Chapter III

Mamoru looks over at his guest sitting on his couch, long legs curled under her, slender hands wrapped around her mug of tea. As she gazes into it, eyes still hidden behind the darkly tinted lenses of the shades, her brows wrinkle in thought at more or less the story of his life and his strange feelings he’s always had.

It’s amazing how sweet she looks curled up there, when yesterday she was fighting like a demon.

“It sounds as if you’ve been very lonely for a very long time,” she finally tells him. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

He nods a little, leaning back and crossing his ankle over his knee. Watching her gaze in thoughtful silence into her tea, he takes a sip of his own before setting the mug down on the coffee table.

“You know, HLM-san, you can take your shades off in here,” he says softly.

She bites her lip as she puts her mug down. “Uhm…are you sure, Mamoru-san…? It’s not really a pretty sight.”

“You had very nice eyes when I saw you last,” he replies in a soft voice.

Instead of soothing her like he’d intended, his words seem to have burned her. He’s afraid that she’s going to burst into tears.

“They’re not the way they were,” she whispers softly, almost brokenly. “But…ok…” She takes a deep breath and reaches up to slide the sunglasses off, her head bowed. When she raises her head to look at him, he can’t help gasping in surprise. The inhumanly dark eyes with their eerie green pupils strike that powerful cord of familiarity with even more force.

If she has red in her hair…

He shifts over to her, puts his arms around her, sliding the tie from her braid and runs his fingers through the soft, dark, long strands, eyes widening when the red streaks are freed.

“Uhm…” she says softly, shifting away from him, shaking off her shocked paralysis. “Mamoru-san…what are you doing?”

“Ah…” he shakes his head and looks into her big, dark eyes. “I…I’m sorry…you just look so familiar…”

“I see…” she gives him an uncertain look, “Like that girl with the weird hair-style you were talking about?”

He nods a little, moving to a more comfortable distance as she nods, tucking an errant lock of two-tone hair behind her ear.

“Well, uhm…you also strike me as very familiar, as does Maxfield Stanton.” She pauses to look at him meaningfully. “Did you get the same feeling?”

He nods. “I wonder what  binds us all together.”

“Me, too…”

“Well, maybe our pasts have a few things in common. Tell me your story…”

She nods a little and straitens her back, folding her hands in her lap self-consciously.

“Ok, uhm…my past is pretty different from yours, I guess. I’m about seventeen years old, I’ll be eighteen in November sometime.” She grins wryly and holds a hand up at the question he looks like he’s about to ask. “The story itself might answer a lot of the questions you might have. Eh heh…and I think common sense will dictate what parts should stay secret.

Anyway, uhm, in 1979 there was an experiment conducted to try creating the perfect soldier. They put together a synthetic sperm cell and egg cell, created by splicing DNA from different people, human, mutant and otherwise. Will wonders never cease, an embryo resulted. They exposed the growing child, a girl, to various different mutagenic and carcinogenic substances. Y’know, poison, radiation, drugs, those sorts of things.

Well, they came up with me. I guess I was pretty sick as a baby, and the scientists were going to destroy me because I wasn’t what they expected. A lab assistant, however, convinced them to let her take me and care for me for the first and last few days of my life.”

She grins into Mamoru’s eyes. “Obviously, I survived. They also don’t know that I did, and, quite frankly, I’d prefer them not to find out. They think I died and was dissolved. The lab assistant, my foster mom, quit, claming that she couldn’t handle creating children and then watching them die.”

“We moved around a lot and all. Through the years, my body’s gone through a lot of changes.” She chuckles bitterly. “I’m not talking about just puberty, either. Would you believe I was once a strawberry blond? My hair changed a few months before I passed my junior year of high school in New York City. That was easy to explain as an experiment in hair dye, which was allowed in that school.” She runs a hand through the silky locks. “You know the policy here, though.” She shrugs. “Anyway, we moved here because I nearly died because of an attack by an anti-mutant group. That,” she sighs, “and I killed one of my attackers.”

She bows her head. “As for the feelings of not belonging and not know who…or what…I am, well, I always just assumed it was because of…well…how I came to be and how we always kept moving around.

Then…then I met Stanton-san…and,” she looks down again, “…the de-ja-vu and other feelings started. I got those strange feelings from you, too.”

Cobalt eyes haunt her. They gaze sorrowfully out of the darkness into her own. There’s powerlessness in them and a self-loathing that’s nearly all consuming.

A body and face materialize around the eyes. Suddenly, Maxfield is kneeling in front of her, clad in white pants and an unbuttoned white shirt. Those eyes beg forgiveness of her for some unknown deed. She slides out of the darkly sparkling throne she was sitting in, her silken white skirts pooling around her.

Gently, she takes his hands in hers and leans forward to light press her lips to his. When she pulls back, Maxfield is no longer there. Instead, Mamoru kneels there, garbed in white, just as Maxfield was, with almost the same look in his eyes as the auburn haired man. The look of power replacing the helplessness is the only difference.

"Was a weakness,” he whispers, sliding his hands to her belly. “I’m sorry…”

Her brows furrow as her stomach cramps and she looks down to see the skirt of her gown turning from white to metallic red. She puts her hands over his and looks into his eyes, confused. “The feel of devastation and hopelessness suprisingly familiar.

“Why…?”

She jerks awake at the sound of the phone ringing. Blindly, she reaches for it.

“He…uh…moshi moshi?”

“HLM-san?”

“Uh huh…? Mamoru-san?” She sits up with a little groan at the tickle between her legs and cramping of her lower belly.

“Hai,” there’s a pause. “Are you hurt?”

“Iie…you just woke me up is all…plush I think I just got my period…”

Weird…it’s a whole week early…wonder if that dream has anything to do with it…

“Uh…I’m sorry?”

She can’t help but giggle. “It’s ok…that was probably a bit too much information. Is everything ok with you? You don’t strike me as the type who calls at,” she looks at her clock, just as it goes off. “5 am.”

Huh…had to wake up anyway…

“Well…ah…this is going to sound stupid, but…”

“But what…?”

“I just had a very strange dream…with you in it. I wanted to talk to you about it.”

She blinks. “Ok…that is weird…you woke me up from an odd dream with you in it, too…”

“I see…so…how about I walk you to school?”

“Uhm…Mamoru-san? You do realize that it takes an hour to get there on foot, don’t you?”

“Hai, but if we leave your building by 6:45, we should be able to get there on time.”

“Uhm…ok…I think I can persuade my mom to cut our morning practice short…when are you getting here?”

“6:30 sound alright?”

“Sure, I’ll see you then.”

“Ja ne, HLM-san.”

Nephrite stands in his cathedral, face tilted to the stars.

“The stars know everything,” he intones, the tingle of power embodying itself as the red glowing symbol seeming to burn on his forehead. He feels the power of the stars lock with him as his energies synchronize with those of the heavenly bodies.

“What significance does that dream have on my mission and life?”

The stars replay the brief dream   from a third person perspective. He sees himself, clad in white, as he kneels before a paradoxly innocent and majestic HLM, seated in a dark throne and robed in a flowing gown of white silk. He notes her throne is very similar to his twisted green one. Hers is a sparkling black with ornately beautiful carvings decorating it, while his is a dull green with carvings of a frightening nature that could hardly be considered beautiful.

His image gazes sorrowfully up at her, and he remembers the strange, intense feelings he experienced. He watches as she slides out of the throne, takes his image’s hands and places a sweetly gentle kiss on the lips. The picture freezes there. The clothing of the two images fades away, leaving them both nude for a moment before new, strange clothing shimmers onto them. His image wears a dress uniform, complete with a snowy cape.  The attire is designed like his Dark Kingdom uniform, but a pure, shimmering white, and the image has the star-sword hanging at his side.

HLM now wears a different gown. It clings to her body before the skirt loosens around her hips to pool about her bent legs. The black material seems to be alive, the folds of the skirt gently falling around her inn graceful curves. The darkness of the gown is all consuming, save the glittering green stars glowing boldly from the fabric. He blinks a little bit, only now realizing that, in the dream, HLM’s eyes, now closed in the frozen kiss, are black with green pupils. He ponders on why that doesn’t strike him as odd.

The stars fade from his mind without really answering his question. With a sigh, he stalks out of the cathedral.

I’ll talk to her this afternoon once she gets out of school…

Chapter II
Chapter IV
Book Two Index