Chapter 5 - Dead Man's Hand

Everything about Makoto's body language told the world that she was just out for a casual stroll with a friend.

Minako was one of the few people who could read the actual mental state her friend was in – which was look at my friend the wrong way and shit is going down. She tried not to feel exasperated, but really, she was way way too tired to ignore anything. Every tiny little thing was bothering her today, and she knew it was making her a grumpy jerkface.

Especially since Makoto was here as her protection detail.

The leggy brunette had her hands clasped behind her neck and was looking upwards like a tourist, but Minako was well aware that if she so much as twitched in distress, Makoto would know it. Which made things especially challenging right now.

They made the way into the front lobby of the building where Minako had been renting office space. The guard working the front desk gave her a sympathetic look. Minako pasted a smile on her face and forced herself to give him a greeting of some kind.

"Hey Aino. Sorry to hear about your office. It's crazy – doesn't make any sense. The police think whoever it is mistook your space for the art collector three floors up," he said, shaking his head.

Well. That was good to know. Minako had no idea what kind of burglar apparently used bazookas to get the job done, but if that was the story the police were going with, that'd suit her needs just fine. She pretended to wince.

"Ugh. Any chance I can get up there and try and salvage some of my stuff? All my designs are there! My materials!" she wailed dramatically, concentrating until tears rimmed the corners of her eyes. She let her lower lip quiver just slightly in its pout and clutched her hands in front of her, pleading.

He cast her another sympathetic look, making it apparent that there was probably a lot that this little display could get Minako if she'd really wanted. "Sure Aino. Go on up. Let em know you just want to grab a few things – it's your business after all, right? Who can say no to a gal like you?"

She waved her thanks at him and led Makoto to the elevators.

"Show off," the brunette muttered under her breath as they climbed inside the mechanical box. Mianko winked at her.

"I am an accomplished actress, thankyouverymuch," she said haughtily. Makoto rolled her eyes, tucking her hands in her pockets as they watched the floors glide by. When they finally reached her floor, Minako approached her office door and sailed right in, fully expecting the space to be buzzing with police work. Fully expecting to have to argue with a few people just to sneak in a covert investigation while she was gathering what she'd need to run her business from Nasuti's for a while.

…Or perhaps Seiji's, if his current mood was anything to go by.

Minako huffed, barging into her space.

Astonished to find it completely devoid of life.

"Ummm. What?" Makoto sounded incredulous, staring around the room with wide eyes. "Shouldn't the cops be…..investigating….something?"

Minako frowned. "Yeah. I mean, look at this place. It looks like world war three happened here. This is….really weird," she agreed. Makoto cast her a sharp look.

"A little too weird. Let's just get what we came for and get out. This place is giving me the creeps," she muttered, moving toward the first set of mangled filing cabinets and attempting to see if she could work anything out of them.

Minako had to agree. Once a comfortable creative space for her, the place now had a strong haunted house vibe going on. Like malice was waiting in each and every shadow to ambush them. She moved to the other set of filing cabinets, and for a while, they worked in silence, salvaging anything they could salvage, digging for clues.

They had nearly combed over everything when Minako finally approached her desk. The least damaged space in the room, she'd left it for last, ensuring she grabbed anything really important before she closed up.

There, sitting calmly and elegantly fanned out on its surface, was an arrangement of playing cards.

Minako felt her blood turn to solid ice. She gasped, jumping back, glancing around as if he might appear before her, looking to ambush her. Her heart began to pound against her chest.

After a beat of silence, he didn't appear, but Makoto did.

"What is it?" she snarled in a low voice, putting a hand on Minako's shoulder. Wordlessly, Minako gestured at the display, and Makoto narrowed her eyes. They widened after a moment, and she shot Minako a worried look. "That's –"

"Please don't say it out loud," Minako cut her off with a whisper. Makoto nodded, giving her shoulder a squeeze as she studied Minako with a concerned expression.

"Okay. I won't. Don't touch that all right? Hang on." Makoto disappeared, only to come back momentarily with some larger scraps of fabric. Minako watched as she carefully used the fabric to pick up the cards – black aces and eights, and one face down – something that Minako was sure was significant, and then carefully wrapped them up in the same fabric, tying a ribbon around the parcel to keep it contained neatly. Minako raised an eyebrow at her.

"Trying to keep the fingerprints intact? Has Touma had you watching crime dramas?" she teased. Makoto rolled her eyes.

"No you dork. In case you hadn't noticed, these things are made of razor-sharp metal and I didn't want you losing a finger or worse," she muttered back. "The blades could be poisoned, who knows!?" she added in exasperation.

It was Minako's turn to roll her eyes. "Poison? Please. Now we're talking about something out of a Film Noir."

Makoto frowned at her, but Minako was disturbed to realize that the frown was more worried than angry.

They packed up what few items they'd been able to collect and were turning to go when Makoto made a sudden noise and then Minako felt herself shoved out of the office and into the hallway. Behind her, Makoto was swearing, and as Minako watched through the doorway, Sailor Jupiter picked up her entire desk, and hurled it at someone out of sight like it was an empty cardboard box.

There was an all mighty crash and then dead silence. Makoto was dusting her hands, a satisfied expression on her face.

"There. I'd like to seem him portal out of here when he's a pancake," she snarled with vicious satisfaction. Minako cautiously peered back into her office. To see her desk embedded in the wall near the ceiling.

"Well. Glad I got everything out of there," she said wryly as she surveyed Makoto's handy-work. Makoto's expression turned into a self-satisfied grin, her hands confidently on her hips as she nodded.

"Good thing," she agreed.

They both watched the desk for some time, and when it didn't move, Makoto finally approached the area with caution. She reached up, and with a vicious yank, pulled the furniture from the plaster as if she were ripping off a bandaid. Her strength still sometimes astounded Minako.

"Damn. He got away."

Makoto sounded genuinely annoyed, and Minako had to agree with the sentiment. Makoto released her transformation and sent Minako a meaningful look. "Let's get out of here, ok?"

Minako nodded, feeling a mix of both dread and anger welling inside of her.

How dare he?!

How dare he?!

He'd cursed her love life for years. He'd traumatized her with his death. He'd lied to her and manipulated her. He'd been her enemy. Now here she was, trying to rebuild her life in a completely different universe. And he'd wrecked her office, destroyed a great deal of her work, and put her back into a position of constantly having not only herself, but ten other people looking over her shoulder.

And Minako adored her friends, but having everyone and their mother watching over her carefully was….exasperating at best. This little incident wasn't exactly going to make that better.

Not to mention – what had happened between them was something that Minako tried her hardest, on a regular basis, to forget. She wasn't a thirteen-year girl anymore. She was older, smarter, and wiser, and the painful lesson he'd taught her still burned in her blood. She'd been so naive, and he'd exploited that. And while she couldn't really fault herself for being young and stupid, since, in hindsight it was easy to admit now that she'd been both, remembering the humiliation, the betrayal, and the pain that she'd felt when she'd realized what he'd done – who he was – still stung like it had happened last week and not a decade ago.

And for some reason, she really, really didn't want to talk to Seiji about this.

For starters, he was already in over-protective mode, and he tended to take anything related to her past traumas so gravely. As if the fact that he hadn't been there to shelter her from whatever had happened was too tragic to contemplate.

…All right. Maybe he wasn't quite that dramatic. And if she was going to be fair, it was important that she remember that it was more of Seiji hurting on her behalf. And honestly, how could she not love someone who cared about her so much? And if she was going to be really honest with herself, she didn't want to tell him because she didn't want to see that knowledge hurt him. Because that hurt her.

And maybe that's what she was really angry about. This entire debacle was going to hurt Seiji. Because he loved her so much – cared about her so much, and learning what had happened to her in the early days of the dark kingdom was going to upset him. A lot.

Then pile on that this was all coming back now?

Forget it.

Her boyfriend was going to be a mess.

Minako groaned, rubbing her hands over her face and then sweeping them up into her bangs.

"…you ok over there? You've been seriously quiet, which is totally not normal for you. Now you're making weird noises."

Makoto's voice snapped Minako back to herself and she realized that she'd totally tuned reality out for the last….well she had no idea honestly. She looked around, blinking, and realized that they were waiting on the train platform. Train platforms seemed to be a grounding point for her.

Minako sighed.

"Just….figuring out how the Hell I'm going to talk to Seiji about all this," she muttered, wrapping her arms around herself. Makoto hummed in her throat, looking up at the sky thoughtfully.

"He's not going to handle the news…rationally," she agreed, adding to Minako's already vast amounts of distress. "I can….talk to Touma if you like. I mean –" she put her hands out hastily once she caught sight of Minako's face.

"Not like that! I mean just….get an idea about maybe how to approach him…..I dunno. It sounds stupid now," she muttered glumly. She toyed with the frayed edges of the ribbon she'd used to tie off the package of cards. A bundle Minako noticed Makoto hadn't handed over to her.

She had always felt closer to Rei, and sometimes it was easy to forget that Makoto was deeply protective of all of them – not just physically, but emotionally. Makoto was just as much a happy endings kind of girl as Usagi was – and that was saying something considering the sort of rough life she'd had growing up.

Minako was so glad that Makoto had ended up with Touma. The blue-haired genius took her friend's well-being with a seriousness that was almost comical. The man would move heaven and earth to ensure Makoto wanted for nothing, and quite frankly, Makoto was a sweetheart who deserved everything he gave her.

But she was still Makoto. And she would still throw herself impulsively in harm's way if she thought Minako needed her protection. Makoto would endure just about anything in her fight for her friends' wellbeing, and now Minako was worried about both Mako-chan and Seiji.

She was leaning more toward Mako-chan as she remembered the way her friend had thrown her from harm's way out of the office completely and stood in front of the threat herself. The train pulled up to the platform, momentarily interrupting her thoughts.

Seiji might get upset – but he was thoughtful. Makoto….might actually end up physically hurt. She was incredibly strong, but Minako was fairly sure that wouldn't stop her enemy. He was too conniving and resourceful to let something like physical strength stop him.

He'd been one of the most successful members of the Dark Kingdom, and his campaigns had brought a great deal of resources to Metalia.

They boarded the train, and Minako shot a covert, sideways look at Makoto again. The brunette was chewing her lip, brows furrowed in worried thoughtfulness as she stood beside Minako, one hand clutching the brace bar. They'd boarded the uptown express, and Minako realized that Makoto was steering them toward Seiji's.

Ugh. She was too tired to deal with this right now. She felt exhausted. She hadn't been sleeping well, the red glow of her enemy's eyes often waking her from a sound sleep.

Maybe it was time to talk to Artemis.

He'd been…..standoffish since they'd defeated Susano-O. Stiff. Distant. He was having a hard time adjusting to the fact that he wasn't the only man in Minako's life anymore – something Minako hadn't ever thought he'd be jealous about. True, he'd been like an older brother to her, but he was also a cat. A Mau, if she wanted to get technical. Minako bit the tip of a finger and wondered, not for the first time, if Artemis thought less of her because she'd let herself have a relationship with Seiji. He'd reminded her, only once, of the vow she'd taken with Rei against men, but she'd been so hurt, so upset at the idea that he didn't think she deserved to have someone care about her that they hadn't really talked about it since.

Or about much at all.

"Do you think Artemis hates Seiji?" she blurted, apropos to nothing. Makoto blinked vacantly out of the train window and then turned toward Minako, worry smoothed from her brow now.

"Uh, I don't think so, no. Why do you say that?" she wondered.

Minako bit her lip, wondering how much she really wanted to have this conversation. She hadn't really talked to anyone about it. She certainly wasn't going to talk to Seiji or Artemis, and Rei was always so matter-of-fact about these sorts of conflicts in a way that was generally unhelpful. The preistess' usual reply was something like he'll get over it.

"He's been sort of….distant since the whole….uhh….universe-eating deity thing," she confessed. Makoto nodded sagely.

"Ah. Since he met Seiji and figured out that you've got a new man in your life you mean?" she replied, nailing the issue on the head directly. Minako sighed, but decided, in this case, she appreciated Makoto's straightforward, honest nature.

"Yeah. Since that," she agreed with a nod.

Makoto looked up, thinking.

"Well…" she began, "He's probably worried that you don't need him anymore."

Minako blinked.

"He's Artemis. Of course I'll always need him. He'd better live a thousand years as far as I'm concerned," she said, feeling exasperated. Makoto rolled her eyes.

"Does he know that girl? Because most of your time has been with Seiji. And Artemis has been moping around Nasuti's place like a grumpy old tsundere," she replied with a chuckle. Minako put a hand to her face as the realization came over her.

"OhmyGod!" she yelped. Makoto nodded sagely.

"I think it's less that he doesn't like Seiji and more that he thinks Seiji is his replacement," she said mildly. Minako made a face, scrunching her nose and pursing her lips.

"Eww," she muttered. Makoto shrugged.

"I'm just pointing it out. There's nothing wrong with wanting to spend time with Seiji. He makes you happy, and girl, you deserve to be happy," the brunette replied, the hearts and flowers part of her personality shining through. "But you can spend time with Seiji and Artemis."

Minako sighed, her shoulders drooping at the thought. Between her past catching up to her and all these new relationship dynamics, she felt like she needed a vacation.

Still, Minako had never run from anything in her life, and she wasn't going to start now.

…Even if she still didn't want to talk to Seiji about this.