| Chapter 18: Home Is Where the Darkness Lies “Amara, do you think that we did the right thing by joining with the other Scouts?” Michelle asked as she packed all of her belongings into her suitcase. Amara shrugged. “I really don’t know yet, we’ll just have to wait and see. But I do trust Serena and Jacey with my life.” She froze in her spot. “Serena hasn’t let us down yet and Jacey is the prophesied savior.” Michelle smiled. “So, on the whole you think that we’ll be all right, don’t you?” The two looked deeply into each other’s eyes and shared the secret of their fate that they both knew would arrive. Then Amara pulled Michelle in for a kiss that foretold all. “I love you, Amara,” Michelle whispered. They just stood there and held each other for a long time. After a moment they returned to packing, silent in reflection. Michelle thought about how to protect the princess and the savior; Amara thought about how to kill Metalia. They both knew to keep a straight head and open mind to win in the end, but they couldn’t help a sense of dread that forced itself into the pits of their stomachs. *** “Are you scared, Mina?” Lita asked as she threw a few pairs of shorts into her duffel bag. “Do you have confidence in the strength of the Scouts?” Mina sat down on Lita’s bed and started playing with her crocheted blanket. “Of course I’m afraid. You’d have to be insane not to be afraid!” She lay down and stared up at the ceiling. “But I do have faith in us. Think of how we all came together last night. I honestly trust that we will be fine.” Lita sighed and zipped up her bag. “That’s good,” she said. “I feel confident and strong now that we have the other Scouts back. But something still doesn’t feel right, you know?” “Yeah,” Mina said. “It’s just a funny feeling in my stomach and I don’t know why.” She sat up and looked at Lita. “Jacey and Serena are both strong enough, aren’t they?” “I hope so. The future is sitting on their shoulders. We’re all just their support beams.” The pair walked out of Lita’s apartment and down onto the street with their bags. “We’ll be the best support beams ever,” Lita smiled. “There’s no doubt about that.” Mina laughed as they both walked on to Raye’s temple. *** “How much have you packed so far, Kiddo?” Trista asked Hotaru as she watched the child cram another shirt into her suitcase. Hotaru looked at her and shrugged. “Enough I guess. How long are we going to be there?” “As long as we need to be,” Trista sighed. She looked down at the innocent young girl and wished that life were fair for all of them. She knew it never could be, though, their destinies were locked, and nothing could change that. They were all Sailor Scouts for life, for better or worse. “What’s wrong, Trista? Are you scared?” Hotaru asked, interrupting Trista’s train of thought. “Do you think we’re going to win this time around?” Trista smiled and zipped up Hotaru’s suitcase. “I don’t know, you tell me.” “Even if I did know, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think you’d want to know the terror and death of absolute war. You wouldn’t want to know any of it.” Trista just stared blankly as Hotaru took her suitcase out of the room. Trista was struck with a sudden fear in the base of her spine. “How bad could this be?” she thought. “Can this really be the end of everything we’ve worked for our entire lives?” Her greatest fears ran through her mind as she walked down the stairs and got into Amara’s car. But there was no time to think as they began towards the temple. *** Amy walked up the steps of the temple, suitcase in one hand; a book in the other. As she reached the top step, she saw Raye talking with Catsie. “Hey guys!” she called out enthusiastically. She approached and Raye turned to her. “Hey Amy! All ready to go?” Amy nodded. “If you’ll excuse me,” Catsie said. “I’m going to help Grandpa and Chad with the morning’s chores. Have a wonderful trip you two!” She waved back as she ran off to fulfil her duties. Amy put her suitcases on the ground and waved back to Catsie. “Raye, I’m worried,” she divulged. “About Catsie? So am I,” Raye returned. She bit her thumb and tried to think. “You know as well as I do that if Metalia wants her back, there’s nothing stopping her with us gone. She’s completely helpless.” “That’s what I was thinking,” Amy said. “I guess we’ll find out if they want her or not soon enough. But the power of the Silver Crystal and the Rock of Magma should be strong enough to beat Metalia and turn everyone back to good, right?” Raye just stared at the ground. “My visions stopped coming when Jacey arrived, and no one else has reported having any visions. Just the ones of the savior, then Jacey arrived and they stopped. The balance has been thrown off somewhere and that’s what we have to correct.” Amy opened her mouth to say something, but just then, they heard a car door shut. *** “Serena! Can you ever be not late?” Darien shouted as she came flying down her front steps, suitcase in hand. “Honestly, you’d think that this is important enough to warrant waking up on time!” She threw her stuff into his trunk and took her seat in the passenger side of his convertible. “I’m sorry, my alarm never went off this morning. I swear I didn’t mean to wake up late.” “You never do,” he said and stared towards the temple. “Are you ready? You don’t seem to be flustered at all by anything that’s going on.” “Are you kidding?” Serena just stared at him. “I’m scared out of my mind! Who on Earth wouldn’t be afraid if they knew what was going on! Darien, you have no idea what’s going on inside my head right now.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and put a hand on her knee. “Tell me. It helps to talk about it sometimes.” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Well, the first thing on my mind is you and the girls. I don’t want anything bad to happen to any of you. That’s my first priority, the safety of my friends. Then I keep thinking about the whole world and what Metalia might do to it if we don’t beat her immediately. That makes me start to think about the future and how I can protect it for Rini. I don’t want her to grow up in a wasteland, or worse, never be born! I just can’t get it to stop, Darien!” “We’ll succeed and you’ll never have to worry again, I promise you that much. I won’t let anything happen.” *** Jacey walked around her room silently after Amara, Michelle, Trista, and Hotaru left. Tears ran down her face uncontrollably as she tried futilely to wipe them away. “I just can’t do this!” she sobbed to Apollo and Athena. “They all think I’m some sort of savior! I’m not at all! I just have the powers of the other Eternal Sailor Scout. Hotaru is the one that they should be training.” “Jacey, you can’t just try to force your responsibility off on someone else. Only you hold the key to this battle and you know it, somewhere deep inside you,” Apollo said. She bit her lip and choked on her words. “No I don’t. I’m just another Sailor Scout! That’s the whole reason that I’m upset, I can’t do anything else to save the world. They think that I can, but when I fail, they’ll be disappointed in me!” “I thought you had come to terms with your destiny, Jacey. You seemed so prepared at the meeting last night. Just think of everyone who needs you, and you can find the strength inside you to beat Metalia and all of her henchmen that she drags up from places. We have so much confidence in you,” Athena said, with a bold voice. “You will succeed and make everyone so proud of you.” Jacey thought hard for a moment. “I know that everyone is counting on me and that the whole fate of the world rests on us. I have to do this, if only to save Griffin and honor my family. I will rise to this challenge.” “There you go!” Apollo cheered. “Now we have to get a move on. Everyone will be waiting for us to get to the temple. We can’t miss that plane!” Jacey looked up and recognized the face of her mother imprinted on the ceiling. “You won’t let me down, my child,” a voice went through Jacey’s head. “No, I won’t, Mother. That I can promise.” *** Jacey walked up the steps of the temple and saw the ten faces of the lives that immediately depended on her and her strength alone. “Hi,” she sighed heavily. “Are you all ready to go?” “Ready and raring,” Serena said, taking Darien’s hand and walking towards Jacey. “You can come with the two of us in Darien’s car, ok?” Jacey nodded in approval. Luna and Artemis trotted over to Apollo and Athena and they just looked at each other. “It’s now or never,” Athena said to the group. “Let’s get moving.” Raye gave her grandpa and Chad a last hug goodbye as she followed Amy, Mina, and Lita into a cab that was parked behind Darien and Amara’s cars. “I love you both. I’ll be back soon,” she said and ran down the temple steps, wiping a tear from her eye. Amara’s car pulled out, followed by Darien’s and then the cab. Serena looked at Jacey for a few minutes as their car drove down the road before saying anything. “What’s New York like?” she finally yelled over the wind. “Well, it’s actually a lot like Tokyo. You know, a big city, a lot of shopping, evil. Pretty run of the mill, but it really is gorgeous over there.” Jacey sniffled and tried to hold back her tears. “And the best part about it is that my family’s there.” “Sounds like the greatest place in the world,” Serena said. “I’m proud to be defending it.” *** Most of the girls stayed up all night on the plane, anxiously awaiting their arrival in the renowned New York City. Amara, Michelle, and Trista worked out battle plans while Hotaru slept soundly with her head nuzzled on Amara’s shoulder. Lita listened to a cd, while Raye, Amy, and Mina watched the in-flight movie. Serena held tightly to Darien’s hand as he silently read a book. The four cats had a fitful sleep for most of the ride and Jacey stared, red eyed, out the window at the ocean and then the land. Jacey was still staring as the sun began to peak over the horizon, and as she looked out into the distance, she noticed a dark cloud hanging in the space before them. Morning broke not too long before the plane was supposed to land at LaGuardia airport, and the sleeping passengers were all awakened by the pilot’s voice over the intercom. “We’re very sorry to report that do to adverse weather conditions, we will not be able to land at our scheduled point of arrival. We have been rerouted to Boston and will be landing there in approximately three hours.” “The cloud!” Jacey thought. Darien and Serena looked at her as her eyes grew wide with understanding. “That’s not smog,” she said to them. “Don’t you feel it? The city’s under attack. Metalia’s filling the city with her dark power!” “Jacey! What’s going on!” Mina asked. “We can’t go to Boston!” Jacey thought for a minute. “We just have to go, we don’t have a choice. When we get there we’ll just take a train into the city. I’ll take a little bit longer, but when we get there we’ll have more ass kicking energy.” *** “I’m sorry, Miss, all of the trains to New York City have been stopped temporarily,” the ticket seller at the Boston train station said sympathetically. Raye stepped up to the counter. “But we have to get to the city! It’s a matter of extreme importance!” The ticket seller thought for a minute. “You could try to rent a car and take it down there, but they stopped the train because of dense smog levels. It’s been going on all week.” “Thanks a lot,” Jacey said politely, picking up her bags. “Let’s go find a rental place you guys. We’re seriously running out of other options, so let’s hope this shot goes better.” It did and within an hour the ten girls, Darien, and the cats were in three cars headed for New York City. As they began to approach the bridge to the city, they could see the thick blackness that was a blanket over the entire skyline. Jacey just stared with a hollow look in her eyes. “My home,” she whispered. “We have to go to Jen’s house first. I have to make sure she’s all right.” “Won’t she wonder why you’re home?” Serena asked. “She knows about me, but it’s a long story. Remind me to tell you when this is all over, ok?” Serena nodded and smiled. Moments later, they were across the bridge and every member of the group held their breath as they plunged into the darkness that was once the greatest city in the world. |