"What were you doing last night?" Usagi asked, her eyes subtly narrowed. "You stopped answering my texts. I almost went out to look for you."
Ami rubbed the back of her neck without thinking about it, but stopped when she realized that the gesture made her look guilty. "Just practicing my powers, like that night with you and Luna."
They were seated in the shade of a tree outside their high school, having lunch. Usagi ate noodles out of a bento with chopsticks. Ami ate a sandwich. The weather was sunny and not too windy, and most importantly, there was at least ten yards between them and any other students. Ami didn't think that anybody at their school could read lips, but she still hid her mouth behind her sandwich as she talked.
"Just throwing bubbles around, then?" Usagi asked, stabbing a mushroom with a chopstick and popping it into her mouth.
Ami hesitated, wondering if she should tell Usagi the truth, then realized that her hesitation already gave away the real answer.
"No, more than that," Ami admitted. "I found out that I could conjure all kinds of water, not just a spray of bubbles that make fog." She took a bite of her sandwich, then mumbled, "I think I've found a way to make a gun out of ice and snow."
"How does that work?"
Ami explained the basic idea.
Usagi chewed in silence. "I don't mean to baby you," she said diplomatically, "but that sounds like it could be dangerous."
"Not what I was doing last night," Ami said, a touch defensively, "I was working on my ice forming. I still don't have enough fine control to make a hollow tube."
"But it would be dangerous once you've gotten past that point, no?" Usagi said with delicate slowness. "What if the cap on the back end of the barrel breaks, and all of the steam blasts back at you?"
"I'd be standing off to the side, not right behind it," Ami said, relieved that Usagi hadn't asked about the chance that the whole gun might just explode. "I'm thinking about that stuff, Usagi. I promise."
"I know you are, but I still worry. Why were you being so cagey about it earlier?"
Ami didn't reply.
"You're still bothered that you don't have an offensive power?" Usagi said. You're still insecure that your only attack is 'bubble spray'?
Ami sighed. "Well, yeah."
Usagi waved her chopsticks. "And you're afraid that I might tell you to stop, saying that you might hurt yourself trying, because without it, you'd have to rely on me to protect you in a fight."
"It's not that," Ami said quietly. "It's just, if I have these powers, I feel that I ought to be doing this kind of, you know, research and preparation. I feel like if I weren't, then that would mean I wasn't taking it seriously."
They watched as a student at a picnic table threw pumpkin seeds to a small group of birds. The birds fluttered and hopped, pecking and nibbling. One of the student's friends got up and ran at them, waving and whooping, and the birds dispersed.
Some of Usagi's other friends had asked her to join them for lunch – Naru Osaka, a spritely red-headed girl, and Gurio Umino, a bespectacled nerd – but Usagi politely declined, leaving the two to sit by each other. Ami remembered Umino as an academic rival, one of the few students who came close to matching her test scores, but knew little else about him. She'd overheard him gossiping about other students, particularly those who kept to themselves, which meant that he'd probably gossiped about her too.
Naru's parents owned a jewelry store that had been targeted by the Dark Kingdom. A youma had disguised herself as Naru's mother, enchanted the store's jewelry to drain energy from their wearer, and began selling the store's whole inventory at clearance prices. The ruse lasted for two days before Usagi came to kill the youma, which had landed her in the newspaper.
Ami gathered that the store had lost a lot of money from the ordeal, on top of the trauma already dealt to Naru's family. Police discovered Naru's mother bound and gagged in the store's basement, dehydrated and delirious, lying in a puddle of her own excrement. And something had happened to Naru, too. Normally chipper and enthusiastic, she'd become languid, shambling through her school day with a vacant stare. Usagi checked on her frequently. She had a ridiculous Boston accent.
("Oh gawsh, Usagi," Naru had said, her limbs leaden and her gaze empty. "I'm joist naught feeling myself today.")
"You know what I'm about to say, Ami," Usagi said. "You're being too hard on yourself."
Ami shook her head. "No, I get why you're saying that, but I honestly think that this is something that I should be doing. Isn't it better if I have some way of protecting myself, if a youma decides to attack me?"
"I'm not disputing that," Usagi said. "But if you wanted help with practicing your powers more thoroughly, you could have just asked."
"I did ask. Luna said that I didn't have any powers besides the 'bubble spray'."
"I think that was just Luna being Luna." Usagi smiled. "I think she likes having fun at your expense. No offense, Ami." She looked over to Ami, saw her scowling, and giggled. "But seriously, if you're willing to ask for guidance, there's a lot that you can learn."
"From you, or from Luna?"
Usagi swallowed another mouthful of noodles. "You free to come to the Game Center with me after school?"
The Game Center Crown was an arcade built into a modest multistory building, situated underneath a cafe, and flanked by tenement apartments to either side. Purple arcade cabinets stretched deep into the building in long rows. It was crowded, as was usual just after the school day, and oversized posters of Sailor V stared down from the walls.
Motoki, the owner's son, was busy sweeping the floor near the lobby. He was tall, blonde, and handsome. He used his wages from the arcade to help pay for classes at a city college, and Usagi seemed to have a crush on him. Ami waved to him as they entered, but was whisked aside by Usagi before she could catch his attention.
"Where are we going?" Ami asked. Usagi held her by the wrist and was leading her to the back of the arcade.
"You'll see," she said. They walked past the restrooms, stepped into a side corridor, and ducked past an 'Employees Only' sign to stand before a nondescript red door.
Ami looked around. The corridor was spartan and undecorated. The walls were white-painted cinder block, the lighting was harsh and fluorescent, and the floor was a green-white checkerboard ceramic tile mottled with black streaks. The lights made an electric buzzing noise.
That would explain why Usagi hadn't wanted Motoki to see them, at least. They weren't supposed to be back here.
Usagi stepped in front of the door. She made a karate-chop gesture that ran parallel to its middle, paused, then took a small step to the side.
"What are you doing?" Ami asked.
"You have to be lined up just right," Usagi said. She leaned forward, touched the door's surface with her pointer finger, and traced four digits: 0-0-9-1.
Ami heard a loud clank, then a motorized rumble, like the sound of a garage door opener. Then, a sharp, metallic click. Usagi turned the knob and swung the door open.
Ami's eyes widened.
The room was clearly ordinarily a janitor's closet; Ami saw a mop bucket, a broom and dustpan, a box of nitrile gloves. But what would have been the janitor's closet had receded perhaps ten feet into the wall. Where the floor of the closet would have been, Ami saw steps going down.
Usagi made a 'come hither' gesture, then started down the stairs. Ami hurried after her, afraid that the door and closet might shut, leaving her locked outside in the maintenance hallway.
"Where are we?" Ami asked, because that was the obvious next question.
"The Game Center Crown," said Usagi.
"No, I mean–" Ami said, before she realized that Usagi was messing with her.
The stairs seemed to be going in a spiral, down and to the right. They'd only turned the first corner when Ami heard the clank and rumbling again, which meant that the closet was closing up behind them. The steps were translucent, tinted green, and glowed faintly around their edges. The space around them was black and filled with stars. The stars weren't just decorations, painted specks on a black wall: Looking at them, one had the impression of looking into the actual night sky, as if the stars sat in the infinite distance. Ami bobbed her head side-to-side, gauging their parallax, and they didn't seem to move.
That had to be an illusion. Ami leaned over, hand outstretched, planting her feet so she wouldn't fall off the side. Her hand met resistance where she expected the wall would be, a hard smooth surface that Ami would have expected to be glossy. She saw Usagi disappear around the next corner and hurried after her, wary of being left behind.
Ami estimated that they'd descended four floors before reaching a small landing.
"Oh gosh," Ami said.
Coming into view was a circular dais, wreathed in a daylight glow, ringed by Doric columns. At its center was a semicircular console, maybe fifteen feet in diameter, with a triplet of television-sized blue-black monitors at its center and two more smaller screens flanking it to either side. Blue holography shimmered in the air above, charts and graphs rendered inside of circular bubbles, shrinking and enlarging and bouncing from one end of the room to the other.
The room's contents seemed to be floating in the void of outer space. Ami guessed that they were in a large chamber, its walls and ceiling made of the same star-black material that enclosed the stairs. Whatever the room's architect's design intent, they had succeeded. Standing inside nearly felt religious.
Standing in the room's center was a short woman with long pink hair, her back turned to Ami and Usagi. She wore navy dress blues with white sleeve stripes, and her hair in a ponytail. She held her hands in front of her, making L's with thumb and forefinger, and seemed to be manipulating the holograms with waves and gestures. Luna sat on an ornate white stool to the woman's left.
"She's here," Usagi announced.
Luna spun around on her stool. The woman turned to face them, allowing Ami to see the front of her jacket. It was plain, unadorned save for six white coat buttons and a white crescent moon on her left breast. Underneath the jacket, she wore a white dress shirt with a high collar, but no tie.
"Hello, Ami Mizuno," the woman said, clasping her hands in front of her.
"He– Hello," said Ami. Her face twitched. "Who– Who are you?"
"Usagi Tsukino," the woman said. "But you can call me Chibiusa."