Can you say, hello badly-inserted scenes from the anime?
She shuts herself in her apartment and does not leave for the next week. The only human contact she has over the week is on Tuesday, when her agent calls her to schedule a show. The phone rings as she finishes painting a crumbled building; gently placing the paintbrush down, she reaches over to the small table and picks up the phone. "Hello," she says. "Kaioh Michiru speaking."
"Michiru-san, it's me, Ayanami. How have you been?"
Michiru glances down at her destroyed feet. "Fine," she answers quietly. "I suppose you've gotten an invitation for me to play, or something like that?"
Through the phone, she imagines she can hear Ayanami nodding. "Yes," her agent says eagerly. "A friend of mine named Yui has invited you to play on her cruise ship before it goes to sea. It's this Sunday and she's offering one hundred million yen. What do you think?"
"Well," Michiru's lips twist into an unsure grimace, "I'm sick, Ayanami-san. If I recover by then, I'll definitely play. Don't worry," she says, hearing her agent quietly gasp, "it's nothing bad. I'll call you back on Saturday."
"Michiru-san—sick? My God, it's the end of the world. You never get sick, Michiru-san. What happened?"
"I... I guess I caught a bug that's floating around. Or something." She pauses and looks back at her painting. "Oh, and Ayanami-san?"
"Yes?"
"Could you let Yui-san know that I'll do it if she'll allow me to exhibit a painting onboard?"
Her agent answers in the affirmative, and Michiru hangs up quickly afterward. Sighing, she resumes painting, but stops a few minutes later and looks down at her legs, hoping that they'll heal in time for the show, for something inside of her tells her that Haruka will be there.
She falls asleep on the couch two hours later, at four in the afternoon, in the middle of painting the red sky. She dreams of the dead boy.
At two in the morning, something in her legs begins to burn. The pain is small at first—easily ignorable—but eventually becomes white-hot. She wakes up with a jolt, face scrunched up from the pain, and pulls her leg up to look at it. The bones of her feet have grown back, save for her toes, and obviously her nerves are growing back now. They burn with a memory of the acid.
Shocked at how quickly her feet are healing, Michiru brings a hand to her face and touches her cheek. Her skin is whole—unmarred, as though the acid had never touched her skin.
She leans over to the canvas and dips her brush into red paint to finish the sky while she is still awake.
By the end of the week, there are barely any indications that her feet were ever destroyed.
It is the senshi healing powers, she supposes as she looks down at her feet on Saturday afternoon. They have grown back almost completely—her toes still have no skin, though, so it hurts just moving her feet. Standing up and wincing a little, she walks to the kitchen to get a drink of water. She grabs a glass from the cupboard and fills it with tap water, leaning against the counter as she thirstily gulps it down. Wiping her mouth as she finishes, she turns to wash the glass when she catches sight of the phone.
She places the cup down and walks over to it. Picking the receiver up, she first dials her agent's number. Ayanami answers after the second ring.
"Ayanami speaking," the agent says in a neutral tone.
"Ayanami-san, it's Michiru," she says quietly. "My sickness went away, so I'm all better. Has Yui-san said anything?"
"Oh, Michiru-san!" The agent's voice lightens considerably. "I'm so glad you're better. Yui called me on Wednesday, and I told her your conditions, and she said she would agree. She said that she's a fan of your paintings, actually, and that it would be an honor to have one aboard the ship."
Michiru nods, though she knows the agent is unable to see it. "Tell her I'll play, then. What time is the show scheduled, again?"
"Eight-thirty. She's going to be so excited!" Ayanami giggles, and something buzzes over the line. "Oh, I have another call. Sorry. I'll talk to you later, Michiru-san, okay? See you!" The phone clicks as her agent hangs up, and the dial tone begins to hum through the speaker.
Michiru almost places the phone down, but hesitates before she does. She thinks for a minute and quickly dials Elsa Grey's number before she can reconsider. After the third ring, the runner picks up.
"Hello?" Elsa says into the phone. "This is Elsa Grey."
"Elsa, it's me," Michiru says. Before she can say anything else, the runner cuts her off with a, "Michiru? Where have you been? I've been worried sick about you! I haven't seen you since you burst through the window of my History class on Monday. What happened?"
Michiru looks down and grabs the phone's cord, twisting it about her index finger as she speaks. "I got hurt, Elsa."
"...Bad?"
Deciding it is best to go right out and say it, she admits quietly, "My feet were destroyed."
Elsa does not say anything for the next few minutes, though Michiru can hear a sharp intake of breath as she digests the information. "Oh god," she says finally. "You... you have no feet?"
"It's why I couldn't come to school. But they've actually grown back thanks to my senshi healing powers, I guess. So I have feet now, even if they aren't fully healed." She does not tell Elsa what happened with the boy afterward.
"So I don't need to call an ambulance?" Elsa forces herself to laugh. "You shouldn't have been able to survive that... and you are alive and well days after your feet... so I guess I don't need to call one..."
Michiru tries to laugh as well, but the context of the situation weighs heavily on her. The line falls silent.
"Michiru?" Elsa says after several minutes.
"Yes?"
"You know I'm always there for you, right?"
The violinist smiles for the first time in several days.
"Of course," she says. "Thank you, Elsa."
"I'm your friend—it's what friends are for, right?"
"Yes." She nods. "I need to go finish a painting. Thank you, Elsa."
"Any time."
Michiru is the one who hangs up. Walking back to the living room, she sits down and grabs her brush. She works for the next three hours until it is finished.
Sitting back, she looks at the painting. It depicts a gigantic tsunami rearing up, ready to engulf a destroyed Toyko. The sky above it is a deep shade of scarlet, and in the center of the sky there is a distant red shape. Below, on the city streets, there are people; thousands of people, all too small to be more than just dots.
She decides to title it "The End of the World." She figures it is fitting enough, though it does not match with her dreams.
Sunday afternoon, four-fifteen; the dress she will wear to the show lays on her bed, but she does not look at it. She had grabbed it almost carelessly from her closet, not bothering to even look at what dress she had chosen. Right now she relaxes in the shower, something she does more and more. But as it is, what Michiru is doing could barely be called relaxing.
She sits on the floor of the tub, letting the warm water slide down her body. She sits with her knees curled into her chest, her arms wrapped around her calves, her head buried into her thighs, and weeps for the first time in several months. Eventually, she stands up. Her eyes are puffy and just a little bit red. Having finished washing her body long ago, she simply turns the shower off. She leans her head against the wall and stares down at her reflection in the faucet. She looks at her eyes—the eyes of a murderer—and turns away.
She steps out of the shower and grabs a towel.
She peers through lidded eyes at the audience, wondering if they could ever imagine that the violinist was a murderer.
Strange—it is the death, and not the loss of her feet, that weighs more heavily on her mind. One would think that, with humanity's tendency to be selfish, that she would regard the potential loss of her own mobility as worse than the death of a stranger. After all, people die every day.
Had it been six months ago, Michiru might have said that the loss of her feet is certainly worse. But the more she fights as a senshi, the more she sees that sometimes, the few must sometimes make sacrifices for the rest of humanity. Losing one person is better than losing a thousand.
She will die fighting if it means humanity will survive.
Near the end of her concert, Haruka stands up and leaves the room. Her gaze grows ever-more somber as she sees the racer turn her back on her, and she finishes up the song almost too quickly. As the audience claps, she bows with a forced smile and rushes from the stage, knowing exactly where Haruka will be.
Leaving the room hurriedly, she almost runs through a hallway, the sting of the new nerves in her feet being the only deterrent. Finally, she comes to the entrance of the Grand Ballroom, where "The End of the World" is showing. No one but Haruka is inside, she is sure.
She opens the door silently, and sure enough, Haruka is staring at the painting in shock. The racer's mouth is open a little, and her eyes are widened in a way that Michiru finds strangely adorable. She hasn't even noticed Michiru, so busy is she with staring at the painting, so the violinist sits down quietly and says, "Did you find the show to your liking?"
Haruka does not look surprised to hear her; in fact, the racer completely ignores her, staring at the painting as she is. Eyes a bit more sad, Michiru tries, "Thank you for coming here tonight, Tenoh Haruka-san, the famous racer."
Eyes never leaving the painting, Haruka finally says, "You seem to know a lot about me. I... this piece... did you paint it?"
No. Michiru does not want to speak of the end of the world. She does not want to speak of the Silence. Not of the dead b...
She completely ignores the question and says, "You're rather famous." Which is true—the racer's popularity has skyrocketed since her first race. "There are a lot of freakish fans of yours at my school." She tries to smile as she says it, but ends up with a strange, coy smirk instead. "One of them is a girl, even, but she doesn't care that you're one too. She still wants to cruise along the beach in your car."
But Haruka is stubborn, and refuses to let the matter drop. "'The End of the World,'" she says quietly, reading the title. "I'm surprised that such a well-off girl like you who probably can't even kill one bug could paint such a horrible fantasy."
The image of the dead boy flashes across her mind at the words can't kill one bug, and she nearly recoils from the pain it brings to her feet's new nerves. Her heart stutters in her chest as she resists the urge to break down sobbing right there. "It's not a fantasy!" she says somehow, her voice surprisingly strong despite her current mental disarray. "I can see that clearly." Hands shaking, she hisses, "Just like you can."
Haruka looks away from the painting and turns to her. As she stares at Michiru, the violinist stands up as if to meet the racer's gaze. Michiru stares strongly at Haruka for several seconds before the racer looks away and growls, "This is stupid. I'm Tenoh Haruka, one of the best racers in Japan." The racer's hands curl into fists as she glares at Michiru. "Memories of my previous life or the end of the world have nothing to do with me," she says, voice raising as she goes on. "If someone has to do it, you do it. Don't drag me into your damn play-war."
Michiru folds her hands together at her waist to stop herself from grabbing the racer's collar and yelling, "People are dying!"
She says nothing.
"And, while we're at it," Haruka adds, "stop stalking me."
With that last sentence, Michiru finally snaps. "Don't say such selfish things," she says quietly, repressing her anger. She looks down at her hands. "I don't want to do it either. Do you think I had a choice? I have a dream too—to become a violinist." The venom finally leaks into her voice as she says sarcastically, "I can't do something stupid like save the world from destruction, now can I?"
She leaves fifteen minutes afterward, knowing Haruka never wants to see her again. The racer had told her in no uncertain words that she was refusing to be Sailor Uranus, to get involved in the play-war, as she called it, or to even consider what Michiru was saying.
Michiru pushes the thought of Haruka as far from her mind as possible over the next week. She does not speak to Elsa at all, despite knowing that the runner is concerned for her well-being. She does not speak at all, save for when she is asked a question by her teachers.
Not really knowing why, she goes to see Kameda on Friday.
She arrives at the racetrack an hour after school lets out, and sees that a race is about to begin. Pit crews are everywhere, all hovering over shiny cars, and she looks around for a minute before she spots Kameda. She smiles a bit and walks down the stairs to greet him before she realizes that all of the racers are standing next to their crew, save for Haruka.
She stops midway down the stairs and looks back at the grid.
She does not see the racer. She looks around wildly before she finally sees a figure clothed in red stepping into a garage. Haruka.
There's a daimon, her instinct tells her. There's a daimon there. Daimon daimon daimondaimonDAIMON—
She runs as fast as she can to the garage.
She arrives exactly six seconds after Haruka had gone in. A large red daimon, akin to the first one she had ever seen, rears up on its stem as it lunges toward the racer, rows of teeth outstretched to slice through her firesuit. Thankfully, Haruka blocks it with a crowbar—Michiru doesn't bother to wonder where she had picked that up—but as she lands on the ground, the crowbar flies out of her hands. Green eyes widening, she scrambles toward it, but not quickly enough—the monster lunges at her before she can grab it, and Michiru jumps forward, ready to put herself in harm's way to save her—
Something flashes brightly.
A blue stick topped with a navy orb materializes in front of Haruka.
Michiru's breath catches in her throat as the racer, transfixed, reaches toward it, and finally she yells, "Don't take it!"
The moment is broken; the stick clatters to the floor. Startled, Haruka looks back sharply only to see the violinist.
"Don't take it," Michiru says again. "If you grab it, you will never be the same."
The violinist looks up at the blue sky, avoiding Haruka's stare, but on the last word she turns to look at the monster. Her eyes narrow in determination and she raises her own stick high above her head.
She becomes Neptune.
Haruka stares partly in awe and partly in shock—and Michiru does not like it. She ignores Haruka and rushes at the daimon, punching it right in its face. It flies back into the wall, knocking over a cabinet, and she clenches her fists as she prepares to kill it.
But Haruka rushes in front of it and thrusts her arms to her sides. "You can't!" she says. "That monster was a boy until a few minutes ago!"
The dead boy flashes across Michiru's mind, and she winces internally. But that boy was a victim, she rationalizes, and this is a monster.
"Are you okay with doing this?" Haruka asks. "This is murder!"
She hesitates and finally says, "The Silence is coming."
Haruka's shoulders sag.
"If I don't do this, there will be more death."
Realization dawns in the racer's eyes. "So you don't care how you save the world?" she says.
"Yes. I don't care what means I use."
"But—"
The daimon rears up, knocking the cabinet away, and hisses. Haruka freezes, and it lunges at her.
"NO!"
Michiru rushes at the racer, grabbing her and pulling her out of the way. The daimon's teeth rake her back, leaving several deep scratches near her spine. She lands on top of Haruka and, shaking, looks back at the daimon. "DEEP..." she yells, as the daimon lunges again, "...SUBMERGE!"
A few moments later, the daimon turns back into a boy, and she collapses.
She comes to in Haruka's arms, and despite the flames engulfing her back, it actually feels sort of nice being held. "The daimon," she says quietly. "Did I kill him?"
"He turned back into a boy," Haruka answers. "He's alive."
She turns away from Haruka's gaze and says, "I might have killed him..."
Haruka glances at the boy and frowns.
"I'll probably end up killing again next time..." She looks at Haruka again. "It's not that I'm fine with it," she says quietly, "but I'm a senshi... I chose to do this..."
"Then why did you cover for me? Why didn't you let me die?" Haruka says. "If you hurt your arm, you won't be able to play your violin." And the racer picks up Michiru's arm in her hands, which are surprisingly warm and soft.
"I..." Michiru pauses to think of a lie, but she is not much of a liar by nature—the truth tumbles from her mouth all too easily. "I didn't stalk you because you're Sailor Uranus. It goes back further than when I realized you were a senshi... I was watching your first race from close by. And I wanted to cruise along the beach in your car—just once..." She bites her lip, seeing Haruka's surprised reaction, but continues, "You don't rely on anyone, and you're always true to your feelings. And I wish—I wish I could be like that."
"No. I'm not honest at all," Haruka interrupts her. "I keep running away."
"But don't you see?" Michiru tries to smile again. "You're not running away. You're just being true to yourself. You don't want to do this—don't want the burden it offers you. I don't want to see you walk the same path I have, so you can—you should—deny it."
She pulls Haruka's arms from around her body and stands up on wobbly feet. "I'm sorry..." she says quietly. "I shouldn't have told you this." She manages a half-smile. "Have a good race, all right?"
And with that, she turns to leave.
"Wait."
Visibly surprised, Michiru looks back at the racer.
"This thing will let me save the world, right?" Haruka holds up the stick.
Michiru's mouth falls into an O. She stares for several seconds at the racer before she stammers, "Y-yes, it will."
"All right." Haruka holds up the stick.
A moment later, Sailor Uranus stands before her.
imjce part one (ch. 6): THERE IT'S URANUS HAPPY?
imjce part two (ch. 5): Nah, I don't think they really need bilingual qualifications. It's only their names that are in Spanish. Hell, my last name is Chinese, but I don't know Mandarin.
Kyzano: Thank you!
ReaderMarz: Oh, yes. I was wincing and cuddling my feet in pain just writing the last chapter.
James Birdsong: Thanks!
Dawnlight-6: I was actually considering prosthetics via a creepy Pluto intervention for a few minutes before I got the email about your review. Sort of creepy, actually.
imjce part three (ch. 4): Pluto is actually doing research at a university about the nature of time. Which basically means, she's goofing around and occasionally giving clues as to what time is really like. The professors are eating it up.