Hi guys. I know it's been a while, but here we are. Having said that, I cannot work out for the life of me whether this chapter works, so let me know what you think. I'll probably comb through the other chapters and tidy them up a bit soon. Happy (belated) New Year.
NUMBERS
Haruka took off her helmet and ran a hand through her hair. She had two weeks until the race but had spent the morning at the track doing practice laps. Happy with the day's session, she crossed the pit lane to the shade of the garages where Michiru and Hotaru were waiting. It was a Saturday, hot and cloudy, and Michiru smiled behind her sunglasses, fanning herself gently with a magazine. Haruka approached Hotaru first, who was nursing blue shaved ice and thumbing through her physics textbook.
"So," Haruka said, and Hotaru looked up at her. "How did I do?"
"Haruka-papa, you're always the fastest anyway."
"That doesn't mean I don't like to hear it," Haruka said, feigning a wounded tone.
"Don't compliment her all the time, Hotaru," Michiru said. "Stroking her ego only makes her more demanding."
"Is that how it is?" Haruka said, pulling Michiru close. They leant in to kiss but, as they did so, another car roared into the pit lane and pulled up sharply behind Haruka's. Sleek and silver, numbered '2' in crimson, it parked alongside a garage reserved for Expansive Motors. The logo was a large black dot with an X through it, four smaller dots attached to each of the X's nodes.
Haruka peered at the sign in cool curiosity. "Expansive Motors."
"Are they a new manufacturer?" Michiru asked.
"Never heard of them," Haruka said.
From her build, it was clear the driver was female with a helmet criss-crossed finely in tomato soup red. She climbed out of the car, revealing white-blue overalls devoid of any apparent sponsorship, and walked towards her garage.
"Oi," Haruka said, intercepting her as she passed. The driver stopped but didn't make any move to remove her helmet. Haruka put her at 5'4". "That was an impressive manoeuvre. I've never seen you around. Where are you from?"
The driver mumbled something and kept walking. Haruka stared after her for a moment, wondering whether to try again. She decided against it. Puzzled, she returned to Hotaru and Michiru.
"What did she say?" Hotaru asked.
"She said she's from Europe," Haruka said, frowning.
Michiru giggled softly. "She's even more elusive than you."
"Who's elusive?" Haruka teased. She gently thumbed a blue smudge of snow cone colouring from Hotaru's cheek. "In that case, perhaps I won't pay for cake."
"Haruka-papa."
"What? It's because I'm so elusive. Who knows what an elusive person might decide to do?" Haruka said wistfully. "Oh well. Michiru-mama can pay. She's not elusive at all."
There was a boom and the vending machine over-balanced, crashing onto its side. Cover blown, Sailor Mars launched a Burning Mandala. It reached its target, a slick humanoid mass with a black star where its face should have been. It was a daimon, of all things, something tenacious enough to have clung to life two years longer than its peers: perhaps scavenging, perhaps feeding off pond life or attaching to human hosts. These were Mercury's theories, fired one after another, her shiny blue visor spitting out calculations.
None of these meant much to Mars, whose morning browsing for books with Ami had been abruptly cut short, and who didn't much care how the thing had survived so long as she could get it to stop surviving. The daimon had been terrorising a teen jewellery store called Pretty Bracelet when the senshi had heard screams and come to investigate. It was blind luck they had run into Minako beforehand, who had been loafing around in Crown Arcade and was so out of it she had jumped out of her skin when Rei touched her shoulder.
"You said you were too busy to come out," Rei had accused.
"I was busy," Minako had replied, sticking out her tongue.
Presently, Mars watched anxiously as her attack sliced through the daimon like jelly. It fell in chunks to the floor. She, Mercury and Venus watched it tensely.
"Did we do it?" Venus asked. Mercury didn't answer, concentrating on her numbers, but then the daimon answered for her. It reanimated itself, chunks shuddering and oozing closer together, fusing back into one.
"Damn it," Mars cursed. Venus blasted one of the chunks with a Crescent Beam, delaying its reunion with the others.
So far, nothing seemed to work. When Mars had used her Fire Soul Bird it had walked through the blaze, apparently unharmed. Mercury had declared it inflammable and tried an Aqua Rhapsody. This had gone comparatively worse: when the water jet connected the daimon looked down at itself, as if Mercury had thrown a glass of wine over it on a particularly bad date, before twitching and grunting, growing twice as large as before.
"Well, it likes water a little too much," Mars pointed out, dodging a wayward punch as Mercury murmured about osmosis and turgidity.
"Up to me, then," Venus said, only to demonstrate immediately thereafter that she couldn't kill it either: none of her energy attacks made a dent. Eventually she had used her Love-Me Chain, and that was where things had gotten interesting: the creature had split in two where the chain cut into it, only to reunite its two halves and continue its advance.
Cutting it up some more with a Burning Mandala had been Mars's best guess, and since that hadn't worked she was fresh out of ideas. She darted back over, returning to their triangle formation.
"We need to make its particles vibrate," Mercury said. "If its structure collapses perhaps it won't be able to regroup. We can do it with the right sound wave frequency."
"Or maybe with electricity?" Mars said pointedly. The intersection was deserted and the few cars close by when the attack had started had long since been abandoned by their owners. Nonetheless Mars felt watched; she pictured hundreds office workers gawking through their windows.
Mercury didn't say anything. Mars turned to her. "Mercury."
"No," Mercury said shortly, eyes on her computer.
"She lives two blocks away."
"We can do it ourselves," Mercury insisted, jumping out of the daimon's reach. Mars huffed and shot a Fire Soul to distract it. Ami had been adamant Makoto shouldn't be called into battle in the event of an attack. For the most part Rei had agreed, as had Minako, but Mars caught Venus's eye now and their expressions were the same: they needed Jupiter.
"Mercury, we don't have a choice," Venus said, cutting the thing in half again with her Love-Me Chain. No sooner had she reached for her communicator than Mercury launched a Shine Aqua Illusion. The daimon took the hit and froze solid, its halves encased in two separate blocks of ice.
"No need," Mercury said. "That should give us time to find a frequency."
"How long will that take?" Venus asked.
"I don't know," Mercury admitted.
"Well, if we had Jupiter we'd save a hell of a lot of time," Mars grumbled.
Mercury sighed and met Mars's gaze, blue eyes resolute. "Mars, I know it's tedious and I'm sorry, but if we don't let Jupiter recover we could lose more than time. We can manage without her."
"Looks like it, huh?" said a familiar voice behind them. Behind them stood Sailor Jupiter, half-smiling, an unreadable expression on her face.
"Jupiter," Mercury said in surprise.
Mars glanced between them, wondering for a moment what Jupiter had heard and whether she had taken offence. As it was Jupiter just eyed them with caution, rubbing the back of her neck uncomfortably. "I wasn't trying to get into a fight," she said, more to Mercury than anyone else. "I just saw your lightshow from my apartment and thought I should… you know. I didn't mean to–"
"No, it's… I just don't want you to force yourself," Mercury said. "I'm sorry if it sounded–"
"It's okay," Jupiter said. "I know."
"How are you feeling?" Venus asked. "Any visions?"
Jupiter shook her head. "I feel fine. So, you've got this?" she asked, nodding towards the daimon.
"Actually," Venus said. "I was just about to call you. Mercury needs your magic touch."
She winked for good measure, apparently hoping to break the tension. Mercury looked ready to argue but held her tongue, looking back down at her computer.
Jupiter's reaction, however, was not what Mars expected. Rather than blush, she tensed visibly, a flash of pain in her eyes. She had seemed subdued for some time, but Mars had initially put this down to her illness. Now, however, she sensed Jupiter's aura flicker with an inky blue-blackness: she was depressed, Mars realised. Had something happened between Makoto and Ami?
"Erm, yes," Mercury said. Mars focused her energies but sensed nothing different about their tactician's aura, which only posed more questions. "It keeps – that is to say, the daimon – keeps coming back to life. I think we may need an electric current to break down its body."
"Oh," Jupiter said, buoying very slightly at being of use. As much as Mars respected Mercury's desire to protect a friend, she also knew how much Makoto liked to be needed and how protective she was. Mars wondered with a pang how much that hurt Jupiter, and how much it worried her. In her shoes Mars would be climbing the walls.
Jupiter walked stiffly towards the daimon halves and placed her hands on top of one of the ice blocks. Mercury tapped some keys on her computer, ready to scan it.
"If you start with a gentle current and work your way up, we should be able to find a weak point," she said. Jupiter nodded in understanding and concentrated; Mars heard a soft hum as electricity conducted the block. She watched Jupiter's back for a moment, then took Venus's arm, gently pulling her out of earshot of Mercury.
"What's up?" Venus asked.
"Can we talk later?" Mars said softly. "I'm worried about Makoto. I think something's happened with Ami."
Venus's eyes widened in surprise. "Why do you think that? Has she said something? Have you had another vision?"
Mars shook her head no. "I just sense she isn't herself. We need to make sure she's alright. Speaking of which, I don't think keeping her out of the fight is necessarily the way. We need to talk about this properly – alone. Maybe you could come to mine later? Grandpa's managing another shrine for a friend so we'd have the place to ourselves."
"I…" Venus hesitated. "I can't tonight. I'm busy."
"The way you were busy this morning?" Mars said. "Jupiter's our friend."
Venus bristled. "I'd be there if I could, Mars."
"Tomorrow, then."
"I can't," Venus said. "My mother wants me at home."
Mars stared at her in disbelief. "Your mother? You never listen to your mother."
"Look, I'll call you, okay?" Venus snapped. "Just butt out."
Rei opened her mouth to retort when she was cut off by a loud, ominous cracking noise. Suddenly, both halves of the daimon burst from their confines, rushing at Jupiter and spraying ice shards in their wake.
"Jupiter!" Venus cried. Mars started to form another Burning Mandala. They saw Jupiter raise an arm in self-defence, knocking the daimon away on reflex, yet as her hand connected there was a flash and a terrible, ear-splitting bang. Mars was thrown backwards and landed on her rear, followed closely by Venus and Mercury. She planted her palms and just about started to push off the ground when a second bang sounded, as loud as the first. Shocks went straight up her palms and jarred her muscles, dropping her flat onto her face.
Mars waited a little this time. When there was no third explosion, the three of them got gingerly to their feet and jogged back to Jupiter, who was standing stock still exactly where she had been before. She was breathing heavily, a cloud of smoke dissipating around her. There was no sign of the daimon.
"What happened?" Venus demanded, looking around. "Where is it?"
"It isn't," Mercury said matter-of-factly. She pointed to the ground. There was a black smudge close to where Jupiter was standing.
"There were two," Mars said. "Where's the other half?"
"I… I hit both," Jupiter said, looking at her earnestly like she was worried Mars was marking her out of ten. Mercury glanced around, peering through the haze. On her visor, Mars saw the numbers stop moving.
"I think we're breathing it," Mercury said softly.
"Did you see it?" Jupiter demanded excitedly. "Did you?"
They ducked into an alleyway and detransformed. Mercury became Ami and immediately took out her mini-computer, scanning Makoto all over. Makoto was exhilarated, grinning ear to ear and panting hard. "So cool. I obliterated it – in one hit. All I did was swipe at it and boom!" She clapped for emphasis."Gone. Imagine what would have happened if I really went for it?"
Ami took Makoto's wrist and checked her pulse. Makoto felt Ami's fingers on her skin and regained a fraction of her sobriety. She laughed nervously, giddily recalling the feeling of the daimon vaporising under her touch. She felt good, really good, better than she had felt since Ami came over – and powerful, like she could take on anything without anybody's help. Even her feelings about Ami were less intense, like the delusion had never happened – like she could kiss her fearlessly on the spot.
"Try to calm down," Ami said. "Your heart rate's too high."
Makoto nodded obediently and gulped down air, ragged breaths deepening as she concentrated. She felt the pressure of Rei's hand on her arm and realised she was being steadied. It was very sweet of Rei, but Makoto really didn't need steadying at all.
"Do you feel any different?" Ami asked.
Makoto shrugged. "My hands tingle."
Ami turned over her hands and scanned Makoto's palms. There was a long pause, the kind of pause Makoto tried not to adore, filled with the silent workings of Mizuno Ami's mind. Then Ami frowned, releasing Makoto's hand and putting her mini-computer back into her handbag. She sighed and stood back, and there was such sad frustration in her eyes that Makoto wanted to hold her.
"I don't know what's happening," Ami said simply.
Wired and emboldened, Makoto shook her head with a grin and put her hands on Ami's shoulders, trying to ignore the way Ami stiffened at the contact. "Ami-chan, don't worry so much. I've thought about it a lot, and what if whatever's happening to me isn't bad at all? What if it's good? What if I really am just changing?"
Ami gazed back at her with concern, shaking her head slowly. "Mako-chan…"
"I'm stronger, right?" Makoto cut in quickly, smiling eagerly. "That means I can protect our princess better."
"If you don't incinerate her," Rei put in sceptically. "Even if these really are your powers – and there's no proof that they are – you're probably best out of harm's way until you can control them."
"So I'll train," Makoto said, hands on hips.
"You can't train, Mako-chan," Ami said exasperatedly. "Last time you passed out."
"Yeah, but I didn't this time," Makoto objected. She looked at Minako pleadingly. "Minako-chan."
All eyes turned to Minako. Minako considered her for a moment, arms folded tightly against her chest. "Like Rei said, we still don't know where this power is coming from," she said finally. "Mako-chan, you say you're stronger but you weren't even transformed when you shocked Haruka. What if this power isn't coming from Jupiter?"
"It would explain why you passed out exerting yourself," Ami said. "And why you're in the state you're in now. If the power isn't meant for you it could be putting too much stress on your body."
Makoto looked between them and was met with three anxious faces. She stared back at them in dismay. Why were they being like this? Why were they attacking her when she had almost single-handedly taken out a monster for them?
"Well, if they're not mine, why am I having these visions?" she argued. Her elation had given way to something hysterical, something shrill and angry and desperate. "It's not like I want them."
"Mako-chan," Ami murmured, but Makoto pulled away from her.
"Don't," she said weakly, and at Ami's expression she averted her gaze, glaring daggers at the floor. She clenched her fist. "I think I need to be by myself."
She took off out of the alley. Mercifully no-one followed. Her heart was hammering again and her muscles burned like she had been working out for hours. Still, Makoto kept going, past shops and apartment blocks, walking further and further from home as she scrambled to get her head straight.
The more Makoto had contemplated her hallucination of Uranus, the more she had thought about her vision of Ami. Was it her imagination or was it a memory, something that had really, truly happened? Had Mercury shot Jupiter down in their past lives? Certainly the more she thought on Ami's words, the more it hurt, like a residual pain from long ago, an old scar being needlessly torn open. Makoto's luck in love seemed to precede the truth and Makoto had all but accepted it; after all, it was so very easy to accept. Why would Ami want her, anyway?
It was this very realisation that had made her lash out. These powers had been it for her: the silver lining. If she had to have these thoughts, had to remember that rejection, then as far as Makoto was concerned she deserved more power. She should get something, some consolation prize for her heartbreak. And for her friends – Ami, especially – to not even let her fight out her frustrations was the final kick in the teeth.
When she reached the park Makoto stopped dead. She still felt like she had run a marathon, but she felt so powerful, so able in spite of it, that her curiosity won out. She checked her watch and took off at a running pace, feet pounding the pavement, muscles pumping with electricity. No matter how exhausted her body seemed, she felt stronger, and faster, all-round better than she had ever been before. The others couldn't deny her this. They couldn't shelve her birthright just in case. And, anyway, what if they needed her to be strong? What if only Sailor Jupiter could stop this new enemy?
At the other side of the park she checked her time: a hands-down personal best. She nodded ambitiously to herself and kept running, all thoughts of destination having slipped from her mind. If Makoto couldn't have Ami then she would be the best warrior she could possibly be, with or without the support of her comrades.
When she finally took stock of where she was, she found herself in a familiar neighbourhood. Across the road, she was unsurprised to see the tall form of Morino Niki, lips curled upwards in a smirk. She didn't wave. Neither did Makoto. Yet something inside Makoto told her she was exactly where she needed to be. Her gaze fell on the signage overhead, its letters painted in gold:
NUMBER ONE DOJO.
