never, ever pull a King Endymion."
"Oh is that what we're calling it?"
"Yes! Because I have more of a back bone than he does! It comes with not having a penis," she joked.
Michiru nudged her back for the rude remark, but was giggling all the same. Haruka could finally look at her and see that the woman she had fallen in love with, the one who would take all of her stupid jokes, sit in a speeding car with her, play violin and let her get her musical itch scratched by playing the piano … this was her. She was coming back. Haruka leaned forward and kissed her fiancée deeply and ran her hand through her thick turquoise hair.
"Guys! The queen would like to meet with you!" Ami exclaimed, bursting into their quarters without a knock.
"Intimate moments do not seem to last that long in this palace," Haruka quipped as she rolled out of bed and started to make her way slowly to the conference room with Michiru at her side.
Once they made it to the conference room, they found some of the screens lit up on the wooden wall behind the queen. One screen had a building of a cathedral on it, one had the street outside of it, and another had an aerial view of it. Serena was standing on her feet, a look of determination etched in her features while the rest of the scouts were sitting down, waiting for her to continue on with the serious conversation.
"We have gotten word that Stella is at the Juniper Glass Cathedral," she announced as the scouts sat down. "She apparently has some connection with the guy who goes up to the top and rings the bells."
"Is she planning on becoming a nun? What is she doing there?!" Haruka asked.
"We don't know, but we have a plan of attack," Mina replied. "Ami and I will climb to the tower and basically chase her out of the building."
"Once we're done there, you and Michiru will be waiting at the open end of the dead end street to get her," Ami continued. "We've arranged for you to drive another car in order to escort her as quickly as possible to the police station."
"And if that doesn't work, the rest of the exits possible will be blocked off by Rei and me," Lita finished.
"Will you two be better by tomorrow?" Rei asked.
Michiru looked at her partner and knitted her eyebrows together, "I don't think we will be."
"I'll heal you," Serena said with a wave of her hand.
"You should really save your strength to carry that baby, Serena," Mina replied.
"There won't be a baby if Stella gets to me," she responded. Looking at her two injured scouts, she announced, "I will heal you in the morning before you depart. I really have no energy right now. I have to figure out how I'm going to tell Darien that I'm not leaving for Crystal Tokyo yet."
"Already did," he said from the doorway. "Nice plan. Thanks for filling me in on it dear."
As he stalked away, Serena stomped her foot at the inconvenient timing. She dismissed the group and started to run after her husband, but he was nowhere to be found. When calling out his name, she heard no response back and even the servants hadn't seen where he went off to. That's when she knew where he was. She climbed the stairs to the highest tower of the castle and looked out the window where she had the best view of the whole entire garden. There, in the back, was Darien standing where gazebo was, completely surrounded by tall, perfectly cut hedges. She wasn't ready to spy on him again, to sneak up on him like they used to. He was waiting for her to find him, but she wouldn't go. Not yet. It wasn't time.
Up next: Battle with Stella again! Will they catch her this time?