Part Three—The Wall
Klausite looked in the mirror. Steveite had done a good job--without close inspection, he really did look like Zoisite. Klausite’s hair was a little bit redder, and his eyes were blue, but he was slight and her uniform fit him perfectly. Her boots had been too small--Klausite was always getting teased for his big feet--but Tux probably wouldn’t notice his black sneakers.
"Good luck," Steveite said. "You have no idea of how I envy you."
"Probably how I’d feel if you were going after him. Don’t worry, Steveite. I’m not going to trade you for anyone."
"I know how cute he is, Klausite. I’d be...tempted."
"Not nearly as cute as, say, Malachite--or you," Klausite replied. "Well, keep wishing me luck. I’m gonna need it." He disappeared. Steveite sighed. He wondered how Klausite had suddenly gotten this sense of responsibility. Maybe it was the new uniform.
Malachite wandered the aisles of a the friendly neighborhood department store, humming absently. He was looking for something nice to get Zoisite. Some new shoes perhaps? No, he didn’t know her size, and she seemed very fond of her boots. His cart was already full of clothes for himself--all picked carefully to look good with his cape--and Zoisite would be mad if he didn’t get her something. He looked at the t-shirts, and was tempted to get her one with Beavis and Butthead...considering her very good Beavis impersonation. But then again, Zoisite wouldn’t wear it. He’d never realized how hard it would be to buy something for her until he actually tried.
He finally had an idea. He’d stop at a candy store and get her something there. He was about to leave when he heard a somewhat familiar voice.
"Hey, you’re the guy with the nice hair!" said Kate. Today her hair was blue, but he recognised the eyebrow ring.
"Thanks," he said, running his fingers through the hair she was admiring.
"I looked all over for dye that color, but I couldn’t find it." She dragged a dark-haired boy by the arm. "You’re sure it’s naturally like that?"
"You wanna see my baby pictures?" Malachite snapped. He pulled out his wallet, flipped past his credit cards, the picture of him and Zoisite, and his drivers license before finding the picture of himself as a baby. He showed it to Kate.
"You were a funny looking kid, y’know that?" she said, giggling. Malachite got a sweatdrop and put the wallet back in his pocket.
"I can’t help it if I had the Beatle cut. It was cool, back one thousa--er, in the seventies."
"Seventies..." the boy began. "The Eagles, ABBA, Pink Floyd, the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Wings, Queen..."
"That’s enough, Jake," Kate said, getting a sweatdrop. "He’ll go on for hours if you let him. All he knows is music, but he really knows music. Well, maybe I’ll run into you later. Jake’s gonna teach your friend Nephlyte guitar."
Malachite raised an eyebrow. "Good luck. I think it may take a miracle to teach him music. Hey, d’you know of any good candy stores?"
Garth Brooks perched atop a building, holding his hat on with one hand and balancing with the other. He was following Zoisite, waiting for an oppurtunity to capture her. She didn’t even seem to notice she was being followed. Finally, Garth jumped off the building and in front of Zoisite.
"Hey!" she screeched. "You’re not Tuxedo Mask!"
Garth laughed. "All the same, you’re coming with me, to Mellotron’s secret hideout." He took her around the waist and flew away, thinking, this is almost too easy.
Meanwhile, Klausite was wondering who this guy was, where he was taking him, and what the hell was going on.
The real Zoisite was looking at computers. As soon as she figured out which one was the nicest, she memorized its location and walked to the other side of the store. Concentrating and pretending to look at camcorders, she teleported the computer to her apartment. She heard screams as the computer disappeared, and yawned nochalantly. She left the store casually as chaos Rayegned behind her.
The walk home was short, and she found the brand-new computer sitting on her desk. It took a while for her to figure it out, but she plugged it in and turned it on, then put in the AOL CD. She thought for a moment.
"Why am I using America Online when this is Tokyo?" she wondered out loud.
The CD changed to Tokyo Online, and Zoisite shrugged. She tried to think of a screen name. Zoisite typed in her name, but it was taken. She tried Zoicite, and a bunch of other spellings, but they were all taken. This confused her slightly--she didn’t think that so many people had her name. She typed in Malachite and got the same result. She decided on one of the odd spellings of Zoisite with a number after it, though she wasn’t particularly happy about it.
She soon forgot about it, when she got the hang of the Internet.
Jadeite hadn’t played the accordion in a while, but it came back to him pretty easily, and Mina looked impressed as he played "I Want to Hold Your Hand".
"I didn’t think anyone could be good at the accordion, but somehow you’ve done it!" she said sweetly. Jadeite hugged her, but it was rather uncomfortable with the accordion between them.
"I’m not that good, really," he said.
"Of course you are," Mina replied. "I’m not usually an accordion fan, but you’re very, very good at it."
"You think so?"
"I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it."
"That’s nothing, compared to how I’m gonna play the guitar," Nephlyte said from across the room.
"Jimi Hendrix didn’t learn in a day, Nephlyte," Jadeite sighed. "D’you think it’s gonna come to you all at once? No way!"
"He was merely human," Nephlyte said. "And I played guitar in my past life, so it’s gonna come back to me really easily."
Jadeite got a sweatdrop, which he added to his collection. "Whaddaya mean, your past life?"
"I called a psychic yesterday. She said that I’d find fortune and fame, meet my true love, and gave me the winning lottery ticket numbers, too. She also said that I should channel my past life as a guitarist to succeed."
"But Nephlyte, we don’t have past lives! We’ve been around for over a thousand years!"
Nephlyte got a sweatdrop. "I want my money back," he muttered. "For two bucks a minute, that--"
"You called a 900 number on MY phone line?" gasped Jadeite. "How long were you on?"
"A half hour," Nephlyte replied defensively.
"That’s sixty bucks! Sixty dollars that you’re paying. What are you giggling at, Mina?" Jadeite asked all of a sudden.
"The both of you," she said. "It’s just--so--" She burst out laughing. Jadeite got more sweatdrops for his collection. He knew he’d find a use for them some day...
Malachite sighed, hanging up the phone. It was still busy. He wondered if Zoisite had left it off the hook or something--he’d been trying for hours. And the way his luck with her was going, she’d probably be furious with him for being late...he gulped, remembering her threat. He was male and wanted to stay that way, and besides, an ice crystal sounded very painful...
But he had to face her sometime. He hoped the large box of candy would at least make her refrain from killing him. He started home, but by the time he got to the door he was afraid to go in.
It was strangely quiet. "Zoisite?" he called. "Zoisite, are you here?"
He heard a voice say, "You’ve got mail," but no reply from Zoisite. He put down his shopping bags and looked around the apartment.
"Zoisite, where are you?" He found her in front of a computer, staring zombie-like at the screen. She didn’t even notice he was there. "Zoey..." He waved a hand in front of her face.
"Oh, hi Malachite," she said, without looking up. "I just found this really cool website, with a really great links page to all this stuff about us!"
"What?" Malachite said, getting a sweatdrop. "And where’d you get the computer?" Zoisite picked up the remote control and turned on the TV. There was a frenzied-looking employee being interviewed.
"It was weird, man. The computer was there one second, then gone...there, gone, there, gone, there, gone!" He got a silly grin on his face, and two men in white coats dragged him away.
"You stole it?"
"Whatever. I needed it more than they did. Hold on, I just got invited into a chatroom."
"A what?!?" Malachite said, confused. Zoisite stared at him as if he had just asked what a toilet was for.
"A chatroom," she said in a tone usually reserved for small children, "is a place online where people talk."
"What the hell d’you mean, online?"
Zoisite had complete forgotten that she had been just as clueless this morning. "You mean you don’t know? You really don’t know? You’ve never heard of the Internet?" She threw the disk at him, but he caught it before it hit him. "You are so out of it."
"Zoisite, I’ve been trying to call you for hours! Is this what you’ve been doing?"
"I’ve only been on since...oh, noon."
"You’ve been on for five hours!" Malachite screamed and got a huge sweatdrop.
"I’ve been trying to design our website," Zoisite retorted. "But come here. You have got to see this page I found. It’s really great!"
"I got you some candy, Zoisite," Malachite said, not sure what else he could say.
"That’s nice, but you’ve gotta see this. The graphics are amazing!" Malachite looked over her shoulder and nodded.
"Yes. Wonderful. D’you want to go out to dinner?"
"You mean, get off the computer?"
"You can’t spend your whole life in from of a screen, Zoisite," Malachite said in exasperation.
"Of course not. I’ll get off in plenty of time to give birth."
Malachite gave serious consideration to jumping out the window. But then again, they were only on the second floor. What if it didn’t kill him?
Serena crossed her arms and stared up at the sky. "About time you gave me a part," she said. "I am the star, you know. I’m Sailor Moon!"
Was she imagining things, or did the sky stick out its tongue at her?
Anyway, she started walking in search of Darien. She found him standing atop a lamppost, brushing his hair. "Hi, Darien!" she yelled cheerfully. Darien lost his balance, and his eyes got really huge as an exclamation point appeared over his head. He tumbled off the lamppost and got a sweatdrop.
"Oh no! Are you all right?" asked Ami, who just happened to walk up with the other Sailor Scouts.
"I’m okay," Darien said, standing up. Something beeped, and all five girls checked their Tamogotchis.
"It’s mine!" Lita announced. The other girls put theirs away. People began running around screaming, and Darien raised an eyebrow. Then they heard it--the country music.
"My delicate yet infallible sense of wrong tells me that something is afoot," Darien said. Serena gave him a "No Shit, Sherlock" look and transformed into Sailor Moon.
"Who are you?" Klausite demanded.
"I’m Tiger Woods," Garth Brooks said. Then a whole bunch of kids appeared, holding golf clubs and saying, no, they were Tiger Woods. Garth shrugged. "Okay, okay, I’m Garth Brooks. Now shut up, Zoisite. I’m trying to write a ransom note."
"But I told you! I’m not Zoisite!" Klausite whined. He hated being tied to a chair, without anyone to help him. He was so scared he was ready to pee his pants.
"You expect me to believe you?"
"But I’m a man!"
"So you’re the Japanese Zoisite. Whatever."
"BUT I DON’T SPEAK JAPANESE!" Klausite yelled, unfortunately, in Japanese. He’d forgotten the powers that came with being a general of the Negaverse.
"What?" Garth said, with a sweatdrop dripping from his head. "I didn’t quite catch that."
"Ich spreche nicht Japanisch," Klausite muttered. (For those of you who may be confused, that’s "I don’t speak Japanese" in German.)
"Zoisite, watch your language," punned Garth.
"I’m trying!" Klausite snapped, in English this time. Then he lost control again. "Ihr Wurm hat meinen Hut gestohlen!"
"What did that one mean?" the country singer demanded.
Klausite tried to explain, he’d said "Your worm has stolen my hat," but it came out in Spanish, which confused things further.
"Why did there have to be so many versions of Sailor Moon?" muttered Garth. "I thought we were sticking to the American version!"
Malachite, deciding that he wasn’t going to get much out of Zoisite, went to visit his neighbors. They looked up, to see that Malachite had a sweatdrop on his head that, had it been sentient, could have decimated Tokyo. Jadeite had to add it to his collection.
"Uh, Malachite, may I ask you something?" giggled Mina.
"Can I stop you?" The minty-haired man muttered.
"Do you wax your chest?"
Nephlyte and Jadeite burst into laughter. Nephlyte, rolling on the floor with tears streaming from his eyes, knocked over a plant. Malachite only got a tiny sweatdrop, which was understandable, considering how much he’d poured into the last one.
"No, I was born like that, OK?" Malachite cried.
"Well, I know that! No one has hair on their chest at birth!" Mina giggled. Malachite’s sweatdrop was growing.
"Maybe," Jadeite laughed, "he uses . . . NAIR!!!" Malachite’s sweatdrop covered half of his body. Jadeite frowned. That wouldn’t fit in his pocket.
"Or, he probably uses Zoisite’s razors . . ." Nephlyte laughed. Malachite’s sweatdrop was beginning to fill up the room.
"Or maybe--" Mina started. The two ex-generals and Mina were rolling on the floor laughing. Malachite was trying to bat his way through the sweatdrop.
"THAT’S ENOUGH!!" Malachite yelled.
"DAMN! YOU CAN’T TERMINATE MY CONNECTION!!!" they heard Zoisite scream. She came in to the room with a hot face. Flames were burning around her.
"Zoisite, aren’t you burning your baby?" Mina asked. Jadeite had told her about Zoisite’s pregnancy.
"Some people just CAN’T keep their mouths shut, can they?" Zoisite screamed in Jadeite’s direction. "Malachite, we NEED a faster modem! I can’t play ‘DOOM 68: Revenge of the Hellbent Death Guppies’ without the fastest available!" Malachite’s sweatdrop just got bigger.
"Why me! Why do *I* get picked on! I am the most powerful general! You know, I’m not just a self-centered jerk! I have feelings, too! I care about more than my hair! I deserve a nice chance, too. Yet, you always make fun of ME! Zoisite always demands the world from ME! It’s not fair!" Malachite whined and started crying like Serena.
"Wow, Malachite, I never knew you felt that way," Zoisite said. She paused. "Now about that modem . . ." Jadeite had to do something about the sweatdrop. He pulled out his Dirt Devil vacuum and turned it to the highest setting. He swept up the sweat along with a little carpet. Oh well, he’d always wanted a hardwood floor.
"Maybe we could go out to dinner first...?" Malachite asked hopefully.
"Yeah, but could we just drive through McDonalds or something? I told Zoi254 I’d get back to her in twenty minutes."
"Zoisite, you’re an addict," Malachite said, shaking his head.
"Sure but can we hurry up? We could be halfway to the store by now!"
"Whatever you want, dear." Zoisite and Malachite were about to leave, when the strains of country music blasted everyone to the floor.