Hi.  Just a fic I've written because I don't see enough of two of 
my favorite senshi.  So you know, this takes place between SuperS and 
Stars.  I realize that timeline-wise, it's rather iffy that the inner 
senshi are in high school before Stars begins, but I figure that the 
timing of events during and after SuperS was goofy enough that I can get 
away with a few liberties.


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The Pink and the Blue
A relatively original fanfic by LeVar Bouyer
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	Squeak.

	The train's breaks squealed as it pulled into the crowded station.  
As the pair of girls stepped out of the car, they stepped into a 
maelstrom of people, with departure and arrival announcements filling 
the air.  As per the older girl's orders, the younger girl tightly 
clasped the hand of the older one, so as to prevent the two from being 
separated.

	They made their way out of the station with little shoving; the 
Japanese were polite as always.  Finally, the pair found themselves 
outside the station, the sun shining warmly upon them.

	The older of the two looked about for a moment, and then fished 
around in the pocket of her school uniform.  Bending her head slightly, 
she slipped on the glasses she had found, looked up again, and then 
looked down at her young charge.

	"Do you need a drink of water, Chibiusa-chan?" asked Ami Mizuno in 
her soft melodic voice.

	"Iie," responded Usagi Tsukino, better known as Chibiusa, shaking 
her pink-haired head back and forth.  "Not really."

	"Good," said Ami, smiling.  "Let's go, then."

	They thus began to walk down the street.  It wasn't terribly 
crowded for mid-afternoon, not since they had left the train station.  
The city they were now in was much like Tokyo, but it wasn't.  It was 
however, considered one of the industrial centers of southern Japan, and 
as such had the same mind-numbing blend of ultramodern skyscrapers, 
factories, split-levels, and so forth.  But all that paled in comparison to 
the city's true history, which for the rest of the world boiled down to a 
single date.  The sixth day of August, 1945.

	The city was called Hiroshima.

***

	Usagi had the flu.  It was a nasty, persistent sort of flu that 
refused to go away, and the doctors said that it was probably best if it 
were simply allowed to run its course.  In a flash of maternal instinct, 
Usagi had decided that it was probably in Chibiusa's best interest if 
her daughter were to spend some time out of the house, lest she too 
contract the flu.

	It was the third day of Chibiusa's "exile."  The previous two days 
had been spent with Kenji Tsukino and Makoto Kino respectively.  She had 
found her day with Kenji rather boring, and Makoto's apartment had 
hardly been an improvement: she had been pressed into service cleaning up
the place.  She suspected that she would never be able to stand the 
smell of ammonia again, not that she had been overly amourous of it in 
the first place.

	Usagi had had initial misgivings about putting her future daughter 
in the care of such a...studious...girl, but Ikuko had been foursquare 
for it.  Privately, Ikuko was hoping that a bit of the blue-haired 
girl's industriousness would rub off on Chibiusa.

	Then again, considering the remarkable similarities between 
Chibiusa and Usagi, and the minimal improvements in Usagi's grades since 
she had met Ami, that was terribly unlikely.

	In any case, Ami and Chibiusa were going to spend the day in 
Hiroshima.  Actually, all high school students were expected to go there 
at some point during their scholastic careers, just as they were 
expected to go on field trips to various temples that even bored Ami.  
Only Rei liked such trips.  In any case, it was a trip that would have had 
to have been made sooner or later.

	Ami had insisted that Chibiusa would be in good hands, and Usagi 
certainly didn't fear for her future daughter's safety.  Her sanity was 
another matter.

***

	Ami and Chibiusa continued to walk down the busy street.  As they 
walked, Ami carefully read through a book on the city's history, only 
occasionally looking up to see which way she was going.

	Chibiusa, for her part, looked back and forth at all the shops.  
They were now in the commercial heart of the city, and if she overlooked 
the slightly warmer temperatures she could think of herself as being 
back in Tokyo.

	Every once in awhile, they would pass an old man or woman who 
seemed to stand out.  Their wrinkled faces seemed to be older, their 
postures were weary.  After passing three of these persons, Chibiusa had 
to ask.

	"Ami-chan?"

	Ami looked up from her book, the familiar distracted look on her 
face.  "Hai?"

	Chibiusa pointed across the street.  "Who is that?"

	Ami blushed slightly and gently pushed down Chibiusa's arm.  "It's 
not polite to point," she said.

	Chibiusa was undeterred.  "But who is it?  I've seen lots of 
people around like that, but there aren't people like that in Tokyo, 
and-"

	"Hai, hai," said Ami, her face returning to normal.  "Come on, 
I'll explain on the way."

	They started to walk faster.  "You see, those are the issei, the 
first generation."

	"Of what?"

	Ami said nothing for awhile, but simply took turn after turn, 
until they began to reach a cleared part of the city.  There were trees 
and parklands here along the river that ran through the city, their 
green leaves in cheerful contrast to the bright blue sky.

	There was one thing amiss in all this, and that was a large domed 
building.  It looked fairly old, and the main reason for this was that 
its dome was nothing more than a few naked girders.  One could guess 
that at one time the girders had supported glass, but the glass was long 
gone.

	"Do you know where we are?" asked Ami softly.

	"Um..."  The place looked familiar somehow, but she couldn't place 
it.  "Not really."

	Ami looked up at the building. "This is the Peace Memorial Garden.  
Those over there are...were...the Botanical Gardens."

	"What happened to them?"

	Ami sighed.  "Here, let's sit down."  They sat on a nearby bench 
and ignored the crowds of people as they walked to and fro.

	Okay, Chibiusa, it's time for a history lesson, she thought.  
"About sixty years ago, during the depression, the military leaders of 
Japan began to take power from the emperor, Hirohito.  They felt that 
the only way Japan could recover from the terrible economic times was to 
build a new economy based on the military.

	"So Japan built a massive army, and began invasions.  First Korea, 
then Manchuria, eventually most of the west Pacific islands.  But the 
generals knew that as long as the United States Navy's Pacific Fleet 
remained afloat, they would remain a threat.

	"So in 1941, we made a surprise attack on an American naval base, 
Pearl Harbor I think."

	This was a revelation to Chibiusa; history had never been 
emphasized to her in Crystal Tokyo.  "We attacked America?"

	"Hai."  And we're none too proud of it, she thought silently.  
"And that brought America into the war.

	"At first...at first we did well.  The Americans were more 
concerned with the war in Europe: a man named Adolf Hitler was on the 
verge of taking over all of Europe, and they thought that was more 
important.  But then came a battle at an island called Midway.  After 
that, things went badly for us."

	"We lost?"

	"We lost.  But not before something else happened.  The Americans 
didn't think they could win if they invaded Japan directly."  Even 
saying it put a chill through her heart; for a foreign power to march 
onto Japanese shores, guns blazing....  "They were afraid the casualties 
they would suffer would be too severe.  So they constructed a weapon, a 
weapon that had never been seen before...and never has been seen since, 
at least not in warfare.  The atomic bomb."

	This was news to the pink-haired girl.  "What kind of bomb?"

	"Atomic."  Ami's voice was purely mechanical now.  She still felt 
the horror she had felt when she had first read of what had happened, 
and she couldn't bear to think of it more, but it was knowledge, and had 
to be passed on.  "An atomic bomb works on the basis on splitting 
unstable uranium-235 nuclei, thereby releasing a tiny fraction of the 
binding energy.  But the binding energies involved are so tremendous 
that even a small amount is sufficient to cause terrible damage."

	Chibiusa was beginning to understand slightly.  "So they used the 
bomb here?"

	"Hai.  They intended to use it at Tokyo, but the weather there was 
too bad.  So they came here."  Ami's voice took on a faraway quality.  
"It was early on a Sunday morning.  When the air raid sirens went off, 
no-one paid much attention.  After all, every other time they had gone 
off, there had been dozens and dozens of bombers.  This time there was 
just one.  and it was all they needed....

	"When it exploded, the first anyone saw was a flash of light, very 
bright.  Then came the thermal pulse, and then the shockwave."  Ami 
retreated into technical jargon for a few minutes, talk of kilotons and 
maximum yield and electromagnetic pulses flying over Chibiusa's head.  
Finally, she came back down to earth.

	"Those closest to ground zero (that's the point directly below 
where the bomb exploded) were the luckiest, I guess.  They were 
incinerated or vaporized in a matter of milliseconds, not even enough time 
to feel any pain.  Those a bit further away suffered severe burns, often 
bursting into flames along with anything and everything else.  The 
temperatures were so high....  There was a zone a few miles away from 
ground zero, where the thermal pulse wasn't so severe, though.  There, 
people only had to suffer from flash burns."  She chuckled slightly, two 
tears streaming down her face.  "Only.  As if anything could have 
possibly been more painful.

	"The entire city was in flames.  Those who hadn't been killed by 
the shock wave, or the collapsing buildings, or the fires, were now 
going to suffer from the worst of it.  The radiation.

	"You see, Chibiusa, one of the main characteristics of the atomic 
bomb is that it produces radiation.  That's um...it's like sunlight.  
You can't see sunlight, but you can feel it on your skin.  You can't see 
radiation, but you can feel what it does.  It...it causes molecular 
disruption of the DNA, resulting in mutations.  They're almost always 
deleterious...."

	She looked down at Chibiusa and could see that her red eyes were 
clouded with confusion.

	"Right.  You don't have a clue what I'm talking about."  She 
looked up at the sky, and the remains of the cathedral, and the trees.  
Was this her lot in life?  To go all through it, unable to make herself 
understood, simply because she was so willing to work harder at school 
than almost anyone else?

	It happened every now and then.  Suddenly she'd get the urge to 
say "to hell with it all," and just chuck her books in the small pond 
behind her apartment building.  But she didn't.  She didn't because she 
had a dream, a dream she had had for as long as she could remember.  To 
help others.  To be a pediatrician.  To do no harm.

	No harm.

	She looked at the gardens for a long moment, looked at the naked 
girders that seemed to taunt her.  "No harm?" they seemed to say.  
"Rather contradictory, seeing as how your job is to kill anyone who 
would do harm to your princess."

	She sighed.  It *was* a contradiction, that she, the future 
doctor, should be such a ferocious fighter.  But...it was dedication all 
the same, wasn't it?  Dedication to your patients, dedication to your 
princess.  One and the same.

	She shook herself from her reverie and took Chibiusa by the hand.  
"Come on."

***

	They walked along the river.  Small insects danced and bobbed and 
floated about it, dragonflies and mosquitoes and various other bugs.  
One of them landed on Chibiusa's right arm, the one Ami wasn't holding 
on to.  Chibiusa shook her arm slightly, but the fly didn't seem to want 
to go away.  She shook it even more, and finally it got the hint and 
left, which brought a smile to her face.

	They stopped at a small shop to get ice cream.  Vanilla for Ami, 
and two scoops of strawberry for Chibiusa.  Chibiusa regarded her cone 
with wide eyes.

	She liked sweet things.  Some of her classmates had berated her on 
that before, how she was always eating sweets to the point that they 
said she gave cavities.  She ignored those people as much as she could, 
telling herself that whatever abuse they could dish out to a small 
child, it was nothing compared to what the Death Busters and the Dead Moon 
Circus had thrown against her.

	It didn't always work, though, and sometimes she had to cry 
herself to sleep at night.  If it hadn't been for Pegasus....

	She shook her head.  Her mind was too preoccupied with darkness 
today.  It must be their surroundings.  Although there were few physical 
reminders that this was the site of the first nuclear attack, the 
ambiance almost shouted it out now that Ami had pointed it out.  She 
wondered idly if Hiroshima was there in the future.  She hadn't been 
taught much geography outside of Crystal Tokyo.

	"Enjoying yourself?"

	"Hai."  They walked along for a bit longer, listening to the 
cicadas.  "But there's one other thing I was wondering about."

	"Nani?"

	"If the Americans knew what the bomb could do...why did they use 
it?  How could they cause all that suffering?  I would think...I would think that surrender would be better than to do that to anyone."

	Ami thought for a long moment.  "It's a shame," she said at 
length, "that people like you aren't in charge of the world."  And it's 
a greater shame, she thought, that it will be a long time before people 
like you are allowed to.

	"So?  Why?"

	Ami blinked at the pink haired girl, the girl in her neatly 
pressed skirt and blouse, flowing ponytails and bright red eyes.  
Chibiusa blinked back at her, the girl with the short-cropped blue hair, 
long skirt and blouse, holding a book at her side, her eyes a slightly 
troubled yet clear blue.

	Ami said something that came very hard to her.

	"I don't know."


=======================

	I'm not at all pleased with the ending to this fic, but as I see 
it it's the only ending it could possibly have.  The pundits are still 
wrangling over 1945 today, and no matter how smart Ami-chan is, I can't 
expect her to answer that question in a couple paragraphs.

	This is another one of those stories that I wrote because I got a 
neat title and wanted to do something with it.  It took a lot longer 
than I thought it would, though: I started the first week of the 
semester in calculus class and finished during the last week of classes.

	And that's that.  Comments and flames are always welcome.

--
LeVar Bouyer -phew, one more to go.
Finger l_bouyer@csunix1.lvc.edu for URLs and such | Libertas per veritatem
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