Star Cross*d Part Four


Mick broke his contact from Tengai, and looked through the window, only to see the villain called S hovering over the road, looking very incensed. She was glowing a sickly green, and had a wild look in her eyes.

"I WILL FIND YOU MISERABLE LITTLE GIRLS!!!" she roared, balling her fists and shaking with rage, "AND YOUR LITTLE BOYFRIEND TOO!!" She was busy lighting fires, jumping out in front of cars, shaking down passer-bys. Micheal groaned and looked down. "I guess my stomach is just going to have to wait." He mentally sighed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mick noticed Tengai blushing a little with the boyfriend comment. He turned to her. "I think our presence is requested on the street Ms. Tengai." She looked distressed, but nodded slowly. He helped her out of the molded booth, and they deposited their forgotten food into a nearby trashbin and strode through the glass doors. They hid behind a phone booth and surveyed the damage. People were running every which way, cars were smashed into phone polls, each other, and buildings, and they were quite a few structures burning.

Micheal frowned. S was so angry, she'd fight way past what was reasonable. It would be difficult to defeat an enemy who was living off adrenalin. He looked down on his red-headed companion. "We're going to need more than just the two of us to beat her, Tengai." He looked pained and unhappy, "We need your friends."

She smiled a little, "Okay, I'll call them." She pulled out her communicator, and pushed it on, but nothing happened. She shook it, yet it still refused to do anything. "Oh no! It's broken!" She held it out to Mick. He frowned, took it and studied it for a second. "This technology is so... ancient. I don't know what to make of it," he contemplated simply giving it back, but when he glanced at her, and was dismayed to see a hopeful look there. After a moment more of inspecting the device, a thought occurred to him.

"It seems to have no power source." He gave it back, and her face fell.

"So there's nothing you can do?"

Mick shook his head. "This is no good, I'm going to have to fight her, and you are going to have to go find your comrades," he pushed his dark hair out of his eyes and grimaced. The color drained from Tengai's face. "No! I can't leave you alone with her!" She grabbed his arm desperately. The look in her eyes pleaded with him to not make her go.

"I'm sorry, you have to go. We can't both leave, but we both can't stay, and my attacks are more effective than yours." He faced away from her. The conflict she felt was thick in the air, and she didn't move or speak. He turned and took her into his arms, then leaned back. "Go. Now." He then walked away without looking back, and thus sensed, rather than saw, her leave.

He ducked behind some bushes, and found a shard of glass laying there. He picked it up and closed his fist around it, and blood trickled down his arm. The familiar energy of transformation then enveloped him and he stood up.

"Hey, witch! Here I am!" Sailor Miranda shouted. He smiled confidently, and his sphere floated around his head.

S dropped the poor citizen she was tormenting, who quickly scrambled away. "Ah, it's the little man!" She pulled out a long black whip with three metal spikes at the end, and flicked it toward him. He dodged, but barely, and she cackled loudly. "You will pay for what you did to my sister!!" She relentlessly came after him with her whip, and he could hardly keep away from her weapon, let alone think of attacking back.

"I can't keep doing this, I've gotta fight back!" he thought, and did a back flip away from the slashing spikes flying through the air. His eyes caught something: an opening in her stance. He ran straight at her, feigning a kick to her stomach, at the last second changed direction and connecting his foot with her whip hand, twisting his ankle around the long leather weapon. He then let himself fall to the pavement, clenching some of her obscenely long hair in his fist, and yanked downward. S screamed with pain and loosened her grip on the whip, and he flung his leg, still tangled in the weapon, away from her, and she lost her hold on it all together. He let go of her poison tresses, and rolled away, just as she let loose an enraged energy blast, that brushed his left leg and arm. They throbbed with pain, and he gritted his teeth while he summoned his sphere to him.

He struggled to his feet and positioned his weapon in front of his chest. "Miranda Sphere Splash!" He looked up in time to see crimson soak S, but she was so consumed in her anger that the pain she was obviously feeling barely phased her.

"You horrible twat! That little move will cost you!" she screeched in an unearthly tone that made Mick shiver. She dug her nails into her own arms until she had little trails of green blood decorating her them.

"What? I thought that was pretty good," he tried to smirk through his injuries, but his agony was written in his eyes. "Pysching her out isn't going to work, you have to have a mind to have it messed with." The corners of his mouth turned up at the thought.

S shook with hatred, and released another attack, which missed him by a thread. "I can't keep this up. I hope Tengai finds her friends soon."




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Kakaru Tengai sprinted off through the pandemonium in the streets. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her breath tore at her throat. Brown eyes scanned desperately for any of her comrades.

"Tskui! Usagi! Haruka! Michiuru! Minna!!!!" she screamed. Her voice was drowned out by the shrieks of the frightened civilians.

Tengai's feet stopped, and she found herself again in the park. Here, the sound from the street didn't penetrate the deep foliage. And here, to Tengai's utter relief was Tskui, reading.

"'Kui-chan!!!" Tengai yelled as she sprinted into her friend's arms. "Tskui, you have to come with me.. my communicator, Mick, the creepy S chick Please!! Oh God, Mick."

"Calm down, Tengai Again, in order" While Tengai repeated what had happened again, Shinseino Tskui reached into her school bag to retrieve her henshin brooch and communicator. "It's ok, Ten-chan, It will all be fine. Where is your henshin pen?"

Tengai produced her lime green henshin pen and held it up for inspection.

"Lets transform and get this hag," said Tskui tenderly. She hugged her orange haired friend quickly and stood up, holding her brooch to the sky.

"Pandora Orbital Power"

"Miranda Orbital Power"

" MAKE UP!"

Red green and silver light filled the glen, and then the girls were off.

"Minna-san," Pandora broadcast to the other senshi as they ran to Mick's aid, "we have an emergency."


*****
When the two moon senshi arrived at the scene, Sailor Miranda gasped.

"Mick!!!"

S was standing over a very prone Mick, the dark son of Uranus was lying on the ground bleeding and broken, struggling to move. S was so focused, she did not hear Tengai's scream. Her arms were raised above her body while her poison green hair flowed wildly around her body. A green-black light was spreading from her body, radiated all around. The sky had begun to darken as S's eyes filled with a venomous glow.

"And now BOY" she hissed, "it is time to DIE!"

S drew her hands before her, readying the fatal blast as Mick looked up with a weak defiance.

"Come on, Bitch," he spat, "better make this good."

"No!" screamed Tengai.

When the ball of energy started forming, Mick closed his eyes tightly. And time seemed to slow. Tengai sprinted towards Mick and shoved him away, just as the dark ball of energy was released. It struck the small senshi of innocence with such force that she slammed through the plate glass of the McDonalds restaurant, landing in the very booth they had been eating at only an hour before. The small Sailor Miranda tried to get up, and fell back weakly against the plastic. When she coughed a moment later, she coughed blood.




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Something about the fact that he was about to die didn't bother him. He was a warrior. He had done his best, and he had lost. Maybe he just didn't want as much as she did. Maybe he just didn't care. Maybe it was a combination of both.

All he knew was that when she made her strike, he wouldn't be curled up like a little baby, begging for mercy, wishing for reprieve. As she looked down on him, he couldn't help but smile.

"Come on, Bitch," he taunted, "better make this good."

His words were rewarded with an enraged look on the face of his enemy. She released her energy, and Mick closed his eyes, and thought of all those who had foolishly cared for them, and asked them to forgive him for going and dying on them.

But in the moment he expected death to consume him, he instead felt himself being shoved away, out of the path of the attack meant for him. He saw a flash of green, and then heard an explosion and a sickening cough, the wet kind that signaled coughing up something. Micheal rolled to his right, and saw Tengai laying in on pavement decorated in shards of glass, with scarlet liquid on her, next to her, all around her. The crimson of her shed blood slowly colored his vision, until it was all he could see.

He felt air rushing by, and realized he was floating above the road, and wasn't sure how he had gotten there. The wind whipped by him faster and faster, and the anger and guilt within him grew, and he was consumed. The red in his vision turned darker and darker until it was black. Somewhere in the distance a pin point of white light appeared, and he reached his hand toward it.

"Let it go. Take in your sorrow. Save your friends, Ten'ou Micheal. Let it go." The light sang.

"Let it go..." he whispered in return. His heart felt warm and he put his hands over it and felt it glow. "Let it go." He blinked, and nodded, "I understand."

Suddenly, the white overtook the black, and he returned to reality. He dropped his arms to his sides, palm up.

"HEART OF LOSS!!"

The light from his heart shot forward and swept over S, and after a heartbeat, there was nothing left of her, not a limb, not a cell, not even a molecule remained. Mick slowly returned to the Earth, and was surprised at the overwhelming feeling of peace that surrounded him.

He then remembered Tengai, and whipped around to see what had happened to her. Sailor Pandora was hunched over her, healing her as she tended to do. Relief flooded through him, and he walked over to them, a bit shaky. It wasn't until then that what he just done hit him. He'd maxed out. He'd used an attack he'd never used before. He had dissolved S. He shivered a little at that thought.

"I didn't know you had that sort of power, Sailor Miranda," Pandora remarked. She had tried to sound casual, but the amazement she was no doubt feeling leaked into her tone.

"Neither did I," he kneeled next to his fallen savior.

Tengai opened her eyes as Mick leaned over her, and looked confused. "I thought you were hurt?" She sat up, "Where's S? What happened?"

Mick looked at his arms, before they had been cut up and bleeding, but now they were unmarked and clean. "I attacked her, she's gone." He put his hand lightly on her cheek, "I suppose the energy I created healed me as well."

Pandora frowned, "Well, I suppose I should contact the others, and tell them not to come?" She got up an walked away, pulling out her communitcator.

When she was a safe distance away, Mick turned back to Tengai and whispered, "Thank you. I thought I was going to die."

She smiled softly back up at him. "I thought you were going to die, too." She put her arms around his neck, "I couldn't let that happen...."

He leaned in close and murmured, "Care to finish what we started before?" and lowered his lips onto hers, and kissed her lightly. It felt like sunshine.

"A-hem." Sailor Pandora cleared her throat. Mick sat up, and Tengai's face turned a bright pink. "We're supposed to go meet the others at Rei-chan's temple."

He nodded, and helped Tengai up, putting his strong arm around her. "Do you need help?"

"Noooo... I'm fine," she shyly replied. But he didn't remove his arm all the way to their destination.



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| Notes | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |