AN: Haha, new chapter in a semi-timely fashion. See, I can learn.
Disclaimer: Is not, will never, blah blah.
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"Nephrite, your element is air, right?" Jupiter asked. She pressed on after seeing his puzzled nod. "Great. Let's go."
"Go? Where? What are we doing?"
"You wanted me to train you," she said briskly. "Now we're moving on to practical applications. Kunzite already cleared it."
"What is 'it', exactly?"
She smiled a dangerous little smile. "Sky pirates."
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"I thought Sailor Venus handled any issues on her homeworld."
"For the most part, she does, but when we have interplanetary issues, we hand the problem over to one of the others to keep things impartial. Since the attacks are being carried out by a rogue gang of Uranians, Venus and Uranus would be inclined to take sides."
"I know Uranians tend to have air magic, but sky pirates?"
Jupiter glanced up from the transporter she was programming and smirked. The world blurred around them, revealing a stunning panoramic over the clouds. The magical atmosphere glittered not too far overhead, and the ground under them seemed to be moving.
"Even with our technology and magic, Venus' surface is uninhabitable. All of the cities are on massive airships that fly above the clouds, which are made up of sulfuric acid. Our records say Venus used to be very similar to Earth, but the oceans evaporated as the planet grew much too hot."
"Do the other planets have anything like it?"
"Jupiter would, but we were able to create giant plants that can survive in the artificial atmosphere and grow large enough that your homeland would not even cover one. Magic is used to regulate the pressure enough to do the rest. It's similar to the outer planets that way, though Uranus has sky cities like these while Neptune managed to cover their planet in ocean. Saturn copied our trees."
"I wouldn't believe this if I wasn't seeing it."
"The Earth is the birthplace of all our peoples," Jupiter told him. "Everything else had to be created by humans."
Nephrite was absolutely stunned. "I had no idea."
She laughed. "It's not common knowledge, even for us, but the rest of this discussion will have to wait until later. Our ride's here." A sky speeder, a quick two-person vehicle used in various Venusian racing events, pulled itself up next to them. She leapt into the pilot's seat as she spoke. "I'll have to pilot, since you've never driven one of these before. That means the pirates are your job."
"What should I do?"
"That depends on what they do, doesn't it? You'll have to figure it out."
Jupiter switched the speeder to manual and only waited long enough for Nephrite to get in before taking off. They were soaring over the clouds in seconds at a pace far faster than he'd ever experienced. He was intensely grateful that his powers seemed to prevent airsickness.
"We're closing in on the pirates' target, according to Mercury's intelligence. Keep your eyes open. I'm putting us in stealth mode."
Nephrite spotted their quarry only a few minutes later. "Your pirates seem… less capable than I would have expected."
The gang, four men and three women, all with white or blond hair and green eyes, were very loud and completely lacking in subtlety as they magically lifted the roof off of the cabin of the luxury cruiser they had intercepted. One of the men was strutting back and forth in front of the guests they'd captured with the aircraft, monologuing dramatically. The general stilled the air between their crafts enough to listen in.
"With your jewels and cargo," the man boasted, "we'll be able to buy weapons to end the hateful Silver Alliance. Our people will rule as we were always meant to!"
"What is he talking about?" Nephrite whispered.
Jupiter scoffed. "The planets were all at war before Queen Serenity created the Silver Millennium and brought peace to our solar system. Some fringe groups preferred the endless war and want to go back to it, even though we were all a single people once." She shook her head. "Sailor Uranus lost her mother to the war. She won't be the supporter they've deluded themselves into thinking she is."
"What should we do?"
"They won't hurt anyone here. Our laws are absolute on what happens in that case, and a Senshi's supposed support wouldn't be able to protect them. Once they separate from the civilian ship, we follow and take them down."
"How?"
"Like I said, you'll need to figure it out. I'll be busy flying."
The pirates only lingered for a few minutes, proving they weren't completely brainless, and the way they moved out quickly suggested the same. He knew the man he'd heard didn't possess any such sense, so he clearly had a more intelligent underling serving as pilot. Their airship shimmered out of visibility just as the speeder had, but he could sense the movements of the air they displaced to tell him where they were. A glance at his partner proved she was not fooled either, and they followed the pirates away.
Once they were far enough out that there was no risk to the civilians behind them, Nephrite commanded the air to thicken, slowing the other ship significantly while they were unhindered. Jupiter pulled them up next to the pirates and Nephrite got to work.
The general leapt across to the larger craft, startling its crew as he landed in the middle of its deck. He went on the offensive immediately, capitalizing on their confusion. The fighting forms Jupiter had taught him came in handy, creating a powerful gale under his control with the center totally calm.
The pirates were thrown to the deck almost instantaneously, struggling to anchor themselves against hurricane-force winds on the smooth sides since, of course, their ship was not made of coarse planks as Terran watercrafts were. When they were all downed, Nephrite let go of the storm and turned the air around them heavy, pinning the miscreants in place.
Jupiter chuckled behind him as she jumped aboard as well. "Not bad. A bit theatrical, perhaps, but not bad."
"If you wanted less theatrics, you could have helped."
She smirked. "That would hardly test your skills."
The general rolled his eyes genially. "You could have done this on your own and just wanted to see if I was worth teaching, didn't you?"
"Of course," she said.
"There are easier ways to get my attention," he chided with a playful hint to his voice.
She blushed, much to his surprise, and immediately turned her attention to securing the pirates and calling the Venusian police to collect the stolen goods. He puzzled over it as she flew the illegal craft back to the city, towing their little speeder behind them.
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Nephrite went looking for Jupiter a few days later.
He'd thought long and hard about what to do when that flush had revealed that the Jovian princess might share his feelings instead of considering him an acquaintance or, at best, a friend. Even with the others pairing up, he'd never considered it likely. Provided with evidence that he might have been wrong, he had to decide whether or not to pursue a possible relationship.
He wanted to try.
Jupiter wasn't on duty and wasn't relaxing with the other Senshi. She wasn't in the training yard or the kitchens. In fact, she didn't seem to be in any part of the palace where they'd previously crossed paths, which forced him to conclude she'd either been called back to her homeworld, or she was avoiding him.
A quick chat with Sailor Mercury told him she was still on the Moon – she hadn't used a transporter and he knew from experience that her teleportation was limited to her line of sight. So she was in fact there and almost certainly avoiding him.
He tried asking the servants, like he had when he found her baking in the kitchens, but they all claimed not to know. It was utter nonsense, of course, since servants could be relied on to know the most recent gossip de, but they had been asked to keep it to themselves for whatever reason. The attempts did, however, remind him of something he'd seen that day.
There had been dirt on her nose, and he'd checked the gardens already, but it occurred to him that Jupiter had powerful plant magic and might prefer to exercise it with functional ones rather than ornaments. Certainly a kitchen garden would benefit more from her presence.
Nephrite returned to the massive kitchens and discreetly observed its going-ons until he saw a boy enter with a basket full of vegetables. He headed out that door and found a near-endless walled in vegetable garden, with a gate to an adjoining orchard. As anticipated, Jupiter was kneeling in what looked like a patch of young strawberry plants. Despite being amid the greenery, she was not working. Instead, she was staring up at the Earth, and the sun beyond it.
She looked like a work of art. Rather than a gown or her uniform, as he'd always seen her before, she had on what he would have described as a jade green Grecian style chiton if they'd been on Earth. Its folds fell only a little further down her thighs than her uniform skirt, pooling in her lap. The sunlight shot her auburn hair through with flaming red and flattered her pale skin. Her strong features, set in a mask of quiet contemplation, completed her near statuesque look, and had he seen such a carving for sale he would have been moved to purchase it immediately.
"You've been avoiding me," he observed quietly.
Jupiter, despite that, met his gaze unflinchingly. "I was," she agreed. "It doesn't seem to have worked very well."
"Not really." He sat in the dirt next to her. "Can we talk about what happened?"
She sighed but again made steady eye contact. "Your comment caught me off guard and I overreacted, even though I know you were just joking."
He blinked once, twice. "I wasn't, though. Not entirely. I thought you would only ever see me as a friend, Jupiter. I never suspected you might feel the same way."
Uncertainty flickered across her face for the first time, bullying her brave mask away. "You… You have feelings for me?"
"I think I always have," Nephrite said honestly.
Jupiter reached out and curled her hand around the back of his neck, slowly using that bit of contact to pull herself closer while giving him plenty of time to back away if he so chose. He moved not at all, but met her in a first gentle kiss.
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AN: I don't love this chapter. I mean, it has everything I needed it to, but it just doesn't click, I guess. Maybe it's the continued super fluffiness and lack of angst, which throws off the plot bunnies like feeding them pure sugar and expecting them to not end up malnourished. Hopefully it feels a little more natural to everyone else. As always, I do want to know what you think, so please leave a contribution in the little box. Till next time!