Author's Note: This one-shot is a part of Everyone Wears A Mask universe. I am also writing a MC story with Michiru as the main character and as a prequel to this story. Hopefully, everyone enjoys this.
It's apart of the RLt's Fall Event: Collaboration.
Please read, enjoy, and review!
Thanks
- Neo
The sea clashed against the Earth. She couldn't see it nor hear it, but the quivering of her lips and the tension in her shoulders proved it to be true. Michiru could feel its anger, its turmoil, all of its emptiness fueling each wave striking Gotham Harbor. She could sense the world was changing, waiting to be taken to its executioner. It almost seemed so long ago when she would've fought to quiet the Earth's screaming tendency to warn her of the oncoming world's danger.
That day was different. The sea was pleading with her, clutching at her shadow, knowing the woman she once was and asking for her to come back. The guardian, the soldier, the Mother. Michiru gently placed her hands on the warehouse and sighed. Looking to the right, she could've sworn she could see Hotaru reaching out for her, her eyes begging for her to turn back.
I'm doing this for you, Hotaru-chan, she thought longingly. Staring at what she knew could only be a figment of her imagination, her eyes softened. My little girl...
It'd been so long since she last held her daughter in her arms. She often repeated Hotaru's final message to her phone, trying to keep the sweet child's gentle, calming voice tattooed in her heart forever. She could see the shadow of Hotaru's memory lips move.
There was no sound, but the green-haired woman had no doubt what she was saying. Michiru-mama, promise me that you'll never leave me. It was always the same thing, the same message repeated in her dreams, the same broken broken promise, the same question.
Her words repeated over and over. Always there. Michiru could remember holding her daughter in her arms, smiling - her entire body warm and for the first time, the world felt right. "'Mamas' never leave their baby fireflies, you know that."
She could remember her little girl wrapping her tiny body around her arm. The small child was sweating bullets and quivering as she cried into her chest. Hotaru-chan...
Why did my Papa hate me so much? What did I do wrong?
Michiru shook her head. This was no time for that. She was a sailor guardian on a mission. No need for distractions. Reaching out for her mirror, the violinist could hear the sounds of shuffling in the background and could feel the waves becoming even more sporadic than before.
Facing the moon, she placed the mirror directly under it's lunar light and smirked slightly. Papa came underprepared... only eighteen men with ten armed. Six have kryptonite and only two are armored.
Pop, pop, pop! The sound of gunshots roared down towards her. Michiru stood still and watched the mirror, her eyes never once leaving the mirror of truth. Bored, she looked around and waited to see the big one do as the mirror showed. He'd be the first to jump down and try to take her down.
Just as the image in the mirror showed, a large, muscular man standing at nearly eight feet tall, jumped down but before he could touch the ground, Michiru ran forward. Almost instantly, she appeared behind him, jumping onto his shoulders and twisting his neck with one hand.
She then grabbed onto his chin then lodged her heel into his back, and digging her high heel into his back, felt the sensation of warm liquid squirt back at her and slide down his body. Smiling, she kissed the back of his neck before then moving her lips close to his earlobe and purring, "If I wasn't in a hurry, I'd have a little more fun with you and your friends." She dug her heel deeper, waited until she felt the bone before then flipping the body over and into the wall behind her.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Shots blared through the air. Men hurled obscenities - words that Michiru was going to make sure would be their last. Glaring, she ran up the wall, the shots following behind her as she jumped to the left. With speed unmatched, she threw herself behind one of the gunmen, using his body as a shield, his blood splattering across her body.
Without much thought, she checked his pulse with her right hand and grabbed his knife with her other hand. Alive, but not for long, she thought as she cut his throat then dropped him from the high platform.
"Bitch, stand down!"
"You ain' nothin'!"
"The Joker got major bank for a hit on you!"
Shots were fired again. Michiru could sense their body boiling, their blood pressure rising, sweat dripping. Bullets shot in every direction as she created a hyperspace shield around her body, a blue light surrounding her - she was tempted to have each bullet returned but decided against it. Her body stiffened as she felt the coldness of a small hand touching her arm.
Mama, you're hurting. Please stop this. It won't stop the hurt... Hotaru's voice? No, she's dead... gone like the soul Michiru rejected... even so, Michiru needed this. She needed to hurt them all; she needed to etch the look in their eyes in their final moments. Michiru needed to know what Hotaru must've looked like when her mother failed to keep her promise to never leave her, to never stop protecting her.
She needed to hurt herself, wanted to destroy every inch of her soul; Michiru deserved to go to hell. The Guardian was locked in purgatory on Earth, torturing herself for neither knowing good or bad anymore. There was no more hurt... she was just living with a memory of how she failed the ones she loved more than anything else.
Mama, please stop!
Her eyes widened as she ran full speed towards the gunmen, taking them all out within seconds, then taking out the armored men right behind them. The six kryptonite holders jumped down and one in particular seemed proud that she hadn't killed them with the other twelve.
"Joker was right about keeping this green stuff on us." The man was smirking, tossing his baggy up, his entire body loose like a weak stool.
Michiru jumped down and smiled. "Papa always had a strange sense of humor." She giggled as she pulled a pen out of her purse as she walked closer to them. Moving closer to them, she could see the mirror of truth in front of her. Standing above it, she looked down, expecting to see a woman covered in blood, a person with eyes of a murderer, but instead - she saw something unexpected.
For a moment, a sincere smile came across her face. In the mirror, she saw herself hugging Hotaru with Haruka holding her toys, a hand rested on Michiru's shoulder with Setsuna smiling sweetly at the family that the four of them made together. In the mirror, she was smiling, happy, a mother who would do anything to protect her child.
Apparently, even the mirror can lie.
"Neptune Crystal Power, make up!"
[(Flashback: Sixteen Years Ago)]
"Papa, you lose." Michiru watched her father with undisguised tears. The game had gone for too long; she hadn't been strong enough to stop him before he went too far. Why didn't she see it before?
A smile spread across his cracked lips. Blood sheared down his lip and tore down his chest. "Ya think tha game is ova?"
"Papa," she whispered as she walked closer to him, staring at the mirror behind him and the toys that surrounded the room. "Please, make it stop." In the mirror, she could herself with bruises all over, one eye closed shut, lip swollen, her clothes ripped off of her after her father decided that she needed to learn 'respect.' He didn't mean it though... none of it.
"You did this to yaself!" he laughed. His eyes flicked with an excitement she didn't want to admit she'd seen. No, this wasn't her father. She was wrong about him - wrong to think he could kill an entire school of children. Michiru was wrong to think that her father was the man that the news nicknamed: "The Joker."
"Papa, I wanna go home..."
His eyes darkened. "I haven't finished here... ya know that!" Michiru knew what he was speaking of, but his obsession had taken over him. He needed help; she couldn't do this anymore. "That man, he stole you from me!"
"Papa, you're my father... no one can steal me away from you!" She screamed, watching his armed hand.
"The Batman, he refused to save my son... then, when I come home, he steals you away from me! He took your heart! He's playing me by using your heart!" He growled as he pulled the knife into the air, the light of the moon glaring it's light at the weapon. "Then, when I tried to get the chance to talk to him, he ignored me!"
"This isn't you..."
"He nearly let you die in that explosion.. he tried to make me lose two children that day.." Her father raged seemingly forgetting that he put the bomb in her private school, putting his own daughter in danger.
"This isn't you..." Michiru shook.
"I'm you.." Joker said, smirking. "You always said that." The psychotic glint in his eyes burning through the memory of Michiru. "Look out! This is who you'll be in the future!"
"We're not the same..."
At hearing her words, he stood up and ran forward, slashing through the air and attempting to cut her face. "You snotty little bitch! You're no better than me!" Michiru kept dodging but her father wouldn't let up.
"The police are on their way!" Michiru screamed, trying to get his attention while focusing on moving out the way of each attack. She needed to somehow save herself and him at the same time.
"Fine," the joker sighed with a laughed. "As a final round of cops and robbers, we'll play one more round..."
"No more!" Michiru hissed, glaring. "You lost! I told you that!" Her eyes widened as he took out a remote from his pocket.
"No hunty," he mocked, his eyes crudely staring at his daughter. "I win!" He raised the remote in the air and pressed the red button in the middle.
Michiru heard the sea screaming. She felt the ocean's waves pleading with her and more than that, she could hear the sounds of children and parents deathly hollers for mercy in her heart. For the first time in her life, she felt alive, knowing she had to protect them. A blue light shot out from her body and a pen appeared in the air. "Neptune Planet Power, Make Up!"
[(End Flashback)]
"It's jus' like the day you realized.."
Michiru scowled. It was her father's voice. "My father was a monster?"
Laughing, the Joker walked out from the shadows, walking over the dead bodies of his henchmen. "The day that you realized that Papa always has a backup plan."
Picking up her mirror artifact off the ground, Michiru aimed it at her father. The light reached him and rather than seeing an image of her father, the man who held her in his arms when she cried, the soldier who fought for his country despite being a wealthy man who needn't do such a thing, she saw an image of twelve year old self being held down on a bed. The image changed to her father laughing when she discovered her mother's dismembered head and how she screamed in fear.
She saw the man who claimed to love her but tried to destroy her dreams.
"You're just like my best friend..."
"The Batman?"
The Joker smiled as he walked closer to his daughter, his green hair matching her own and crude eye shape the same as his "little girl."
"How do you feel, little gul?"
Michiru kept the mirror facing her father, unable to shake away the images from her mind. She was gutted inside. Her father was living the life he wanted, being who he truly was, there was no struggle inside him about his actions. The smile on his lips were genuine and cruel, just as she remembered her last memory of him.
"Did you know today's Halloween, Michie?" He asked gingerly, a chuckle on his tongue, unescaping.
"The day of the dead, yes?" Michiru said nonchalantly, feeling tears bridge at her eyes.
"I wonder how many demons and spirits will fear what you've done..."
Michiru said nothing, but looked around, hoping to see Hotaru again. Nothing, just the scent of blood clouding the air. "You win, Papa."
"Looks like you're coming to your senses.."
"But you're wrong about one thing, Papa..."
"Oh?"
"I'm nothing like you..."
"You're every bit of me." He watched his daughter's tears stream down her cheeks. "The smile and all, the enjoyment of killing... you're every bit of me."
"I'm dead, Papa." Michiru bit her lip. "I don't know how to feel alive again."