I don't think I have any real notes about the part, but just to recap:
Rubeus just told everyone that Ashleigh was responsible for the destruction
of the Silver Millenium.
P.S. I know it's not that likely that Rubeus would use a gun,
but hey, I needed it, O.K.?
Disclaimers: Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi, but this story is mine and so are my characters.
Dedicated to Emily-chan.
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Little Sister
Part 6
By Marie-chan
It appears that all this is too much for Ashleigh, who faints. Renie, being closest to her, tries to wake up her new friend, who is now lying on the ground.
However, from Ashleigh’s perspective, she only feels
like she’s been transported to
another place. She looks around and sees a man facing a window.
She approaches him, and he
turns to face her. It’s Darien, except he’s dressed as the king.
She’s in the future, but she doesn’t
realize it yet. “Darien? Where are we?”
He answers her, “We are in your mind, Ashleigh.
But I am not the Darien you know now.
I am from the future. I came to you because I have a very important
favor to ask of you.” She
asks him what it is. He tells her, “I would never ask you to
do this under normal circumstances,
because it endangers your life, but if you do not, then I will die.”
She tells him, “You know I
would do anything for you, just ask it.”
“As we speak, your Darien, the Darien of my past,
is about to die.” the king tells her,
“You must sacrifice yourself to save him, Ashleigh. But please,
be very careful; I don’t want to
lose you.” As he is speaking, Ashleigh’s surroundings are fading,
and King Endymion’s voice is
growing faint. “You must hurry now, good bye and good luck....”
She can’t hear him any more,
and it’s dark all around her.
Suddenly she can hear Darien’s voice again.
“Ashleigh! Ashleigh! Wake up, please,
you’ve got to wake up!” She realizes that she’s back in the present.
He’s holding up her head
and back, shaking her gently. She opens her eyes and the darkness
is gone. She can see Darien
above her. It looks strange from the outside, since she had appeared
to be unconscious, but then
she opened her eyes so quickly, as if she had only blinked. Somewhere
in the back of her mind,
Ashleigh wonders how she got on the ground, and how Darien got over
to her, when she abruptly
sees the danger. A red laser targeting beam is trained on the
side of Darien’s head. Because
everyone’s attention is on her and because of their angles, nobody
can see the small red circle but
her. Rubeus is aiming some sort of energy gun at Darien’s head.
She knows it will surely kill
him.
Just as Rubeus fires, Ashleigh shoves Darien back
with a scream of his name. The blast of
white-hot electricity misses it’s intended target, but hits Ashleigh
dead on in the side. She
screams in agony, and lands on Darien, who was shoved onto his back.
Ashleigh looks barely
conscious, but she moves to block another shot. Rubeus is about
to fire again, but Venus’s
Love-Chain combined with Mars’s Celestial Fire stop him. Renie
runs over to Ashleigh and
Darien, crying. Mercury blasts Rubeus with an Ice Storm, and
a Moon Scepter Elimination
finishes it off. He shouts, “You may have won for now, Sailor
Scouts, but I’ll be back! And
don’t forget, I’ve already gotten rid of that little brat. She
won’t be any trouble for the Black
Moon now!” With that, he leaves in the usual manor of disappearing
in a flash. The scouts run
over to Renie, Ashleigh, and Darien.
Ashleigh tries to get up, but can barely raise her
head. Renie puts a restraining hand on
her back to hold her down, but very gently. She tells her to
stay still. Darien pulls her back down
by her arms. Lita carefully lifts her off of Darien, revealing
her injured side. Ashleigh’s shirt is
terribly scorched, but it covers the wound, so only Ashleigh knows
how bad it is. The only
indicator for everyone else is how Ashleigh is acting (in severe pain).
She realizes that she can’t
let them know how badly hurt she is. Darien stands up and takes
Ashleigh from Lita. He’s not
carrying her, just holding her up on her feet. She leans against
him as he holds her upper arms.
Her body is stiff and she can hardly move. Serena puts a hand
on her shoulder (very softly, for
fear of hurting her), and asks her how badly she’s hurt. Ashleigh
says shakily, “I’ll be all right, I
just need to rest a minute.” Raye says, “Are you kidding!?
We need to take you to a hospital!”
Mina adds, “Yeah, we don’t even know the effects of the weapon you
were shot by.” But
Ashleigh protests, “We can’t go to the hospital, we can’t let anyone
know what happened here.”
Renie asks her what she’s talking about. Ashleigh tells her that
if they go to the hospital, Serena’s
parents will find out. Darien says, “I hate to admit it, but
she’s right. It’ll seem too suspicious, all
this stuff happening to Ashleigh all of the sudden. But we’ve
got to find some way to get her
home with no one noticing that she’s hurt.”
They decide to go to Darien’s apartment to make
a plan, and let Ashleigh rest.
Fortunately, it’s not far, and they don’t pass many people on the way.
Amy gives Ashleigh her
jacket to cover up the burns, and Darien walks close next to Ashleigh.
He has a hand on her
upper arms, helping her stay on her feet. Serena walks on her
other side, and holds one of
Ashleigh’s hands in both of her own. Renie stays behind for a
few seconds, watching Ashleigh.
She can tell that something’s not right, but can’t figure out what.
She hurries to catch up.
At Darien’s place, they’re sitting in the living
room, quietly making plans. Ashleigh’s in
the bathroom. The view is from behind, so only her back and her
face (reflected in the mirror),
can be seen. She’s found some bandages and iodine in the cupboard.
She pours a lot of iodine on
a piece of cloth, nearly saturating it, then lifts her shirt off the
wound and presses the cloth on to
it. She gasps in agony, and looks like she might scream from
the pain. She steadies herself
against the sink with her other hand, as her legs grow weak.
Finally she removes the cloth and
washes it out. A lot of blood goes down the drain. She
then grabs a clean cloth and bandages it
to her side, wrapping it around her waist many times. Renie knocks
on the door and asks if she’s
all right. Ashleigh says she’s fine and that she’ll be out in
a minute. Quickly she puts everything
away and cleans up. She opens the door and goes back out into
the living room. Raye sees her
and asks her how she is. Ashleigh says she’ll be O.K.
They scoot over on the couch to make room for her,
but she tells them she’d rather stand.
They tell her the plan: they’ll walk to Serena’s house, then
Renie and Serena will go in first and
distract anyone who’s home. Ashleigh will run upstairs and change
her clothes, then come back
down, before anyone notices she’s gone.
Their course of action set, they get up and leave
Darien’s apartment. Mina takes the
opportunity to tell the girls about the guy she met. “He was
such a hunk, guys! His name is Gabe
and, get this, he’s in the same class as me, isn’t that cool?
We ate lunch together, and for the first
time in my life, I can’t wait to get back to school!” Lita says
it must have been some guy if Mina
wants to go to school. Amy says she doesn’t understand why they
wouldn’t want to got to
school anyway.
Darien and Renie have both been pretty quiet so
far. Darien appears to thinking, but
Renie’s been watching Ashleigh again. She thinks to herself that
she doesn’t quite believe
Ashleigh’s story about being all right.
Now they’re at Serena’s house and the plan starts
going into action. Ashleigh returns
Amy’s jacket and thanks her for letting her use it. Darien tells
her that there’s no way she’s going
to run with him tomorrow, but he promises to come and check on them
before school.
Serena goes inside with Renie, and they can all
hear her yell, “Hi, Mom! We’re back!!”
Ashleigh sticks her head in and sees that Renie and Serena have her
facing away from the door.
They motion for her to come in. She says good bye and thanks
to the other girls and Darien, then
scurries in. “How was your shopping trip, dear?” Mrs. Tsukino
asks them. Ashleigh hurries
upstairs to change while Serena tells her mom about their afternoon
(leaving out the part where
Rubeus attacked, of course.) Just as Serena’s mom asks where
Ashleigh is, she comes downstairs
in a new outfit and says, “Right here.”
They show her all the stuff they bought. Renie
bought a bracelet for herself and Serena bought a
skirt and some socks with bunnies on them. Serena’s mom tells
them that her dad was just as
excited as she was when he got home and she told him about how their
daughter did on the test.
“Come on, girls, I’ve made a special dinner in honor of your good grades.
Serena’s favorite.”
“Cake?” she asks her mom hopefully. “Your favorite dinner food.”
They head into the dining
room, Ashleigh trailing behind. When the others are out of sight,
she lifts up the edge of her shirt.
The white bandages already have a few drops of blood seeping through.
She squeezes her eyes
shut and lets out a quiet groan. The difficulty of keeping up
her act is wearing on her. Serena
calls her and she hurries after them.
To be continued......
Wow, that part was kinda long, huh? Well, what can I say? When I finally motivated myself to start typing, I just kept going and going and going and......