Oh god, it's been a while. School got in the way for a long time, since I'm taking really hard classes, but still, that's not much of an excuse for not updating in almost... Man, it's been two years, practically.
When I got the idea for this story, I was in 8th grade. Now, I'm in 11th. Wow.
Well, yeah, I haven't stopped writing, but I've been awfully neglectful of my fanfics, which I hate being because I know people read them. Well, I'm going to try to update this more faithfully than I have in the past. Namely, getting chapter 4 out sometime before January 15th.
Chapter 3: The Dream.
Haruka sat hunched over at the desk in her room, concentrated on highlighting pages in yet another textbook. Redox reactions. Whose bright idea was it for her to learn this? She certainly wasn't ever going to use it. Beside her, sat Kaioh Michiru, kneeling gracefully at a low end table, flipping through a book of sheet music. Her violin lay in its case beside her. The smaller girl seemed absentminded on this April evening, a first in Haruka's experience.
"You're thinking about her, aren't you? That Tomoe girl." She asked, closing her chemistry textbook and moving it aside. Michiru nodded, turning to face Haruka.
"Something about her is a little off. About where she lives, I mean." Haruka continued, rambling slightly. "Like, she seemed hesitant to go into that house, and her mother looks kinda scary."
"That's not her mother." Michiru coolly stated the fact.
"Oh?"
"Have you ever heard someone call their mother by their first name? Kaori? She's obviously too old to be Tomoe-san's sister, but mother? I don't think so."
Haruka pondered this before speaking once again, although, she gave merely a laconic "I guess." in reply. Michiru let her aqua gaze linger on her.
"Are you planning to pick her up tomorrow?"
"I promised, didn't I?" Haruka replied. Michiru gave her a smile and let her thoughts drift over to less pleasant topics of conversation.
"The talismans," was all she had to state. They needed no further introduction before the almost warm mien Haruka was displaying froze and her brown eyes started to gaze coldly at nothing in particular.
"I guess we'll have to get onto that too." She mused. "Although, I don't particularly want anything to do with them. I don't think anyone would."
"They wouldn't. But it's necessary what we do, isn't it? We can't just cruise around, stopping at coffee shops and dropping random girls off at their houses. We have to get down to what needs to be done." At another mention of Tomoe-san, a chill went down Haruka's spine, as she thought of something terrible.
"About that girl, what if she has one of the..." She couldn't finish.
"Then you know what we have to do." Michiru stressed. "No one said this job was easy, and the talismans could be held by anyone. Anyone at all."
When she chanced a glance at Haruka, however, she wished she hadn't made that statement. She appeared to be on the verge of tears.
"Anyone. My mother. My father, not that I give a damn about him. The girls who wave at me in the morning, hell, you or I could have one of them and you're telling me that I'm supposed to stand there and zap you into oblivion if need be? What kind of messed up idea is that?" Her voice nearly cracked. "I can't. I won't do it. Not you, not them, not that little girl with the purple eyes, not anyone!" She banged her fist against the table, the vibrations of which caused her chemistry book to fall onto the floor, spine first, and open to a page about aqueous solutions.
"When I became a Sailor Senshi, I thought I'd be saving people's lives, y'know, making the world a better place, all that crap you read about in comic books, and now what? What side of things are we even on? What kind of noble thing is this, thinking about killing people. I don't care about your 'greater good' bullshit. Death is death."
Michiru, seeing the effect her words had on her love, tried to fix it, though, knowing full well, it was hard to stop a deluge of thoughts once the faucet had already been turned on.
"Forget it, Haruka. Forget it for now. We're not against a daimon right now, so it doesn't matter. Just...." She struggled for words. "Just study for chemistry, or something."
But Haruka made no move to open her textbook. She didn't move to start shouting again, so Michiru supposed that was a good sign. Instead, she simply sat there, with her previous words hanging like an invisible curtain upon the air. After a moment and another of silence, she spoke.
"Maybe that's why we care about that girl. Because saving her wasn't some ambiguous Am I doing the right thing kind of dilemma. You just saw her there, and I ran out into the street to save her. There was no blasted question about that, none at all. She's alive, and it's in part because of us. We're drawn to that kind of certainty, I think. What about you?"
"I think you have a good theory there, Haruka. I also think you'd do better if you could be so thoughtful in your essays for Literature class." Haruka let out a snort of laughter.
"Ah, you know I'd never be so intelligent where it actually matters. Where would my overall average go if I did that?"
"Up?" Michiru guessed.
It was dark. That was all Hotaru could ascertain. It was dark, and she had no idea where she was, although she thought she could see the vague and hazy outlines of piled stuffed animals in the distance. When she opened her mouth to speak, a queer thing happened.
"Hello?" She timidly asked, but it came out as more of a malevolent greeting, issued in a strange voice she knew wasn't her own.
"What is it you desire?" Another voice rose in reply.
"Hearts. Pure hearts." Her red gaze flicked up toward the form of Tomoe Souichi, her loyal servant. "You know what you have to do, isn't that right?"
"Yes, mistress." He gave her a low bow.
"Then do it!" She screamed, pushing him away from her. "If you know what you must do, then don't return until you have something to show for your efforts!"
She awoke, covered in a thin layer of sweat, tangled in her sheets, with her face pressed into a pillow. It had all been a dream. Her room was still her room, not some dark chamber, and she wasn't some evil... thing. But still. This dream had happened before, often with disastrous results.
"Oh no." She glanced around her room. "What did I do now?"
Nothing appeared to be out of place - there were no broken lamps or evidence that she had started screaming or throwing things. But still... That dream.... That recurring dream. It seemed to always surface whenever she started to feel anything other than despair, almost to spite her feelings. If she got 100 on a test and felt some kind of inward pride, there it was that night, to confuse her, to perplex her and to tinge her otherwise innocent thoughts with something darker. Far darker.
Hotaru was not a fool. In fact, as far as intelligence was concerned, she out-performed most in her grade level, even though she attended Mugen Gakuen, one of the most prestigious schools in Tokyo. But this, this wasn't a problem to be figured. This was something stranger and harder to answer, and it infuriated and scared her. That woman whose personality she assumed in her dreams was not her in any way, shape or form.
It was puzzling. Hotaru despised uncertainties, almost as much as she hated Kaori.
Speaking of Kaori........
She hadn't seen the woman since she had come through the door, floating on bubble of hope and filled with visions of talking to the two people who had dropped her home. Kaori had been quick, in dark tones, to interrogate the poor girl.
"You didn't let them take you anywhere? To the hospital? A doctor? Any place but here?"
"No, no, and no, Kaori-san." Hotaru crossly replied.
"Good." The woman's crimson lips still shone like rubies despite the darkness of the room. Hotaru thought they looked like they were covered in blood. Her hair, her clothing, her lips, even her eyes, at some points, were that same color. But her skin was pale as snow, her legs white and shapely as she walked out of the room.
"Good." Hotaru echoed Kaori's last comment, before adding a "She's gone."
As she floated away from her thoughts of moments passed and back to reality, she came to realize that she had left her room and was now staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, her skin almost as white as the wall behind her.
Quietly, she padded back upstairs to her bedroom, violet eyes glancing around, searching for Kaori or her father, the enigmatic man in the white lab coat. When she reached her room, she saw that her bed was in a state of disarray, sheets rumpled, and that her heavy lavender blanket was balled up. On her desk, was a tray, containing a glass of milk, a note, carefully written in neat kanji, and a single, bright green, almost luminescent pill.
"Hotaru, please take your medication." The note read. In her mind, she was throwing the glass of milk into the wall, stomping on the pill with her foot, and grinding it into glowing, odd-smelling dust, but the neutral look on her face had hardly faltered before she had popped the pill into her mouth and downed the glass of milk in two gulps. It felt as if something slimy and foreign was sliding down her throat, but her father instructed her to take the medication, so it must have been doing something.
Again, she felt oddly sleepy. The day had taken so much out of her. Her eyelids drooped as if they were being pulled down by weights. Quickly, she looked at the mountain of books on her desk, confirming with herself that she had finished all of her work, not that it would have mattered either way. But I remember finishing it she thought, before darkness pulled her away from awareness and into slumber.
Light was streaming into her east-facing room before it even occurred to her to wake up. Cognizance came back to her in stages. First, she realized that it was morning. Then, came the realization that it was Tuesday. The blinking red LED light of her clock swam before her eyes. Early, but not that early. Her feet hit the ground with a soft thud and she shuffled over to her dresser drawers, looking for a clean uniform.
As she knelt down, trying to untangle a pair of black stockings from a black, long sleeved sweater, a bright yellow Ferrari, the signature car of only one person, approached her house.
"You're sure you have the right street and everything?" Michiru asked, as the cool spring wind blew through her aqua hair.
Haruka continued accelerating toward her supposed destination.
"Yeah, Michiru. I never forget a house."
"You forgot where your new apartment was when you moved into it." Michiru quipped.
"Nah, that was just because I was trying to think of an excuse that would get you to walk me home." Haruka shot her a smirk that she was quick to return.
She slammed on the brakes when she approached the house she thought was Hotaru's, causing Michiru's head to snap forward and almost smack into the windshield.
"Haruka!" Michiru began to chide, however, her target appeared to not be paying attention.
"Why is it that whenever I get near this house, I get the weirdest feeling?" Haruka asked, her eyes taking on a faraway quality. Michiru thought of a reply, but as the same thought washed over her, she was rendered silent
"I don't know." Michiru pensively murmured.
This mysterious sway that the house tenuously held over them was easily broken when a small, black cat shot around nearby corner, in its continued flight from a group of children that was chasing it.
"What in the world was that about?" Michiru asked, when they had run out of sight.
"I have no idea." Haruka replied. "But this is taking too long. I think it's time to wake her up."
She blasted the horn, sending every bird within a hundred foot radius flying, simultaneously, from its perch. Inside of the house, Kaori and Souichi, deep within the bowels of the Tomoe Laboratory, heard nothing, while Hotaru, dressing upstairs in her room was left to wonder what in the world could be making all that racket. The cacophony ceased before she could run to the window, coughing, although the cause of the noise still remained seated in her bright, yellow Ferrari.
Hotaru's mouth dropped. Seated there in the car, were Tenoh Haruka and Kaioh Michiru, two of the smartest, most talented, most popular people in Mugen Gakuen. Dimly, she recalled that they had dropped her home after her attack yesterday night, but she wondered why on earth they could possibly be here now. As she continued her shocked stare at the car, Haruka, the blond one, by chance, happened to glance up at where she stood at a window on the second floor, eyes wide.
"Tomoe-san!" She called, a smile on her face. Hotaru blushed. Michiru turned and also smiled at the girl.
Hotaru floated, as if on a cloud, downstairs toward the car. Hardly believing what was happening, she listened as Haruka asked her if it was okay to drop her off at school. As they sped away from her house, her dream resurfaced in her mind, chilling her like a cold wind on an otherwise warm spring afternoon.
However, as the car sped away from her house, its inhabitants laughing and talking all the while, Hotaru thought she would never feel as far away from those foreboding feelings as she did now.
And, given the later circumstances, she was right.
AN: So yeah, that's chapter 3. My writing style's changed markedly since 9th grade and now. But I still have the same ideas that I did then, and I hope to see them through. So, please review? It was looking through the old reviews that got me back into writing this fic in the first place.
:)
~ Sailor Prozac.