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A Fanfic by Lady Neptune
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned were created by their respective holders.
Rating: PG
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Dark clouds covered the sky, obscuring the city below them. The smell of rain hung in the air, which made most people walk hastily through the streets every moment waiting for the next shower to pour down. Businesspeople returned to office from lunchtime while the stormy wind was playing with their neckwear and tousled the women's well-styled hair. Mothers with heavy shopping bags pulled their children behind them and everyone seemed rather annoyed by the dreary weather apart from a blond girl jumping amused with her blue boots into every puddle she could possibly reach. "Ame, amadare, amagasa" she quietly sang to herself while her long pig-tails seesawed through the moist air and drops of water spluttered on her school- uniform's skirt, which looked as if she had performed her "rain-dance" already the whole way on from the high school she attended. If everyone hadn't been so blindly engaged in rescuing themselves from the threatening tempest, probably more people would have had the delight to watch this uncommon scene take place, but only a stranger sheltered by a housetop lay his eyes on her while the rain began to fall again with full drops shattering on the wet ground.

Suddenly the girl felt a hand touching her shoulder and the sound of a congenial deep voice calling her name. "Usagi aren't ya already too old for playin' in puddles?" the voice asked belonging to the stranger, who had just emerged from the dry shelter. "Oh Haruka nice to meet you!" She giggled at the sight of the person dressed in a boy's uniform and holding a huge umbrella over them. The raindrops were falling loudly on the umbrella and the two moved closer together as they continued talking. "Lucky you are that I just crossed your way - walking in this kinda weather is hazardous for pretty girls as you are didn't'ya know?" Haruka said brushing her sandy blond her out of her face as she watched the girl blush and giving her one of her furtive glances. Haruka smiled and wondered why still most of the girls she knew were behaving strange whenever she appeared although they knew that she was a girl under her men's clothes and her sometimes rough behaviour but nevertheless she had to admit that she often enjoyed the confusion she produced.

Usagi felt vexed by the fact that she had again given way to being fooled by Haruka's terribly irritating manner that made her closest friends quarrel for her attention. She eyed her from the side and came again to the conclusion that Haruka was really extraordinarily good-looking with her portly stature and the boyish hair-do but after all she was a girl - wasn't she?!

Haruka sensed the stormy wind in deep breaths tearing her clothes and soul, taking it high in the air, where no pain could possibly reach her. She felt like being lifted up by invisible hands; she nearly seemed to fly over Usagi's head - her fellow Sailor Senshi, the revived Princess of the moon, who was to become the shining queen Serenity of a new age still lying in the hands of an unknown future. But that was also the girl still able to jump around in puddles - naive and innocent... The thought suddenly made Haruka shiver, she had long time struggeled with her second identity and hadn't been prepared to accept her destiny, but had later on laughed at Sailor Moon, who had often cried and given up exhausted during their battles. Didn't the burden of responsibility and fate rest even harder in these small hands, which were supposed to hold the immense powers of the universe and be at the same time the symbol of hope and love? A wave of shock flooded Haruka as she looked down on her mistress, who had to see her own future child before she had outgrown her own childhood, love a man she loved by destiny in eternity and suddenly the rough Haruka felt compassion, nearly bringing tears into her eyes which had already forgotten how to cry.

Her mind was endlessly spinning around two sentences she would never forget throughout her whole lifetime: "If you once touch the magic pen your life will never be the same again." Michiru had said before she had first time transformed into Uranus and today she knew that it had been the love for that girl, the mysterios Sailor Neptune, from the first second on, and not the wish to fight for Silver Millennium which had persuaded her to take it. Secondly Usagi had once said that they all shared the same destiny as Sailor warriors but that wasn't true Haruka had had the choice if she wanted to sacrifice her normal lifetime, her dreams and her innocence...