Hello. Well, this was quick, wasn't it? A long one, too. Anything to not look at my grammar handouts XD.
Yeah, okay, so this chapter is, as promised, the explanatory chapter. Not that I don't trust you guys, I love you all, but as a general heads-up, skim-reading this will only cause you hardships in the future. If there's anything anyone doesn't get, include it in a review and I'll be sure to provide an explanation. ;)
Okay, so, hope this one's okay, and I'll see what I can do about a quick update in the future. Sayonara!
Floodgates: Chapter Nineteen
"Mercury!"
Jupiter dashed over to the senshi of ice, stopping before she hurtled straight through the apparition.
"What's going on? What do I do? Why aren't you-?!"
"Enough," Mercury cut in gravely. Makoto decided she liked Ami Mercury better. Mercury seemed to sense this and softened a little. "I'm sorry, but there's not enough time. I have no idea how long I'll last without a body, and that's one piece of information I'd rather not find out, so I have to explain this quickly."
She looked at Mako pointedly. She knew how difficult it had to be for Mako not to chase Ami at that point, but she had to listen. "You might want to sit down for this."
"That bad, huh?" Mako cracked nervously. When she was met with silence, she mutely did as she was told, thoughts of Ami escaping agitating her.
There was a pause as Mercury clearly tried to work out what had to be said first. There was, after all, one hell of a lot to discuss.
"Needless to say… Ami's not in her right mind at the moment," she began cautiously. "And if there were any normal... natural way to get her back, it wouldn't have come to this."
Come to what?
Makoto opted to remain silent, but the question in her eyes was clear. Mercury took a deep breath.
"I've had no choice but to separate myself from Ami – to strip her of her powers."
Mako shot up again like a rocket. "What? Why?! It's not like this is her fault! What if she needs for you to lend your strength to fight off that thing that's controlling her, huh?! Or what if she gets into trouble and she can't transform?!"
She started pacing, panicking. The same question kept appearing in her mind. "This doesn't even make sense. Aren't you her? Or, isn't she you or whatever? How can you even be standing here? It's not like you're two separate people!"
"One thing at a time," Mercury said patiently. She sounded somewhat like a wise old woman, choosing her words carefully, everything she said seeming to have purpose and meaning.
"For the first part, I'm sorry, but I have no choice in the matter. I made this decision millennia ago, and I can't back out of it now. We all did – that's why Venus' host can't use her powers either."
Mako stared at her. "Wait, slow down, what? Minako's lost her powers too? What the hell is going on?!"
"It's honestly not as conspiratorial as it sounds…" Mercury remarked earnestly. "Just an unfortunate set of circumstances – nothing more than a bizarre coincidence, actually. Though both problems admittedly still originate from the same source. From old vows we took."
Mako faltered then, realising that she was recounting something from their past lives. Reluctantly she fell back into her seat. Mercury began again.
"Have you ever wondered… about the sense of it all? You, Ami, Usagi, the others… why you all lived in Tokyo; why your paths crossed – all of it?"
Mako paused to consider a concept that huge. She shrugged, feeling a little stupid.
"I don't really know. I guess we all just wrote it off as destiny or something."
Mercury smiled wistfully. The naivety in this girl was refreshing. "I suppose that would have been the best line of thought to follow," she admitted.
Makoto looked up at the semi-transparent princess in confusion. Not destiny? Then what?
"What if I told you that this – all of this – was arranged? By us, the original senshi, after our deaths?" Mercury questioned delicately. Mako was quiet, listening intently.
"We knew that no matter what the circumstances, we couldn't just wait for fate to hand out your powers. If we allowed it to take its natural course, our souls would simply have been harvested along with everyone else's and handed back out at different times. I calculated the probability of all the factors – of all of us meeting, appearing in the same timeframe together, all of us appearing in the same timeframe as Beryl's next attack and being prepared to fight…" Mercury noticed Mako's expression growing blanker and blanker and trailed off. "There were just too many variables. The odds were so low that the option wasn't worth even considering. As much as anything, we wanted to be able to elect a candidate to gain our powers for ourselves…"
"Wait, 'elect'? What do you mean? We're just you – your souls reincarnated."
The princess smiled at her wistfully. "If I was all that there was to Ami's soul, how could she still be alive? When I'm here with you?"
Mako went quiet again, mouth agape as she tried to think of an explanation. But she had nothing.
"After the rest of the kingdoms were destroyed, only Earth was left inhabitable. We knew you'd be reincarnated as human beings. You couldn't have handled all the abilities we had. How could you have done? They could have turned you evil, destroyed you… We realised that we had to have control over the situation."
"So what did you do?"
Mercury looked at her. "We waited. For millennia our souls existed in limbo – watching and waiting for Beryl to come back; to find who we considered to be appropriate candidates. Then we found you. By then, our souls were tired – time had eaten away at us, and we were no longer complete. We placed our remaining energy into the henshin wands and entrusted them to Luna and Artemis to give to you. Your spirits are you own – our souls only have energy enough to grant you your powers, our old appearances as your transformed selves, and some memories of the Silver Millennium.
"Of course, our choice, our cheating of fate, came at a price – though nowhere near as high as we had come to expect. Fate had no plans to allow Beryl to rule the Solar System, so it appreciated the trouble we had gone through to find candidates. But Fate wanted something more concrete than our personal opinion. It wanted insurance. So it bound us to take… some precautions."
Mako frowned, elbows on knees, her eyes darkening in concern. "Precautions?"
Mercury nodded gravely. "We had to choose something that had to be present in our own respective candidate – a quality they had to possess in order to be deemed capable of using their abilities properly. If they lost whatever quality we had chosen, they were to be stripped of their powers – of us – to prevent them from doing anything detrimental to the cause of stopping Beryl."
Makoto glared at her accusingly. Immediately she knew. "You chose her mind."
Mercury's brow creased. Her silence only urged the brunette on in pursuit of her hunch.
"You chose Ami's mind to be that quality. And now she's lost it, and you're abandoning her!"
"I told you, I don't want to have to do this!" Mercury cut in angrily. A few particles of light – of her life force - began to drift off her as she gestured sharply in argument. She was losing valuable time, she knew. "I've known Ami even longer than you have, and I want to be able to help her! But I can't. I'm bound."
Mako scoffed, her fists balling painfully tight.
"You have to understand why I did it," the princess continued sadly. "I did it because so many of my abilities are passive, or at least not as strong as any of the other inner senshi's. She had to have a powerful mind, to be able to strategise, to know that her true strength wasn't in physical ability. You can't deny that she's saved you more than once by doing that."
The cook closed her eyes in frustration. Yes. All of it was true. And she knew Mercury was right. But she was drained. Kami, she didn't want to talk about this anymore.
"What about Minako?" she asked weakly. "Venus – what did she choose?"
Mercury smiled sadly. "Well, being a child of Venus, she naturally chose her heart," she replied. The sentiment behind the statement was somewhere between a fond memory and the sting of hindsight. She clarified for the brunette before her. "If Minako's heart was broken. That was her condition."
Mako frowned once more in confusion. "Huh? But what about Alan? You would think that if she had lost her powers she would have told us about it. Or at least Artemis would. Besides, people have ups and downs in love all the time – it's hardly the best choice when it comes to keeping your powers."
Mercury's eyebrows rose in what Mako assumed to be humour as she explained.
"No, you don't understand. Not just any broken heart. A heart broken by her one true love."
She smiled knowingly, noticing it dawn on the face of the girl before her.
"By Mars."
Haruka tried Michiru's communicator once more, pacing fiercely around the room. No response. The thing didn't even show any signs of connecting – if Michiru was ignoring her, perhaps she could have understood it better. At least then she would only be going mad from hurt and frustration, rather than having to throw crippling worry into the mix.
Chibi-Usa and Minako watched her nervously, anticipating an outburst.
It came. Yelling in anguish she hurled the communicator across the room. It collided with the wall, chipping the paintwork. Miraculously the device itself remained unscathed.
"Damn it!" she bellowed.
Chibi-Usa tried to console her. "Haruka, it's alright! We'll get her back! We'll find a way!"
"How?" Haruka's eyes were filling with angry tears. "How could this ever be alright? She thinks I left her at the altar! She could be anywhere! She could..."
She trailed off. Minako saw what she was trying to suggest, and the thought of Michiru doing anything to jeopardise her life was an alien concept indeed. "You're not seriously saying she would do something... as rash as that, are you?" she asked, glancing uncomfortably at Chibi-Usa. She didn't really want to discuss something like this in front of the princess, fourteen or no. She also couldn't predict the answer – after all, she had seen Michiru broken without Haruka, and she supposed it wasn't out of the question.
Haruka scoffed miserably. "I would," she said quietly. "I can't rule it out."
Minako turned to Chibi-Usa. "Any luck finding Hotaru-chan yet?" At the same time she went to take out her own communicator to try Setsuna, before realising that hers wasn't working. She dropped her hand to her side, closing her eyes against her upset.
Chibi-Usa shook her head sadly. "No. Nothing."
Minako sighed. "Give it an hour, then start calling the inners."
"And you say that your communicator won't work?" Haruka asked sternly.
Minako frowned, looking away. "Not just that. I can't transform either."
"Any suggestions as to what could be causing all this?"
Minako raised her hands in defeat and shook her head in an open display of hopelessness as the tears began to well. She had been attacked not long ago, and the memory of being defenceless still haunted her. She felt considerably more vulnerable than she would ordinarily.
"It'll be okay, Minako," Chibi-Usa promised in a tone remarkably similar to Usagi's, though it seemed more to soothe her own worries about her own girlfriend and friends. Minako tried to give her thanks with her eyes, but knew that she was about to cry and needed to get away. Besides, there was little she could do here, and there was someone else she had to talk to. It was late, she knew, but she was sure Usagi wouldn't mind.
"We begged her not to," said Mercury. "Not because we didn't trust Mars to love Venus, but because we had no real control over your free wills, and so we could hardly guarantee that Rei wouldn't break Minako's heart. But Venus' decision was rash. She was young, and had died whilst in the throes of an incredibly powerful love. She witnessed Mars' demise when the fight finally came to us, and after that, she was a woman possessed, not caring even when she herself faced certain death. Afterwards, she told us that if she had to live a life without Mars, there would be no point in living. That's why she made that choice.
"Mars was horrified. Suddenly her charge, whose actions she held no responsibility for, was unwittingly left with the pressure of maintaining Minako's powers; of saving what remained of the soul of her true love. That's why she made her own pledge in secret, away from Venus."
Makoto was spellbound. "What did she do?"
Mercury's expression was growing dark as she delved further and further into the past.
"She did the only thing she felt she could – as much as it would tear her apart. She knew that Rei would have to break Minako's heart in order for her to lose her powers – but Venus had never mentioned anything about the two of them simply never falling in love at all. And so Mars decided that the best way to protect Minako was for her and Rei to never, ever fall in love. She chose a miko in the hopes of her charge remaining celibate and heavily religious; a girl who was destined to become bad-tempered and bitter, closed-off after close losses. And her final insurance was that Rei would be far more rational than she herself was – in part, to keep her alive, and in part to make Rei too collected to simply fall into Minako's arms as Mars had done with Venus." Mercury seemed to feel pity for her Martian comrade. "Not that it worked, it seems."
Quickly she moved on. "Of course, those were simply personality traits she selected to protect Venus. What she truly chose as her insurance, she chose for Serenity. She chose her soul. Rei had to keep her own, pure soul to be able to keep her powers. Mars knew of too many warriors who had had their strength taken through possession and used against the people they loved, or who had fallen from greed to become nothing more than bounty hunters. If she could conserve Rei's integrity and chastity, she felt that would never happen."
Makoto nodded, admiring the old Mars and cursing the current one. "Damn it, Rei..."
Then the young cook perked up. "So, wait, to get Minako's powers back, we have to get her and Rei back together?"
Mercury snapped back to the present. "No... Minako is not your concern."
"But-"
"Minako's problems are destined to be repaired without your help. Ami's aren't."
Makoto seemed relieved about Minako, but she allowed herself only a moment of rapture before sobering up. "What do you need me to do?"
The Princess came back to the task at hand. "I'm not going to punish Ami for something she can't help by allowing her to lose her powers forever; and I'm also not prepared to die here. So I need for you to house my spirit until you can bring her back."
The brunette looked blankly at her. "How do I do that?"
Mercury's intent was clear. "Ami may not have received her diagnosis yet to be able to get drugs for her illness, but we all know who has."
Mako's eyes widened in sudden understanding. "Her father."
Mercury nodded. "Ami's father is in an institution in Odaiba. Go there and ask for his help. All else fails, ask her mother if she can swing something. She may not be home all that much, but she still needs to know what's going on with her daughter."
"Alright. I'll go call her now."
Mako stalked over to the phone. Mercury followed her with her eyes.
"Remember, this won't be an overnight recovery for her – it's going to take some time for her to be back to normal again."
Mako sighed in frustration, receiver in hand. "And first I have to find her."
The doorbell rang shrilly through the Chiba apartment. Snapping his eyes open, Mamoru sighed. He looked down at Usagi, lying on his chest asleep – the girl could sleep through most natural disasters – and gently tried to nudge her off him without stirring her or her plaster casts. Why he went through the trouble with such a heavy sleeper was probably just instinct. After he did so, he walked easily to the door. Usagi always needed such huge amounts of snooze that he always wound up lying awake for hours. Ordinarily she would have been curled up beside him as he worked on his laptop or read, but given the day's events he was quite content to hold his girlfriend, safe in the knowledge that she and their daughter were both alive.
Meanwhile, the ringing continued, on and on. It was the way Usagi used to call for him when they were younger, and if he could possibly have known better he wouldn't have entertained the idea of a younger Usagi finding her way to his door in the future. Their track-records, however, meant that pretty much anything was possible.
His suspicions were thankfully proven wrong as he peered through the peephole in his door. There in his hallway, was the anxiously fidgeting form of Aino Minako. She shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. Mamoru could have assumed it was a senshi thing if it wasn't so blatantly personal. This, he understood, was a long-awaited visit to deliver a long-awaited apology. He sighed and opened the door.
"Mamoru-san!" Minako started in surprise. Her thoughts had clearly been on what she was going to do once she was inside rather than on what was actually happening.
"Hey, Minako," he smiled at her. "Here to talk to Usagi?"
Bashfully she nodded. Mamoru stepped aside to let her in. He tried to grin reassuringly, but the boyish look wasn't really suited to his mature persona. "Come on in. She's already asleep, though, so I can't promise anything."
Minako smiled and walked in. In her hand she held a small bag from a convenience store she had stopped at on the way. She waved it at him whimsically, and then withdrew a dumpling. Mamoru smiled wider. Absolute genius.
Minako peered into the bedroom, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The lining of a lump on the bed gave way to the form of her best friend when Mamoru turned the hall light on, and Minako snuck towards her in comedic fashion despite the events of the day. Perhaps their princess just brought out that kind of behaviour in people.
Climbing onto the bed and kneeling over an already spread-eagle Usagi, Minako held the dumpling under her nose, and within a second flat the blonde girl was stirring.
Her eyes flickered open. It took the best part of a minute for her so stop smelling the air and mumbling about cake, but finally she registered the other blonde hovering above her.
"Minako-chan!" she squealed. And with that the dumpling was remarkably forgotten as Usagi shot up and threw herself into a suffocating hug-slash-straddle using her one good arm and leg, her remaining casts flailing behind. Mamoru cringed, wondering vaguely how much just that motion had affected her recovery time. Minako barely had time to angle the dumpling so it wouldn't be swished between their shirts.
"You're here!" Usagi somehow achieved a muffled cry from the material on Minako's shoulder. Minako continued to choke. The princess' formidable nose finally returning to its full power, a slender hand reached out slowly but embarrassingly unsubtly down Minako's outstretched arm to grab the sweet treat.
"So does that mean you've cleared things up with Rei-chan?" She asked excitedly, forcing most of the dumpling into her mouth and releasing Minako enough to look at her properly. The fact that this motion allowed the other girl to breathe again was pure coincidence. "Bekosh dat wosh a chochal mishundershtandind."
Minako looked at her wincingly. "She told you then, huh?"
Usagi nodded sympathetically.
Minako turned solemn, her shoulders slumping a little. "No," she conceded sadly to the blonde's earlier question.
Noticing the tone turning more personal, Mamoru took his cue to close the door for them. Sighing in the quiet hall, he resolved to turn on his laptop after all.
Meanwhile, Minako continued inside, head bowed, looking ready to cry for what seemed the thousandth time that day.
"But I do admit that what I thought was completely unfair. You're always there, for all of us, and you wouldn't dream of even letting us get hurt, let alone hurting us yourself. Thinking you would do something like that... I've failed you as a friend."
Usagi stared at her worriedly, mouth still full. She swallowed the large piece of dumpling in one. "Don't be silly! You were heartbroken! You don't owe me an apology."
"Please don't forgive me," Minako whispered. "You died, and I hadn't even seen you in days. I couldn't get over myself and realise what I thought was ridiculous. I'm sorry."
"Alright..." Usagi trailed off. What else could she do? "But I'll still forgive you."
Minako was prepared to argue again when Usagi said one of the smartest things that had ever left her mouth.
"But only after you've talked to Rei."
Minako frowned. She owed the priestess Usagi's life, but nothing more. "Why should I?"
Usagi smiled at her wisely. "Because you've dated a lot of guys, Minako-chan, and not one of them has put you in a mood like this."
Minako looked away, caught off-guard. It was true. But the thought of how Rei had acted towards her that day at the hospital sent chills down her spine. It was as if in the space of those few minutes Rei had been gone, Minako had somehow become unclean – too disgusting to be close to. The very memory broke her resolve.
"But she's been so cold to me, Usagi-chan!" she cried out suddenly, voice cracking. "She just changed and I don't know why! I don't know what I did!"
Minako studied Usagi's face more carefully in a sudden moment of hope. "Did she say anything about it?"
Usagi went quiet, thinking back, trying desperately to find some piece of information to help her friend. Minako watched her intently.
"'I'd rather she lived hating me, than died loving me.'"
Disbelief and confusion began to chase one another across Minako's face. The look in Usagi's eyes told her the sentiment was genuine.
"That's all she would tell me."
"I suggest you make yourself comfortable. It may take you a while to recover."
All other things having been said, Mercury led Makoto to her room. Mako looked perplexed. "I bet you say that to all the girls," she joked grinning.
Mercury looked back at the beaming face of the heir of Jupiter – at the girl who housed the soul of her love – and seemed to stall at the resemblance between the two.
"No," she explained, somewhat flustered. "I just mean that... Venus and Mars weren't the only two senshi to be in love."
She shot Makoto a meaningful look. "Placing two souls that were meant to be together into the same body... It's never happened before. True, we're not complete souls anymore, but... it will still come as a shock."
"What do you suppose it'll feel like?" the brunette asked curiously.
"Well, let's see..." the princess thought aloud. "The most complete I've ever felt was when..." A furious blush spread over her cheeks. She cleared her throat.
"It will feel good. That's what's important."
Mako blinked naively at first. Then she realised, and went nearly the same shade of red herself. "Oh..."
"Like I said, you're better off somewhere comfortable in case you don't wake up for a day or two. So don't be worried if you think you've lost some time."
Makoto nodded. She lay down and prepared to go to sleep.
"I'm not going to overload you. It will take a few minutes to successfully funnel an essence into a new body."
Nothing happened for a moment. Then when Mako next breathed in, she felt it: warmth. It spread from her nose through to the rest of her body; incredible, consuming. She felt calm and ecstatic at the same time, like anything could happen and she would still be happy, here, forever. And so it was that a lost, lonely, angry orphan became the only person in celestial history to grasp at the fringes of a complete soul.
"You should also know that, since you'll have two sets of powers, it's too risky for them to conflict. That means you won't be able to transform until Ami is well again."
"Mmm?" Mako managed. She had heard the information, but no longer had the capacity for negative emotion to allow it to bother her.
Minutes passed, and Makoto drifted further and further into sleep. And yet there was one thing that was getting in the way of her peaceful slumber – one more thing that she wanted to know:
"Mercury?"
"Yes?" The voice was becoming more distant now. The procedure was almost complete, she knew.
"What did I choose?"
"Hmm?"
"Jupiter – what did she choose?"
There was a short pause. The love lacing Mercury's fading voice was clear as she recalled her former lover; the one she was to be reunited with very soon.
"She chose your body."
"...Huh? That's kind of boring," Mako commented absentmindedly. Her words were slurring as sleep claimed her.
She heard the Princess of Mercury chuckle.
"She chose your body because she wanted to make sure that whoever had her powers understood what it was to be powerful. Understood the damage having too much power could do, and so had the presence of mind to be respectful of her gifts."
The young brunette could feel, could see, Mercury smiling in her mind's eye. She was aware of Jupiter watching the bluenette warrior through her eyes. She could even see the dance hall of the Moon Kingdom, moving fast past her as her Jovian counterpart ran to her lover.
"And what you thought that day, at the tournament, about those male competitors - about how they treat their strength as if it is a right rather than a privilege."
With that, Makoto's world fell away to bliss, to dancing on the moon, and to cold lunar nights warmed by the presence of another.
"That just proved that... she was right."
So, that's another chapter done. And guess what? Some actual Rei/Mina in the next one! Woo!
Well, that's it for now.
Sayonara, minna!