By Haruka

The Amazoness Quartet watched with interest as Hawk Eye miserably told his parents about the confrontation at Haruka's house.
"She's not a liar! If she says she hasn't seen her mother all day then-"
Nuriko sighed. "It may be a sore point right now, Hawk Eye, but just this morning Haruka apologized for lying to me last night."
"But Mama!" Hawk Eye exclaimed. "That was a little white lie to protect Fish Eye! Haruka wouldn't lie to save her own skin!"
"It does sound odd," Sanosuke said. "But a mother knows his own child, and if Zoisite stood that close to Haruka and looked right at her, what is he supposed to believe?"
"How about believing the word of that child?" Hawk Eye demanded. "She's a good kid, they must know that. Can't they give her the benefit of the doubt?"
"What's going on?" Fish Eye asked as he walked in. "Sorry I'm a little late - I had dinner in the restaurant."
"Hawk Eye's friend nearly killed her own mother!" Ves Ves piped up. "Well, maybe."
"She didn't do it!" Hawk Eye said hotly, then turned to his brother. "Fish Eye, when did Haruka leave the restaurant?"
"Gosh, I don't know," Fish Eye said thoughtfully. "It was after Seiya got off shift, because we were already eating when she left ... maybe four-fifteen?"
Hawk Eye hesitated. "But ... she didn't come here until five-thirty."
"Was she alone when she left, Fish Eye?" Nuriko asked him.
"Yes, Mama," he answered. "She hung out in the restaurant most of the afternoon. Yui and Kurama were there, too, and they brought in a new boy named Inuyasha. The three of them all left about half an hour before Haruka, though."
"So there's about an hour's worth of time when no one can vouch for Haruka's whereabouts." Sanosuke shook his head.
"I don't care!" Hawk Eye said stubbornly. "I _know_ she didn't do it!"
Nuriko and Sanosuke exchanged uncertain looks and Fish Eye patted his brother's shoulder.
The front door opened and Tiger Eye bounded in. "Hi! Hey, you know, Yaten Kou isn't so bad." He took off his jacket. "He hung around the pet shop awhile and helped me out, he's really good with animals. Who'd have figured?" He stopped, noticing the expressions surrounding him. "What happened?"

*WHACK!*
Haruka bit her lip and tried not to let loose the tears that threatened.
*WHACK!*
It _hurts_. It's not fair, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut.
*WHACK!*
I didn't do it. Why won't they believe me? Papa, please ....
*WHACK!*
She gasped out loud and began to tremble. How many times had he hit her? Twelve? Fifteen? She usually got ten good swats for punishment, but she was sure her father had passed that. She flinched, expecting the next blow to descend on her sore bare bottom at any moment.
"Haruka," Kunzite's deep voice interrupted. "I will cease this now if you start telling me the truth."
The pain of the spanking and the injustice of it overwhelmed her. Tears finally spilled over and she shuddered. "I-I've been telling you the t-truth all along, Papa!" she cried, succumbing to the heart wrenching sobs that were impossible to hold back any longer. "How can y-you think I would just drive away if I nearly h-hit Mama with a car?! I'd be out of the car so fast to see if he w-was okay -" Hot tears slid down her cheeks. "And I w-wouldn't disobey you by driving in the first place! I went to the arcade and s-spent an hour on the racing game, b-but I didn't think staying off that was part of my punishment!" Kunzite barely heard her add in a plaintive whisper, "I wish I'd j-just come straight home. You'd have to believe me then ...."
There was a pause, and then Kunzite took her by the shoulders, moving her off his lap so he could get up from the bed. Haruka lay facedown on the covers, hiccupping and gasping from the sobs that shook her body.
"You owe your mother an apology," he told her. "If you don't give him one when you first come downstairs, you'll be sent back up here until you do. And you will not drive your car, your cycle, or anything with a motor for three months regardless." He left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
Michiru, Haruka thought miserably, I miss you. She pulled a pillow into her arms as fresh tears brimmed.

"Who was on the phone?" Kunzite asked as he entered the living room. "I heard it ringing just after we went into her room."
"That was Michiru," Zoisite said, shaking his head. "Can you believe it? The girl is grounded and forbidden to use the phone, yet she practically _ordered_ me to let her talk to Haruka! I threatened to tell Setsuna what she was up to and she said she didn't care! I finally had to hang up on her. What's going on with these two today?!"
"Hey, I'm home," Yui said as she walked in. She took one look at her parents' faces and stopped in her tracks. "What is it?"
"I just gave your sister the spanking of her life," Kunzite said grimly. "She broke her punishment today and drove a borrowed car, nearly running your mother down with it at the strip mall. Then she drove off and left your mother standing there."
"I don't believe it," Yui said firmly.
"Yui, your mother saw your sister at point-blank range and she had the nerve to lie to us about being there. We couldn't let her get away with that."
"So you spanked her?" Yui said quietly. She hated when Haruka got spanked. Despite having to live with her, she secretly admired her sister as much as everyone else did, and it seemed beneath her somehow to be treated like this.
"She won't get her keys back for three months, either." Zoisite told his younger daughter. "If she's going to drive like a maniac, she doesn't deserve to drive." The doorbell rang and Zoisite pursed his lips in annoyance. "I'll get it," he said, and headed over. "If it's Michiru, there's going to be trouble," he muttered and opened the door. Taiki stood there, smiling shyly.
"Hello, Zoisite," he said. "Haruka invited me over to hang out with she and Hawk Eye."
"Hi Taiki," Zoisite replied. "Haruka is here, but Hawk Eye is at home. There's been some trouble, so it's probably not a good idea if -"
"Taiki!" Yui cried, running over to him. "Did you hear Haruka say anything about where she was going when she left the restaurant? Kurama and I were gone by then."
The tall redhead was startled by her desperate expression, but thought carefully before answering. "Yes, she repeated her invitation to come over, and I told her I wouldn't be getting off until five- thirty. She said Hawk Eye probably wouldn't be ready until about then anyway, so she'd drop by the arcade on the way home to play the racing game and kill some time." Taiki looked uncomfortable. "Was she not supposed to do that?"
Yui spun around to face her parents. "The arcade is out of the way of the strip mall. How could she go there and then have time to go borrow a car and then get back to the strip mall in time to run Mama down?"
"Haruka borrowed a car?" Taiki frowned. "That's odd. She was saying how the racing game would have to suffice for her car fix this week."
"Someone who looked like Haruka nearly hit Mama in the parking lot of the strip mall," Yui told him.
"Yui, no one could possibly look that much like her," Zoisite said reasonably. "You resemble her yourself, but you're sisters. A stranger just couldn't look exactly like her the way the girl driving that car did!"
"There must be a lot of Haruka look-alikes running around today," Taiki remarked. "Remember, Yui, how Inuyasha mistook her for someone else?"
"That's right!" Yui exclaimed. "I didn't know you overheard that."
"I was manning the cash when you three came in while Fish Eye learned some drive-thru." Taiki smiled. "Inuyasha's appearance was hard to miss."
"So that proves there's at least _one_ person in town who looks enough like Haruka to be mistaken at close range." Yui's blue eyes pleaded with her parents, who shared a troubled glance.
"All right," Kunzite said firmly. "Let's get the truth one way or another." He went to the foot of the stairs. "Haruka! Come down here!"
"Do you want me to leave?" Taiki asked.
"No, don't." Yui clutched his arm. "You've already been a good witness, we may need you."
Taiki almost didn't recognize Haruka as she came down into the living room. She looked like hell. Her walk was stilted and she was wincing as she moved. She'd obviously been crying hard. "Hey, Taiki," she said in a voice thick with recent tears. "What are you doing here?"
"You invited me." Taiki smiled.
Haruka managed a feeble smile in return. "That's right, I did." She sighed. "But I seem to be forgetting a lot of important things I supposedly did today."
"Haruka!" Kunzite said sternly. "We brought you down here to try and figure this out, but we won't do that if you're going to-"
"I'm sorry," Haruka said, her voice breaking again. "It's just ...," a sob escaped her, "I didn't DO anything!"
Yui wrapped her arms around her sister while Taiki looked on sadly. He had a feeling he knew what happened just before his arrival.
"Upstairs, she said she went to the arcade after leaving the restaurant," Kunzite told Zoisite. "And that she was there for an hour."
"I _was_!" Haruka wiped her eyes and breathed deeply to try and calm herself. "There weren't any people there I knew who could vouch for me, but I was _there_, I swear it! I left the restaurant a little after four and was at the arcade for an hour, then I came home. I didn't go _anywhere_ else!"
"But no one can confirm your story?" Zoisite asked. "No one at all?"
Haruka lowered her head, shaking it slowly. "There were only two other people there besides me. One of them played in another aisle the whole time and I never saw them. The other, some guy with a really long braid, played against me in the race game once, but I'd never seen him before and we didn't exchange names." She raised desolate green eyes to her mother's matching ones. "You don't believe me," she said flatly.
"I wish I could," Zoisite told her sincerely. "But Haruka, it was _you_. Not just a look-alike. If it wasn't you, it would have to be an _exact_ double and we both know that's impossible."
"I'm supposed to apologize to you, Mama," Haruka said in a soft voice. "But if I do that, I'm admitting to something I know I didn't do and that _would_ make me a liar. So I'm sorry for not being able to apologize." She slowly turned and went back upstairs.
"I'm going to find out the truth," Yui told Taiki grimly. "I swear to Seiryuu I am."
"I'll help you," he promised. "All her friends will."

End of chapter 16

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