Lunar Expedition

Chapter 13: The Slippery Slope

"That explains the time we went out for ice cream and Usagi had just ordered her favorite five scoop, mint chocolate chip, vanilla, chocolate, with extra sprinkles ice cream and just before she had any, just left. She said something about having to study for math," Naru said, poking her chocolate milkshake with a bent spoon. Motoki covered his cracked coffee mug with both hands. In the glow of Mercury's computer, they looked like Smurfs.

"I'm not sure which is more unbelievable: abandoning her favorite ice cream or doing so to study math," Motoki said. Naru smiled and sipped her milkshake. "I've got a good one. Mamoru and I were having lunch on my break and I'd accidently let slip something kind of embarrassing-,"

"Really? What?" Naru interrupted. Motoki paused long enough to avert his eyes and rub the back of his neck.

"Just... something embarrassing," he said. "Anyway, Mamoru always loves to rub stuff in my face, especially when I do something stupid that I normally wouldn't do. So he was really getting into it, getting pretty high and mighty on me, and you could just tell he was warming up for more... but then he got a call. And he said he forgot something and had to go." Motoki shook his head. "He loves to gloat. No way he would have left unless it was something urgent."

"You're right, it seems really obvious now that we know the truth," Naru said. "And I guess... I'm happy. Not about Usagi having to go out at all hours of the night and risk her life to fight youma in the name of love and justice," she paused, waving her hand vaguely, "but the part about her being Sailor Moon. Do you know how many times she's rescued me?"

"Probably more times than you remember," Motoki said, sliding from his stool to the small counter in the back. Mercury typed away, eyes fixed on a long string of equations that could have been alien sentences or foreign math for all he knew the difference. He poured himself a refill of coffee, dumped in a few packets of sugar, and returned to his stool.

"What do you mean?" Naru said, pulling out the straw with a squelch and licking the end.

"Mamoru was telling me that they've been fighting evil for at least two years. The first time they did, time went back almost a whole year and they relived that year as if nothing had happened. So we don't remember an entire year that they do. Oh, and he said that a bunch of times the entire Earth's memory was erased."

Naru took a moment to absorb this new information. She tapped the end of her straw against her upper lip, frowning absently. "That makes sense now. Usagi would sometimes say things and talk about places we'd supposedly been but I wouldn't remember what she was talking about. And then she'd look a little panicked, like she'd talked about some forbidden topic, and she'd be really obvious about changing the subject. I guess it never bugged me because she was always doing that and I just thought she had a bad memory."

"Mamoru too," Motoki said. "When we first became friends in secondary school, he was always punctual and precise. He never missed any anniversary or birthday or school event. But then, I guess when he became Tuxedo Mask, all of a sudden he was half asleep during class, never available, and constantly missing things he never would have missed before."

"We thought we knew them so well but when they changed that much, we didn't think to ask them why," Naru said, smiling wanly. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stared down at her empty milkshake glass as if it held the secrets to the universe. Motoki smiled faintly and traced a finger along the rim of his mug.

"Guess we both sucked as friends," he said. They smiled at each other.

"I've traced the negative vibes from both the Tokyo attacks and the American assault on the compound," Mercury said. Naru and Motoki perked up, setting aside their mugs and turning their attention to her. One of the monitors flashed for a moment and a video feed showed Sailor Pluto typing on a huge keyboard. "According to my calculations, the area they've inhabited is too large for us to cover by foot. We can't hope to catch even half of them through divide and conquer tactics."