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SAILOR MOON: DEVASTATION
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By Doctor-T
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Twenty minutes after the destruction of the 'Happy Hour' bar, Artemis, Luna, Diana, Sailor Moon and Sailor V were making their way carefully towards their final target. Their first two attacks on the yakuza safe-houses had gone off without a hitch – both buildings had been destroyed and their adversaries put to flight, and all without a single casualty amongst them. It was a testament to the planning skills of their two cat guardians that things had gone so well.
Nor, despite Artemis's quite understandable worries on this score before the mission had commenced, had they been spotted by any of the infrequent police patrols that were still out on the ominously quiet streets. This was due to three main reasons. Firstly, the police already had their hands full dealing with the massive casualties that they had sustained during last nights destructive campaign by the yakuza Shinigami, secondly, the keen ears of the cats ensured that the small party had plenty of time to safely hide at the distinctive approaching sound of any of the remaining police vehicles still on the beat. The third reason was the damage that the sailor scouts had already caused earlier tonight to the infrastructure of their enemies. This had drawn away every police car not already assigned to other duties, leaving the little group a clear run towards their final target.
"All right, our last target is only five blocks away, now," Artemis was at that moment informing his troops. "We'll play it the same way as we did with the other two; Sailor Moon and Sailor V blow the main doors and shoot in through the front windows. Luna, Diana and I-!"
"'Fire One and Two' to 'Gold Team'! Come in, please?"
"That's Rei and Yuichiro," Luna exclaimed, as the sudden call from Sailor Mars on their communicators interrupted Artemis in mid sentence. "This is 'Gold Team'," She quickly answered. "Receiving you loud and clear, 'Fire Team'. How is your mission going? You haven't run into any unforeseen problems, have you?"
"No, we're actually finished already, 'Black One'! Request permission to rejoin you at entry jump point. Over."
Luna exchanged a quick look with Artemis. "It'd probably be best to say, 'yes'," he advised her. "Instead of them heading straight to Arisugawa Park, maybe it'd be better if they tagged along with us right now? We've got to go back past the jewellery shop to get to our last safe-house target, anyway, and if 'Fire Team' rejoins us on our way there that'll save us all a bit of time afterwards."
"Good idea, Artemis. And once we're destroyed our last target, we can all sailor-teleport back to the Crown straight away, without having to divert to Arisugawa Park at all."
"Yes, the sooner we all get off these streets and out of sight again, the better I'll feel," the white cat agreed.
"Ah, 'Fire Team' that's an affirmative," Luna informed Sailor Mars. "Can you be there in ten minutes? Over."
"No problems, 'Black One'. We'll be there in five. See ya!"
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True to her word, Sailor Mars and Yuichiro rejoined their friends in the alley beside the jewellery store at exactly the prearranged time. After the congratulatory greetings were over, Sailor Mars got right down to business.
"Mission accomplished, Luna. We totally destroyed all three of our targets, and what yakuza we did encounter are now all scattered and running hard."
"Well done, Sailor Mars, Yuichiro! We've destroyed two of the targets on our own list, but so far we haven't been able to discover the whereabouts of 'Cream Man' Oda. He wasn't at the first yakuza safe house where he was supposed to be, or the second, so we're hoping that he is at the last one, which is less than three blocks away from our position here. We're on our way to take it out right now."
"Well done, Rei-chan, Yuichiro-san," Sailor V congratulated her friends, giving them both high-fives. "Boy, you two work fast!"
"Yeah, guys, totally excellent work," Sailor Moon added, doing the same. "We would have been finished by now, too, but we prefer to – ah? – Pace ourselves…yeah, that's it! Pace ourselves!"
"Nice try, Bunny-chan," Sailor Mars grinned and then flinched slightly. "Ow!"
"Rei-chan, you're hurt!" Sailor Moon gasped out with concern, just now noticing the bloodstain on the front of her friend's left shoulder.
"It's nothing, Bunny-chan. The bullet bounced off me, but it broke the skin and cut me first. Nothing's broken and I'll be fine."
"Are you positive about that, Rei?" Luna inquired worriedly. "I can take a quick look at it, if you want?"
"It'll be fine, thanks, Luna. The bleeding has stopped now and I can still move my left arm just fine, see?"
"Okay, then. All right, everybody, let's get moving. We've got one more attack to carry out before we go home, so let's get it over and done with."
"Oh, there's one other thing that we need to tell you about, guys," Sailor Mars informed the others as they all started on their way once again. "Yuichiro-kun and I had just got into position to hit the 'Happy Hour' bar, when someone else beat us to it! A strange black cloud appeared overhead, it started to rain, then someone or something half hidden in the cloud opened fire down into the rooftop of the bar, blowing it into a pile of collapsing rubble! We took advantage of the situation and set the remains on fire before we got the heck out of there. So what do you make of that?"
"Someone else helped you?" Artemis repeated with surprise, halting to stare upwards at her, his blue eyes huge. "And you didn't get to see whom it was?"
"No. At the time I thought that it might have been someone else you managed to contact to give us a bit of extra help?"
"If someone took out the 'Happy Hour' bar for you, it wasn't anyone that I managed to call up," the white cat declared in a puzzled tone, "Unless…? Hey, maybe the outer senshi have finally arrived? Maybe it was Sailor Pluto, she can fly and hover in mid air!"
"Maybe…? But if it was Sailor Pluto or one of the others, then why didn't she attempt to make contact with us?" Sailor Mars replied, looking thoughtful. "She must have known that we were there, and when I blasted the remains of the building into embers there was no way that whomever it was could have missed seeing me do it!"
"Hmm? It's a mystery, all right?" Luna commented. "When we get back to the Crown Game Center, we'd best get right onto it, Artemis, and see what we can dig up?"
"I concur, Luna. But maybe we'll even run into this mystery helper again, tonight? Listen up, everybody! As well as watching our immediate surroundings, you'd better keep a good eye open for anyone who might be following us, as well!"
Despite the cat's misgivings about the possibility of them being secretly trailed by their unknown ally, their very cautious ten minute walk to the location of the last yakuza hideout was totally uneventful. Totally uneventful, that is, until the bright headlights of another car suddenly appeared in the distance in front of them, the vehicle first indicating and then slowing down to park on the other side of the street from their hurriedly taken cover behind the corner of the opposing building.
"Look!" Sailor Mars hissed out to the others, flattening her slender back against the stone wall and peering cautiously around the corner towards the vehicle as it pulled over to a stop only twenty or so meters in front of them. "In that car! I think that there's a yakuza in it…?"
"Can you see who it is, Rei-chan?" Sailor Moon asked, peeking as well from a position just under that of her taller friend.
"I wanna see, too!" Diana squeaked from behind Usagi's ankle, before being seized firmly by Luna and carried back to the safety of the rear of the group.
"Not yet, Bunny-chan," Rei whispered down to her curious blonde friend. "Hey! Don't stick your head out too far, Odango head, he'll see you!"
"Whoops! Sorry, Rei-chan…!"
The headlights of the mystery car suddenly faded out, and then the driver's side door opened and the yakuza in question stepped out onto the road. As he walked around onto the sidewalk, the little group caught a glimpse of his face…
"That's 'Cream Man' Oda!" Sailor V gasped out, eyes widening with surprised satisfaction from her vantage point above Sailor Mars's head. "That's him, right there in front of us!"
"Sailor Moon!" Luna cried out in alarm, as Usagi dashed forward to confront the man that had caused her so much pain and suffering over the last few days. "Wait!!" But she was too late to stop the angry girl, Usagi was already well on her way!
The yakuza enforcer had so far had a fairly uneventful day. With the hunt for the sailor senshi having been temporarily called off due to the attacks by the Shinigami on the forces of law and order, he had been assigned instead to transporting stocks of ammunition, liquor and cigarettes to the various safe houses in the district. He had spent the last half an hour having a late dinner at a nearby diner, and this place just around the corner was his last delivery for the night. Once he had arranged to remove the supplies in the trunk of the car safely into the confines of the hideout, 'Cream Man' was looking forward to having the rest of the night off. As he didn't have any soft bodied young girl lined up for his relaxation that night, there was a high stakes card game going to be starting back at the 'Happy Hour' in another thirty minutes that he had no intention of missing. After the thrill and excitement of last weekend, it would be the mundane, though tolerable, highlight of his so far boring day.
At least I've got that to look forward to? 'Cream Man' thought to himself as he unlocked the trunk of the borrowed vehicle. Since he didn't have a two-way radio in this car, he had no inkling at all that his base of operations had already been reduced to a smoking pile of embers. Once I meet my contact here and arrange for all of this stuff to be taken to the hideout, I'd better hurry up and get my ass back to the bar for the game. Nothing else is liable to happen tonight - or tomorrow, for that matter - now that we've all been ordered off the streets by Oyabun Tanaka-sama…!"
The sound of an alarmed cry reached his ears, followed by the clicking of rapidly approaching footsteps. The bulky yakuza whirled around to see a small figure blocking his path. A slender figure with two long blonde pigtails, clad in a sailor suit of blue and white and red, with red, knee-length boots on her lovely slim legs. And she was holding a sceptre of some kind in one white-gloved hand…
"Sailor Moon! It's you, isn't it, Bunny? Hah! What now, Sweetie…?"
"You stole my life," Usagi told him simply, raising her sceptre as she spun around and dropped to her knees. "Moon Spiral Heart-!"
With sickening suddenness, a totally unexpected bullet blew the moon sceptre clean out of Usagi's hand a split second before she could fire it, the savage impact on her weapon spinning her around, causing the shocked sailor scout to overbalance and fall hard onto her rear!
"Waaaaaaah!" Usagi wailed out with shocked surprise, legs splayed out as she sat on her bruised bottom on the hard concrete, tears erupting from the corners of her blue eyes. "That huuurt!"
"Look out, Sailor Moon!" Sailor V screamed out, eyes wide with concern and fear for her lover as she spotted the hidden gunman. Disregarding her own safety, Minako leapt out onto the sidewalk and whipped up her Crescent compact. "There's another man behind the corner of that building behind him!"
"So the little sailor girls have come out to play, eh? Hi, girls! Bye, girls!" Laughing, the yakuza enforcer dodged Sailor V's Crescent compact beam and ran off with the other gunman behind the corner of the building, disappearing into the all-concealing shadows blanketing their escape path.
"Why, you dork-!" Sailor Moon cried out, her flood of tears disappearing as if by magic as she regained her nerve. Snatching up her moon sceptre again, she leapt back to her feet. "I'll-!"
"No, Sailor Moon," Sailor Mars told her firmly as she reached her friend, grabbing the angry sailor scout's arm as Usagi prepared to dash off after her tormentor. "It's too risky for you to run off chasing him! You stay here with Sailor V. Yuichiro and I'll go after him, instead, and make him pay for what he's done to you and us!"
"Do it, Sailor Mars, Yuichiro," Luna urged them. "The rest of us will head for our next target. We have to hit them before they receive warning of us coming or else we'll lose the advantage of surprise!"
"And if that happens, we'll probably get tied down in an unnecessary gun battle," Artemis added. "And we can't afford to do that, it'll give the police time to find and mobilize reinforcements and surround us!"
"Okay, we'll see you all at the rendezvous at Arisugawa Park at eleven o'clock, then, like we originally planned to do," Sailor Mars called back to them as she and Yuichiro ran off towards the corner of the building. "Take care, you guys!"
"Same with you, Rei-chan, Yuichiro-san," Sailor Moon called after them. "Don't let him get away!"
"We won't, Bunny-chan," Sailor Mars grimly promised her. "He's toast!"
And then they both vanished into the night as well.
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"Hold it, Hisashi-san," 'Cream Man' Oda puffed out to the other yakuza as he came to a halt just in front of a brightly lit truck stop petrol station. "I've got a plan to deal with that sailor scout following us, and right here is the ideal place to carry it out. This place is for trucks only, so there should be no one else around to get in our way, either."
"So what have you got in mind?" the other man asked him after throwing a nervous look back towards the pitch black park that they had just run through. "I think that there's at least two people following us, and I'm sure that one of the pair is Sailor Mars. I caught a glimpse of her red sailor suit just before we ducked into those trees back there."
"Perfect! So, my plan is this, I'm going to fight fire with fire," came the somewhat cryptic answer. "I had this idea the other night, when I found out that Sailor Mars was one of the opposition. I'm going to give her a taste of her own medicine." He gestured back at the row of fuel pumps behind him to help make his point.
"Ah, I get it! Lure her here, and then make her open fire on us. But how do we get away? I don't want to be anywhere near here when these petrol tanks start to blow!"
"Don't worry, Hisashi-san, I've got that all worked out, too. See this access hatch here? I worked for a few months in a place just like this one, once. It leads down to a service tunnel about ten feet below ground level. We'll open it up now, you get down there and check that there's no obstructions that could keep us from making our escape along it. I'll wait up here and taunt Sailor Mars into opening fire on me, then drop down feet first to safety before she can hit me! Then all we need to do is identify her body – if there is one left – after the explosions die down up here!"
"That sounds like a plan to me?" the other yakuza grinned, pleased that his part in it was limited to opening the manhole cover and being the first of the pair to go down to safety. "Let's get on with it. She can't be too far behind us now?"
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Hisashi Morita-san's words proved to be pretty prophetic. No more than two minutes later, Sailor Mars appeared at the edge of the wide expanse of concrete that marked the edge of the truck stop refuelling station's forecourt area. Such was her thirst for vengeance on the yakuza that had ruined her and her dear friends lives, she had left Yuichiro – encumbered as he was by the bazooka and his backpack of ammunition - well behind. Slamming to a halt at the sight of 'Cream Man' Oda's waiting outline, the infuriated girl in her red sailor suit stared at him with a chilling look of vengeance in her burning eyes.
"There you are, you Hentai," Rei called out to him, her voice as cold and unfeeling as wind driven snow. "You can't escape from me, you yakuza scum! I'll track you down to the ends of the earth if needs be to kill you for what you did to my best friends and to my home!"
"You're far too good looking to be so angry, Honey," 'Cream Man' taunted her, an involuntary chill running up his broad back at the intensity of her hatred towards him, standing so that his emergency escape route was hidden behind his bulky form. But, because of that very reaction from her, he now knew that his risky plan would work. "I'd much rather take you to bed with me than have to fight you – just like I did with your two blonde sailor friends, both at the same time! And I had them both moaning with pleasure, too, just like I will have you doing as well. And, once I subdue you, I'm going to strip you, spread your lovely long legs open on the grass over there, and make you mine!"
"Die!!" Sailor Mars screamed with hatred, racing towards him as she totally lost it at his mocking words. "Fire Soul Bird!!"
As the spiral of incandescent fire roared towards him, 'Cream Man' hurriedly dropped feet-first through the open manhole at his feet, and fled with his comrade as fast as they could down the service tunnel away from the refuelling station!
"Rei!! Rei-babe, hold your fire!!" Yuichiro yelled out in alarm as he hurled himself desperately out of the park behind him towards his love, realizing just too late that she had walked into a trap. "Stop!! Those are petrol tanks behind him-!!"
But he was too late. In front of his horrified gaze, Rei was engulfed in a gigantic, petrol-fuelled fireball of her own making! The fiery blast picked Yuichiro up and flung him violently forty feet backwards; clean through the board fence surrounding the exploding refuelling station and into the whipping bushes beyond!
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"Got you, Sailor Mars," 'Cream Man' exulted to himself as he hurriedly trotted away down the service tunnel, the fiery roar of the first explosion ringing in his ears. "Nothing could have survived that-!" But, before he could finish his smug sentence, the earth heaved violently from a vastly larger eruption as the main underground fuel tanks of the doomed service station behind him blew like a volcano, blowing him and his friend clean off their feet and down onto the hard concrete beneath them! Then the curved roof of the tunnel caved in almost directly on top of them, burying his accomplice in an avalanche of shattered debris from the concussive force of the petrol fuelled airburst above and behind his kneeling form.
"Damn!! Yaaargh!" Then a large chunk of falling concrete caught 'Cream Man' squarely on his shaven head as he desperately tried to scramble up onto his feet again, and he dropped limply back down to the rubble littered floor, his unmoving body half covered by shattered concrete shards and white dust, further explosions revibrating above him as the truck stop blew itself steadily into total oblivion.
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Yuichiro stumbled out of the burning woodland, his helmet gone, arms held high in an effort to protect himself from the fearsome heat of the roaring blaze and the droplets of fire raining down from the sky above the raging inferno in front of him. He staggered forward out into the open again, somehow avoiding the hungry tongues of fire that radiated out from the epicentre of the blast, to stare with frantic, tearful desperation towards where he had last seen the spotlight-lit silhouette of Sailor Mars as she had run forward towards her doom.
"Rei! Rei!!"
But the area where his love had stood was nothing but a sheet of leaping flame, backlit by the blasts of secondary explosions as further stores of petrol and diesel ignited from the heat of the fierce blaze. And then he knew, he knew, that she was dead and gone and that she was never coming back.
Yuichiro collapsed to his knees and began to cry great choking sobs of grief. He knew that he would never, ever, as long as he lived, forget Rei standing there in all of her beauty as she had strode to her death, or her final word to him…
For the last word that she had screamed out in anguished terror as the fireball consumed her had been his name.
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Yuichiro Kamada finally arose back to his feet, and stood there, swaying back and forth as he tried to compose his shattered emotions. In his overwhelming grief at Rei's loss, he had come to a decision. He knew that he couldn't effectively help the sailor senshi any more – his bazooka was gone, and for all that he knew they were by now all as dead as his lover was. And because Rei was dead and gone, there was nothing left for him here, now, anyway…
Taking the car that 'Cream Man' Oda had parked a couple of streets away – luckily leaving the keys still in the lock of the trunk - Yuichiro drove it back to the now abandoned Crown Game Center. Once there, he packed his remaining possessions into his backpack and collected his guitar. Then, after writing a quick, farewell note to Artemis and Luna, on the off chance that they would return to this location and find it, Yuichiro, deep in the throes of his despair, departed the place for good.
Walking steadily away from the life and the dead girl that he had loved, Yuichiro reached the street that led to the nearest train station. Once at the terminal, he booked a seat on the next train to the southern suburbs of the huge sprawling city of Tokyo. After he had arrived there later tonight, he would turn his feet further south…
Yuichiro Kamada, ex-JGSDF artilleryman, rock star, shrine helper, and now broken man, was at long last going home.
"Goodbye, my darling, Rei-chan…" Yuichiro whispered to himself, tears in his eyes and unkempt head bowed with sorrow as he waited for his late night ride, slumped on a seat on the brightly illuminated train station platform. A vision of the beautiful raven-haired teenage girl in her grey, catholic school uniform, with a smile and a cheery wave for him arose before his moisture filled eyes. "I'll never, ever forget you…! As long as I live, I'll keep your memory alive…"