A/N: In this fic, the Legendary Silver Crystal is not Usagi's Star Seed/Sailor Crystal. She has a separate Sailor Crystal that she carries within herself, like the other Sailors.
A couple of fan wikis say that removing a Star Seed from a Sailor's body makes them disappear or die. That doesn't gel with Usagi fighting as Sailor Moon in Season 1, despite the Legendary Silver Crystal being broken into Seven Rainbow Crystals that aren't in her immediate possession.
Ami stared at Chibiusa, scrutinizing her features. She did look faintly like Usagi, but with different hair, and maybe a few inches taller. There was a regal bearing to the way she held herself. Her clothes reminded Ami of a military uniform, but they lacked sleeve stripes, or anything to signify rank. There was a metallic gleam under Chibiusa's left shirt cuff – a watch, maybe. Ami felt like she was meeting Usagi's mother.
"Chibiusa?" Ami said. The name felt odd to her. "What is that, a nickname?"
Chibiusa's expression went from confusion, to realization, and then to sadness. "Yes. It literally means 'small Usagi'. It's a nickname from my youth that I kept through adulthood."
"Okay, Chibiusa," Ami said, "you and Usagi are related?"
Chibiusa nodded. "Correct. I am her daughter."
Ami blinked. "You mean she's your daughter?"
"No. I am her daughter."
Ami looked at Usagi, at Luna, then back at Chibiusa. All three were watching her patiently. "Either you're much younger than you look, or Usagi's much older than she looks, or some kind of time travel is going on," Ami said.
"Aren't we all time traveling, forward one second at a time?" said Chibiusa.
"That wasn't a yes or a no," said Ami. "And you're messing with me. Why does everybody always keep messing with me?"
"Because it's fun," said Luna. "You make it fun, Ami."
Ami sighed.
"But you are half right," said Chibiusa. She waved a hand. Two chairs, bulbous and white with red seat cushions, dissolved into view on the dais. "Have a seat."
Ami gawked at the holography as she walked and nearly tripped over the side of the dais. Chibiusa summoned a chair for herself. The three of them – Ami, Usagi, and Chibiusa – sat in a triangle, facing each other, with Luna sitting to Chibiusa's side. "The 3D projectors will make this easier," Chibiusa said. "This cycle hasn't invented them yet. I can see that you enjoy them."
"This," Ami began, "is proper science fiction shit. I'm very excited." Usagi's lips quirked into an affectionate smile, though Ami didn't notice. "For the exposition, too. How are you Usagi's daughter?"
"I both am and am not her daughter. I was not born to the Usagi Tsukino who sits next to you. I was born to Usagi Tsukino, the Princess Serenity, of the last cycle's Lunar Crown."
Chibiusa flicked her fingers, and Ami saw a city, hovering above them like the lights of a planetarium. A vast cityscape, skyscrapers that gleamed like icicles, deep black reflecting pools that glittered with starlight. Plants, greenery, people. Highways and railways, a maglev train. Gray moon dust. A spaceship, gray and square, upthrust on pillars of blue thruster flame.
"This was the Moon Kingdom of the Silver Millennium," said Chibiusa. "Selene City, in the heart of Serenity Valley."
She made a cutting gesture, and the image changed. Ami saw a palace of white stone, a high balcony. There was a woman, radiant, perhaps in her thirties, with long blonde hair and gentle blue eyes. She wore a flowing off-shoulder dress, white with gold embroidery. Usagi Tsukino, the Princess Serenity.
Four women surrounded her, each dressed in the uniform of a Sailor. One with black hair, red trimmings, and a purple bow, staring fiercely. Another with a high red-brown ponytail, green trimmings, and pink ribbons, left hand balled into a fist, standing a half-head taller than those around her. A woman who looked like Sailor V, sans mask, in an orange skirt and heels, her arms akimbo.
And a woman in blue, her hair cut short and practical. Weight balanced over one leg, the other bent slightly, scanning over the scene before her with innocence and curiosity. Sailor Mercury.
"This was your past life," said Chibiusa. "My life, before I came here."
There was an intimacy to the scene, in how the five stood among each other. While the Princess stared forward, as if facing a crowd, the Sailors looked at her with adoration and undying loyalty. And they showed the same to each other: looks of tenderness, gentle touch. Sailor V took Sailor Mercury's hand in her own, one white glove in another, and circled Mercury's palm with her thumb.
Ami felt a strange yearning, an aching that dropped into her stomach like a river stone. It all looked more real than the world she knew, richer and fuller, warmer and more loving, more concrete and more meaningful. It had a heart of music and a voice like summer sun. It was beautiful. Gazing into a memory of the Silver Millennium, Ami Mizuno felt like she belonged.
The image froze.
"Usagi and I," Ami said, still awestruck, "we're reincarnations? Of people from this past universe?"
"Yes," said Chibiusa.
"And Usagi was a princess?" Ami asked, with a note of incredulity. She got to be a magical girl, Ami thought, but Usagi got to be that and a moon princess? And it looked like Usagi would be their leader, too. From the way they stood, arrayed in a semicircle behind the Princess, you could tell that the four Sailors were subordinate to her. Maybe they were her bodyguards.
Ami got the sinking sense that even if her life was an anime, the main character was Usagi and not her. She was just a supporting character in somebody else's story.
Chibiusa nodded. Usagi was still smiling, but there was sadness in her eyes.
"What ended up happening?" Ami asked. Chibiusa had called it 'the last cycle'. It was past, lost to them. Ami had the terrible sense that it was truly gone, that its full glory could never be rebuilt.
Chibiusa flicked her hand.
And Ami saw ruin. Skyscrapers toppled like bowling pins. Buildings wreathed in flame. Mechanical golems whose guns spun spiderwebs of lightning. Spaceships flying, cannons thundering. Swarms of aircraft, huddled like starlings, chased and broken by missiles. Clouds of smoke. Thousands of men, fighting and dying.
"War," said Chibiusa. "Chaos came for the Earth, and the Earth came for the Moon Kingdom."
Chibiusa waved. The scene changed from a wide panorama to a point-of-view, as from a helmet-mounted GoPro. Iconography dotted the image's periphery. Ami recognized Arabic numerals, but the rest was illegible to her: pictograms or logographs, almost like Egyptian hieroglyphics, but rendered in abstract brush strokes.
The camera, if it was a camera, seemed to be falling out of the sky. Ami saw only blurs of black and gray, mostly gray, rushing toward the camera at alarming speed–
–and Mercury hit the ground feet first, swallowing momentum into her knees, taking off in a run. She and her team were vulnerable. The Earthers had fewer troops on the ground, but they had air superiority, and they may have been seconds away from targeting them with naval guns. They had to reach the drop point, enmesh themselves among the Earther troops defending the main approach, so that the airships couldn't fire without striking their own personnel. If her team waited, they and the buildings around them would become a mushroom cloud. Sailor Mercury was a priority target for battleship gunners.
The rest of their flight group sped towards the control tower. The tower sat atop a hill, boxed on three sides by reinforced concrete. Even after cutting the power conduit to the tower's Dome Shield, the only avenue of approach was a single staircase, long and straight, running past a security checkpoint into a courtyard that held the tower entrance. The full length of the stairwell had been fortified by Earther marines. Mercury's flight group had Titan support, Reaper and Hunter drones, two platoons of Lunar Guard. The plan was to bypass the stairwell – an obvious killzone – and drop into the courtyard, where they could flank the Earthers from behind. Securing the tower approach was a secondary objective; in the worst case, they just needed enough chaos for Mercury and the 6-4 to slip inside.
Thirty seconds till the drones dropped. They needed to be in the courtyard immediately after; it would take seconds for the drones to be bricked by gunfire. But it would take several minutes to reach the tower on foot, even with jump kits, and asking the flight group to circle back to them was just an invitation for more Ravens to get shot down.
"Hermes Flight, Hermes Actual, proceed with the drop, over. Team, on me," said Mercury. She threw her hands down, rose on a platform of meter-thick ice. "Get on."
It took ten seconds for the 6-4 to gather around her. "All aboard," said Gates.
Mercury erected walls around them. They were in an igloo. Mercury grew handles from the interior. "Grab hold. Cloaks off, let them recharge." Five more seconds. Mercury crouched, her hands flat to the floor.
The igloo launched into the air on a plume of steam, tilted toward the tower, and accelerated.
They had little time. Every airship in the city could see them now. There was probably a Jackal targeting them with air-to-air that very instant. But they moved quickly. Twenty seconds for the steam rocket to reach the courtyard's airspace.
"Cloaks on. Drop!" shouted Mercury.
The igloo's occupants vanished with a shimmer. Its walls and floor vanished, too; Mercury had dismissed them, reclaiming their magic. She saw jump kit flares, the 6-4 adjusting their trajectories. The Earthers had erected particle walls above them to screen against aerial bombardment, but the translucent barriers would only arrest fast-moving projectiles, missiles and bullets and the like. Mercury and the 6-4 slipped straight through.
And,
They were flying toward the courtyard. Dust from the drone drops hadn't settled.
A Hunter with scutums raised, weathering a fusillade of machine gun fire to its shielded front, staggering from machine gun fire to its unshielded back.
Four Earther Titans, Ogre-class, firing chainguns. One Ogre wrapping clumsy fingers around a Reaper's torso and crumpling it like paper.
And,
Mercury's scouter alight with callouts, a handful of Earther marines within her line of sight. But she knew there were more outside.
She made an X with her forearms. "Mercurybubbleblast." Flung her arms out and away.
A stream of bubbles, the courtyard bursting with fog. Silhouettes, dozens of them, outlined in grainy orange. She could see them now, which meant that her team could see them, too. Sounds of startlement, surprise.
And,
Still falling,
Mercury summoned five ice gonnes the size of tree trunks and fired.
And,
Dust. Five clusters of orange popping into flying chunks.
And–
"Tiro Finale," Ami mumbled, transfixed.
Panic. Above the rushing wind, Mercury could hear.
On the lips of a marine, the first syllable of her name.
Mercury.
A clunk. One of the 6-4, Davis maybe, snagging a handhold on an Ogre, stopping a fifty-meter fall with a catch that would rip a normal human's arm from its socket.
Above the gunfire, Mercury could hear.
Her heels snapping a marine's neck like a candybar, his body breaking her fall. Three more gonnes into three chests, point-blank range. Doesn't penetrate. Crushes the ribcage like birthday cake hitting floor.
Mercury.
"She's using gonnes," Ami said.
Chibiusa nodded vigorously, looking pleased. "Yes. Yes, she is."
"I'm working on learning that," Ami said, her tone abstracted.
Scattered gunfire, an Earther spraying bullets in her direction, missing every shot. She was invisible in the fog.
Above the sounds of screaming, Mercury could hear.
The thermite hiss of a thrown firestar, three Earthers melting inside their hardsuits. Footsteps, Droz and Gates, running on the face of a courtyard wall, cleats clawing into masonry, carbines blasting and jumpkits jetting.
Four gonnes, larger. The thundering chainguns of the four Ogres guttering, their ammunition belts clogged with ice. Davis tearing off a maintenance hatch, stuffing a satchel charge between thick cables. Him leaping free, clacker detonator in hand. His Titan rodeo crumpling into sparks and flame.
Her radio. "Standby for Titanfall."
A Stryder plunging from the sky, popping a particle wall with a wet-sounding thump, landing on top of an Ogre like a bowling ball into a bucket of nails. Infantry drop pods burying themselves into the courtyard, particle walls erected, Lunar Guardsmen deploying behind floating blue honeycomb.
Mercury leapt, her boots leaving small craters in the regolith and a dust cloud behind her. She caught the top hatch of a surviving Ogre, pressed her free hand into the crevice where entry hatch met hull. There was a lip, a narrow slit, big enough for a crowbar.
She summoned water into the crevice, froze it. Water expands when it freezes. Replace some of the ice with an equal volume of incompressible liquid water. Freeze it again. Over and over, several times per second.
The Ogre slapped at her like a mosquito. The first slap missed, metal fingers scraping paint. Mercury cocooned herself just in time, and the Ogre's hand skidded off a frozen boulder. It drew back, balled into a fist.
Freeze, replace, refreeze. Over and over.
A latch failing, the hatch groaning open, just wide enough. The pilot inside–
Mercury filled the cockpit with superheated steam.
The Ogre's fist went still.
More Titans dropping. They could handle the last Ogre.
Bear threw a satchel charge, sticking it to the archway above the main entrance, rocked a clacker with his other hand. The tower's facade exploded.
"Mercurybubbleblast." And a river of bubbles flew inside.
More orange silhouettes painted in her vision. The building's original Lunar Guard complement, who had defected to the Earthers' side, scrambling behind improvised barricades.
Mercury and the 6-4 entered the control tower.
Chibiusa paused the feed with a gesture and looked at Ami expectantly.
"Then what happened?" Ami asked, quietly. "Wars are fought all the time, but the world doesn't end. Life goes on. How did this war manage to reboot reality?"
"It was a conscious choice," said Chibiusa. "The Moon Kingdom was the custodian of an artifact called the Legendary Silver Crystal. It is, put simply, the most powerful magical device in the known universe. One who wields it can destroy entire planets." Chibiusa made a fist, and the projection vanished. "But that is not even the full extent of its power. The Legendary Silver Crystal can reweave the fabric of existence. Its primary and most crucial function is that of a reset button for the entire universe, to rescue it from destruction, or from worse."
"So, the people of Earth were fighting to destroy the universe?" Ami asked, frowning.
"When I said that Chaos came for the Earth, I meant that in a very literal sense. A magical being that we call 'Chaos' was summoned to the Earth," Chibiusa said, then stopped. She and Luna exchanged glances. Something seemed to pass between them. "Chaos was summoned to the Earth, and the Earth fell under its thrall. Five of the Earth's greatest defenders, Queen Beryl and the Four Heavenly Kings, commanded the armies of Earth to invade the Moon, seeking to steal the Silver Crystal in the name of Chaos. They very nearly succeeded. When all seemed lost, the Queen Serenity used the power of the Silver Crystal to unravel the threads of space and time. The last cycle came to an end, and the universe was reborn."
Chibiusa breathed deeply. "Myself, Luna, and a few others survived into the new cycle through the magic of the Time Gate, which is another device safeguarded by the Moon Kingdom, the details of which aren't relevant right now. Our duty is to steer the new cycle toward peace and prosperity. That is our mission, and it is now yours as well."
Ami waited for Chibiusa to elaborate, and frowned when she didn't. She couldn't help but think that Chibiusa's story felt off. It felt too neat, too tidy, like a children's storybook or a fairy tale. Sometimes wars were fought for simple reasons – megalomania, revanchism, greed – but Ami's instinct was still that surely there's more to it than that.
But that was only a feeling. She had no concrete grounds on which to dispute Chibiusa's narrative, no literature to cite. She had no knowledge of the topic beyond what Chibiusa had just told her.
"Could I take time to study this? Come here in the evening and spend my time reading?" Ami asked.
Chibiusa's gaze darted to Luna, who said, "I'm afraid not, Ami. Remember what I told you about gates not to be opened and seals not to be breached? The Legendary Silver Crystal is the most powerful magical artifact in existence, and it is far from the only dangerous magic recorded in our archives. I'm sorry, but you are not ready."
"That is the other reason why Usagi brought you here," said Chibiusa. "So that we can teach you the basics of magical theory, as it pertains to your duties as a Sailor Scout. It's common for novice magic users to make reckless mistakes. For instance, have you been sleeping regularly?"
Ami literally had not slept since she awoke as a Sailor Scout.
"Ah," said Ami. "No?"
Now that she thought about it, she hadn't even been feeling drowsy. Not needing to sleep freed up a huge amount of time, which she'd started to take for granted. Sleep had become less than an afterthought for her.
"That is not good, Ami," said Luna, her tail flicking in disapproval. "I told you to keep a normal sleep schedule."
"It's just so convenient not to, though. That's how I'm finding time to practice my magic, anyways," said Ami. "I haven't felt tired or sleep deprived at all. Will anything bad happen if I don't get regular sleep?"
"Sleep deprivation causes physical harm to the body, Ami. You haven't felt those effects because your magic has been healing them," said Chibiusa. "It makes you a less effective magic user, moreover."
"How so?"
"You have a soul," said Chibiusa. "A Sailor Crystal, a kind of 'Star Seed', that is the source of your magical power. It exists outside of this reality, in higher dimensional space, and your body is the substrate anchoring it to the physical world. That which heals your body and your mind – that which makes your mind and body more orderly – better permits the energy of your Sailor Crystal to flow through you, and helps to preserve your Sailor Crystal's integrity. Your soul affects your body, and your body affects your soul."
"So sleeping helps to keep my mind and body in good function, which makes magic easier to cast," said Ami, "but doesn't magical healing do the exact same thing? Isn't the final outcome the same?"
"No," said Chibiusa, "sleep is a time that your brain and body use for housekeeping. For processing and consolidating memories, healing and growing. It serves an analogous purpose for your soul, your Sailor Crystal. Healing the effects of sleep deprivation saps your magic reserves rather than replenishes them. It eats at you. You don't necessarily need a full night's sleep every day, but try to get at least, say, three hours each night, minimum," said Chibiusa.
"Okay," said Ami. "But let's say that I kept not sleeping. Or I magically exhaust myself by trying to conjure a lake or something. What would happen?"
"Retrogression, in both cases," said Luna. "There is a cost to magic use. That which you call magic is, ah," Luna scratched her head with her paw. "You've seen Madoka Magica?"
Madoka, do you know what the word 'entropy' means?
"I thought you said that you weren't Alien Cat Satan," said Ami, narrowing her eyes.
"I'm not," said Luna, sounding cross, "but it's relevant. You remember how Madoka discusses entropy, about how the universe only has so much energy that can be used to do work? A wooden log burned for warmth releases less energy than was used to grow it. An empty battery will never hold a charge as large as when it was last full. The rust that a workman scrapes off of his tools was once good steel, and with its absence, the tool is lighter and weaker.
"When a tool is used, it wears: its usable life shortens, and it becomes less useful to its wielder. When energy changes form, some of it is lost forever.
"Entropy is chaos and uselessness: the ashes of a fire, the rust in a gearbox, a dead alkaline battery. Negentropy is order and potential: a dry stack of cordwood, a newly sharpened ax, a fresh tank of gasoline. Negentropy is a system's capacity to effect change. Entropy is change already made final. That which we call 'magic' is distilled negentropy, the power to make almost arbitrary changes to physical reality. Magic lets you create water from nothing, freeze it without refrigeration, boil it without heat. Magic is a negentropic force: a 'negaforce', if you will."
"Okay," said Ami. "But it sounds like 'negaforce' is something finite and measurable, something that can be stored and consumed. When I use magic, then, I'm drawing from some kind of mana pool?"
"In a sense. Magic is–" Chibiusa stopped, bit her tongue, as if she were about to say something compromising. She ducked her head, seeming to think hard about what to say next. "Your 'mana pool', as you describe it, is the integrity of your Sailor Crystal," she continued. "With excessive magic use, your Sailor Crystal, your very soul, starts to weather and crumble. Your inhibitions loosen, your self-control fades, and your love for others weakens. Your psyche burns like fuel. That is retrogression. That is what happens when youma of the Dark Kingdom siphon energy from human victims: they are stealing those humans' negaforce."
Ami felt the urge to giggle, but suppressed it. 'Negaforce' was just a funny word.
"Eventually, you would lose your humanity," Luna finished, somewhat quietly. "There is a term for it in the literature. The end result of unchecked magical overuse is retrogression, and the end result of unchecked retrogression is magical psychopathy. You might still look human, but you would be a danger to everyone around you."
"And does magical psychopathy also limit my magical power?
"It does not," said Luna. "Which makes it doubly dangerous. The cycle perpetuates itself. As you become less inhibited, it grows easier to offer yet even more of yourself to fuel your magic, which makes your magic more powerful even as it chars your sanity. It feels good. It is addictive, narcotic. You may have noticed this already."
Ami nodded slowly. Casting 'bubble spray' felt pleasant, almost euphoric. Transforming into Sailor Mercury made her feel like she'd stepped out of a shower. Even the act of conjuring ice felt vaguely sensual. It occurred to Ami that since awakening as Sailor Mercury, she had spent every single night doing nothing but practice her magic. If magic use was narcotic, then she had been binging.
Ami remembered learning about illicit drugs in school. She'd sat through lectures and educational DVDs warning of the irreparable harm that drugs and alcohol would do to her body. Magic wasn't even an actual drug – she hadn't imagined that those lessons would apply – yet she worried that she might have broken herself already.
"So, we're not worrying about the heat death of the universe, then?" Ami asked, sheepishly.
"Our concerns are much more immediate than the heat death of the universe," said Luna. "And besides, if the universe even lasts long enough to experience heat death, that would be a victory for us."
Ami nodded. "So, any magic use will eat away at my soul. Skipping sleep keeps my body from healing and recuperating, forcing me to heal instead with magic, which eats away at my soul. It sounds like I'd inevitably become a magical psychopath, unless there's a way to reverse that damage?"
Chibiusa grimaced, like a child realizing for the first time that her parents necessarily had sex to conceive her. "We mentioned that retrogression damages your self-control, makes you care less about other people. It disorders you and disorders your mind. The way to reverse that is to do things that build self-discipline, or that strengthen your relationships with those around you. You need the power of love, in other words."
"And so, during the Silver Millennium, given that the Princess and her Sailor Guardians were frequent magic users in need of frequent emotional healing," said Luna, with a wide, shit-eating grin, "it was known that the Princess Serenity would rejuvenate herself and her companions by taking each of her Sailor Guardians not just as friends, but as lovers."
Ami's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "Oh my. That's rather, progressive," she said, feeling flushed. Ami tugged at her collar. "So, uh, does that mean that I should start dating, then?"
Nobody replied.
Ami looked around, confused. "Or, should I work on fixing my relationship with my parents? Adopt a pet? Read philosophy? Do volunteer work?"
Luna watched Ami with a look of eagerness, eyes wide and attentive. Chibiusa seemed to be staring at Ami's shoes, face carefully neutral, like she was trying very hard not to think of something deeply unpleasant without much success.
Usagi was lounging in her chair, her arm draped over the chair's back, one leg crossed over the other in a manner that lifted her skirt. She crooked her right brow rakishly, flashed Ami a wolfish grin.
"Oh," said Ami, realizing.
A pause.
"Oh!" Ami shouted.
Instinct compelled Ami to jump to her feet and flee the room, but the risk-taking part of her mind vetoed. Ami did have a crush on Usagi! Ami did have indecent thoughts about Usagi when she was comfortable and alone, her hands unrestrained by prying eyes! But those weren't thoughts that she was prepared to process, let alone in front of other people. Ami's brain sent conflicting signals to her legs, the first telling her to stand bolt upright, and the second telling her to stop and sit back down so as not to make a fool of herself.
Ami leapt up, pushing off with both arms, then froze, tried falling back into her seat, but her foot caught one of the chair's legs and she wound up kicking the chair forward into her the back of her knees so now she was tipping over like a Ming vase and–
Ami smashed her face and nose hard into the dais with an ungraceful whump sound, her shriek of alarm cut short by impact with the marble floor.
"Oh, goodness, are you alright?" said Chibiusa, moving over to Ami.
"I'm fine," said Ami, pushing herself up, the lower half of her face streaked with blood. "My nose is bleeding."
"You can heal that with your Sailor magic," said Chibiusa, hurriedly. "We can practice that now."
Ami sniffled. It wasn't even a proper anime nosebleed, but it was still undignified.
Usagi had half-started out of her chair, her arm stretched towards where Ami had fallen. She looked concerned, and there was a guilty cast to her face.
Chibiusa knelt in front of Ami, took Ami's hand, and gently laid it over her face. She whispered instructions. It turned out that Ami already had an instinctive understanding, as she had with 'Bubble Spray'. Healing was like stretching a different mental muscle.
There was a glow from her hand, bright enough to turn Ami's vision white, and a pleasant tingling. Then Chibiusa made a twisting motion with her hand, and Ami felt her face dry.
"I got rid of the blood for you," said Chibiusa.
Ami nodded. "Thank you."
Chibiusa returned to her seat. Ami slunk back to her chair, feeling ridiculous.
"I confess that I'd wanted to get a reaction out of you," said Luna, with a flick of her tail, "but I am sorry that you were hurt."
"I know that you don't mean any harm, but I wish you'd stop having fun at my expense," Ami said, quietly. "I feel like I'm the butt of every joke, and I'm not enjoying it."
She looked around. Luna was stoic, and Usagi was smiling apologetically.
"And, uh," Ami twitched, "I'm sorry, but I'm not ready to start dating Usagi."
Ami didn't feel that she was ready for such a step, which was a bit of a surprise to her. She'd had a small hope that tutoring Usagi would lead to dating her, buried in a hidden part of herself that she'd been reluctant to acknowledge. But now that there was a real possibility, the thought made Ami flinch. It felt wrong. The thought that she might have to date Usagi to be a Sailor Scout, that Luna or Chibiusa or Usagi herself would be disappointed if she didn't, was frightening to her.
Which made her feel strangely guilty. Usagi was nice enough, Ami thought, and she seemed like she would be a great partner. Ami hoped that she would understand.
Chibiusa slouched in her chair, wiped her brow with the back of her hand, and heaved the deep, contented sigh of a daughter free to forget about her mother's sex life.
"That's good," said Chibiusa. "I mean, that's fine. Supportive friendship is also restorative."
"It really is alright, Ami. It would be a big step. You don't have to if you're not comfortable," Usagi said. She was sitting normally, now, hands clasped penitently in her lap.
"The power of friendship," said Ami, with a small fistpump.
They spent some time doing practical study. Chibiusa led them to a practice room connected to the central chamber, a gymnasium lined with foam gym mats that also seemed to hover in the vacuum of outer space. Luna joined her in refining Ami's magical technique. They were surprised at how much progress she'd made muddling through things on her own, but they admonished that she'd already picked up many bad habits. It was like Ami was painting with the wrong end of the brush, Luna said.
Usagi graciously asked if Ami would prefer that she wait outside. She was fine, Ami stammered, so Usagi sat on a bench a short distance away, watching Chibiusa and Luna lecture. They gestured frequently and expressively. In lieu of a chalkboard, Chibiusa and Luna manipulated holograms.
Two hours later, Ami was able to conjure ice in the shape of a donut and propel it across the room. She could also dismiss her ice conjurations, she learned, which returned some of the energy that she'd used to create them. Eventually she might be able to hurl conjured icicles like spears, but her current throws were sluggish and easily dodgeable. Conjuring gonnes was still the ultimate goal.
Usagi approached Ami as they wrapped up for the day. She handed her what looked like an ornate watch, gold and mechanical and embellished with ocean waves, and told her that it was a communicator.
It was another brain-computer interface, Ami gathered. As she put it on, she could sense a protrusion in her mind, like a ripcord. When she tugged on it, thinking of Usagi, she could feel her thoughts spilling out of her like water from a pitcher. Moments later, she felt a mental nudge. Tugging on the ripcord, Ami heard a deeper version of Usagi's voice, as it sounded to her own self when speaking. This is how we should communicate, she said. Not by phone.
But shouldn't we still use our phones, for verisimilitude? It might look weird if we're always hanging out, but have no text history, said Ami. She realized that Usagi was also hearing Ami's voice as it sounded to her own self. She liked that. She hated how her voice sounded on recordings, high pitched and squeaky.
You're overthinking this, Ami, said Usagi, with a mental chuckle.
With minor practice, Ami found that she could send and receive any kind of thought: things she'd seen, things she'd heard, abstract concepts, emotions. She didn't feel capable of sending skills over the communicator, or her full recollection of a book. Those thoughts were too large to flow free; they stuck in her mind, the pitcher's spout clogging with ice. The communicator didn't have enough bandwidth, it seemed. But Ami still felt faintly disturbed. She was able to upload thoughts into Usagi's mind, and vice versa, just by wearing a device on her wrist. How easy would it be to do such a thing against the recipient's will?
Still, it was enormously convenient. And there was an intimacy to it, not just in hearing one another's internal monologue, but in sending feelings like the impression of unconditional love and support as a message in itself. Usagi did just that, and it touched something inside of her. Ami had many fears, many insecurities, many reflexive self-criticisms that the feeling of acceptance helped to salve. She felt lighter, less burdened. It was therapeutic.
You needn't feel awkward and you needn't feel guilty, the message said. I'm still here for you.