Written for the UsakoMamoru One Hundred Themes Challenge on LJ. View my link on my bio page. We now also have a "Choose Your Own Adventure" challenge going, and are accepting fanart, icons, and anything Usa/Mamo related. Hope to see you there!

Please forgive the inconsistencies in location between parts 5 and 6. I wrote them a couple days apart...

77. Fantasy
Part Six of the Luna Pen Series
Alicia Blade
1201 words

“Where. Did. You. Put it?” Rei said through clenched teeth, her hands clenching the skirt of her blue school uniform in big fistfuls.

“Not telling,” Minako sang mischievously.

Forcing herself to take steady breaths and not pull out the blonde pigtails on either side of her head, Rei tried again. “Aino Minako, if you do not tell me where you put that Luna Pen I swear to the Powers That Be that when I find it, I am going to shove it up your—”

“Rei!” Ami scolded.

“Oh, don’t give me that! You’re as much a part of this as she is! And you!” she rounded on Makoto who was turning red in an attempt to hide her laughter. “You are going to get burnt to a crisp if I hear one more peep out of you! Don’t think I won’t! Now will somebody tell me where you put that pen?”

“Rei…” a quiet voice moaned from the corner and Rei turned to see Usagi slowly sitting up and rubbing her head. “Stop yelling. You’re giving me a headache.” Slowly, her drowsy gaze rose up to the priestess and her blue eyes widened. “Hey! You look like me!”

“Always the observant one.”

“But… but it was a dream!”

“Don’t I wish. Usagi-chan, they hid the Luna Pen! I say we take Ami; she’ll be the easiest to make talk. So you hold her arms and I’ll—Usagi! Pay attention! I don’t want to be stuck as you for the rest of my life!”

But Usagi had zoned out, her pale blue eyes gazing unseeing at the dojo wall, her mouth hanging open. “The Luna Pen… turned you into…me.”

“Hey, Sherlock, a little help over here?”

“But… you asked it to…. But that would mean…”

“Someone tell me where that pen is before I rip off these pigtails and strangle you with them!”

“That makes me the object of Mamoru’s desire!”

“Uh, Rei-Dudette, has, like, a visitor...”

“Can’t you see I’m busy, Yuuchirou! Tell them to come back later!”

Stalling in the doorway, Yuuchirou blinked at the blonde through his mop of thick brown hair, and, realizing her mistake, Rei’s anger quickly sizzled. “Rei’s not here,” she quickly amended. “I think she went to the… uh… um…bathroom.”

“I can wait for her.”

Five hearts leaped into five throats at the sound of a deep voice outside the doorway. Yuuchirou, looking shaken and uncomfortable, quickly left, making room for Mamoru to saunter into the doorway.

“Gee, Odango, no need to bite the guy’s head off. I wasn’t looking for you, anyway, if you didn’t hear him.”

The girls found that they couldn’t move and Usagi, still hiding in the corner, desperately tried to will herself invisible.

They all held their breaths as Mamoru walked in, his eyes watching Rei with the glint of a challenge in them, but it began to fade when his opponent only gawked at him with a mixture of nervousness and astonishment.

“Wh—what are you doing here?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “I came to ask Rei if I could borrow a book on martial arts she was telling me about. Is she around?” That’s when his eyes circled the room, noting all the familiar girls, and then…

Mamoru’s breath caught.

Usagi squeaked.

Rei pursed her lips and wished with everything in her that it was all just a bad dream.

Everyone watched him, waiting, hoping that someone else would come up with a master plan so that they wouldn’t have to. Mamoru’s blue eyes shifted from Usagi to Rei and back to Usagi and back to Rei and back to Usagi once more. No one spoke for a long time, before finally, slowly, Usagi realized that the situation wasn’t going to get any better any time soon, so she forced herself to stand and say, in as even a voice as she could manage, “Mamoru-baka, have you met my twin sister…” Think of a good name, think of a good name, think of a good name. “…Odango?”

Usagi flinched at her own stupidity. The rest of the girls groaned and Rei smacked her hand to her forehead with a muttered, “Why me?”

Mamoru’s eyebrows shot up as he analyzed Usagi’s “twin.” “You have a twin? Named… Odango?”

After laughing nervously and twiddling her thumbs, Usagi shook her head and said, “No, silly, that’s just what I call her.”

“You call your twin Odango.”

“Yeah. Ironic, huh?”

Mamoru looked at her, his mouth open as if to say something, but he evidently couldn’t figure out exactly what question to begin with, and so he closed it again.

“Hi!” Rei said with a face full of resignation and held out her hand. “My name’s… Miko.”

Mamoru shook the proffered hand limply, his eyes still staring at Usagi. “Since when do you have a twin?” he stuttered.

“Not as long as one might think.”

Closing his eyes, Mamoru shook his head a few times, and upon opening them again, took a moment to compare Rei and Usagi bewilderedly. “But… how come… why didn’t I… there are two of you?”

“Yup,” Usagi said nervously, and then a sudden idea crept into her thoughts and before she knew what she was thinking, the words were escaping her. “Wow, this must be, like, a dream come true for you, huh?”

“Usagi!” Rei chided.

“What?” Mamoru breathed, his face turning an alarming shade of crimson. “What do you… How… But there are…” With a groan, he pressed his palms up against his ears. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“It’s just that,” Usagi continued, ignoring Rei’s outburst and Mamoru’s growing bewilderment, “if I’m already the object of your desire, it must be pretty cool to have two of me, right?”

Mamoru’s jaw hung open as he looked at her. “The object of my what?”

“You know, the object of your…”

Clunk.

Thud.

Usagi and Rei gasped as Mamoru fell face-first onto the dojo’s floor, Makoto hovering above him with an impish grin and the Luna Pen in one hand. “Percussion therapy; works every time. Here you go, Rei-chan,” she said, tossing the pen to Rei.

“Thank God,” Rei mumbled, wasting no time in transforming back to her normal self.

“Hey, I was going somewhere with those questions!” Usagi spouted angrily.

“Honestly, Usagi, I think Mamoru was too dazed to ever give you a straight answer,” Ami said, kneeling down and feeling the bump on Mamoru’s head to make sure Makoto hadn’t done too much damage. “If you want to know if you’re really the object of his desire, I think you’ll have to find a better way to ask him.”

Minako, who had been giggling quietly to herself since almost the beginning of the whole charade, waved Ami’s suggestion away. “Oh, come on. The look on his face was all the evidence you need!”

Two hours later, a disheveled Mamoru woke up groggily on his living room couch, still dressed, with a killer headache, and having no idea exactly how he’d gotten there. Sitting up, he rubbed at his head and mentally went over the dream he’d had, followed by a disappointed sigh.

“Man, and that dream had so much potential, too.”