Crash
By Reianna
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Sailor Moon, whether they be Shitennou or Senshi
Author's Note: I haven't written anything for a while, and I'm terribly sorry, but I'm making up for it by writing this story, which I swear I'll finish!
Chapter One: Saturday Morning Mayhem
I awoke to hear a shrill scream pierce the air around me effortlessly. My cobalt blue eyes snapped open at the sound, and it took a few moments of heavy, labored breathing to figure out the source of the horriible noise. My mother had been shrieking at my father. Again. They had done this a lot, lately. Although I couldn't decipher the words very well, I caught a few of them. No matter, for I knew the roots of their problems anyway. Money. It was always money. Ever since my duties as a Senshi had begun to interfere with my Sailor V modeling job, I had been slacking off lately, and had been canceling more of my photo shoots until I had just given up on them entirely. That was a month ago, and I sighed. My father had been working ridiculously hard as the co-exec fpr Rurouini Software since I had quit modeling, as I had pretty much been the person "raking in the dough" as the saying goes. I guess saving the world almost every day from power-hungry Youma was nothing in comparison to money. Not that I could tell my parents about my so-called "career." The way things were going, I doubted that they would apprecciate my risking my life for them, anyway. Or they would make me charge the world leaders for my services.
I chuckled at the thought, realizing that it would really had been funnier if it had it not been so true. My parents were real money-mongers these days.
The sound of something shattering on impact made me jump, and I realized that my
Suddenly, a white furball nudged my bedroom door open, and I looked down to see my pet/guardian, Artemis, on the floor next to my bed.
"Minako, are you okay?" he asked, furry brow creasing with worry as he took in my position. I was curled up on my side in my bed, thinking, and I realized that I must have looked pretty helpless. I sat up, yawning, and leaned down to pet him.
"Yeah, I guess I'm fine, considering..." I was interrupted by yet another scream, this time a deep bellow belonging to none other than Daddy Dearest. "That." I finished, and I swung my legs over the side of my butter-yellow bed, throwing the matching conforter away from my slim frame forcefully. Artemis looked towaed the door, obviously still worried. "Don't worry." I assured him "You know my parents, they wouldn't lay a hand on me. It would disrupt their contest." I had often gone over my "Contest theory" with Artemis, aware that he would listen to me as he always had. In a sense, I guess, he was my best friend, even if he was "just a cat" to the rest of the world. I knew better than to treat him like a regular cat, although he did enjoy fish a lot. He nodded.
"I didn't mean if you were okay physically, Mina-chan." he said "I was watching you last night. You were whimpering in your sleep and muttering things..."
"Doesn't everybody talk in their sleep a little bit?"
"Not in Venutian, they don't." he countered, and I flushed.
"So my dreams have been a bit more past-oriented." I remarked defensively. "It's not like it means anything. I mean, I'm sure Rei lapses into Martian, Makoto into Jovian, Ami into Mercurian, Usagi into Lunarian while they're asleep. It's just a part of our lives!"
"Still, you're beginning to worry me..." he commented, jumping up onto the bed and rubbing his head against my bare arm, a very catlike gesture indeed. "You're not ready for this." he muttered, and I looked down at him.
"What?"
"Nothing." he said quickly, seeming to realize what had just escaped him. Suddenly, his speech becaue hasty, his body language nervous and afraid. "Ummm... I need to go now. I promised Luna I'd meet her at the arcade..."
"Can I go?" I asked, to test him. As expected, he shook his head.
"No, this is kind of our business. Sorry, Mina-chan. Hey, maybe you could go to Rei's shrine or something later today, Luna told me that she's supposed to be having a meeting."
I blinked a few times, not very used to this stuttering mess of a cat that was Artemis. Without another word, I just nodded as he ran from my room, kind of annoyed that he had decided to hide things from me. Especially since I had the feeling that they concerned me in the first place.
Oh well, I thought, suddenly aware that the noise from downstairs had stopped. That was my cue to go downstairs and clean up whatever dish remnants llittered the floor, before they could start up again and throw some more things.
I reached up and touched my tangled mass of blonde hair, feeling the strands slicken beneath my fingers and shudderint. The one bad thing about haveing light hair was that it tended to get greasy quicker than dark hair. The length only added to the problem. I decided to take a shower before making my downstairs appearance, as I hated appearing grubby and unkempt in front of even my own parents! I guess you could say that I had picked up the habit from my modeling jobs, where if a single strand of my hair showed any sign of being dirty, the photographer yelled at me. The only way to avoid being yelled at was to take extra good care of myself both on and off the set of the shoot. Even now that I wasn't a model anymore, I still liked to look my best. So, without further ado, I stood up and walked to my halfway open bedroom door, wiping the sleep from my eyes as I stepped out of the room. I peered down the staircase and saw that the last four steps were littered with broken glass, presumably from one of the glasses we kept in the refridgerator so that we could have cold drinks with our dinners. Lovely. As soon as I got out of the shower, I would have to take precautions not to slice my feet open, as well, just to get to the broom closet!
Without making my parents, assuming they were downstairs on the couch or something, aware of my presence, I slipped into the bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind me and flicking the lightswitch with one hand. The bright, flourescent lights illumating my light pallor, making me look sickly and malnourished. I hated those lights, but slipped out of my blue flannel pajamas and turned on the water in the shower, sticking my hand in to monitor the temperature. When it was perfect (meaning not too hot but not too cold) I stepped in, reveling in the feel of the water against my bare skin.
When things got too stressful for me to handle, I could always rely on a nice, warm shower to keep me sane, whether it was early in the morning or late at night. My parents didn't mind my cleanliness. How could they? They were both raised in England as dirty, unkempt children with little to no potential, and I got the feeling that they admired the fact that I was able to make room for so many baths and showers, as they had been lucky to bathe every other day.
I cringed at the thought, remembering the time when Makoto had taken all of the Senshi camping in a less populated area of Japan. After about two days without some sort of cleanliness ritual, I had begun to nearly go insane, and had finally just begged Makoto to take me home. I'm not much of the outdoorsy type, anyway. I think that she had understood that, because she had made the three hour drive to drop me off at home, and then had left to go back to the campsite.
I laughed, remembering the shock on my mother's face as I had strode through the doorway. She had been in the middle of cooking fugu, and had asked me why I was home so early. I had only grunted "shampoo" before heading upstairs to wash myself.
Those had been good times, the days in which my mother had actually cooked meals for the three of us with a smile on her face. The times before the fighting, before the yelling and throwing things. When the Youma attacks had happened after modeling jobs, never before or during. When my family had been just that, a family. Not just three complete strangers the way we were now.
After scrubbing my hair vigorously with lavender-scented shampoo, I let the warm water trickle down my body for a while and then stepped out, grabbing a fluffy green towel that hung on the rung beside the sink. I wrapped one towel around myself, then found a matching green towel and wrapped my waist-length hair up in it. It took a minute, but I finally had the sopping mess under my complete control.
I walked out of the bathroom and shuddered as the cold air met my bare shoulders, sending goosebumps across my skin insanely. It was still quiet downstairs, and, of course, when I looked down the stairs again the glass was still there. Neither of my parents had even bothered to clean it up.
"What am I? Their maid?" I mumbled harshly, stepping into my bedroom and closing the door. Immediately, I squeezed the now-wet towel that held my hair into place and let the water drip out down my body. When I was sure that no more excess water could be removed, I unwrapped the towel and shook my head, sending my hair in every direction. I then proceeded to walk to my vanity table, sit down, and brush out all of the knots and snarls, the touch of a brush upon my scalp somehow soothing.
Finally, my damp hair hung in straight, volumeless strands around my torso, and I smiled, satisfied as I stood up and turned to my closet, wondering what outfit would be best for the overcast weather we had been experiencing as of late. I finally decided on a knee-length, light blue cotton skirt and a darker blue long-sleeved top with white ruffles around the wrists and rounded neckline. I quickly grabbed a pair of underwear and a bra, tossed them on, and changed into the outfit, being careful not to muss my already brushed hair too much.
I walked back to my vanity mirror, grabbed a red ribbon from a drawer filled with different colored ones, and tied it into my hair. Upon inspecting myself in the full-length mirror on the back of my door, I found that I looked pretty good.
I slipped on a pair of socks and some ankle-high faux fur-trimmed tan boots, ready to face the mess downstairs with a smile. Good girl, Minako, I thought to myself. You're learning fast.
As soon as I got downstairs, my mother greeted me with one of her sad smiles, which would be interpreted as happy by anybody who hasn't lived with her for almost seventeen years.
"Your father decided to go for a walk a little while ago." she said, and I could smell alchohol on her breath when she spoke. "He should be back soon."
I glanced at her, and some tinge of sorrow tugged at my heart, making me feel bad for this dishevled, obviously somewhat drunk woman. My mother, as a girl, had been relatively pretty, and if she had lost a bit of extra padding, would have succeeded as a model or something. She was the person I had inherited my deep blue eyes from, and my naturally cheery disposition. My love of luxury also came from her side of the family, as she and her two older brothers had always dreamt of leaving their small English house and making it big in the world. My mother had made a living in Japan for a few years as a sort of mangaka, writing and illustrating her own underground manga, Bishoujo Kitty-Chan, about a girl who could change into a cat. She almost got it published by a few big-time agencies, but they had apparently found something bigger and better to do. When I was born, she gave up her dream of becoming a mangaka, and married my father, whom had been her high-school sweetheart in England. They moved back to England and then, when I was thriteen, had decided to move back to Japan. When I was a young girl, she sometimes drew small mangas that featured me as the heroine, but other than that, her talents were useless in the big-business world my father was a part of. She had to settle with being a housewife.
I saw now that my mother was extremely unhappy with her lifestyle choice, as she had had so much potential as an artist. Nevertheless, I spoke.
"Are you going to clean up that glass, or am I?" I asked her gently, and she looked confused before she noticed the shards of glass that lay behind me.
"Could you, please, Minako? Mummy is tired, and needs to sleep."
"I suppose you would, what with all that yelling you were doing earlier." I said, and I suppose my voice came out a bit harsher than expected, because her face fell.
"Please, don't be angry at me, honey. Your father and I just had a minor disagreement..."
"That ended up with you throwing a glass at his head." I concluded for her. She shook her head and handed me a broom from the nearby closet. My rage suddenly flared, and I felt as though if it lay within me, supressed for any longer, I would burst into a million tiny pieces.
"Really, Minako. I don't really want to talk about this right now." she said flatly, making her way to the couch and laying down. That made me even madder, and I glared at her angrily, taking the broom and sweeping the glass to the bottom of the stairs, where I then began to sweep it into a little pile.
"Of course you don't want to talk about it! You never want to talk about it! All you want to do ia argue with him and throw things! Neither of you takes into consideration how I feel about waking up to your screaming at eachother!" I realized that now I was becoming much more vehemant than I had intended, but I plowed on. "It's like neither of you cares! There's a little thing called divorce that would probably help us all out!"
"Mina, please, darling, I don't want to have to go through all of that messy paperwork, and besides, we're just in a tight spot. After you quit modeling for that campaign..."
"This isn't just about the money I earned!" I said heatedly. "This is about your relationship with dad! You guys haven't slept in the same bed for a year!"
"Why should it matter if-"
"Face it, Mom." I said curtly. "Your marriage is falling apart, and you're just afraid to divorce him because it's unknown territory, not because of the paperwork. You're a wonderful mother, you know. You can't even admit to your own daughter that you're afraid!"
Her face paled, and I knew that I had gone too far as it quickly regained it's color and then some. I had scarcely ever seen my mother angry, although I had heard it a considerable amount, and I knew now that there was a good reason why. Her eyes seemed to look right through me, making me seem small and insignifigant. I wondered right then and there if that was what everybody felt like when they got on her bad side.
"Minako Aino, how dare you imply that I'm a bad mother! Who landed you that modeling job in the first place? And you threw away a perfectly good career because it was interfering with some after-school activities or something like that! Who's taken care of you for sixteen years when you've been sick? who's backed you up with your decisions for almost your entire life? It certainly wasn't your father!" she said, her tone as cold as ice. I knew that she was right, and I had to fight the urge to hug her and apologize. I was too riled up, though, about the fact that she was so afraid of getting a divorce that she'd rather put me through the hell of listening to them fight. Without another word, I threw down the broom and said "You clean up your own mess." my icy tone matching hers almost perfectly. I watched as her facial expression went from incredibly angry to incredibly shocked in a millisecond.
"Mina, wait..." she stammered as I turned on my heel, grabbing my blue windbreaker and car keys on my way out of the door. I think that she followed me to the door, but I was too infuriated to care. Why did she just have to assume that I didn't care about her? I wanted to tell her so badly about my duties as a Senshi, but I knew that i couldn't for fear that she'd tell somebody, and that word would get out to whatever enemy was sending these dratted Youma into Tokyo these days. That would put mot only myself, but my family (or lack thereof) in a considerable amount of danger.
"It's not fair!" I whispered to myself, jamming my key into the ignition and turning it, enjoying hearing the sound of my silver Mitsubishi as it roared to life. "Why can't she just be grateful?" My head was spinning, reeling as it never had before. I was so sick of her taking me for granted! I backed out of the paved driveway, not even bothering to look and see if there were any cars headed my way before I drove off at high speeds, unsure as to where I was headed but knowing that I'd be happy to get there as soon as possible.
About fifteen minutes later, I was pacing the streets of Tokyo with reckless abandon, mulling over why I was so angry and dreaming of running various narrow-minded pedestrians over. Albeit my anger was getting the best of me and I was driving like a maniac, my frustration hadn't reached it's peak yet. Maybe that was a good thing, too, because otherwise, I probably would have killed somebody.
I was gripping the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles were white, and my eyes were flashing dangerously as I ran red light after red light without any regard for traffic safety.
"I'm Sailor Venus," I mumbled "and I can't die yet!" to me, it made perfect sense. If the "Gods" wanted me to die, then I would end up wrecking and I would die. If they wanted me to live, then I would live with a few tickets for hazardous driving. I guess I wanted to challenge myself somehow, to see how far I could push life. I was sick of being sweet, innocent Minako Aino. I wanted to be somebody different. I didn't want to be a model, a maid, or a Senshi. I just wanted to be myself, whomever that was. That was all I wanted. I closed my eyes, running a yellow light at what I was sure was a high speed. I wanted the fighting to end, the yeling to stop, the secrets to be hidden from somebody other than myself.
I wanted...the past back...
Just as that thought sprung into my mind, a thought I couldn't control, I heard the sick crunching of metal, heard smashing glass, a scream, a siren... and then it all faded to black.