Tenshi still hadn't come home. Haruka paced the living room floor, uncertain whether to let her oldest blow off steam, as she would have wanted if it was her, or to go out looking for her. She had to admit, these last couple days, Tenshi had been acting more like her Haruka-papa than usual, so she had considered the possibility that Tenshi just needed to get away for awhile and hopefully return in a better mood. But still, it had been all night!
Michiru walked down the stairs in her sheer light blue robe. "Still no sign of her yet?" she asked, concerned.
Haruka shook her head. "I'm going out to find her," she declared. "Will you take Puroko to school?" Michiru nodded, and Haruka left.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jasper stared out the window of their apartment and watched the students at Infinity College. Somewhere down there, the Mizuno children were entering the school. He watched restlessly, unable to contain his anxiety about the fight that would inevitably ensue today. He was also anxious to get the inanimate person out of his apartment. He couldn't stand to look at the deadened shell of Tenoh Tenshi. In fact, he had ordered her to lie on the couch and pretend to sleep (he wasn't sure that she would wake up if he told her to actually sleep) just so that she would at least look normal.
Frankly, the whole thing creeped him out.
He finally decided that he would go out for a walk. He'd be back long before school was out, and he doubted Amethyst would want to fight before then. So with a puff of blue smoke, he left the room.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Haruka had been dashing around town searching for Tenshi, but she didn't have a clue where the girl had gone. Naturally, she had checked the school first, but Tenshi hadn't shown up for her first class. She'd try pole vault later, but for now, the only thing she could think of was to look at some of Tenshi's favorite places.
Standing at the cliff of Tenshi's favorite part of the beach, Haruka sighed as she surveyed the empty shore. This was the first place she thought of to try, but the last she had gotten to because it was further out than Tenshi's other hang-outs. But Tenshi wasn't here either.
The wind rustled through her hair. This was not good. Haruka could sense danger upon the wind. And she couldn't imagine where else Tenshi could possibly hiding out.
But she wasn't about to give up! Now she would have to just keep her eyes open as she drove around until pole vault.
*Poor Tenshi* Haruka thought. Tenshi had never reacted so poorly to a breakup before, nor a rejection. Of the three other girls Tenshi had dated, only one had broken up with her instead of the other way around, but when Tenshi had first started dating girls, she hadn't been as good at judging people as she should have been. So she had tried taking things a little too fast with some girls who were not interested in girls, and was dismayed when they had snubbed her. Then there was one girl that she really liked as a friend, but wanted more, and she had not only rejected Tenshi, but ended the friendship. And of course the one who had broken up with her, hadn't exactly made her happy either
But for all of these incidents, Tenshi had continued on. She had remained confident in herself and her abilities to find romance, even as other romances fell apart around her. And she had never reacted as violently as this.
Haruka frowned even more. She might have had issues with how fast Tenshi and Neko's relationship was going, but she had still supported it. She hadn't even forbidden Tenshi to call Neko "Koneko" without the honorific because she agreed with Michiru about how their relationship was as strong as hers and Michiru's at that age (well, younger, she admitted to herself).
And while she wouldn't admit to accepting their blessing as a definite sign that they would always stay together, she felt it should have at least cushioned Tenshi from falling so hard - both in love with Neko and once they had broken up.
So why hadn't it broken her fall?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Michiru glanced into her mirror, hoping to use it to find Tenshi. It should have worked, but for some reason the mirror gave her no clue as to her eldest daughter's whereabouts. It was as if Tenshi's being was unreachable.
She called Neo-Queen Serenity. Besides her questions about where Tenshi was, there was something nagging at her.
"What happened to the blessing?" she demanded of her queen. "The one you gave to Tenshi and Neko-chan? It should have prevented this! If Neko-chan and Tenshi were not meant to be together, they shouldn't have gotten that serious. And if they are meant to be together, then why aren't they? When they're together, they should be protected. Why weren't they?"
Serenity seemed to consider this. "It must have been the eclipse." Michiru didn't understand. Eryx's lunar eclipse was back on Thursday night. Seeing her confusion, Serenity continued, "Something big must have happened on Thursday night, big enough to break the couple up. It must have happened at the moment the blessing was weakest - when Eryx's moon was shadowed from Eryx. At that moment, the blessing shattered. I felt it, but I thought it was just the eclipse."
"So they are meant to be together�," Michiru said thoughtfully. "Can't you bless them again?"
"At this point, it would take Neko-chan and Tenshi-chan's power to help reinstate the blessing. And Tenshi-chan doesn't have access to her power."
"Yeah�. Well, arigatou gozaimasu." Michiru didn't point out that Tenshi was also missing. She'd rather Haruka focus on that and Serenity focus on getting Tenshi's powers back, as well as the blessing. Maybe they still could get things back to the way they used to be.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
