------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAILOR MOON 4200: What has gone before
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's the year 4200. More than seven hundred years ago, Crystal Tokyo
was destroyed in an as-yet-unexplained disaster. Queen Serenity and her
Senshi died fighting a hopeless battle against the mysterious evil. All
over the world, civilisation fell. Then, one hundred years ago, a great
renaissance began. Today the city of Third Tokyo is the centre of a new
world order, ruled by the shadowy Serenity Council.
Artemis survived the final battle; now he and his great-granddaughter
Bendis are searching for a new generation of Senshi. Shortly after they
argue and split up, Bendis discovers the new Sailor Venus: a girl called
McCrea Beth. For his part, Artemis finds the new Jupiter and Mercury --
Hayashi Miyo and Sharma Dhiti. Miyo is actually Kino Makoto, now reborn
in her third lifetime; but when Artemis tries to re-awaken her memory of
her previous life as Sailor Jupiter, he accidentally restores her memory
of the Silver Millennium as well.
The first exploits of the Senshi are national news but public opinion
soon takes a disturbing direction: some people hate them; others want to
worship them. The Council, already searching for Bendis, create "vitri-
morphs" -- crystalline monsters designed to hunt Senshi.
Meanwhile Artemis asks an old friend to help find Bendis again: Hino
Rei, once Sailor Mars, who also survived the fall of Crystal Tokyo. Now
powerless, she tries to avoid recognition, taking the name Pappadopoulos
Itsuko, owner of the Olympus Gymnasium. But her efforts to help Artemis
draw attention, and a security team begins a secret investigation of the
Olympus, causing Itsuko to send Artemis away.
Pluto has also survived the fall and, using the name Fumihiko Sadako,
is secretly working to help the others -- altering records to hinder the
Olympus investigation, and sabotaging the Senshi detectors being mounted
in a patrol vehicle.
Venus, Jupiter and Mercury meet for the first time while lending help
at a major fire. Afterward they are attacked by a vitrimorph and defeat
it. But the Council is strangely pleased ...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
S A I L O R M O O N 4 2 0 0
------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Angus MacSpon
macspon@ihug.co.nz
http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon/fanfic/index.html
Comments and criticism welcome!
Based on "Sailor Moon" created by Naoko Takeuchi
------------------------------------------------------------------------
C H A P T E R S I X
"Spies: Secrets, Lies, Ears and Eyes"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beth dreamed:
She stood in the road, facing a monstrous creature that was trying to
kill her. A building was on fire behind her, but it didn't matter; it
was irrelevant. Her knee and her hands didn't hurt at all. The monster
roared toward her and she stepped aside nimbly, and used her Love-Me
Chain to trip it up. There was nothing to it.
Then the monster threw her into a wall, and Sailor Jupiter had to rescue
her. [That's not fair,] she thought indignantly; [I'm supposed to be
the hero!] And Jupiter mocked her, told her she was just an amateur,
and should leave it to the professionals. But then Jupiter got into
trouble too, and Beth saved _her_. It was an immensely satisfying
moment. And suddenly there was another Senshi on the scene, appearing
out of nowhere, and Jupiter called her
[[Dhiti?]]
and together they defeated the monster, and everyone started cheering.
Quite suddenly she realised that they were shouting her name, her _real_
name, and when she looked down at herself she realised that she was just
plain Beth, not Sailor Venus at all. That wasn't right, was it? But
nobody seemed to mind. She smiled and waved to the crowd, and her hands
and her knee still didn't hurt, and then she saw that Eitoku was in the
crowd, cheering harder than all the rest. He ran up to her, and put his
arms around her, and she felt a strange warmth in her belly, and then
somehow the crowd and the other two Senshi were gone, and there was just
her and Eitoku, and he bent his head to kiss her --
It became another kind of dream entirely.
--**--
Miyo dreamed:
She was at home on Callisto. She was six years old. Her parents were
there -- her real parents, her first parents. It was an ordinary,
peaceful evening. Her mother was in the kitchen, cooking dinner, and
she wanted to help; and when, for the first time ever, her mother gave
her some simple task to do, she was so thrilled and proud that Mommy was
trusting _her_ to help that she made a complete botch of it, and dropped
a glass bowl on the floor, and when it broke she started to cry and --
-- And her daddy came into the kitchen and picked her up and soothed
her, and she felt so warm and safe and utterly secure in those strong
arms. And somehow, even in her dream, she knew that within a year he
and mommy would be dead, and she threw her arms around his neck and
clung to him desperately, wanting to hold onto this moment forever. And
in the moment before he pried her loose so that he could breathe again,
in that too-brief moment when she gazed up at his face, shining lovingly
down at her, she realised something that she would never ever remember
by daylight:
Her sempai looked like her daddy.
--**--
Itsuko dreamed:
She saw the Ginzuishou. That was a wonder in itself; it had been lost
after the fall of Crystal Tokyo, though she had looked for it when she
escaped from the ruin of the Palace. As she watched, a Senshi -- Itsuko
couldn't make out her face -- reached out her hand to pick it up. There
was a shout; she looked up, to see Sailor Pluto (Pluto?!) crying out,
"Don't touch it ...!"
[Shift] She saw herself speaking to a Senshi, and almost wept at the
bitter knowledge that the Senshi was Sailor Mars.
[Shift] Then she stood in her office, here in the Olympus, facing two
men -- but again, she could not make out their faces. They were
pointing weapons at her, and she knew there was only one way out. She
reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a henshin stick, and shouted
familiar words ...
She awoke. There were tears in her eyes. She sat up in bed, trying to
make sense of it, for a long time.
--**--
Dhiti dreamed:
She was in an alleyway, watching her friend at work. Her friend who was
risking her life to save people caught in a fire. Her friend who had
unexpectedly turned out to be Sailor Jupiter.
That had been stunning in real life, and it had taken her some time to
be able to breath again, and more time to remember to close her mouth.
But in her dream events went the way they _should_ have gone. So she
wasn't staring, her heart pounding, as Sailor Jupiter defied death; she
was shaking her head at her friend's antics, and considering how to drop
a few hints about the episode (enough to make Hayashi nervous, but not
enough to tell her for sure that Dhiti knew), and thinking that she
really ought to leave before she got caught ... when she heard the voice
behind her.
"Just before you go, I wonder if I might have a word?"
She turned in surprise (caught after all!), but there was nobody there.
Just a white cat, gazing up at her. Had she been imagining things? She
shook her head, trying to clear it; and then the cat (the cat!) spoke
again.
"You're one of Miyo's friends, aren't you? I'm sorry, I don't remember
your name."
What came next was kind of embarrassing, and something in her tried to
change it, rewrite this part too. But now her traitorous dream insisted
on following the reality script, and she-the-dreamer could only watch
and cringe as she-in-the-alley stared at the cat, slack-jawed, and made
a pathetic gibbering noise: _whaa-aa-aa-a-a ..._
For some irritating reason this seemed to please the cat. "My name's
Artemis, by the way," he said, with just a hint of satisfaction, "and
there's something very important I have to tell you."
She might have gibbered some more, but at that moment (thank goodness!)
there was a sudden noise from the street: a shot, and then a scream.
Dhiti and the cat raced to the alley mouth, and saw that things had
changed. Jupiter and Venus were together, and facing them was a --
what? A _thing_, a monstrous crystalline form that was all too clearly
trying to kill them ...
There was a strange, burning sensation on her forehead.
"Damn!" said the cat. "No time to talk. You've got to help them."
There probably wasn't much that could have gotten Dhiti's attention
right then, but that did it. "What?" she demanded, forgetting (for an
instant) who and _what_ she was talking to.
The cat gave her a firm look that somehow she knew was a frown, and
said, "I felt something from you before, and now it's certain. You are
Sailor Mercury, and you must help the other Senshi."
And he spun about madly for a moment, and when he stopped she saw, lying
on the ground, a short rod with a vaguely-familiar symbol at the tip ...
and suddenly she knew, with a cold shock, that this was real; she was
talking to the legendary Artemis, and he was offering her ...
She felt a grin beginning to form. He was offering her the chance of a
lifetime.
"Pick it up," Artemis told her softly. "Say the words."
She reached out her hand --
Time seemed to freeze.
In the real world, what followed did not actually happen. But in her
dream it did, and that was real too:
She reached out her hand and said, "What the hell. I'll give it a try
for a while, see how I like it."
"No," Artemis told her solemnly. "This isn't something you can pick up,
then drop. If you take this chance, there's no way out. No turning
back. You must follow the path all the way."
His words seemed to ring in her ears. "All the way. Wherever it
leads."
For a moment she hesitated. It seemed to her that she could see the
road ahead, and it ran into impenetrable darkness. An inner voice urged
her to think again, to choose the light. But then --
[Hey, I'm Sharma Dhiti. I make my own light.]
-- And suddenly time was moving again, and reality was following its old
path, and she took the henshin stick and raised it to the sky, exultant,
and shouted the words that were her birthright.
"MERCURY POWER, MAKE-UP!"
And there was light aplenty. A cool light, a stream of cold fire that
poured through her, thrilling, exhilarating. A flood of power that spun
about her. She felt her clothes shifting and changing; then, more
subtly, her whole body. And when it was done --
Sailor Mercury stood for a moment in what was half a pose, and half the
end of an intricate dance, a dance of transformation. Outside the
alley, she saw her friend in trouble, trying to fight a horrific
creature that was clearly too strong for her. She burned to help, to
strike at the thing ... and suddenly, she realised that she knew how.
She sprinted out of the alley, on her first steps down the path laid out
for her. When the time came, as always, she did what came naturally.
--**--
Sadako dreamed:
She was at home -- the home of her youth, her childhood. It was a
bright, warm, sunny day; her parents and her friends were there, all
around her, and for a moment, just for a moment, she felt happy.
Then she saw that none of them had faces.
None of them had faces, because she no longer remembered what they
looked like. Somehow, even in her dream, she realised this. They were
lost, lost like her home, her youth, and everything else that had
mattered to her. She faced that realisation for a moment, unflinching;
and then, with the skill of uncounted years' experience, she turned her
dream to other matters; and if she no longer felt happy, at least she
got the rest she needed, to be able to continue to do what needed to be
done ...
****************
The morning was grey and drizzly. Itsuko woke up at six-thirty as usual
-- she was seldom off by more than five minutes either way, though she
never used an alarm clock -- and got out of bed with a sigh. Another
Tuesday. Another day running a gymnasium, hooray. [I need a holiday,]
she thought sourly. Then she remembered that she couldn't afford to
take a holiday at the moment; not with a crisis just beginning to take
shape. Hooray. She shrugged on a robe, and stumped out to the kitchen
for coffee.
All thoughts of coffee vanished when she saw Ochiyo's body lying on the
floor.
She froze. [What the --]
For a moment that seemed like an eternity she stood, staring. Her
thoughts moved sluggishly. Ochiyo? What was _she_ doing here? Then,
distantly, as if through a fog, she remembered: the girl had worked the
late shift, ending at midnight, the night before; and as usual Itsuko
let her sleep here in the guest room, rather than sending her out at
that hour.
[But she's dead,] the voice in her head insisted petulantly. [What's
she doing dead on my kitchen floor?]
Then she saw that Ochiyo was breathing, and suddenly reality snapped
back into focus.
[Holy shit.] She ran forward and knelt at the girl's side, feeling her
forehead. She wasn't dead. But she didn't stir when Itsuko shook her.
Some kind of attack, or seizure? Her forehead wasn't warm. No fever.
[Damn, what am I supposed to do now --]
She realised she was dithering, and took control of herself firmly.
Ochiyo was breathing steadily, but wouldn't wake up. All right. She
fetched a blanket and wrapped it around the girl, trying not to move her
too much. Then she walked briskly through to her office, and called for
an ambulance. Ten minutes before it arrived, the operator told her.
She went back to the kitchen. On the way, she started to realise how
different the suite looked this morning.
The absence of familiar objects was the first thing she noticed. It was
just a nagging feeling, at first: something subliminally out of place.
She stopped, confused for a moment, and looked around her. That was
when she finally noticed the mess all around her.
It took her a few seconds to realised what had happened. That she had
been burgled. Then, with a curse, she headed back to the office to make
another call. It wasn't even seven o'clock, and already it was a lousy
day. She had a feeling that it wasn't going to improve.
After calling 'P' Division, she started back to the kitchen again, and
then had turn back to the office _again_ when she realised that she
hadn't warned the night receptionist downstairs what to expect. Then,
finally, she made it back to Ochiyo's side.
This was going to be bad publicity, she thought absently, stroking the
girl's forehead without really noticing. The Olympus was a popular
spot, and the newsies were going to jump on the story. At least there
weren't many clients in at this hour; but even so, it was going to be
bad for business. She really ought to go down, ready to handle the
inevitable inquiries.
The hell with that. Being here was more important. The Olympus was
just a business. If she didn't look after her people, how could she
live with herself?
She thought of the girl-turned-Queen who'd taught her that, long ago,
and smiled.
The telephone rang. It was the receptionist downstairs. The ambulance
and the police had arrived. Itsuko rose and went to let them in.
****************
"I got into a fight," Beth said nervously. "All right?" They'd
cornered her as she arrived at school. She should have expected it.
"Just asking," said Nanako, shrugging. She eyed the bandage around
Beth's knee and added, "Must've been some fight, though."
Beth sighed. "It was." She didn't know which was worse: her father,
Bendis or Nanako. Her father's alarm at her injuries, and then his
anger when she said she'd been fighting: that she could understand.
Bendis ... had acted kind of funny, once she'd finished her own lecture.
But Nanako's brand of wide-eyed innocence and bubbly good-natured
laziness was worse, in some ways. She felt guilty for being annoyed at
Nanako, for one thing.
"Since when do you go around fighting, anyway?" inquired Eitoku.
"Look, I ... I'd really rather not talk about it, all right?" It was,
of course, impossible to be annoyed at Eitoku. Even if he was being
nosy. He should be grateful that she'd saved him last night -- or, no,
that was just her dream, wasn't it? Well, she'd saved several people,
and helped save more. That should count for something.
"I know! She was defending your honour, Eitoku-kun," giggled Nanako,
unwittingly mirroring Beth's own thoughts. "It's so romantic!
Beth-chan, tell us all about it --"
"Will you stop that?" said Beth, blushing. "That wasn't it at all -- I
mean, ahh, not that I wouldn't, um ..." She trailed off, her face
bright scarlet.
"It looks pretty bad," commented Iku unexpectedly. "And you've got a
black eye, too."
"Yeah, my Dad took me out to the doctor," Beth said, grateful for the
distraction. "He says my knee's sprained, but it's not as bad as it
looks. I should be much better by Thursday." [I hope,] she added to
herself. She did heal faster now, one of the few advantages of being a
Senshi that she could see, but it was still pretty sore to walk on.
"I guess you missed all the excitement last night, then?" inquired
Eitoku. He'd taken no notice of Nanako's teasing comments. He never
did, when they were about Beth. Beth wasn't quite sure what to think
about that. He had to know how she felt, didn't he? So why didn't he
ever say anything?
"Excitement?" she said, somewhat lamely.
Oh, great. Suddenly everyone was staring at her. "You haven't
_heard_?" demanded Nanako. Beth shook her head, trying to look puzzled.
"I don't believe this! You miss _everything_ around here!" Nanako
complained. "It was the Senshi! And there's three of them now! And
they had a big battle last night, and Iku actually _saw_ it! How can
you not have heard --"
"You saw it?" Beth said, startled. She hadn't seen her in the crowd.
Of course, she'd been concentrating on other things at the time ...
Iku looked flustered. "I was on my way home from school," she said. "I
saw the smoke, and went to see."
Beth remembered, just in time, that she wasn't supposed to know what had
happened. "Smoke?" she said.
That was enough of a hint, fortunately. Nanako leaped in and started to
tell her exactly what had happened, blow by blow, as if she'd been the
one there. Beth listened, bemused. At least _someone_ was pleased
about the night before.
--**--
Bendis certainly hadn't been pleased. She had acted quite oddly, really,
when she heard that there were two more Senshi. Almost as if she were
afraid of something ... but why?
Perhaps, Beth thought slowly as the lecture droned on, it had something
to do with the cat's strange reluctance to discuss -- or even mention --
Artemis. The excuse that he was away on a secret mission elsewhere had
long since grown thin, and now it was clear that he too was in Tokyo,
recruiting other Senshi. Beth had gone through more than a dozen
theories to try and explain it, but none of them really seemed to fit.
And Bendis just became evasive when she tried to ask directly.
Maybe there was some kind of secret plan to bring her and the other
Senshi together when the time was right, she thought. When the Moon
Princess was found, possibly. Wasn't that how it had happened, two
thousand years ago? Well, something like that, anyway. But it didn't
quite seem to fit; and why wouldn't Bendis _say_?
After a while Bendis' tirade degenerated into a telling-off for not
using all the manoeuvres they'd practised. Beth hesitantly pointed out
that none of the cat-fighting techniques really seemed to apply to a
huge crystalline monster several times larger than Beth herself. Trying
to bite its neck, for example, would have posed certain difficulties.
"That's just typical of a human," Bendis told her. "No flexibility!
You're not thinking like a cat. There are lots of perfectly good ways
of attacking something like that. I'll --" She hesitated, then went
on, "I'll show you tomorrow night. You'll see!"
Beth nodded meekly, and the cat finally let her go to bed. As she
closed her eyes, Beth smiled. She had suspected, for some time now,
that Bendis was simply making up most of what she was teaching her. On
the other hand, the cat _was_ very creative, and her manoeuvres often
worked quite well. Even the failures could sometimes be adapted into
something useful. Beth was looking forward to seeing what Bendis would
come up with this time.
--**--
She listened as Nanako's account of the battle droned on. It was pretty
accurate, for the most part, though Beth didn't remember the monster
carrying a bazooka. But of course that was Nanako through and through.
Eitoku, on the other hand, simply listened with little reaction. That
was disappointing; but on the other hand, it was actually something of
an improvement; he'd been rather critical of the new Senshi -- of _her_
-- before. At least he finally seemed to believe that they were real.
He'd come around in the end; she was sure of it.
As for Iku ... Beth shook her head. The girl was, as ever, totally
closed; a real mystery. What was wrong with her? She seldom spoke,
seldom seemed to do anything much. She'd been the one on the scene last
night, and she was letting Nanako do all the talking! Beth couldn't
figure her out at all.
She'd asked Nanako about her, a couple of days before, but Nanako simply
shook her head and said, "She's always been very quiet." Then, with a
frown, she added, "She's worse since you came along, though. Funny ..."
"Maybe she doesn't like me," Beth suggested. She had the impression
that Nanako knew more than she was saying.
Nanako grinned. "Maybe she doesn't like your cat! She did say she
prefers dogs." Then, more seriously, she added, "I don't know. It's
odd, though ..."
Now, Nanako was finally wrapping up her account of last night's action.
Beth listened with half an ear. Something was nagging at her, right on
the tip of her tongue. Something somebody had said. What was it?
"... And blasted it to atoms!" Nanako finished triumphantly. She gave
Beth an expectant look. "So, what do you think?"
"Um ..." Beth frowned. Suddenly she remembered what it was. "Do you
know if there's anyone around here named Dhiti?"
The bell rang. Nanako stared at her for a moment; then, muttering
something under her breath, she turned and headed in to class. After a
few seconds, still puzzled, Beth followed her.
****************
"I got into a fight, all right?" said Miyo. They'd cornered her as she
arrived at school. She should have expected it.
"So what else is new?" said Kin, unimpressed. Dhiti laughed, and Miyo
shot her a withering look.
"Must've been some fight, though," Kin added. "You're pretty banged
up."
"She was taking on someone bigger than her again," Dhiti told her. "I
saw the whole thing."
"Will you shut up?" said Miyo, pained.
"What, are you kidding?" Dhiti was enjoying this far too much. "You
should have see it, Kin! She demolished him. I mean, really, she
demolished him."
Miyo groaned. She was in hell.
Kin still wasn't terribly interested, fortunately. "I guess you missed
all the excitement last night, then?" she inquired.
"Excitement?" asked Miyo.
"You don't know?" Kin exclaimed. "The Sailor Senshi had a big battle
last night! Not far from here, too. It was on the news. Didn't you
see?"
"On the news?" Well, they ought to have expected that, Miyo thought.
Somehow, in the heat of the moment, she'd forgotten how many people had
been watching last night. It was so different, this time around!
Before, they'd been urban myths. In this age, they were celebrities.
How were they supposed to handle it? [I should ask Artemis,] she mused.
They had to keep their identities secret, of course, especially while
they were still this young, but ... she shook her head. Kin was
speaking again.
"Yeah! There was some guy in the crowd who had a camera. It was so
cool! Oh, and there's three of them now! Venus and Jupiter and, um, I
forget who the other one was ..."
"How fleeting is fame," murmured Dhiti.
"What? You know, sometimes I don't understand you at all. Geez, Dhiti,
you were all over the moon about Sailor Venus when she appeared, and now
you're not even interested! Even you don't get usually bored with
things _this_ fast."
"Oh, well, you know how it goes," said Dhiti airily. "Venus is, like,
ancient history. If there's two more Senshi, though, who knows? Maybe
I'll like one of them better."
"Imagine that," Miyo muttered. Why couldn't she be like Dhiti? Always
quick with the facile answer, never taking anything seriously -- able to
joke about it all without raising suspicion, because everyone knew she
was always joking anyway ...
"Mercury!" said Kin suddenly. "I remember now. That was the other new
one."
"Mercury," mused Dhiti, with a rather-too-innocent look on her face.
"Well, well. Mercury. Hmm. Now there's a thought. The smart one."
"What, are you kidding?" said Kin. "Sailor Jupiter, now, there's a
Senshi for you. And she was the one who blasted that monster last
night, too."
Miyo looked over at Dhiti, waited until she was sure she had the other
girl's eye, and gave a long, triumphant smile. Dhiti rolled her eyes.
"Well, well," said a familiar voice. "The usual gang, at it already I
see." Wright Mark strolled through the gate, grinning cheerfully, with
Keenan Liam right behind him as usual. "So what is it today?" he
inquired, noticing the war of grins going on. "Not more of your
cooking, I hope."
"I," announced Miyo, "am going to be _very_ unpleasant to the next
person who mentions --"
"Perish the thought," said Liam hastily.
"You're not the one I was thinking of," she retorted, eyeing Mark and
Dhiti. "Just so we all know where we're at," she added.
"I assure you," Mark said in an injured tone, "I hadn't the slightest
intention of mentioning ... certain gastropods ..."
"Careful," said Dhiti, snickering.
"Pa dachiel!" cursed Miyo. This was just too much. "I suppose everyone
at school knows about that by now, right?"
"Come on, Hayashi," Dhiti admonished. "Even Kin needs a _little_ time
to spread rumours. Be fair. Give her an hour or so more."
"Hey!" protested Kin. "I don't go spreading rumours! _You're_ the one
who does that!" Then she grinned. "Anyway, that's what I always tell
everyone."
"Ah, so you're the one to blame for that! My revenge will be slow and
terrible, possibly involving tweezers. Let's see, what can I tell
people about you ...?"
"Tell them she's in love with Mark," suggested Miyo evilly. "No, wait.
With Liam."
"Wonderful," murmured Mark. "I'm the lesser of two evils."
"With me?" exclaimed Liam at the same time. "Acushla!" he cried
dramatically, falling to his knees before Kin. "And wasn't I thinking
you'd never come to your senses?"
Kin groaned. "I'm going to get you for this," she told Miyo. Then she
grabbed Liam by the arm and hauled him away, saying, "C'mon, lover-boy.
Let's find you a bucket of cold water to soak your head in."
Miyo watched them go, her mouth hanging open. "What?" she said. "She
really _does_ like him?"
"Well, well," said Dhiti thoughtfully. "Did you know anything about
this, Wright-kun?"
But Mark, too, was looking surprised. "No," he said. "I knew there's a
girl he's interested in; he told me down at the gym, a couple of days
ago. But I don't think it's Kin. I hope --"
The bell rang. Mark sighed, then glanced over at Miyo. "See you at
lunch-time?" he inquired, winking. Then he took off, without waiting
for an answer.
"I knew it," said Dhiti. "He _is_ sweet on you, Hayashi." She shook
her head. "This is unfair! You get him, and Kin gets Liam ... dammit,
who's left for me?"
"Someone normal, perhaps?"
"Don't be silly, where'd the fun be in that? C'mon, we'll be late."
They started to head in to class. As they walked, Dhiti added, "Hey,
what was that you said before? 'Pa dachiel?' Or something like that?"
"What!" Miyo stopped suddenly. "I didn't say that, did I?" she said,
sounding worried. Dhiti nodded, and she sighed. "It's ancient
Callistan," she said resignedly. "Not very polite."
"Callistan? What's that -- oh! As in Callisto, the moon of Jupiter?"
"Yes. I used to live there. Damn ..." Miyo hesitated, then said
quietly, "Look, if you hear me start to talk nonsense -- you know, other
languages -- let me know, will you? I ... well, I don't always notice."
Dhiti stared back at her. "I'll do that," she said seriously.
****************
After the policemen had left, Itsuko spent some time picking through the
suite, trying to make a list of what was missing. She didn't like this
one bit. It was a nasty feeling, knowing that somebody had been in here
while she was sleeping.
Ochiyo wasn't sick at all. She had started to come around even as the
paramedics examined her. One of the 'P' Division men recognised the
symptoms. She'd been dosed with halogyne: a fast-acting knockout spray.
Uncommon, but becoming more popular with the criminal world, it seemed.
Ochiyo was incoherent for a few minutes when she awoke, but soon enough
she was able to confirm that she'd met the burglar, and that he'd
sprayed her with something.
The paramedics wanted to check her into the hospital, just in case; but
Ochiyo put her foot down. She was shaken, and a little scared, but
determined not to let this get to her. After being reassured that there
were no known side-effects to the drug, Itsuko supported her. She
called the girl's father -- a rather cold and pragmatic man; she didn't
like him much -- and told him what had happened. He arrived to pick her
up half an hour later, leaving Itsuko alone in her newly-denuded suite.
-- It did seem rather odd. Her rooms were on the third floor of the
building. Why had she been burgled, when nothing else in the building
had been? There were a number of retail shops on the bottom level, but
none of them had been entered, as far as anyone could tell. It was as
if she had been singled out.
That might be it, she realised. She was running a successful business,
after all. Perhaps they'd been after the takings? Most of her income
was from monthly, quarterly and annual memberships, but still ... She
went into the office and checked the safe. It did look as if someone
had tried to get into it. Something else to report to 'P' Division.
She closed the wall-panel that hid the safe and leaned back against her
desk, sighing. As she did so, her arm brushed against the little tub of
paper-clips and knocked it to the floor. Groaning, she bent down to
pick the clips up again. Quite a few were strewn under the desk, and
she had to crawl to get them. As she came out again, her hair caught
painfully on something. Muttering angrily, she glanced up to see what
it was, and froze.
It was very well camouflaged. A casual glance wouldn't have noticed it
at all. But she was looking in just the right spot, and she could see
it very clearly.
Somebody had bugged her desk.
She managed to suppress her gasp of surprise. The device looked to be
audio-only, thank goodness: a tiny device, smaller than her little
fingernail, made of a clear, nonreflective plastic in which a fine web
of wires was embedded. It was mostly transparent, virtually invisible
in the darkness. If she hadn't been looking right at it ...
She crawled out and stood up once more, slamming the tub of paper-clips
down in the desk for the benefit of whoever was listening.
This put a whole new complexion on the burglary. On a lot of things.
She could rule out industrial espionage immediately. It was impossible
to believe that another gymnasium was spying on her. The idea was
simply ridiculous. That meant that somebody knew something. Probably
something dangerous.
A few days before, she'd seen someone outside setting up cameras. She'd
thought they'd spotted Artemis. But could it have been _her_ they were
after? Had she been careless? They wouldn't plant microphones to track
a cat. Unless they knew the cat could talk, of course ... but ...
She buried her face in her hands, trying to think clearly. Her first
impulse was to run -- get out quickly, take up a new identity somewhere
else. But of course, if she was being watched, her chances of success
were slim. And creating a new identity was not something she could do
at the drop of a hat.
In any case, she could not run. Not with the crisis coming.
And after all, she thought wryly, it wasn't as if she'd actually done
anything wrong. Well, not very wrong. The worst that could happen was
that her cover would be blown, that she'd be exposed as Hino Rei. That
would be bad, but at least she'd still be on hand, still able to help.
Well, whatever help she was capable of.
And maybe she could even avoid that much, she realised. There was a
chance that whoever was watching her didn't know much. She could try to
keep it that way. Contain the problem.
After all, she had contacts. In her position she needed them; apart
from anything else, every so often she needed a new identity, and that
was getting hard to do. But she knew people who could do things.
She dressed for outdoors and walked downstairs, nodding to the
receptionist on the way. Outside, she started briskly away from the
Olympus building. This was a call she didn't want to make from inside.
Especially not now, when she couldn't trust her own phone.
She walked down the street for a few minutes, then stopped, making a
show of suddenly remembering something. There was a telephone booth
nearby. She hurried over, inserted her credit chit into the phone's
MS-reader, and punched in a number from memory.
The voice that answered was bluff, curt. "Yes?"
"Jiro? Is that you?" she said. "It's Itsuko."
"Itsuko? Jiro? I think you got the wrong number, lady."
She grinned, and named a few names.
"Itsuko!" Suddenly the voice sounded much warmer. "Yiasou omorfi! Ti
kanis?"
She held back a sigh. Taking a half-Greek identity had seemed like a
good idea when she thought of it, years before. No Enclaves had
survived in Greece (though the country was reviving fast), so it made
her background very difficult to check. Also, having peculiar ancestry
made it easier for her to get away with a few of her own peculiarities.
The disadvantage was that sometimes she met someone who spoke a little
Greek. "Arketa kala, efharisto," she answered casually. "Koita, thelo
voithia."
"Any help you need, you got," he said seriously. "You know that."
She smiled. Jiro remembered old favours. "Thanks, but this is some
rather special help. Look --" She told him what she'd found. "I guess
I have to assume there's more than one bug," she added.
There was a slight pause at the other end. "All right. I can handle
that," he said after a few seconds. "You just want them removed? Or
you want a false signal, so they think they're still working?"
"Can you do that?" she asked, surprised.
"Hey, why you calling me, if you don' think I can get the job done?
Sure I can do it. I know some people, y'know?" After a moment's pause
he added, "Listen, what you getting into, Itsuko-chan? Who you got on
your back?"
"Believe me, if I knew that I'd tell you. You know how much I've got to
hide." Jiro didn't know the half of it, of course. But he knew that
she was not who she said she was.
"Yeah. Well, maybe I can help with that too, maybe not. We'll see.
It'll take me a few hours to get the people an' the equipment. Can you
wait that long?"
She was surprised again. Jiro must think he owed her a lot more than
she did. "I could have waited a couple of days, actually," she said,
not trying to keep the pleasure out of her voice. "Jiro, you're a
life-saver."
"Any time. You know that. Any time, ever. Can you get me an' my
people in without being seen?"
She had to laugh. "Jiro, I run a gymnasium. Just come in as if you're
going to get some exercise."
He laughed back. "Okay. I call you when we're on our way."
"Right. Thanks, Jiro." She hung up and stepped out of the booth,
pocketing her credit chit.
All right. That was done. Now, to perform a few unnecessary errands
before heading back. Just in case someone was watching.
****************
Beth picked at her lunch dispiritedly. As usual, the four of them --
Eitoku, Nanako, Iku and herself -- had met for lunch in their favourite
spot, in a little area off to one side of the school grounds. The other
three had been coming here for a long time even before Beth was drawn
into their group, she knew, and most of the other students seemed to
tacitly acknowledge that their area was "theirs."
She leaned back with a sigh, her lunch still unfinished. They had
started off talking about the new Senshi again, of course -- the topic
was all the rage throughout the school once more -- and Beth had tried
to throw in some comments that didn't sound like she knew exactly what
had happened. But after a while the conversation lapsed. Eitoku seemed
nervous about something, and Nanako was preoccupied, which was unusual
for her, and Iku ... was her normal cryptic self.
Beth was just as glad, really. She didn't feel like talking either. Her
leg ached like a demon, and her shoulder was throbbing again from when
she'd been thrown into that wall; and more than anything else she felt
like lying back and relaxing. The sun was warm, and she felt sleepy.
Nanako yawned, excused herself, got up and walked off in the direction
of the toilet block. Beth watched her go for a few seconds, then
glanced away, bored. She found herself staring at the clump of bushes
not far away, and remembered the day (not too long ago actually) when
Nanako had caught her there, lying hidden and spying on Eitoku. She
shook her head, flushing at the memory. But of course that hadn't
really worked out so badly, after all --
She blinked. What was that? A movement in the bushes. She tried to
watch it from the corner of her eye. Yes, there. It was --
Oh. It was that creepy little kid. Nanako had spotted him yesterday,
spying on them. She supposed he must have a crush on one of them.
Perhaps even on her, she suddenly thought, a little startled at the
idea. But that was silly, surely?
It was a pity Nanako had just left. She would have enjoyed seeing the
kid.
--**--
Hideo peered out from the bushes, observing his quarry. He was trying
to keep low and make no sudden movements, the way they did on the action
movie he'd seen on the viddy a couple of weeks ago. It seemed to be
working so far.
Which one of them was Sailor Venus? There were four people, but Bendis
had only been interested in three of them: Higoshi Nanako, Shiomi Eitoku
and Kodama Iku. One of those three had to be the one. Well, not Shiomi,
obviously; he was a boy. So that meant Higoshi or Kodama.
Higoshi had walked away a few minutes ago. He continued to study
Kodama, wishing he had a pair of binoculars. She did seem to be about
the right height, but her hair was rather long, and braided. That
didn't seem quite right. He spared a glance at the other girl, the one
he didn't know. She would almost have done, he thought for a moment;
but then he remembered that Bendis hadn't been interested in her, and
dismissed the idea.
He turned his attention to Kodama. She was always so quiet. Maybe that
was a pose, though. Like a superhero's secret identity. He frowned,
and reached out to pull a branch out of the way --
"Gotcha!"
He jerked upright with a yelp. Caught! One of the teachers must be
snooping around. Resigned, ready for the inevitable telling-off, he
looked up ... into the grinning face of Higoshi Nanako.
--**--
Catching people spying from these bushes was getting to be a habit.
Nanako watched a series of expressions flit across the kid's face:
surprise, chagrin, confusion, anger, resignation ... He was a cool one,
she thought, amused. Pretty good for someone his age.
"Aren't you a little young to be girl-watching?" she asked.
He wasn't fazed. "It was a dare," he said.
"Uh-huh." She grinned. "Was it a dare yesterday, too?"
That one did throw him. He recovered fast, though. "I wanted to see if
I could get away with it twice."
Uh-huh. Sure. She had to respect him, though; it was a pretty good
story. Under other circumstances it might have been very tough to
crack.
Not this time, though. "Funny thing," she said. "When I asked around
yesterday, to find out who you were, I found out that _you'd_ been
asking who _we_ were, a couple of weeks ago. That's quite a dare."
She watched his eyes widen, listened to him start to stammer, groping
for an excuse, before she went for the knock-out. "I also heard that
you'd been asking about cats," she said.
He fell silent, looking panic-stricken. [Game and set,] she thought
smugly.
"Now as it happens," she went on, "I do know someone who has a cat. A
tabby cat. And it's funny -- this cat has a peculiar mark. Right on
its forehead. Like a scar. Shaped like -- hmm, how to describe it ..."
"Full moon," he whispered.
She beamed at him. "Why, yes! Just like a full moon. Isn't that
interesting?"
He was silent for a moment. Then he burst out, "It's you, isn't it!
You're the one! Sailor Venus ..."
Game, set _and_ match.
"No, it's not me," she told him, shaking her head. "Sorry." She
watched his face for a moment -- saw the disappointment slowly shifting
to suspicion -- and then said, "But you know, there's another funny
thing. This girl I know, the one with the cat -- well, you remember a
week or so ago, when Sailor Venus got shot? I'm sure you saw it on the
viddy. And the next morning, this girl had a sore arm, in exactly the
same place. Now isn't _that_ interesting?"
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.
She ignored him. "And as for yesterday ... well, we both know what
happened yesterday evening. And today, this girl can hardly walk
straight, she's got a black eye, and it hurts her to move her shoulder.
Quite a coincidence, don't you think?"
"Who --" he began.
"So many interesting things going on at the moment," Nanako mused. She
threw him a sharp glance. "Now what _I_ find interesting, just at the
moment," she added, "is you. You and ... a certain cat. What do you
know about that cat, Kawatake Hideo?"
He visibly debated whether to tell her or not. At last he said, "I've
talked to it. To her."
"Ah!" Nanako beamed at him. "It seems we have information to exchange.
Isn't this fun?"
Reluctantly, he nodded.
It didn't actually take very long. Neither of them, really, knew all
that much. Nanako knew who Venus was, of course. Hideo knew Bendis'
name, and had had some tantalising hints from her about the Great Fall,
but that was all. Nevertheless, by the time the recitations were over,
the two of them were unmistakably conspirators.
And Nanako had one more piece of information, but for now she kept that
to herself, unsure whether it was really relevant. A name: Dhiti.
"Her?" Hideo kept saying, looking through the bushes at where Beth lay,
dozing in the sun. "But ... but Bendis said that she was interested
in you, or Shiomi-san or Kodama-san."
Nanako grinned. "Perhaps Bendis is a little more intelligent than you
gave her credit for," she suggested.
Hideo was taking a longer, harder look. "You're right," he breathed.
"It _is_ her. She looks exactly like Sailor Venus."
"She does?" Nanako blinked. Then she got down on all fours and peered
through the bushes herself. "She does. I'll be -- why didn't I ever
see that before?"
It was uncanny. The pictures she'd seen on the viddy had been blurred,
hard to make out; but nevertheless, the similarity was unmistakable.
How could she have missed it before? It was as if --
-- It was as if there was something that had kept her from seeing it.
Her and Hideo both. After all, she hadn't worked out Beth's secret from
the way she looked; it had been based on a cat, the girl's injuries, and
her general uneasiness and shiftiness whenever the Senshi were
mentioned. Beth really wasn't any good at hiding things. If Eitoku and
Iku paid more attention to what went on around them (and if Eitoku
wasn't so determinedly ignoring all the cow-eyed looks that Beth kept
throwing him) they'd have noticed too.
But then, if nobody could see that Beth looked like Sailor Venus, why
should anybody put the rest together? That took someone different.
Someone nosy.
She exchanged glances with Hideo. There was more magic around Beth than
either of them had realised. It was something to think about.
--**--
Beth opened one eye as Nanako came back and sat down. "You were a long
time," she said idly.
"Oh, well, I got sidetracked," Nanako answered. She yawned. "Why, did
I miss something?"
Beth yawned too. "Not likely. We've just been dozing."
Nanako beamed at her. "Yeah, it's too nice a day to spoil." Then she
cast a suspicious glance at Eitoku. "Of course, there's always one,"
she muttered. Raising her voice, she demanded, "Have you been reading
that book all this time?"
He jumped, clutching the book defensively. "What? No! Yes! There's
nothing wrong with that!"
She shook her head, tsk'ing sadly. "All this studying ... it's bad for
you, Eitoku-kun. You'll strain that brain thing of yours, or something.
You need to relax more. Go with the flow."
"But --" he began to protest.
"No buts. C'mon, just lie back," she ordered. "Give it a try." She
followed her own advice with a sigh. "You see? Relax. Don't worry
about anything. Take things easy."
She smiled. "Like I do."
****************
When the phone buzzed, Itsuko was at her desk, trying (and failing) to
concentrate on some of the paperwork that had been building up. She'd
been neglecting her job lately; she'd had other things on her mind.
"Yes?" she said distractedly.
"We're on our way now," said a voice. "Five minutes." Then the speaker
hung up.
Five minutes? She groaned. All right. She finished skimming through
the page at the top of her pile, and scrawled a few notes at the bottom.
Then, pushing the entire pile to one side, she got up and headed out.
On the way, she took a quick glance around the suite, checking that
everything looked tidy. It wasn't that she was house-proud, or anything
like that. She was just ... nervous about guests.
Downstairs at the reception desk, she was startled to see that Ochiyo was
on duty. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was after four. Where
had the afternoon gone?
"Hi, Itsuko-san," said Ochiyo, smiling. "Looks like a quiet day."
Itsuko blinked. Quiet? After everything that had happened that
morning? [Oh.] Quiet here in the gymnasium, of course. "It happens,"
she shrugged. She studied the girl, noting with a little surprise the
large bunch of flowers on the desk in front of her. "Are you all
right?" she asked gently. "After this morning, I mean?"
"Oh, I'm fine," Ochiyo said happily. "Actually, it was kind of cool.
Well, not at the time, I mean. But --"
"I know," said Itsuko wryly. What on Earth was the girl so happy about?
She eyed the flowers again, and suddenly realised. "Oh. From your
boyfriend?" Ochiyo nodded, beaming, and Itsuko laughed. "Not bad,"
she said. "What's his name?"
"I don't know," Ochiyo told her. Then she grinned. "Yet," she added.
Itsuko shook her head, still laughing. Flowers from a secret admirer;
that was all it took to make the girl forget what could have been a
highly traumatic experience. [Was I ever like that?] She tried to
remember how she'd felt when she was that young. [Maybe I was.]
She heard footsteps and looked around. Jiro was coming up the steps,
followed by a pair of other men. They were all carrying equipment bags.
Itsuko breathed a sigh of relief. This could actually work.
Jiro came forward, his hand outstretched, pushing past a client who was
just leaving. "Itsuko-chan!" he exclaimed. "To see your face again!"
She smiled, taking his hand. "It's been a long time, Jiro." Inwardly,
she was cringing. Did he have to call her that, right there in front of
Ochiyo? All the other staff were going to hear about this within the
hour. Her hard-nosed reputation was shot.
He took a good look at her, and she saw his eyebrows go up. "You
looking real good, lady," he said, almost in wonder. "Good as the day
we met."
She winked. "Clean living," she told him.
Hmm. That could be a problem -- as if she needed more problems. It had
been twenty years since they'd last met. Jiro had put on weight; his
face was lined, and his hair and bushy eyebrows were greying. Itsuko
hadn't changed at all.
"Glad you could drop by," she said, masking her worry. "Let's head on
up." She indicated the stairs. Jiro nodded, his smile fading slightly,
and he and the other two followed her up the stairs.
Inside her rooms she hesitated, not sure what to do next. Jiro held a
finger to his lips and glanced at one of his men. The man pulled a
small grey box out of his jacket and flicked a switch on the side. She
heard a faint, crackling hiss. The man nodded shortly.
Jiro relaxed. "Okay, it's safe to talk," he said. "There's another
team outside. Posing as an electrical crew, you know? Doing work on
the wiring. They're making some interference, so your eavesdroppers,
they don' know what's going on." He gestured to his two men. "All
right, get started. We can' keep this up more than a half hour, maybe."
They began pulling equipment out of their bags. Jiro asked, "Is it just
the office, you think, or maybe everywhere?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. It -- it could be everywhere." It was
unpleasant to have to admit it; but she could not take the risk. The
only place she was sure about was her secret room, where the sacred fire
burned.
Jiro only nodded. "No problem. What about downstairs? There too? Not
so easy to check, down there."
Another shrug. "Maybe. I'll chance that, though." She gave a small
smile. "After all, if there's anything secret going on down in the gym,
it's none of my doing."
"I believe it," he said. He gave her a long, thoughtful gaze. "I think
you got plenty enough secrets right up here."
--**--
"We've got trouble," Kuroi said as he stepped into the van, closing the
door behind him.
"Imagine my joy," said Hiiro laconically. "What now?"
"Have we got a camera over the main entrance?"
"You know perfectly well we have." Hiiro looked at him quizzically.
"What's got you so upset?"
"Check back in the logs. About five minutes ago, a group of three men
walking into the building."
"By your command," Hiiro said, with just a touch of irony. He looked
back at Mitsukai's work-desk. She was hunched over one of the receiver
units, manipulating the controls with an intent look on her face. "Hey,
Mitsukai, take a look, will you?"
She sighed, and turned her attention to a console to one side. Watching
her, Kuroi said, "Problems?"
"Interference. There's a crew working on the power lines a couple of
blocks away. Whatever they're doing, they're kicking up a lot of
static. We're not getting much out of the bugs."
"Should have used the longer-range units."
"They're too visible. I send Kitada over to take a quiet look at what
the repair boys're doing. They shouldn't be too much longer."
"Right." For once, Kuroi didn't have anything bad to say about Masao.
Truth to tell, for an Irregular he was working out pretty well. "Bad
timing," he said at last. "You'll see what I mean in a moment."
They headed back to Mitsukai's console. She was rapid-scanning back
through the camera logs. as they watched, she brought up a picture of
three men entering the Olympus building: a bulky, middle-aged man
followed by two others, younger and fitter-looking.
"Try and get the faces of the two in the back," Kuroi ordered. Mitsukai
searched forward a moment longer, and found another shot of the three.
"There," Kuroi said, pointing to one of them. "The one on the left."
Hiiro studied his face. "What about him?" he said.
"He's Sankaku."
Hiiro sat bolt-upright, staring at Kuroi. Even Mitsukai looked shocked.
"You sure?" Hiiro asked after a moment.
"Ninety-five percent. Ninety-nine."
"Oh, shit." Hiiro rubbed his forehead. "This doesn't make sense. Why
would the Sankaku clans be involved in this?" He glanced up at Kuroi.
"Ryozo, how --?"
"How do you think? I've seen him before. He's small-fry," Kuroi
admitted, "usually a technician, not an operator. Low-echelon. Ran
into him on a job, three, four years ago. He got away, but I remember
the face."
"Could just be a coincidence?"
"Not a chance. I saw the three of them go in and walk straight up to
Pappadopoulos. She looked real friendly with the fat guy."
"Damn. And right when we can't hear a thing from inside."
"I said it was bad timing."
"All right." Hiiro paused, thinking hard. "We don't want to fly off
the handle. Not yet. It could be some kind of sting operation, or even
a protection racket. Not our business. Ryozo, get out there. Find
Kitada, tell him to try and hurry the damn power crew up. Then get back
and cover the entrance. Find out where those three go when they leave.
Mitsukai ... when's Aoiro due back in?"
"Six hours," she said. "He's on down-shift."
"Too bad. Wake him up and bring him in. Then get back on that receiver.
Even if you can only make out a word or two ..." He shrugged.
"Right."
--**--
"So exactly what are they doing?" asked Itsuko, watching Jiro's men at
work.
Jiro grinned, looking rather proud. "We found twelve bugs. Your
burglar, he was pretty heavy-handed. Now, we fix them so they only send
what we want them to send."
"Like what?"
His grin widened as he pulled out a slim box from his bag. "I'll leave
you this," he told her. "Very smart little machine. I got samples of
your voice fed in here. When you switch it on, it overrides the bugs,
sends out a nice little conversation in your voice. All random, not a
tape. Clever computer program, you can listen for hours an' not guess
it's a fake."
Itsuko had to grin in reply; his enthusiasm was infectious. "But won't
someone get suspicious if I keep talking all night?"
"No, no. You only turn it on when you don' want anyone to hear. Most
of the time, it stays off, an' they hear what you say for real. It's
much safer that way."
"I suppose so." But a sudden thought struck her, and she shot him a
suspicious glance. "Just where did you get samples of my voice?"
He burst out laughing. "On the phone, this morning! A little fuzzy, a
little tinny, maybe, but we don' need great sound quality, not for this.
Those bugs, they're only short range, low-power. At the other end, they
sound like a phone anyway."
"Huh," she said, mollified. "Short-range, you said?" A somewhat
predatory look appeared on her face. "Any chance you can find out where
they're transmitting to?"
"Sorry, no," he said regretfully. "Could be anywhere within two, maybe
three blocks. Doesn't sound like much, but it's a lot of territory."
"Pity," Itsuko said, just as regretfully.
"I could have some of my people search, but I got to tell you, it's just
as likely they'd be spotted first, an' then you'd really be in trouble."
Itsuko thought about it. "Don't worry about it," she said after a
moment. The predatory look was back. "I know some people who can look
around. They're _very_ discreet."
Artemis, of course, was out of the question. They'd spot him. But his
great-granddaughter was another matter, if Artemis could just hurry up
and find her. Bendis could snoop around and spy on the spies without
danger of discovery. After all, why would anyone be looking for a tabby
cat with a full-moon mark?
It didn't take much longer for Jiro's men to finish up. Jiro himself
installed the controller box, and went over how to use it with Itsuko.
When they were all done Itsuko checked her watch: twenty-two minutes.
Impressive, she thought, and told Jiro so. He winked.
"We got to go," he said. "The jamming will end soon, an' we don' want
to get you into any more trouble, eh? You take care of yourself, pretty
lady."
He took her hand, for a moment she thought he was going to kiss it. But
he simply gave her one more wondering look. "Whatever your beauty
secret is, you should sell it," he told her. "Forget this place. You
could make millions, easy."
She laughed, and saw the three out of the building. Her smile faded as
she watched him go. It saddened her to realise that she was never going
to be able to see Jiro again. But he'd noticed that she hadn't aged.
And that meant that he, too, could be a danger.
****************
"It'll be all right," Miyo said as they walked up to the door. "Miliko's
got a netball practise, so she won't in the way."
"What about your brothers?" asked Dhiti. She'd visited Miyo's house
before; she knew what to expect.
"They won't get in the way either." Miyo grinned suddenly. "Not if
they know what's good for them."
The front door opened, to reveal Fujimaro and Ichiyo standing there in
the hall, apparently on their way out. Miyo froze. Her brothers
exchanged meaningful glances.
"Do we know what's good for us?" asked Fujimaro solemnly.
"Depends," said Ichiyo. "Is she in a bad mood?"
"Let me check." Fujimaro reached out and poked Miyo on the shoulder.
Miyo sighed and swatted his hand away. "No broken bones," he announced.
"About middling, I'd say."
"Hmm." Ichiyo pulled out a coin and prepared to toss it. "Heads we run
for it, tails we sit on her," he suggested.
"Tails," Fujimaro said without hesitation.
"Right." The coin flipped up into the air, spinning over and over --
Miyo caught it before it landed in Ichiyo's hand. "Allow me," she told
him coldly, and inspected the coin. "What do you know," she said a
moment later, giving the two a withering look. "Both sides are tails."
"I am shocked, deeply shocked --" began Fujimaro.
She snorted. "You probably lent him the coin," she said.
"You wound me," he said, contriving to look sad. "That my own imouto
could be so distrustful ... you bring dishonour upon the family name --"
"Dishonour!" she yelped. "Who was the one who put slugs in my bed last
night! Dishonour! I'd like to maroon the pair of you on Io, then we'd
see who was dishonoured --"
Dhiti cleared her throat loudly, and she stopped.
Diffidently, Ichiyo said, "Actually, that was Miliko with the slugs.
Word of honour."
Fujimaro said, "Io?"
"Sensei was talking about it in science class," said Dhiti quickly.
"One of the moons of Jupiter. Lots of volcanos. Very nasty." Miyo
shot her a grateful look.
"My, my," Fujimaro said gravely. "You're getting creative, sis. Maybe
something's rubbing off from Sharma-chan." Dhiti stirred; but before
she could say anything he added, with a faint grin, "Or should that be,
from Wright-kun?"
Miyo gaped at him. "Where'd you hear about --" she began. He laughed,
grabbed Ichiyo by the arm ... and ran for it. Just in time; Miyo almost
managed to grab him by the throat as he went past. The two's laughter
trailed behind them as they headed down the path and around a corner.
Miyo snorted. "Brothers," she said.
"Sure had you dead to rights, didn't they?" said Dhiti innocently.
"They did not! They --" Miyo stopped, and sighed. "Brothers," she
repeated, with a little more force.
Dhiti snickered. "Have you actually been to Io?" she asked curiously as
they stepped inside.
"What? No. There's a -- there _was_ a research station there, but
that's all. The environment was too hostile. The Miranda Institute was
talking about another terraforming attempt when ..." She trailed off.
"Well, you know. When."
Dhiti nodded. She'd been about to make a rather clever remark about
volcanos and Miyo's temper, but she didn't. The mood was spoiled.
It always seemed to come down to that for Miyo, eventually. To what had
been lost. She was so wrapped up in the "when" ... why couldn't she
open her eyes and see the "now"?
That was a clever remark, too. Pity it was true.
She followed Miyo through the living room, where Miyo's father was
sitting, reading the newspaper, and into the room Miyo shared with her
sister. Artemis was waiting for them.
--**--
Hayashi Hitomaru glanced up and smiled as the two girls went past. When
they were out of earshot, he stood and went through to the kitchen, where
his wife was busy getting the dinner started. He couldn't quite restrain
himself from checking what she was doing -- remembering a certain episode
four days before when his daughter had been cooking -- but managed to
glance away before she caught him doing it.
"You look serious," Aki said tentatively.
"Miyo just got home," he told her. "She ..." He hesitated.
Aki sighed. "Again?"
"Again," Hitomaru confirmed. "She was giving some wild talk about the
moons of Jupiter. Her friend was encouraging her, I think."
"That would be Dhiti. Yes, she would." She thought about it, her hands
working steadily at the food. "Have you considered speaking to someone
at the school?"
"Yes, but what can I say? My daughter is acting strangely, and talking
nonsense all the time, and recently she cooked slugs for her family and
didn't even notice until afterward?"
"I'm sure it's just a phase she's going through." Aki's face said that
she wasn't sure at all.
"Let's hope so," Hitomaru answered. Reluctantly, he added, "Sometimes,
it's as if she's ... someone else."
--**--
"Nice of you to show up," said Artemis.
"Oh, don't be silly," said Miyo cheerfully. The argument with her
brothers had left her in a surprisingly good mood. It was nice to see
some things never changed. "School only let out a little while ago."
She found a chair, dumped a pile of Miliko's stuffed toys off it, and
offered it to Dhiti, who looked rather glum for some reason. Sitting
down on her bed, she said, "So ... our first Senshi meeting." She
chuckled. "Not quite as big as I remember them."
"I wouldn't worry too much," Artemis said dryly. "Judging by previous
experience, that'll improve fairly quickly."
"Wait a minute. Shouldn't we be waiting for Sailor Venus to arrive?"
put in Dhiti.
Miyo and Artemis exchanged glances. "Go ahead," said Miyo, slightly
vindictively. "Tell her."
"Er ... Venus won't be coming," said Artemis. "She's operating
independently for the moment, with my great-granddaughter."
Dhiti wrinkled her brow. "Why?"
"This should be good," said Miyo.
"Well ... it's a little complicated." Artemis sounded oddly nervous.
"Bendis and I have been searching for you Senshi independently, you see.
We'll be putting the two groups together later."
Dhiti looked over at Miyo. "Does that make any sense to you?"
Miyo grinned. "Nope."
"Good. I was afraid it was just me."
"I was thinking of withholding his catfood until he gives us a straight
answer," Miyo confided. "Or making him go back to that stuff Mom
bought."
"Hey!" Artemis protested. "You can't do that! You promised!"
Dhiti laughed. "Maybe I can come up with some ... interesting ideas,"
she suggested.
"You can't team up on me like this! Show some respect! I'm thousands
of years older than you are!"
"What?" said Miyo with a hoot. "More like thirty or forty, isn't it?"
Artemis had to stop and try to remember. "Well, if you count from your
first birth, sure," he admitted. "But remember, you've had two gaps
where you were, well, technically dead. Those shouldn't count."
"Shouldn't count?" said Miyo, laughing. "Shouldn't _count_?"
"I --" Artemis looked over at Dhiti. "Well, I'm thousands of years
older than _her_, anyway! So _she_ shouldn't pick on me!"
"Umm ..." Dhiti began. She looked uncomfortable with the subject. "Are
these Senshi meetings always like this? I mean, well, just sitting
around and yakking?"
Miyo thought about it. "Pretty much," she admitted.
"Well, we did use to do _some_ other things," pointed out Artemis.
"Yeah, when we could persuade Usagi to stop eating, or leave Rei's manga
collection alone. Oh, come on, Artemis, you know what she was like --"
"This is 'Queen Serenity' Usagi you're talking about?" inquired Dhiti.
Her eyes were sparkling.
"Ahh, well, she did get a lot more serious later on --"
"She could be serious enough right from the start, when she had to be,"
Artemis said, dropping his bantering tone suddenly. "When those she
loved were threatened." He caught Miyo's eye; after a moment she
nodded, sobered. "And speaking of threats," the cat continued, "I'm
afraid we do have some serious business today."
"The monster last night," Miyo said, nodding once more.
"Right!" said Dhiti. "I was wondering if we were going to get to that.
I mean, I'm sure it was nothing special to you guys ... being thousands
of years older than me, and all that ..."
Miyo cleared her throat, looking slightly embarrassed.
"What do you call those things, anyway? I mean, I recognised it from
the description, but none of the books ever gave them a name."
"Excuse me?" said Artemis. "You recognised it?"
"What? Didn't you?" Dhiti frowned. "I was assuming it was one of the
monsters that destroyed Crystal Tokyo. They were supposed to be big,
crystalline things, weren't they?"
Miyo and Artemis exchanged glances. "No,," Artemis said definitely.
"No, not the same." Then he added thoughtfully, "But ... there were
similarities, now I think about it."
"It acted quite differently," said Miyo. "But ..." She shook her
head. "Something to keep in mind. Thanks, Dhiti."
"Hey, I've got a brain, you know. Besides my gorgeous looks, I mean."
"Yes, well," said Artemis hastily before Miyo could reply. "If one
of those things shows up again, hopefully you'll be able to do some
kind of analysis on it."
"Analysis?" Dhiti looked dubious. "How? With that?"
"With this." Artemis jumped up onto Miyo's dresser and indicated an
object that was lying there. "The Mercury computer. I got it out of
storage this afternoon. And there are communicators for both of you, as
well."
"Now that sounds familiar," said Miyo, picking up her communicator. It
had been redesigned slightly, she noticed, to fit in with modern styles,
but it still basically looked like a wristwatch. She seemed to remember
that hers had always gained five minutes a week; and it was hell to
reset, though as a communicator it worked just fine ...
Dhiti was looking at the computer uneasily. "What does it do?" she
asked, picking it up as if she were afraid it might explode. "How does
it work?"
"Oh, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it," Miyo said airily. She'd never
been able to make head or tail of it, herself, but Ami had certainly
managed easily enough. "Hey, what's this third communicator?"
"Oh, that's for Venus," said Artemis casually. A little too casually.
"Could you give it to her, the next time you see her?"
"Eh?" said Dhiti, distracted from a nervous examination of her computer.
"Why can't your granddaughter give it to her? Er, Bendis, was it?"
"It's better this way," Artemis told her unhelpfully. Then, as if eager
to change the subject, he went on, "Oh, and another thing. Could both
of you give some thought to finding a better place for meeting? Here
was all right for today, but we can't rely on meeting here regularly."
"Not with Miliko getting in the way," Miyo added, nodding.
"Somewhere with a bit of privacy, anyway. I did have somewhere in mind,
but --" He hesitated for a moment. "Well, it's difficult at the
moment. In any case, if either of you have any ideas ... and we'll need
to find somewhere to hold training sessions, as well. Makoto, you need
to get back into practise with your Supreme Thunder, and Dhiti, we'll
need to get you up to speed as soon as possible, too."
"Are you expecting more of those things?" asked Dhiti.
Artemis looked grim. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
****************
Lieutenant Midori arrived at 'S' Division headquarters at seven o'clock
sharp the next morning, exactly as usual. He pulled up the day's
agenda, ran through it quickly, made a few notes, and transmitted it to
Colonel Shiro's desk. Exactly as usual.
What happened next was not at all usual. He sat at his desk, staring
off into mid-air for several minutes. He should have been going over
last night's logs, preparing a summary. That was his job, as Shiro's
ADC. But something was bothering him ...
After a few more moments' thought, he accessed the security system, and
pulled up the entry and exit records. He stared at them for a while
longer, puzzled. He knew what he was looking for; but the idea was
preposterous. And yet ...
And yet, he scanned through the list methodically. He was looking for
intruders. Intruders, here! It _was_ ridiculous. But he could not
leave it alone. Something inside him, some inner voice, drove him.
Sometimes he even thought he could see the intruder in his mind's eye.
A ... woman? Tall, and ... tall ... and ... and the face, it ... swam
in him memory for a moment, elusive, and then flickered away again ...
and ...
(Green hair?)
... and he could _not_ remember! He slammed his fist down on the desk,
hard, in frustration. Sometimes he thought he was losing his mind.
Sometimes he thought he recalled searching the entry records yesterday,
too, and the day before, and ... but that could be crazy, wouldn't it?
He'd remember, surely? He'd remember, just ... as ... as ...
He blinked suddenly. What the hell was he doing, staring at nothing,
when he was supposed to be finishing off Shiro's morning report? He
glanced at his terminal, and frowned. Entry logs? What was he looking
at those for? He shook his head impatiently, and reached out to clear
the display --
A name on the list leaped out at him. A name he recognised.
He frowned again. What the hell was ...? He tapped on the screen and
brought up a more detailed display. Entry date and time ... exit date
and time ... Now that _was_ odd. What was going on here? He hesitated
for a second, then got up. He thought he might check this personally.
He caught the elevator down to the records floor, three levels
underground. Through two separate security checkpoints. And into the
central filing office. There should have been nobody here, at this
hour. But one of the terminals was busy. He recognised the person
sitting in front of it.
"Mitsukai!" he exclaimed. "What _are_ you doing here?"
She glanced up for a fraction of a second. "Checking records," she said
tersely.
"No, really?" He had to grin. "The logs say you've been here since
yesterday afternoon. What's Hiiro got you working on this time?"
With a sigh, she sat back from the terminal. "Go away, Midori," she
told him. "I'm busy."
"You're always busy." Midori's eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't be in here
at HQ if Hiiro didn't think he wasn't onto something big. But he hasn't
filed a report on it, so he's playing it close to his chest ... as
usual." His tone became acid for a moment. "So what is it?"
"Midori --" she began. But at that moment, one of the doors into the
record stacks burst open, and a man Midori didn't recognise came in,
staggering under the weight of two large boxes of paper files.
"Got them," the man panted, putting the boxes down with a gasp. He
wiped his brow, looked up at Mitsukai, and caught sight of Midori. "Who
are you?" he asked.
"Midori," said Midori crisply. The man looked tired. Had he been here
all night, too? "And you are ...? No, let me see some ID, please."
The man rummaged through his pocket, pulling out a card. "Midori?" he
said, sounding puzzled. Then he laughed. "Now I remember! You're my
uncle Tomiji!"
"I'm your --?" Midori stared at the card. [Kitada Masao?] Then he,
too, remembered. He grinned. "Well, well. Still with us, then,
Kitada-san?"
"Sure ... no thanks to you."
"Now, now." Midori thought back. Yes, perhaps he _had_ given the man a
hard time. "I told you it could be a couple of weeks or more."
Kitada snorted. "Quite a lot you _didn't_ tell me, though, wasn't
there?"
"Think of it as on-the-job training," Midori told him blandly. "And
speaking of jobs ... what have you two been doing down here all night?"
Kitada glanced at Mitsukai. (Midori nodded to himself. Kitada seemed
to be becoming part of the team. Just as well, if his mission was going
to be an extended one.) After a few seconds, Mitsukai sighed, and
nodded.
"We're looking up backgrounds, property records, anything we can, on a
place called the Olympus Gymnasium," Kitada said. "Captain Aoiro is
over at the "I" Division offices, searching the records there."
Belatedly, Midori noticed the other boxes of documents that were piled
up around the walls of the room. Kitada and Mitsukai had been at work
for some time, all right. The filing staff were going to want to kill
them. He raised his eyebrows, amused. "An old building, I take it?" he
asked. Otherwise all the records would have been in electronic form.
Then, suddenly, he remembered where he'd heard of the Olympus. And what
Kitada had been activated for.
"Wait a minute!" he burst out. "You're on that lost-cat case! What on
earth are you still working on that for, after two weeks! And why do
you have to check _property_ records, of all things?"
"The lost cat?" Kitada said. "Right. I'd almost forgotten about that.
No, Captain Hiiro wants us to look into connections with the Sankaku
clans."
"Sankaku!" Midori stared, his full attention suddenly focused on
Kitada. "Oh, hell! What would they be doing with -- no, never mind,
let me give you a hand there ..."
He grabbed one of the boxes Kitada had brought in. "Olympus Gymnasium,
you said? What date range are you looking for?" he asked Mitsukai. She
told him, and he began to leaf through the box. Kitada started on the
other box. "Why hasn't Hiiro reported it, if there's a Sankaku link?"
Midori demanded as he worked.
"The connection is unproven," Mitsukai said softly. She had turned back
to her terminal, and was working away there once more.
"Some people came to visit the owner yesterday," Kitada said helpfully.
"Captain Kuroi recognised one of them as Sankaku."
"Pretty brazen of them. Typical. And Hiiro wants everything wrapped up
neatly before he lets headquarters take a sniff, as usual, I suppose?
That figures."
He heard Mitsukai sigh, but of course she did not reply. That wasn't
surprising. He'd known her for a long time, and she almost never spoke
when she could help it. She simply wasn't interested in people; it was
data, words on paper, and by extension in computers, that she related
to. She'd started in 'S' Division in the records section, and it had
been a sad day for them when she'd left; but she'd helped Hiiro break a
major case, a couple of years ago, and he pulled her out into field
work. Unexpectedly, she seemed to be working out pretty well in Hiiro's
team; the man did know how to handle his people. Of course, he had an
advantage, though he probably didn't know it --
"Hello," he said, flipping through a sheaf of papers, loosely clipped
together, that had been buried half-way down the box. "This looks
interesting."
"What?" Kitada leaned over his shoulder.
"A copy of a property transfer record." He frowned at it. "There's
almost nothing here. Lots of legal gibberish ... financial statements
... receiver name of Pappadopoulos Itsuko." He stumbled over the name.
"There's a file number," he added, turning to the last page. "Mitsukai,
you should be able to look that up." He read the number out.
"Right," Mitsukai said, typing it in. The response flashed up almost
immediately. "That's better," she said, sounding pleased.
"We tried this before, yesterday afternoon," Kitada told Midori. "But
we only got a not-found indicator. What was that filing number again?"
Midori read it out once more. "Right. Two of the digits have been
transposed. That's why the computer couldn't find it." He stared at
the page for a moment longer. "She's owned the building since 4179?" he
muttered. "Boy, she's older than she looks."
"Never mind that," Midori said impatiently. "Let's see what you were
looking for." Now it was their turn to look over Mitsukai's shoulder as
she paged through the data.
"Oho," said Mitsukai suddenly, halting the scroll.
"What?" said Midori. He read a few lines, and then laughed suddenly and
said "Oho" himself.
"What?" said Kitada plaintively.
"It looks like it could have been a false alarm," Midori said. "It
seems that Pap -- er, Pappadopoulos bought the building from the Hoseki
Property Group."
"Yes, and?" said Kitada patiently.
"Oh. Sorry. Well, they're owned by one of the Sankaku clans, all
right. But they're mostly legitimate. Occasionally some very minor
money-laundering operations, no more. We keep an eye on them, but
that's about all."
"So," Kitada said slowly, "her contact with them may be perfectly
innocent?"
"Could be," Midori agreed. "Of course, it's odd that they'd come
calling on her eleven years after she bought the building --"
"No," said Mitsukai. "She had a break-in last night."
"So? Oh! And --" Midori pointed to the screen again. "There. Her
security contract is through Hoseki." He blinked. "A break-in? It
wasn't you, was it?"
"Er, no," said Kitada, flushing. "It was Captain Aoiro, actually."
Midori laughed. "Sounds like one of Hiiro's operations all right,"
he said. "Well, I expect you can probably relax again now --"
His comm chimed suddenly. He looked down at it, puzzled, then glanced
at his watch ... and squawked, realising the time. "I've got to head
back upstairs," he told them hastily, heading for the door. "Good luck
with your, er, lost cat."
"Hey!" shouted Kitada after him. "What are we looking for that damn
cat _for_, anyway?"
He paused for a moment, looking back. "If you ever find out," he said
fervently, thinking of all the effort and money that had been poured
into the search over the last weeks, "I'd be most grateful if you'd tell
me."
Then he closed the door behind him and sprinted for the lift. Colonel
Shiro was not going to be pleased with him.
--**--
Masao pulled out his own comm and called Hiiro. "We found the records,
sir," he said. "Apparently Pappadopoulos-san bought the building from
the, um, Hoseki Property Group --"
"Damn," said Hiiro's voice. "Another goddam red herring."
"Er, apparently," Masao said, a little uncertainly. "Lieutenant Midori
said the contact with them was probably perfectly innocent --"
"Midori? What the hell was he doing, butting into my case --" Hiiro
sighed. "Oh, well. It doesn't matter. He's right. We'll still keep
an eye on Pappa-san, just in case -- I don't trust coincidences, not
ones this big -- and I'll get some extra coverage put on Hoseki. But I
think we can relax again, for now. You and Mitsukai can go and get some
sleep, Kitada. Well done."
"Er, thank you." [Pappa-san?] Masao thought. He managed to stifle a
laugh.
"I'm getting a little suspicious of that girl, Aizawa Ochiyo. She was
in a position to have put that lost-pet poster up, and it disappeared
pretty quickly after you asked her about it. And Aoiro was right, last
night; she could be the one Artemis is interested in. I want you to
start checking up on her tomorrow."
"Yes, sir." Masao hesitated, then said, "Sir? I asked Lieutenant
Midori about the lost-cat search. He doesn't know why we're doing it
either."
"Doesn't surprise me. This order came from pretty high up, I think."
"Right." Masao closed the connection, frowning. It had only been two
weeks, but he'd already learned that those orders were usually the worst
ones.
--**--
Midori rode up in the elevator, trying to think of a good excuse to give
Colonel Shiro. He was already half an hour late for the morning
briefing. It wasn't going to look good.
Still, it had _felt_ good to actually get his hands on some case-work,
for a change. He smiled. He'd been stuck in headquarters for entirely
too long. Maybe he should request a transfer.
As he thought about poring through the records again, for some reason he
had a sudden memory of --
(A tall woman with green hair)
-- He shook his head. It didn't make any sense. He'd never met anyone
like that. Had he?
****************
Several days passed. After the excitement of Monday night, it was
almost a let-down. There were times when Dhiti could almost believe
that it had been a dream. But she had her communicator; that was real.
(Though as a watch, it seemed to run a little fast.) And she had her
henshin stick.
Oh, and she had the computer. That thrice-damned computer. She had
never cared for the things much; they made her nervous. But this one
seemed as though it were deliberately out to get her.
It was a bewildering machine to start with. When she finally dared turn
it on (it started instantly, without any long boot-up sequence), she was
presented with a positively daunting array of screens, windows, icons,
displays, menus, and little moving objects that she had no name for.
There was a keyboard, but the keys were tiny, and laid out in a strange
order, and some of them had symbols she didn't recognise. There was a
device that she eventually worked out she could use as a cursor; but
sometimes it did other things as well, and she could not predict when it
would behave one way and when another. Nothing worked the way she
expected. Nothing seemed to make any sense at all.
(On Wednesday night, in despair, she called Miyo and got her to ask
Artemis if there was a manual for the thing. Miyo said Artemis had just
laughed.)
-- She made some progress, eventually. After two days, she accidentally
discovered that the screen was touch-sensitive, and suddenly a whole
range of things started to make a dim kind of sense. She found that she
could, slowly and hesitantly, find her way around the system. She was
on top of it at last, she thought triumphantly. Then it pulled another
fast one on her. Just when she was beginning to feel confident that she
could find something, it _changed_ -- suddenly the displays were laid
out differently, and doing the same set of actions produced completely
different results. She had to start out from scratch, all over again.
At least it didn't take her as long this time; but the changes kept
happening, apparently at random. On Friday night, after she discovered
how to access the sensory and analysis routines, she practised starting
them up several times over (remembering Artemis' comments about
analysing the crystalline monster). But the fifth time she tried to
launch them, they weren't there any more. She eventually found them
again, in a completely different location. After another three
attempts, they shifted again. It was maddening.
On Saturday morning she woke up -- after a totally inadequate night's
sleep -- with a sudden inspiration. There _was_ a system to the
changes. The machine was _learning_. Or trying to, at any rate. It
was shifting options around to try and make them more convenient for
her. And when she continued to try and find them the old way, both of
them were getting confused ...
She tried it out and it worked. Gradually, things started to make
sense. And just as gradually, she began to feel a little grudging
respect for whoever had programmed it. The damn machine was an
intelligence test. Non-geniuses need not apply.
Fortunately her self-image had always been very high.
She couldn't stop grinning when she got to school that morning. (Kin
and Miyo teased her about it unmercifully, and she was in such a good
mood that she almost forgot to make some cutting remarks in return.)
Then she fell asleep in class, got woken up by the sensei, and was
brought back to reality in a hurry. Thank goodness Saturday was only a
half-day.
When she got home, she looked at the computer and decided the hell with
it. She needed an afternoon off.
--**--
She wandered cheerfully down the street. Her mother had announced that
she was going shopping, and on impulse Dhiti had decided to go along.
She wasn't planning on buying anything, but a little window-shopping
never hurt anybody, and she felt she needed to get out of the house.
Stopping in front a music shop, she peered through the window
thoughtfully. The trumpet lessons a few months ago had been a dead
loss; it seemed to take forever to develop an embouchure and she didn't
have the patience. But she did want to be able to play something. She
wondered how long it took to pick up the flute. That didn't look too
hard.
On impulse, she opened the shop door and started to step inside --
Not far away, somebody screamed.
Dhiti looked around, startled. A woman was running out of a nearby
shop. She looked terrified. Somebody holding the place up? She heard
a crashing sound, then the sound of glass shattering. More people ran
out of the shop. What was going on?
Then she heard a roar, and finally realised that this might be a job for
... well, for her.
The street was quiet; not too many people around. Good. She went to
take a cautious glance through the shop window -- and was stopped by a
hand on her shoulder.
"Stay back!" her mother hissed. "Come away! You don't know what's
happening in there!"
"That's what I wanted to find out," she protested. She was interrupted by
more shouts, and a long, tinkling, smashing sound. "Um, maybe not.
Maybe we should get out of here ..."
"That," her mother said mildly, "sounds like a better idea." They made
their way away from the shop in some haste. So were most other people,
Dhiti noticed. That would help.
When they reached the corner, her mother stopped to look back. Dhiti
managed to slip away. She felt a twinge of guilt -- okaasan would be
worried -- but she had a feeling this was more important.
There was an alleyway that ran down behind the row of shops. She ducked
into it and headed back toward the ruckus. When she reached the place
that all the noise was coming from, she tried the rear door cautiously.
It opened and she slipped inside.
She found herself in a small room at the rear, curtained off from the
main body of the shop. She lifted a corner of the curtain and peeped
around it.
She almost laughed involuntarily.
It was a dressmaker's shop, and two woman were being chased around and
around the central display by what appeared to be an enormous animated
dressmaker's dummy. It would have been hysterical if they hadn't looked
so terrified. There was a third woman, ducked down behind a number of
bolts of cloth, watching; but she seemed safe enough for now. Dhiti
tried to work out what to do. Should she call for help, or ...?
As she watched, one of the women being chased snatched up a pair of
scissors and threw them at the dummy. They bounced off its padded torso
with a ringing sound, and the dummy roared in reply.
-- Wait a minute. What kind of padding made a ringing sound when you
hit it? That dummy wasn't padded at all; it must be as hard as --
She opened her communicator and called Miyo.
--**--
The third woman in the shop, the one crouched down watching the action,
was getting bored. This wasn't working at all. She'd known it was a
bad idea from the start, but she'd had no choice but to obey.
She sighed, watching the dummy swipe at one of the other women and miss.
This wasn't just a bad idea; it was silly. She'd give it another five
minutes, then give up and leave. The hell with her orders.
Then the curtain at the rear of the shop opened, and a Senshi leaped
through. Number Twelve sat up suddenly. [Well, what do you know? It
worked.]
--**--
"I am the miraculous Sailor Mercury," she declaimed, enjoying herself
immensely. "And on behalf of the eponymous orb, I will discombobulate
you!"
The women being chased stopped to stare at her. No reaction from the
dummy, though. Bother. She'd hoped she'd at least confuse it. Instead
it turned and started toward her. Uh-oh, that's not so good.
Never mind. This thing was much smaller than the monster last Tuesday.
It should be a snap. She raised her hands, took aim, and shouted, "ICE
SPEAR!"
The bolt took it squarely in the middle of its chest, and shattered in a
blinding cloud of ice crystals. When the cloud cleared away --
The thing was still coming, apparently undamaged, and was only a couple
of metres away. She yelped, ducked under its swing, and rolled. The
dummy's fist struck the wall and went straight through. Hey, that was a
brick wall! All right, maybe she'd underestimated it a little.
"Get out of here!" she shouted to the other women, who were still
standing around gawking. She saw them start to move, and directed all
her attention back to the dummy.
[Go for the third eye. That worked last time.] Always nice to have a
system. She took aim, and --
This thing didn't _have_ a third eye! It didn't even have a face,
actually. It occurred to Mercury that she might just be in a bit of
trouble here. But hey, didn't she specialise in getting into trouble?
She ducked another swing. All right, make that a _lot_ of trouble.
She tried the Ice Spear again, hoping to at least throw it off-balance.
No luck. Surely it must have a weak point somewhere? It was fast, but
not too agile. How much weight was there behind those blows? [Damn,
that computer might be useful after all. If I had time to use it ...]
She ducked past it, and tried kicking it. That actually rocked it,
surprising her. [How strong am I, anyway?] But her foot felt as if
she'd kicked a brick wall.
She leaped back, putting a little space between her and the dummy.
[What do I do now? The Ice Spear won't touch it!] She'd been able to
punch holes in the other monster. This one seemed immune.
She let it chase her around the shop for a while, trying to think. It
was irritatingly difficult to try to plan under this kind of pressure,
she found. Let's see: it didn't seem too smart and all it did was come
after her and try to hit her. What good did that do, though? If her
attack didn't affect it ... hmm.
She picked up a bolt of cloth and threw it at the thing's legs. It
tripped up very nicely and hit the floor with a thunderous crash. She
stepped closer cautiously as it began to struggle to get up. The floor
hadn't broken, so it couldn't be _too_ heavy. She took careful aim, and
hit it with a point-blank Ice Spear right in the back of the neck. This
time, she was rewarded with a splintering sound, and a tiny crack
appeared, looking rather odd in what appeared to be foam padding. [All
right! As long as I hit it hard, from real close --]
The dummy lashed out, shockingly fast, as she positioned herself for
another shot. The blow caught her in the back of the legs, knocking her
flying across the shop. She shouted in surprise and pain. Then she hit
the wall, and she could no longer shout. For a few moments, she
couldn't even breathe.
She watched, helpless for the moment, as it awkwardly levered itself
upright again. [Scratched it,] she thought dismally through a mist of
pain. [All I did was scratch it.] It was coming toward her, and she
couldn't get up. Ice spears, what good were they? What she needed was
a weapon, something like a rocket launcher --
As the dummy raised its arm to strike, a bolt of lightning hit it in the
small of the back.
"Mercury!" shouted Jupiter, jumping to her side. "Are you all right?"
Mercury tried to grin. "Just dandy, thank you," she gasped. "I was just
catching a nap while I waited for you to arrive."
Jupiter didn't turn a hair, which was annoying. Instead, she helped her
up. Mercury was gratified to find that she _could_ stand. What was
less gratifying was to see that the dummy could also still stand.
Jupiter had knocked it down again, but it was still struggling to rise.
It was glowing from Jupiter's lightning bolt. Just like the last time.
"It's fast, but clumsy," Mercury said rapidly. "Very strong. My Ice
Spear hardly scratches it."
Jupiter nodded. "No third eye?" she inquired. Mercury flushed, but
shook her head. "Right," Jupiter went on, grinning. "My Supreme
Thunder did some damage. Keep back and try to distract it, and I'll see
if I can finish it off."
"Gotcha." Mercury's right arm and leg were stiff, and her back ached,
but at least she could move. She began to circle around, waving her
arms and shouting to attract the dummy's attention.
She succeeded too well, perhaps. The dummy ignored Jupiter completely
and made straight for her. She had to duck and roll again to avoid its
blows. As she did so, Jupiter hit it again. A roar of thunder; chips
of crystal burst out from the impact point of her Supreme Thunder. The
dummy rang like a bell. But it continued to ignore Jupiter and advanced
toward Mercury, a fist-sized hole gaping in its shoulder.
[Must be my charm,] she thought crazily. Charm or not, she was limping,
and the pain was slowing her down, and the dummy's blows were getting
closer and closer. Brute strength was all the monster seemed to have,
but that was starting to look like all it needed.
She jumped out of the way of another charge, spun to one side, stepped
back to allow space for Jupiter to attack again, then ducked, rolled ...
but she'd misjudged; this time there was only one way to roll, and when
she got up again, suddenly there was no way out.
"Hit it!" she shouted frantically to Jupiter. "Hit it!"
Jupiter hit it. Sparks flew; crystal splinters flew. And the animated
dummy ignored it all and followed Mercury.
She was caught. She was backed into a corner. The roof was too low to
jump over it, and if she tried to get around it she'd get caught in the
swathes of fabric. More lightning bolts smashed into the dummy, but as
usual it paid no attention. She readied herself for a desperate leap
down, between its legs, knowing she'd never make it --
Somebody shouted. A golden chain of love-hearts settled around the
thing's shoulders, and suddenly it was yanked back, and she was free.
Sailor Venus grunted with effort, yanked again. The dummy lurched back,
tottered, and fell once more. Venus released her chain with a gasp and
it vanished.
"Hi," she puffed. "Heard there was a party ... thought I'd invite
myself in."
It was a pretty good line, actually. Mercury memorised it for later
plagiarism. "Please," she returned, more than a little out of breath
herself. "Feel free. Any time."
"Thanks, I --" Venus stopped suddenly, her eyes flicking to something
over Mercury's shoulder. "Is someone else back there?" she said.
"What?" Mercury looked back toward the rear of the shop. To her
astonishment, she saw that the woman who'd been hiding behind the racks
of bolts of cloth was still there. She had something in her hands, and
she was --
-- Taking notes?
"A newsie," she muttered under her breath. Off to one side, Jupiter had
taken up a sentry pose over the fallen dummy, and was methodically
blasting it back down whenever it tried to rise. Things looked safe
enough, for now. Mercury started back toward the woman.
"What do you think you're doing there?" she demanded. The woman looked
up, startled. She turned pale as she saw Mercury coming toward her, as
if she was more afraid of the Senshi than of the monster, which was
patently ridiculous --
"Vitrimorph! Protect me!" she shouted, backing away from Mercury.
"What?" Mercury began. But at that moment the dummy exploded into
action behind her. If it had been moving fast before, now it was like
greased lightning. It rolled to one side, knocking Jupiter sprawling,
and whirled to its feet, showing none of the clumsiness it had displayed
earlier. It hurtled down the shop toward Mercury, who could only
stand there, staring at it, transfixed --
Venus yanked her out of the way just in time. The dummy thundered past
her, ignoring her completely, to where the woman was standing. It
reached out and, stupefied, Mercury saw it pick the woman up.
"Get me out of here," the woman snarled. The dummy obeyed instantly; it
swung around and bounded out of the shop into the street, carrying her
with it. Venus followed it; after a moment, so did Mercury and Jupiter.
"She was controlling it," said Mercury wonderingly.
"She still is," returned Jupiter, her expression grim. "You know, I
think I've seen that woman before, somewhere."
"Where?"
"I can't remember ..." Jupiter shook her head. "Never mind, it's not
important. If she's controlling that thing ... this could be trouble."
Out in the street, the dummy -- the 'vitrimorph'? -- set the woman down.
She looked back at the three Senshi, and shot them a venomous look.
"I'm leaving," she told it. "Kill them all."
She turned her back and fled.
"Yep," said Jupiter. "It's trouble."
The dummy launched itself toward them.
Mercury and Jupiter snapped off their attacks together. The combined
force spun it around, and disintegrated most of one arm. As before, it
didn't even seem to notice. It continued on, accelerating -- toward
Jupiter, this time. But they were outside now, with a lot more room to
manoeuvre in. Jupiter leaped high, evaded it -- and it turned,
instantly, and started for Venus.
[Did she ordered it to only attack me, before?] Mercury wondered. [I
wonder how that works ...]
And with that thought, finally, she remembered her computer.
The scanning functions were where she remembered them, thank goodness.
She started the scan, and instantly the screen came alive with data:
speed readings, mass figures, thermal graphs, tracking and targeting
sights (what?), a dozen other displays she couldn't identify. Almost at
random, she picked the thermal graphs. An oddly-hued image of the dummy
appeared. The colours swam as it moved, darkening, intensifying,
swirling like a pot of variegated, boiling goo. And yet ...
There _was_ a point, a single constant spot. A point where all the
constantly-shifting patterns came together. A centre around which all
the rest moved. It was like ... like ...
[Like a third eye,] she thought. An 'eye' that was right between the
shoulder-blades.
"Jupiter! Venus!" she shouted. "Keep it occupied! I know how to
take it down!"
The other two exchanged glances. Jupiter shrugged.
"No problem," said Venus.
Before Mercury's astonished eyes, she crouched down on all fours -- head
low, hindquarters up -- right in the monster's path, and _hissed_ at it.
Then she sprang.
It was a perfect jump, Mercury recognised absently. But there was
something eerie about it. It was smooth, graceful ... but not quite
human. Almost, well ... feline. Just what kind of training was Venus
getting, anyway?
[I don't think I could do that if I practised for a hundred years.]
Venus came down, head-first, straight for the dummy. At the last moment
she shot her hands out, caught it by the shoulders, flipped herself up
again, over, and came to a halt ... clinging to the dummy's back, her
legs wrapped around its waist. She began to buffet its head with both
hands.
The dummy stopped. It seemed confused. Mercury couldn't blame it. It
tried to reach back, pluck the girl from off its back ... and failed.
"It can't reach back!" Jupiter whispered. "Of course! Its arms can't
reach back far enough to touch her!"
It could have touched her legs, though, where she gripped its waist. But
it didn't even try. Perhaps it wasn't that smart, Mercury thought
vaguely. Or did it even have a brain at all? Was it alive?
"Better hurry," Venus called, her voice tight with strain. The dummy
was thrashing around, trying to dislodge her, and she was having
considerable difficulty staying on.
[Oh, right.] She told Jupiter what she had to do. The other senshi
nodded shortly. Then, raising her voice, she called, "What I say 'now'
get off it, fast!"
"Just ... get on with it ..."
"Three ... two ... one ... NOW!"
"SUPREME THUNDER!"
"ICE SPEAR!"
As the attacks shot out, she caught a brief, confused glimpse of Venus
leaping away. Then all sight was lost in the blaze, the burst of light
and the thunder, and the noise that sounded like a million crystal
goblets, all bursting at once ...
And when her vision finally cleared, they were alone in the street.
--**--
Venus joined them a few moments later. She was brushing at her hair,
and with each brush a cloud of tiny, glittering particles rose up.
Mercury gingerly patted her own hair.
"Careful," Venus said. "It's pretty sharp."
"Um, maybe I'll leave it until I can get a brush." Mercury studied
Venus wonderingly. "That ... was pretty impressive," she said after
a moment.
Venus shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," she said.
"You didn't do too bad yourself. Or you, obaasan," she added to
Jupiter, grinning.
"Now look --" began Jupiter heatedly.
"Obaasan?" said Mercury at the same moment.
"You should have heard her, last time. 'I've been doing this for
centuries, just stay out of my way.'" Venus snickered. "You move
pretty good for an old lady, Jupiter-sama."
"Hey, I said I was sorry! What do you want, blood?"
"Now, now," soothed Mercury. "Calm down. We're all friends here,
right? I'm sure she didn't mean to be insulting ... obaasan."
The two of them shared a giggle as Jupiter spluttered helplessly.
Mercury had the feeling that she was going to like Venus a lot. Just as
soon as they sorted out who was the comedian and who was the straight
man, of course.
"How did you know to come here, anyway?" asked Mercury curiously. "You
don't have your communicator yet."
"My what? No, I was out window-shopping with Bendis, and we heard a
noise. She said we'd better take a look."
"Bendis?" said Jupiter sharply, looking interested. "She's here? I've
been wanting to meet her. Artemis keeps dropping these funny hints, but
he won't say much about her."
Venus looked thoughtful. "That's funny. Bendis is just the same way
..." She looked around. "She was here when I went inside ... oh,
there!"
She ran over to a narrow gap between two buildings, reached down, and
returned a moment later holding a squirming ball of fur. "Everyone,
this is Bendis. Bendis, Jupiter and Mercury."
"Let me go, you idiot!" the ball of fur spat. It straightened out and
leaped to the ground as she loosened her grip, and became a small tabby
cat with a curious white circle on its forehead. It looked up at
Mercury and Jupiter and said nervously, "Er ... konnichi wa."
"Konnichi wa," Jupiter said back gravely. "We've been hearing about
you from Artemis."
"You -- you have?" The cat sounded miserable; actually, she looked as
though she wanted to be anywhere but here. [Cat?] Mercury thought.
[She doesn't look much more than a kitten.]
"What's the matter with you?" asked Venus suspiciously. "You sound like
somebody's died, or something."
"Shut up!" the cat shouted. "You don't know what you're --" She wilted
suddenly, glancing up at Jupiter. "Gomen," she muttered.
Jupiter stared down at her, perplexed. Mercury opened her mouth to
speak -- but forgot what she was about to say as her computer bleeped.
She looked down at the screen, surprised. She'd forgotten to shut down
the scanning program before, she saw. And now it was showing --
"Someone's watching us," she said, incredulous. "Someone -- no, wait,
some_thing_ ... something big, just over that way ..."
She looked up, along the street. The others followed her gaze. For
several seconds, they saw nothing: an empty street, buildings, the
background of the city ... and then, slowly, it glided out into view.
An Opal.
"It's 'P' Division," said Jupiter, sounding relieved. "About time the
police arrived."
"What?" said Bendis, sitting up straight. "Oh, no ..."
"What's the matter?" asked Mercury.
"We've got to get out of here," the cat said urgently. "Be -- I mean,
Venus, come on. We have to leave!"
Venus picked her up obligingly, saying, "What's the rush? I mean,
they've seen all of us before --"
"It's _me_ I don't want them to see! Come on! Hurry!"
Venus glanced at the other two. "Um --"
"Don't worry," Jupiter said. "Past time we left anyway. Let's go,
huh?"
They ran out of the street. Venus, in the lead, jumped up onto the roof
of a building and began to leap across from building to building.
Mercury stopped, taken aback; but Jupiter followed without hesitation,
and after a moment Mercury tried it herself. It turned out to be easier
than it looked, though she found she had to be careful with her
landings.
It did not take long to put some distance between themselves and the
battle site. After a couple of minutes Venus stopped to let the other
two catch up. "Now," she was saying to Bendis as Mercury came to a halt
beside her, "what was that all about?"
"Look," whispered Bendis. They looked back.
The Opal was only a few hundred metres behind them.
"It's following us!" Jupiter gasped. "What the -- what do they think
they're doing?"
"Let's lose them, then!" said Venus. "Come on, this way!"
She took off once more: heading toward the central district, Mercury
soon realised. But surely more people would see them there? It was
late afternoon, but there was still plenty of light to see by.
It took her a few minutes to realise what Venus had in mind. The taller
buildings further downtown gave them more cover, more places to hide.
They could play hide-and-week here for hours, if need be. The Opal
didn't have a chance.
They stopped for breath some time later. And when they looked up, the
Opal was hovering right behind.
Slowly it became a nightmare. No matter what they did, they could not
lose it. Even when they descended to ground level, ran into a hotel
foyer -- startling a number of guests and staff -- and out through the
kitchen doors at the rear, it was unshakable.
It made no offensive moves. It took no action at all that they could
see. But wherever they went, it was there. As if it had some kind of
device that pointed them out, wherever they went. Transforming back out
of their Senshi forms might have foiled it, but none of them were
prepared to risk it. Not when they were being watched.
"We've got to split up," panted Mercury at last. She was on the school
running team, but she was a sprinter, not a long-distance slogger, and
she was nearly exhausted. She could not keep going much longer. "It
can't follow all of us at once."
"No!" gasped Jupiter, her chest heaving. "We stick together!" They had
stopped on a narrow ledge half-way up a twelve-story building. Jupiter
was slumped down, her legs, hanging over the edge. The Opal hung in the
air, almost within stone's throw.
"She's ... right," wheezed Venus. She had been leaving against the side
of the building, trying to catch her breath; but now she stood up once
more. "Let me go first. I have ... an advantage here."
"What --?" began Jupiter. But before she could finish her sentence,
Venus raised her hands and shouted.
"VENUS LOVE-ME CHAIN!"
The chain leaped out and caught on a cornice of a building a little way
off across the street. Venus followed it, leaping off the ledge and
swinging away in a long, flat arc. She disappeared around a corner and
vanished.
"Show-off," Jupiter said, getting up with a groan. "Come on, let's go."
They jumped down to the roof of the next building, a couple of floors
below --
--**--
The new sensor suite that had been installed in the Opal was behaving
perfectly. They had been able to follow the trio without a hitch. But
now, finally, they had split up. The 'S' Division officer piloting the
Opal punched in the commands to track the girl who'd swung away, and
prepared to follow the two who'd stayed together --
Dividing the tracking functions was the signal.
Inside the black box that was bolted to the floor of the Opal -- the
heart of the new sensor system -- was a computer chip that wasn't
supposed to be there. A chip that had been substituted for the correct
one, five days before. Now, responding to the required stimulus, it
began to send out a new set of commands. They were routed to almost
every component in the Opal within three microseconds. Then the chip
erased itself and went dead.
The pilot cursed as her control board lit up red. Suddenly nothing
worked. She wrestled with the inevitable for some time, but she really
didn't have a chance. The sabotage had been impeccably planned.
The Opal hit the ground a few seconds later, with a long, rending scream
of metal. All the officers on board were mysteriously unhurt, but the
new sensors were a complete write-off.
--**--
Jupiter and Mercury watched the crash, dumbfounded.
They hung around for a few minutes to see if anyone needed help. But
everyone seemed to have made it out unscathed. The two Senshi gave up,
detransformed, and went home.
****************
"I don't understand," Beth protested. "Why would the police have been
chasing us?"
It had been a short, quiet trip home after all. The Opal hadn't
followed them; it must have stayed with Jupiter and Mercury. Bendis
wasn't too worried; if Jupiter was really Lady Kino reborn, she'd have
gotten herself and Mercury out all right, somehow.
Now, safely ensconced in her bedroom, with her parents watching the
viddy in the living room, the girl had to go getting curious. That
could be tricky. Bendis concentrated on looking relaxed.
"How should I know?" she said innocently.
"Oh, come on ... it's not the first time you've gotten all weird about
Opals, either."
"I --" Bendis hesitated, but for once the girl would not back down.
Still, it wasn't a _big_ secret, anyway. "I think it was me they were
chasing," she said reluctantly.
Beth blinked. "_You_? Why? How?"
"Well, ahh, the Serenity Council, um, sort of ... knows about me."
Embarrassed, Bendis began to wash herself furiously. That was supposed
to be a signal to change the subject; but the dratted girl simply waited
patiently, and at last Bendis had to continue. "One of them heard me
talking," she admitted.
"Which one?" Beth asked, interested.
"What?" Bendis was caught by surprise. "I don't know! It was dark!
Anyway, I was concentrating on the fish -- ahh, that is, I was
concentrating on ... oh, never mind," she said, exasperated. "Anyway,
he heard me talk. After that, there were Opals after us all the time.
Artemis thought it was just a coincidence," she added with a snort.
"Shows what _he_ knows."
Beth frowned in thought. "I suppose the Council _would_ be interested
in you," she said judiciously. "What's so bad about that?" Then
another thought occurred to her. "They must be interested in me, too.
And Jupiter and Mercury. I mean, they say they're running things until
the Queen returns, right? Maybe we should go and talk to them, or
something."
"What?" Bendis was shocked. "No! Are you crazy?"
"Well, why not?" asked Beth logically.
"Because -- because -- well, just because!" The cat turned her back on
her, her whiskers bristling angrily.
"I mean, surely they have a right to know?" insisted Beth. "Maybe
that's why that Opal was getting so creepy. Because they couldn't find
us any other way."
"I doubt it," Bendis said darkly. Then she sighed. "All right. I'll
... I'll talk it over with Artemis. Don't do anything until then, all
right?"
"You'll talk to Artemis!" said Beth, excited. "Really? When? Can I
come too?"
"No!" the cat snapped. "I ... don't see Artemis very often. We're kind
of operating independently for now. I'll bring it up the next time I
see him."
"When's that?" she prodded.
"Mind your own business," Bendis said rudely. Then, seeing the look on
Beth's face, she said hastily, "No, wait. I'm sorry. I ... that is ...
look, just don't push it, all right? It'll probably be a while before I
see him next. I'll ... I'll let you know, I promise."
Beth's hurt expression didn't change. With an inward sigh, she got up
and went and butted her head against the girl's arm. That didn't work
either, and finally she lay down in Beth's lap and started purring. (The
infuriating part was how good she felt there.) Finally, she felt Beth's
hand on her back, stroking gently, and relaxed. Another situation
defused ... for now.
Later, they lay in bed together: Beth lying on her side, wrapped around
her pillow, and Bendis curled up comfortably against the small of her
back. She wasn't quite sure when she'd gotten into the habit of
sleeping like that. It was almost perverse, really: sleeping with a
human. Best not to think about it, perhaps. Fortunately Beth didn't
usually move much in her sleep.
She heard the girl stir, and flicked one eye open. "Bendis? Are you
awake?" Beth said softly.
She sighed. "What do you want?"
"Why were you acting so weird before, when I introduced you to the other
Senshi? It was almost like you were afraid of them."
More like, she'd been afraid of what Artemis might have told them. But
she couldn't say that. "You told me that Sailor Jupiter is Lady Kino
reborn. And, well, I never met any of the original Senshi, remember.
Meeting her was ... was like ..." She let her voice trail off
suggestively. It was even true. Like meeting a living legend.
"Oh." A silence fell again. Bendis began to drift back toward sleep.
Then she heard Beth chuckle softly.
"What _now_?"
"Oh, it's just ... when we were leaving, right after we killed that ...
monster thing ... I saw Iku in the next street. She almost saw another
Senshi fight."
"Yes? So?"
Another chuckle. "I was just thinking what Nanako would have said. She
hasn't seen us at all yet, except on the viddy."
"Go to sleep, Beth."
****************
"That's what she said?" asked Artemis sharply. "'It seemed like a good
idea at the time'?"
"Yes," said Dhiti, puzzled at his insistence. "Why? What's the
matter?"
Artemis shook his head slowly. "I don't like it," he said, almost to
himself. "That, and this acting-like-a-cat business. It's the sort of
idea Bendis would come up with, all right, but for a human to be going
along with it ..."
"You think she's going to have problems?" asked Miyo.
"I think she's going to get herself seriously hurt before long," said
Artemis bluntly.
"Are you sure? I mean, she does seem to have a certain ... gymnastic
ability," Dhiti offered.
"So do you, in your Senshi form. You could probably do what she does,
if you tried."
"I wouldn't dare," said Dhiti faintly.
"Right, and that's the problem. Those stunts today, and the ones I've
seen her do on the viddy ... Venus doesn't seem to consider the
consequences of what she does before she does it." Artemis sighed. "Or
... I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into this. But I'm
worried about what Bendis is doing with her ..."
"What kind of damage can she do?" said Miyo. "She's not much more than
a kitten. She seemed very quiet when we met her. Shy. Pretty kawaii,
actually."
Artemis gave her an odd look. "This _is_ the same Bendis we're talking
about?" he asked.
"Oh, come on. I'm sure you're exaggerating. She can't be that bad."
"No. No, right ... of course not. She's not that bad. How could she
be? She's a perfect angel, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She's
... kawaii." Artemis growled, deep in his throat. "Give me strength."
Dhiti cleared her throat noisily. "About this monster we met," she
said suggestively.
"Oh, right. A ... what was it? 'Vitrimorph.' Can't say I've ever
heard that one before." Artemis cocked his head. "Did your scans
show up anything interesting?"
"Uh ..." Dhiti flushed. "I haven't had a chance to look yet," she
said. Honesty made her add, "I'm not sure what to look _for_, really."
"Well ... try, anyway. Anything would help. Mm ... I'm interested in
this woman who was controlling the thing, too. You didn't notice
anything in particular about her?"
"She looked familiar, somehow," Miyo offered. "But I can't place her."
"Dhiti, I don't suppose you got a picture of her on your computer?"
Dhiti shook her head. "Ah, well. Keep it in mind, next time."
"I did have other things to think about, you know," Dhiti retorted.
"Yes, but ... oh, you know what I mean! I need some information here!
And that's supposed to be your speciality."
"So sorry," Dhiti snapped. "Next time I'll just prance around playing
with my computer and throwing shabon sprays, shall I?"
"Hey, calm down," interjected Miyo. "We're all supposed to be friends
here, right?"
Dhiti snorted. "I've heard that somewhere before, today," she observed.
"Isn't that right ... obaasan?"
"Dhiti ..." Miyo began in a warning tone. Then, unexpectedly, she
chuckled. "Sorry," she said. "I just had a mental picture of you ...
dancing around, throwing shabon sprays." She snickered again. "You're
no Ami, that's for sure ..."
She stopped suddenly. Her face went white.
"No, you're not, are you?" she whispered.
--**--
"What's the matter?" Dhiti asked.
It gave her the creeps, sometimes, when Hayashi had her memory spasms,
remembering past lives back when she was one of King Tut's handmaidens
or something. It made her wonder if this was what being a Senshi was
all about; if someday she'd be doing this too. It was enough to make
her want to run for her life.
But in a way, it was kind of cool, too. The idea that she was a friend
of someone who had actually _been_ there: back in the glory days. Dhiti
was interested in history -- the only subject at school she bothered to
do well at -- but Miyo _was_ history. And she was also fun to be
around, most of the time.
Friendship was confusing, sometimes.
"Hayashi?" she tried again. "What's wrong?"
Miyo looked up slowly, blinking. "What? Oh, sorry. No, it's ... it's
nothing. Sorry. I just thought of something, that's all." She gave a
wan smile. "What were we talking about? That Opal that chased us?"
"Um, no," Dhiti told her. ['Nothing'? Sure it is.] "Actually --"
"Good point, though," put in Artemis. "I was going to ask about that.
Did you get a good look at it? Was it a regular 'P' Division Opal?"
"What other kind is there?" asked Dhiti, momentarily distracted.
"'W' Division has a fair number," Artemis replied. "They're usually
pretty clearly marked as military, though, and you don't often see them
inside the city. 'R' Division has a few, for traffic monitoring and so
forth. Oh, and 'S' Division has a number; but you can't tell those from
'P' Division ones."
"Oh. Well, this looked like an ordinary police one to me."
"Hmm. Most likely the Serenity Council is getting interested in you.
Bendis and I had a few close encounters with them, before."
"Oh? How close?"
"Not _that_ close. You have a dirty mind. Well ... the Council found
out Bendis existed, and after that we had Opals on our tails a few
times. Bendis always thought it was just a coincidence." He snorted.
"Shows what _she_ knows."
"Well, I guess they would be interested, wouldn't they?" pointed out
Dhiti. "Goes with the name."
Artemis hesitated. "Well, yes," he said reluctantly. "It's just that
... I don't know, there's something about them that bothers me, for some
reason. They always seem, well, just a little bit slimy to me."
"Isn't that how politicians are supposed to be?"
"Not when they name themselves after Queen Serenity, they aren't."
Artemis shook his head. "Anyway, it's beside the point. You girls have
a job to do. The last thing you want to do is go getting mixed up with
politics."
"Sounds good to me," Dhiti agreed. "Right, Hayashi?"
There was no answer.
"Hayashi?" Dhiti was getting seriously worried now. The tall girl was
turned half-away from her, her face partially obscured, but she almost
looked as if she --
"Hayashi? Are you listening? Hayashi?"
Still nothing.
"... Miyo-chan?"
Hayashi looked up finally. She looked miserable. "Oh!" she said,
making a dismal attempt to hide it. "Dhiti? I'm sorry ..."
Dhiti took her by the shoulders and shook her gently. "Hayashi, please.
Tell me what's wrong."
The taller girl shook her head, not answering. She looked like she was
actually on the point of tears. Dhiti felt afraid. She had never seen
Hayashi cry, never.
"I'm your friend," she said softly. "Please. Let me help."
"You can't help. No-one can help." Hayashi turned away. Her shoulders
were shaking. "It's ... it's nothing, it's silly. I ..."
"Tell me," Dhiti whispered.
"I ... was just remembering Ami. Lady Mizuno. I ... when you mentioned
shabon sprays, I was reminded, and ... and I suddenly realised. That
you're Sailor Mercury now. And that means she wasn't reborn." Hayashi
was crying now. "And I'm never going to see her again."
Dhiti felt cold. She didn't know what to say. Was she supposed to
apologise for living? And yet, Hayashi had just lost a friend. Had
just realised her loss, at least, even if it had actually happened long
ago. How did you try to comfort someone, when you were, in a way,
the one who was hurting them?
She lifted her hand, reached out to touch her arm. "Hayashi," she
began.
"Please ..." Hayashi took a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm sorry ...
but I ... I'd really like to be alone now ..."
Dhiti stared at her. [Let me help.] But how?
"Please."
Sometimes, no matter how good you were with words, there was simply
nothing you could say. Nothing at all.
--**--
"Makoto," said Artemis softly after Dhiti had gone.
"Don't _call_ me that," Miyo said through her tears. "I'm not Makoto.
I'm not Hebe. I'm Miyo. Just Miyo. I can't be ... can't be ..."
She could not continue. It had been right in front of her, all this
time, and she had refused to see it. How could she have done that?
What did it say about her, that she be so blind, so unwilling to see?
"Miyo, I'm so sorry. I thought you'd realised before now."
It had been easier to accept Minako's loss. She had never met the new
Venus, not then, and so she could treat it more impersonally, accept her
as a replacement. An unpleasant truth, but not an unexpected one. But
with Dhiti it was different. Dhiti was her friend; and so she had
closed her eyes. She had not wanted to see the truth, accept the
consequences. She had not wanted to face the facts.
The inescapable fact that a new Sailor Mercury, in this age, in this
way, meant the old one was gone.
She remembered her friend: solemn, studious Ami -- so quiet, so shy, and
yet always so quick, so dedicated -- so ready to sacrifice her own
dreams for the good of her friends ... It had been seven hundred years.
But it felt like yesterday. Yesterday.
"What about the others?" she asked, her voice shaking. "Rei, Hotaru,
Haruka, Michiru? What about Setsuna? What about ... what about
Princess Usagi?" She looked up at last, stared at him through puffy red
eyes. "Artemis, what if I'm the only one left? What if I'm the last?"
He was silent for a long time. As if he were debating something in his
mind.
At last he said, "Miyo, I want you to come with me."
"Leave me alone," she whispered.
"Miyo," he said insistently. "You have to come. It's important."
"Not NOW!" she shouted, clenching her fists. But the rage died away
almost instantly. "Go away," she said dully. "Just leave me alone."
"There's something I haven't told you."
That did catch her attention, in spite of herself. "Big surprise," she
muttered, not wanting to be distracted.
"Miyo, please. This is ... I think you need to see this. Please. Come
with me."
Unwilling, but still too depressed to put up much of a fight, she let
herself be argued into it. She washed her face, changed her clothes,
and left the house, carrying a canvas satchel with her at Artemis'
insistence.
They walked through the streets for some time. In spite of herself,
Miyo did begin to feel a little better. The fresh air, the breeze in
her face ... she still felt the loss. But it began to retreat.
They seemed to be heading downtown. "Where are we going?" she asked.
"You'll see," the sat said. "Just a couple more minutes now."
They continued on. Miyo knew this area, but she didn't come here often.
It was a trendy sort of district: full of upmarket cafes, boutiques and
salons ... the area you went to be seen. Miyo's tastes were more
traditional.
"That building up ahead," Artemis said in a low voice, waiting for a
moment when nobody was nearby.
She looked. "You're kidding," she said involuntarily.
"No. Now, listen. I'm going to have to ride in that bag you're
carrying. Don't go in the main door. There's an underground car park.
Head down there. Let me out when you get to the second level down."
Confused, but oddly expectant, she opened the bag and let him in. She
walked casually in through the carpark entrance. Nobody gave her a
second glance. But then, they must have girls her age coming in here
all the time.
She let Artemis out two floors below ground. He led her to a closed
door set at the rear of the level. There was a keypad on the wall next
to it. Artemis recited a number and, bemused, she punched it in. The
door opened to reveal a narrow staircase.
"Upstairs," Artemis said. "The third level. Try to keep quiet."
She followed him up four flights of stairs. The door at the top opened
with another keypad (and how did Artemis know these numbers?) and she
stepped out into --
Somebody's apartment?
"Artemis, what is this?" she hissed.
"Quiet," he muttered back. "Through here."
They went down a short passage and into a large room that looked like
somebody's office. As they went through the door Miyo stopped, looking
around. It was neat, tidy, almost fastidious. Windows filled most of
two walls. The rest of the walls were largely bare, though the few
decorations she could see looked expensive. The furniture looked
expensive, too. The desk at one end of the room --
There was a woman sitting at the desk. She was slim, attractive, her
close-cropped, spiky hair dyed a brilliant white. She looked up as
Artemis walked in, and frowned. Then, oddly, she reached under her
desk. Miyo heard a faint click.
"What are you doing here?" she asked the cat. "We weren't supposed to
meet again for three more days."
Miyo blinked. This woman knew Artemis?
There was something familiar about her voice.
"Something else came up," Artemis said casually. "There's someone here
who needs to see you."
"What?" The woman looked around quickly, and saw Miyo standing
hesitantly at the door. Her eyes widened.
"Damn it!" she cursed. "I told you no!"
"I'm sorry," Artemis said. "But I had to, Itsuko. She has to know."
Miyo stared at the woman. Her voice was so familiar. Where had she
heard it before? And the way she shouted at Artemis. And even her face
looked oddly --
She froze.
"Rei?" she whispered.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
S A I L O R M O O N 4 2 0 0
------------------------------------------------------------------------
E N D O F C H A P T E R S I X
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEXT: A reunion; a mysterious stranger; a new assault on the Senshi;
and an unexpected arrival.
Thanks to Sandy Drobic, my "Pre-Reader."
FFML Release draft: 3 August, 1998