After months of radio silence...
(as far as drabbles go, anyways) and just in time for Christmas, I offer you:
An Unfinished Valentine's Day Fic That Has Nothing to Do With Our Drabble Themes!!!
shadowravyn
"As Yet Untitled"
Words: 2046
“Oh look, Usagi’s late again. I fall all over myself in shock and surprise.” Rei rolled her eyes as the clock in her room chimed the hour. She leaned back against her bed and began flipping through a nearby manga. “Where is Odango? Mooning over boys at the mall, hoping to get a date for Valentine’s?”
“Be nice, Rei-chan,” Ami chided. “Usagi-chan’s only a little late, and it’s not like this is an important senshi meeting. We really don’t have anything to discuss. It’s been pretty quiet recently. We could just as easily turn this into a study session instead.” Considering the pile of textbooks Ami had on the table in front of her, she’d probably intended to propose that anyway. The assorted papers and schoolbooks nearly hid the plate of cookies Makoto had baked for the meeting.
“She’s a half an hour late,” Rei retorted with a disdainful sniff. “And even if the fate of the world rested this meeting, she’d still be late.”
The other three senshi shifted uncomfortably, unable to argue with the truth pf Rei's statement. Usagi had been about twenty minutes late on the day they’d teleported to D point to destroy Queen Beryl.*
“So maybe we can get her a boyfriend,” Minako suggested brightly. “Then she’d be able to get places on time.”
“Minako-chan!” Makoto said with a laugh, “He’d be a boyfriend, not an alarm clock.”
“Well, he’d have to be a very organized boyfriend, then. Organized and disciplined.” Minako retorted with a toss of her hair. “Someone who could remember his schedule and hers, and remind her when she was about to be late for something, and not let her talk him out of making her do stuff.”
“He’d have to be extremely intelligent,” Ami seconded. “And he’d have to recognize the value of study and schoolwork, and make her start doing her homework.” In true Ami-fashion, she’d pulled out a blank sheet of paper and was busy making a list of their suggestions.
“And he’d need to know how to cook and take care of the house, too,” Makoto pointed out. “Because if he left it up to her, it would be a race to see if they starved to death first, or were just smothered in a pile of dirty clothes.”
“Oh, Mako-chan, not you, too!” Rei groaned, covering her face with her comforter. “The last thing Odango needs is another distraction from her duties.”
“Come on, Rei-chan, can’t you see this idea has merit?” Minako said, all smiles and enthusiasm. “With the right guy, Usagi could really start…you know, growing as a person.”
“Usagi does not need some man to start telling her how to be--” Rei started hotly, an angry flush rising in her cheeks.
“No, no!” Recognizing the danger, Minako hastily backpedaled. “Not like that at all! He’d just be...uhh...incentive for her to start behaving a little more maturely.” Talking to Rei without triggering her temper was closely akin to walking through a minefield without a map. Introducing men into the conversation was like volunteering to make that walk blindfolded.
“He’d just be an incentive? We’re not saying that Usagi needs a guy for anything, right?” Rei mulled that over while her friends nodded vigorously. “Well that’s okay then.” She smiled brightly. “He’d better be really handsome, or we’d be looking at guys like Melvin. That’ll never work. Oh! And he should be patient, or he’ll end up throttling her when she does something dumb.”
Minako, Ami, and Makoto exchanged a quick glance, and stifled sighs of relief. Crisis averted.
“Shall we go over what we have then?” Ami asked, holding up the list. “So he has to be organized, disciplined, intelligent, good at cooking and cleaning, handsome, patient, have a good sense of humor, have good study habits, responsible, although that’s more of a corollary to organized and disciplined-”
“Corollary, isn’t that a heart attack?” Minako whispered to Makoto, puzzled.
“No, Minako-chan, that’s coronary.
“-Charming, protective, brave, s-sexy” Ami’s cheeks burned as she read off Minako’s last qualification, “able to get along well with us, romantic, athletic, financially secure, and emotionally available.”
Rei poked Makoto. “Financially stable and emotionally available? Have you been reading self-help books or what? We’re looking for a boyfriend, not the father of her children or something.”
Makoto poked her back. “C’mon, Usagi-chan spends her allowance a week or so before she gets it. If they want to ever do anything more than hang around the arcade, he’s going to need money of his own. Oh, and he should be older too. Ami-chan, write that down. Old enough to drive, anyway, or else Usagi’s dad will have to drive them everywhere and we all know how that’ll turn out.”
“And emotionally available?” Rei prompted.
Makoto sighed. “I’ve decided that the biggest problem I had with my old sempai,” she ignored the assorted groans “was that he was emotionally unavailable. He wasn’t interested in long talks and holding hands. He just wanted to kiss and-” Makoto stopped and turned bright red, suddenly aware of the three sets of eyes now intently watching her.
“Kissing and….what?” Minako’s eyebrows waggled in what Minako probably meant to be a suggestive fashion. Makoto just thought she looked ridiculous.
“Kissing and-other stuff! You know, other stuff.”
“Ah, yes. ‘Other stuff.’ Exactly.” Minako looked around archly. “And how much of this ‘other stuff’ did you indulge in, Mako-chan?”
“Not enough to keep him, obviously!” Reflexively, Makoto clenched her fists and shifted into a fighting stance.
“So I added ‘old enough to drive’ to the list,” Ami interjected hurriedly. Really, as a group they’d be much more efficient if they weren’t so inclined to fly off the handle at any given moment. They all knew that discussing her old sempai made Makoto unreasonable, so why Minako had kept prodding her on the subject was far beyond Ami’s ken. “Is there anything else we should add?”
Rei counted the characteristics they’d already listed and rolled her eyes. “Wow. We’re never going to find someone who fits all nineteen. We might as well add that he’s also got to be Tuxedo Kamen, it probably won’t lessen the odds any.”
“Ooo! What’s this about Tuxedo Kamen? Did I miss something?” Usagi’s excited squeal was the only warning they had before she launched herself through the doorway toward the ignored plate of cookies. “He is so dreamy,” she mumbled through a mouthful of baked goods. “Sorry I’m late, I was at the mall looking at the Valentine’s Day decorations. What did I miss?”
A look of agreement flashed between the girls. Fortunately, Usagi was far too busy grabbing another handful of cookies to notice. “Nothing,” they chorused, Ami slipping the list into the rest of her notes. “Now that you’re finally here,” Rei continued, her voice frosty. “Why don’t we actually get this meeting started?”
Aphrodite lounged on her divan and made a tiny moue of dissatisfaction at the scene in front of her. A mirror, fully seven feet wide and four feet tall hovered in front of her, showing images from the earth below. Currently if was focused on a group of five girls, curled around a low table, talking and chatting with one another. “Stop. Rewind.” she commanded, curling one long, blonde tress around one thin aristocratic finger. The mirror rewound as she commanded, stopping at the exact instant she’d desired to see again. “Play.”
“Wow,” said the raven-haired girl; the mirror’s magic flawlessly translating modern Japanese into ancient Greek. “We’re never going to find someone who fits all nineteen. We might as well add that he’s also got to be Tuxedo Kamen, it probably won’t lessen the odds any.” Around her, her friends, only three at the moment, nodded agreement. Including the little blonde with the bow, the one who carried a hint of Aphrodite’s own power. It was this girl’s accord that made Aphrodite’s eyes narrow and a hint of a frown mar the perfect, unlined beauty of her brow. How dare that girl think that there was a limit to what she, the goddess of love and beauty, could accomplish?
With a wave, she dispersed the image, leaving only her own reflection in the mirror. Catching a glimpse of her frown, she willed it away, and concentrated on an expression of cool serenity. Even a goddess cannot be too careful about wrinkles. With her facial muscles firmly back under her control, she reopened her luminous blue eyes. “Something must be done about this,” she announced firmly.
Her current companion paid no more heed to her words than he had to her beauty regimen. Aphrodite shot him a sour look. Moldy old man. She had no idea why she was stuck with this frivolous little holiday, but she was willing to bet it had been assigned to him as punishment for boring someone important to death. There he was, with his long white beard, clad in pristine white robes, his halo set at an exact 30 degree angle from his head. This was the incomparable St. Valentine? Hardly her idea of a saint who was in charge of what was supposedly most romantic holiday on Earth. He spent his days reading his precious Gospels and ranting at her for wickedness.
“Just another short week of this enforced togetherness, and we’ll be well shod of one another,” he said mildly, not looking up from his book.
“For another year, anyway,” Aphrodite retorted. “And it seems like we keep getting called together earlier and earlier every year. I soon expect we’ll be rooming with your Saint Nicholas.”
“It would be nice to finally have some conversation,” Valentine agreed.
Aphrodite debated making a snide remark back, but with a sniff decided he wasn’t worth her conversation. She had much more important things to concern herself with, such as proving to her errant handmaiden that, when one wielded the power of love, nothing was impossible. With a snap of her long, aristocratic fingers, she summoned a handsome youth. He was as blonde as she, with finely-sculpted muscles and brilliant green eyes. He sported a tunic, a quiver, and an impressive pair of wings.
“Ah, darling, you’re home,” Aphrodite purred, turning her face towards him. “Come give mummy a kiss.”
With a brief eyeroll, the youth complied. “I’m assuming you summoned me for more than just a peck on the cheek?”
“Eros, pet, I have need of your abilities,” she coyly batted her eyes at him.
Eros flung himself onto the chaise, kicking his feet onto the low table and ignoring St. Valentine’s indignant huff. “Really?” he asked, bored. “I can hardly wait to hear what it is. Let me guess, another woman offended you and you want me to make her fall in love with a pig. Or a mule. Or a monkey.”
“Honestly, darling, the things you say.” She laughed, a rippling silver noise, like music.
“Right, cause that’s never happened before,” Eros replied. He glanced over to the elderly saint, who was doing his best to pretend absorption in a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions. “Did I ever tell you how I met my ex-wife?”
“I’m sure I’m not interested in a tale that involves heathen magics,” St. Valentine said primly. “And divorce is a sin in the eyes of God.”
“Your God, maybe,” Eros retorted. “Fortunately, my pantheon takes a different view of things.”
“A licentious and wicked view!” The older saint inhaled sharply, intending on delivering another one of his long-winded, sanctimonious speeches about religion. Eros turned back to Aphrodite; getting involved with one of her schemes was infinitely preferable to listening to one of those.
“So what’s this plan of yours, mother?” he asked, ignoring St. Valentine’s droning. Valentine, for his part, seemed perfectly willing to continue his lecture, well-aware that no one was listening.
A slow grin spread over her perfect features. “How do you feel about a little sojourn to earth? I’ve got a few mortals who need to learn a lesson.”
Eros arched a golden eyebrow. “Usually those lessons are rather rough on the mortal in question.”
“Oh, don’t be such a stick in the mud! By Zeus, you're starting to sound like Saint Holier-Than-Thou over there. Besides,” she said with a wicked giggle, “this is going to be fun!”
*For the purposes of this ‘fic, the whole prince/princess, discovering-one-another’s-secret identities plot never existed.
An Unfinished Valentine's Day Fic That Has Nothing to Do With Our Drabble Themes!!!
shadowravyn
"As Yet Untitled"
Words: 2046
“Oh look, Usagi’s late again. I fall all over myself in shock and surprise.” Rei rolled her eyes as the clock in her room chimed the hour. She leaned back against her bed and began flipping through a nearby manga. “Where is Odango? Mooning over boys at the mall, hoping to get a date for Valentine’s?”
“Be nice, Rei-chan,” Ami chided. “Usagi-chan’s only a little late, and it’s not like this is an important senshi meeting. We really don’t have anything to discuss. It’s been pretty quiet recently. We could just as easily turn this into a study session instead.” Considering the pile of textbooks Ami had on the table in front of her, she’d probably intended to propose that anyway. The assorted papers and schoolbooks nearly hid the plate of cookies Makoto had baked for the meeting.
“She’s a half an hour late,” Rei retorted with a disdainful sniff. “And even if the fate of the world rested this meeting, she’d still be late.”
The other three senshi shifted uncomfortably, unable to argue with the truth pf Rei's statement. Usagi had been about twenty minutes late on the day they’d teleported to D point to destroy Queen Beryl.*
“So maybe we can get her a boyfriend,” Minako suggested brightly. “Then she’d be able to get places on time.”
“Minako-chan!” Makoto said with a laugh, “He’d be a boyfriend, not an alarm clock.”
“Well, he’d have to be a very organized boyfriend, then. Organized and disciplined.” Minako retorted with a toss of her hair. “Someone who could remember his schedule and hers, and remind her when she was about to be late for something, and not let her talk him out of making her do stuff.”
“He’d have to be extremely intelligent,” Ami seconded. “And he’d have to recognize the value of study and schoolwork, and make her start doing her homework.” In true Ami-fashion, she’d pulled out a blank sheet of paper and was busy making a list of their suggestions.
“And he’d need to know how to cook and take care of the house, too,” Makoto pointed out. “Because if he left it up to her, it would be a race to see if they starved to death first, or were just smothered in a pile of dirty clothes.”
“Oh, Mako-chan, not you, too!” Rei groaned, covering her face with her comforter. “The last thing Odango needs is another distraction from her duties.”
“Come on, Rei-chan, can’t you see this idea has merit?” Minako said, all smiles and enthusiasm. “With the right guy, Usagi could really start…you know, growing as a person.”
“Usagi does not need some man to start telling her how to be--” Rei started hotly, an angry flush rising in her cheeks.
“No, no!” Recognizing the danger, Minako hastily backpedaled. “Not like that at all! He’d just be...uhh...incentive for her to start behaving a little more maturely.” Talking to Rei without triggering her temper was closely akin to walking through a minefield without a map. Introducing men into the conversation was like volunteering to make that walk blindfolded.
“He’d just be an incentive? We’re not saying that Usagi needs a guy for anything, right?” Rei mulled that over while her friends nodded vigorously. “Well that’s okay then.” She smiled brightly. “He’d better be really handsome, or we’d be looking at guys like Melvin. That’ll never work. Oh! And he should be patient, or he’ll end up throttling her when she does something dumb.”
Minako, Ami, and Makoto exchanged a quick glance, and stifled sighs of relief. Crisis averted.
“Shall we go over what we have then?” Ami asked, holding up the list. “So he has to be organized, disciplined, intelligent, good at cooking and cleaning, handsome, patient, have a good sense of humor, have good study habits, responsible, although that’s more of a corollary to organized and disciplined-”
“Corollary, isn’t that a heart attack?” Minako whispered to Makoto, puzzled.
“No, Minako-chan, that’s coronary.
“-Charming, protective, brave, s-sexy” Ami’s cheeks burned as she read off Minako’s last qualification, “able to get along well with us, romantic, athletic, financially secure, and emotionally available.”
Rei poked Makoto. “Financially stable and emotionally available? Have you been reading self-help books or what? We’re looking for a boyfriend, not the father of her children or something.”
Makoto poked her back. “C’mon, Usagi-chan spends her allowance a week or so before she gets it. If they want to ever do anything more than hang around the arcade, he’s going to need money of his own. Oh, and he should be older too. Ami-chan, write that down. Old enough to drive, anyway, or else Usagi’s dad will have to drive them everywhere and we all know how that’ll turn out.”
“And emotionally available?” Rei prompted.
Makoto sighed. “I’ve decided that the biggest problem I had with my old sempai,” she ignored the assorted groans “was that he was emotionally unavailable. He wasn’t interested in long talks and holding hands. He just wanted to kiss and-” Makoto stopped and turned bright red, suddenly aware of the three sets of eyes now intently watching her.
“Kissing and….what?” Minako’s eyebrows waggled in what Minako probably meant to be a suggestive fashion. Makoto just thought she looked ridiculous.
“Kissing and-other stuff! You know, other stuff.”
“Ah, yes. ‘Other stuff.’ Exactly.” Minako looked around archly. “And how much of this ‘other stuff’ did you indulge in, Mako-chan?”
“Not enough to keep him, obviously!” Reflexively, Makoto clenched her fists and shifted into a fighting stance.
“So I added ‘old enough to drive’ to the list,” Ami interjected hurriedly. Really, as a group they’d be much more efficient if they weren’t so inclined to fly off the handle at any given moment. They all knew that discussing her old sempai made Makoto unreasonable, so why Minako had kept prodding her on the subject was far beyond Ami’s ken. “Is there anything else we should add?”
Rei counted the characteristics they’d already listed and rolled her eyes. “Wow. We’re never going to find someone who fits all nineteen. We might as well add that he’s also got to be Tuxedo Kamen, it probably won’t lessen the odds any.”
“Ooo! What’s this about Tuxedo Kamen? Did I miss something?” Usagi’s excited squeal was the only warning they had before she launched herself through the doorway toward the ignored plate of cookies. “He is so dreamy,” she mumbled through a mouthful of baked goods. “Sorry I’m late, I was at the mall looking at the Valentine’s Day decorations. What did I miss?”
A look of agreement flashed between the girls. Fortunately, Usagi was far too busy grabbing another handful of cookies to notice. “Nothing,” they chorused, Ami slipping the list into the rest of her notes. “Now that you’re finally here,” Rei continued, her voice frosty. “Why don’t we actually get this meeting started?”
Aphrodite lounged on her divan and made a tiny moue of dissatisfaction at the scene in front of her. A mirror, fully seven feet wide and four feet tall hovered in front of her, showing images from the earth below. Currently if was focused on a group of five girls, curled around a low table, talking and chatting with one another. “Stop. Rewind.” she commanded, curling one long, blonde tress around one thin aristocratic finger. The mirror rewound as she commanded, stopping at the exact instant she’d desired to see again. “Play.”
“Wow,” said the raven-haired girl; the mirror’s magic flawlessly translating modern Japanese into ancient Greek. “We’re never going to find someone who fits all nineteen. We might as well add that he’s also got to be Tuxedo Kamen, it probably won’t lessen the odds any.” Around her, her friends, only three at the moment, nodded agreement. Including the little blonde with the bow, the one who carried a hint of Aphrodite’s own power. It was this girl’s accord that made Aphrodite’s eyes narrow and a hint of a frown mar the perfect, unlined beauty of her brow. How dare that girl think that there was a limit to what she, the goddess of love and beauty, could accomplish?
With a wave, she dispersed the image, leaving only her own reflection in the mirror. Catching a glimpse of her frown, she willed it away, and concentrated on an expression of cool serenity. Even a goddess cannot be too careful about wrinkles. With her facial muscles firmly back under her control, she reopened her luminous blue eyes. “Something must be done about this,” she announced firmly.
Her current companion paid no more heed to her words than he had to her beauty regimen. Aphrodite shot him a sour look. Moldy old man. She had no idea why she was stuck with this frivolous little holiday, but she was willing to bet it had been assigned to him as punishment for boring someone important to death. There he was, with his long white beard, clad in pristine white robes, his halo set at an exact 30 degree angle from his head. This was the incomparable St. Valentine? Hardly her idea of a saint who was in charge of what was supposedly most romantic holiday on Earth. He spent his days reading his precious Gospels and ranting at her for wickedness.
“Just another short week of this enforced togetherness, and we’ll be well shod of one another,” he said mildly, not looking up from his book.
“For another year, anyway,” Aphrodite retorted. “And it seems like we keep getting called together earlier and earlier every year. I soon expect we’ll be rooming with your Saint Nicholas.”
“It would be nice to finally have some conversation,” Valentine agreed.
Aphrodite debated making a snide remark back, but with a sniff decided he wasn’t worth her conversation. She had much more important things to concern herself with, such as proving to her errant handmaiden that, when one wielded the power of love, nothing was impossible. With a snap of her long, aristocratic fingers, she summoned a handsome youth. He was as blonde as she, with finely-sculpted muscles and brilliant green eyes. He sported a tunic, a quiver, and an impressive pair of wings.
“Ah, darling, you’re home,” Aphrodite purred, turning her face towards him. “Come give mummy a kiss.”
With a brief eyeroll, the youth complied. “I’m assuming you summoned me for more than just a peck on the cheek?”
“Eros, pet, I have need of your abilities,” she coyly batted her eyes at him.
Eros flung himself onto the chaise, kicking his feet onto the low table and ignoring St. Valentine’s indignant huff. “Really?” he asked, bored. “I can hardly wait to hear what it is. Let me guess, another woman offended you and you want me to make her fall in love with a pig. Or a mule. Or a monkey.”
“Honestly, darling, the things you say.” She laughed, a rippling silver noise, like music.
“Right, cause that’s never happened before,” Eros replied. He glanced over to the elderly saint, who was doing his best to pretend absorption in a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions. “Did I ever tell you how I met my ex-wife?”
“I’m sure I’m not interested in a tale that involves heathen magics,” St. Valentine said primly. “And divorce is a sin in the eyes of God.”
“Your God, maybe,” Eros retorted. “Fortunately, my pantheon takes a different view of things.”
“A licentious and wicked view!” The older saint inhaled sharply, intending on delivering another one of his long-winded, sanctimonious speeches about religion. Eros turned back to Aphrodite; getting involved with one of her schemes was infinitely preferable to listening to one of those.
“So what’s this plan of yours, mother?” he asked, ignoring St. Valentine’s droning. Valentine, for his part, seemed perfectly willing to continue his lecture, well-aware that no one was listening.
A slow grin spread over her perfect features. “How do you feel about a little sojourn to earth? I’ve got a few mortals who need to learn a lesson.”
Eros arched a golden eyebrow. “Usually those lessons are rather rough on the mortal in question.”
“Oh, don’t be such a stick in the mud! By Zeus, you're starting to sound like Saint Holier-Than-Thou over there. Besides,” she said with a wicked giggle, “this is going to be fun!”
*For the purposes of this ‘fic, the whole prince/princess, discovering-one-another’s-secret identities plot never existed.