Dalit appeared outside the palace with a heavy heart full of worry and sadness. What would happen to the princess with the Soldiers gone? The Senshi of Mercury felt out of place on her own planet. She hadn't been there since seven years ago. And it hurt, remembering why she had left and not returned. Could those seven years have healed the pain for her family?
She walked up to the gates and the guardsmen parted for her. She hesitated and greeted them. They did not respond and she sighed. Some things never changed. They'll never talk to me like they used to, Dalit thought, almost despairingly.
"Dalit!" cried a warm voice.
Soldier Mercury sighed and turned with a smile pasted on her face. Coming towards her was her mother. The cause of all her pain. If only her father was still alive…
"Hello, mother," she said politely.
The Queen of Mercury threw her arms around her daughter. "Come with me. You can have your old room and you can get out of those awful clothes."
Mercury stopped walking. "I like my fuku," she said coldly.
Her mother paused. "Of course you do. I simply met you might want to change from them now that your home and you are not specifically on duty as a Senshi," she hedged.
Dalit said not a word and swept past her mother. This was going to be hell. She walked past everyone in the palace with long, angry strides. Her white, icy blue hair swayed madly as she walked. Her eyes narrowed and she brushed the strands of hair from her eyes.
Someone grabbed her waist-length hair and pulled. Automatically she cried out and whirled around, ready to fight. She saw no one. Looking down, she saw a baby boy with dark brown hair. She bent and picked him up. A girl about two years old ran up to her and held out her arms. She had very dark blue hair that came to her neck and she wore an apologetic expression on her face and in her deep blue eyes. "I'm sorry. He got away from me."
Dalit smiled and knelt in front of the little girl. "Who are you?"
The girl gave her a watery smile. "Ami. He's Randilyn, my baby brother. Momma said I had to watch over him today because her sister was coming back and she wanted to greet her."
"I see," Dalit said tonelessly. "And what do you know about your aunt? Are you looking forward to meeting her?"
Ami paused and looked at what the woman was wearing. "Well, I heard," She lowered her voice and continued on confidentially, "I heard she is a Senshi. She is the Senshi of Mercury in fact. I can't wait to meet her! I heard the guards talking one night and they said it was a great honor and that it couldn't have happened to a nicer person or a better warrior!" The girl paused, as if something had just occurred to her. "Who are you? Are you here to see her too?"
Dalit smiled and handed back Randilyn. "Well, I've already met this Senshi of Mercury. She is happy to meet you, Ami."
Ami's eyebrows drew together in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"
"Well, I'm pleased to meet such a wonderful niece of mine. I'm Dalit, Senshi and a Princess of Mercury."
Ami's eyes widened.
"Better get back to your mother. She'll be looking for you."
Ami nodded and ran back the way she came, looking back occasionally. Dalit continued to smile as she stood up. Ami had a true gift. Had she been her age when she had been chosen to become the Senshi of Mercury, Ami would have been chosen over her. She has such a gift.
Dalit walked down the halls again, slower this time. She enjoyed looking at the ice-blue walls and long corridors. She would sometimes stop at the windows and look down at the lakes around the palace. Now she remembered why she sometimes missed her home.
"Dalit!"
Dalit turned and watched as her sister ran up to her. She smiled and hugged her. "Sasha! It's good to see you."
"Why don't you come to visit more often then?" she asked as she pulled away and they started walking toward Mercury's bedroom.
Dalit's eyes hardened. "I wish I could, but I can't bear the thought of being in the same room as mother for more than sixty seconds."
"Are you both still arguing about that? She's making an effort to change and says she's sorry, she really is."
Mercury turned to her sister angrily. "No she isn't. She's just being more condescending in subtler ways!"
Sasha sighed. "You met her on your way in, didn't you?"
Dalit turned away and didn't answer. Instead, they began walking again and she asked, "How are things going between you and your husband? I heard it was an arranged marriage."
"Yes, it was. There is neither love lost nor hate. For both of us I guess it's more like a business deal. We're friends, but we don't love each other."
"Are you faithful to him and him to you?"
Sasha turned to look at her sister. "Yes. Just because we aren't in true love doesn't mean that we aren't faithful."
Dalit didn't say anything and Sasha cleared her throat when they reached her room. "Can I come in?"
She looked at her sister in surprise. "Sure."
Sasha closed the door behind her. "I have something to tell you. You might want to watch yourself around my husband, Akamu. He is violently proud of his ability to fight and will go to any lengths to prove it. He also saw the picture of you in my room. A friend of mine that visited from Venus said he had fallen instantly in love with you."
"What? How could he just from a picture?"
"I don't know, but I think you should watch yourself."
"I will," Dalit promised. It was obvious to her that Sasha was concerned that Akamu could beat her in fighting. Well, if he tried anything with the Senshi of Mercury, he would find himself in some big trouble.
Dalit stretched her muscles. It felt so strange to not be even the slightest bit sore. She was always slightly sore because of…Suddenly she remembered where she was and why she was not sore. There had been no training session and would be none until the year was over.
The Senshi of Mercury crawled out of bed to find a servant waiting for her. "What do you want?"
The maid winced at the harsh tone she used. "The Queen asked me to help you into your gown," she said, pointing at the dress hanging from the closet rack.
Dalit's eyes grew icy with anger and seemed to freeze the maid where she stood. "You go back and tell my mother that I will not wear her clothing. Tell her I will remain in Senshi form. Tell her…tell her that even though I am here on my own planet on a supposed visit, I am still a Soldier, first and foremost, and I will remain that way until it is time to leave. And if she doesn't believe you or wishes to punish you, tell her to come see me," she finished, cracking her gloved knuckles.
The servant bowed and hurried from the room. Dalit felt slightly guilty about scaring the poor girl, for she couldn't have been older than fourteen, but she had been so angry with her mother that she couldn't help it. She knew her mother, the Queen of Mercury, wouldn't believe her. Well, let's show her that I'm not lying, she thought and headed for the training grounds.
She spent the entire hour there unmolested. Soon she gathered an audience, small Ami included, although hidden behind the guards. Among the spectators was Sasha's husband. He watched with a blank face.
"Ice Mist!" Mercury cried, the gem on her tiara glowing. Touching it in the center, her palm shimmering. Pulling her hand into a fist, ice shards burst from between her closed fingers and turned into a beam of mist with shards inside. When it hit the practice dummy, it shattered to pieces.
One man clapping caught her attention. She turned her head and saw Akamu. He approached her, his hand outstretched. Although she had her misgivings, Dalit took it.
"It is good to see someone who can fight well, even if you are only a woman."
Dalit bristled and pulled her hand away sharply, as if she'd been stung. Her attitude turned to ice. "Any time you want, I'll show you that gender does not matter to a good fighter."
Akamu glared at her as whispers started in the spectators. "For a princess, you are quite rude in the mouth."
"For a prince, you are quite stupid in the brain," was her cool reply.
He lunged at her with a dagger in his hands. Mercury dodged it easily and hit him back. He fell to the ground. Turning her back on him, she decided a walk around the grounds would do her good. Unfortunately, Akamu had many dirty tricks up his sleeves that he was in no way averse to using and that Mercury had not thought of.
Hitting her from behind, the Senshi fell to the hard-packed earth. She rolled onto her back as he swiped at her with the dagger. A flurry of movement and Ami was lying on top of the Senshi, begging her father not to hurt her aunt.
Both the warriors knew he could not pull his strike in time. Mercury clutched the two year old in her arms and turned on her side. Because he had tried to change the strike from the dagger, it had no real force behind it and it did not even cut through her fuku. Not that it would anyway!
Both adults were slightly shaking by the close call of the little girl's injury. Ami, whose eyes were closed, felt herself being picked up. She looked up into Dalit's aquamarine eyes. They held concern in them and she wondered if she'd been hurt.
Mercury stood up. "Ami, what did you do? He could not have pulled that strike and if it had been anyone but me, you would have been seriously hurt. Listen, your father was not intending to kill or injure me. We were only having a sparing match."
"Sparing?"
"That means when you fight, you only fight to see if you can best someone, not hurt or kill them. It's really only used to test abilities when compared with another."
Ami nodded shakily and Dalit set her on the ground. "Go back to Sasha."
The little girl ran off and Mercury, without a word or looking back, left the training grounds. A walk would certainly do her good and she had a lot of thinking to do.
Akamu was certainly very handsome and his looks had stirred something in her heart. Yet she could not bring herself to look past his actions. He had attempted to injure her. But she had watched him the day she had arrived when he was with her sister and children. He loved the kids, that was for certain and it was obvious that what her sister said was true. They were friends, but not in love. The match was actually a good one. But what did she feel?
She ended up running into her mother near the pool that had always been her childhood favorite place. Her mother's eyes were cold, hard stones. With her icy demeanor, one would not think that she came from the planet Venus.
"I heard what happened in your bedroom early this morning and I saw what happened in the training grounds right now. Can you not…" She trailed off with a groan of frustration.
"Can I not what?" asked Mercury angrily. "Can I not act more like a princess? Can I not act like a Senshi? Can I not act more like you?"
"Yes…no…I don't know! Can you not act so…brash?"
"Oh," she said, her tone one of mock-discovery, "you mean, can I not act less like myself? Well, sorry mother, I can't. I won't because this is who and what I am and if you don't like it, you'll just have to deal with it."
The Queen of Mercury glared at her daughter. "You should not have come back."
"I didn't want to, but you threatened to pull your alliances from the Moon if I did not. Do you remember that? Did you not know that all the Senshi had to go back to their families for an entire year, leaving the Royal Moon Family unprotected? That I had to leave my princess and FRIEND defenseless?!"
"Royal Moon Family. Can't you be a Senshi and protect the Royal MERCURY Family?"
Dalit sighed. This was an old argument that happened from the dawn of the Senshi. "I can't. You don't understand."
"But you say you're the Senshi of Mercury. Why can't you protect the Royal Family of it?"
"Look, this is how it goes: A Soldier is born and they take the responsibility. They call on their planet for power and are named after it. Their duty is to protect the Royal MOON Family and the Ginzuishou. In turn, when company, bad company, evil company, calls, the Royal MOON Family protects everyone else."
Her mother sighed. "That makes no sense."
"If you bothered to actually listen to a word I said, you would see it makes perfect sense!" she yelled, having had enough of her mother's baiting. "Now if you don't mind, I shall go train some more." She turned to leave.
"That's all you ever do and ever did do. You couldn't be normal. You always had to be social with the guards. You spent more time with them than you did with your own family!" cried the Queen, rising from her seat on the lip of the fountain.
Dalit stopped and slowly turned around. This was the argument that had driven her away from her home planet. "I talked with them because they understood me. They are soldiers, I am a Soldier. We could understand one another, like you never could. Father never said I couldn't see them because he understood; he was a soldier too. Sasha never condemned me because she understood; she knew what I was and that I needed comfort from being with others like me. You never understood; I wasn't the perfect princess like Sasha so you wouldn't bother to understand."
Mercury turned and stalked back to her room. Opening her compact computer, she attempted to get it fixed. Over the past two years, she had tried everything. She gave a scream of frustration and threw it into the wall. It clattered against the floor. She buried her fingers in her hair. This was going to be one hell of a rough year. She just hoped the others were doing better than she was.
A small movement caught her attention. The door slowly cracked open. "Who's there?" she asked suspiciously.
There was a gulping sound and Ami stepped into the room. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
Dalit blinked and smiled reassuringly. "What are you sorry for, hon?"
"I interrupted your sparing match. You could have been injured because of me."
Oh, no, hon. You probably saved me from being injured, she thought. "Don't worry about it."
Ami spotted the computer lying on the floor and picked it up, carrying it back to her aunt. "You dropped this."
Dalit scowled at it. "It doesn't matter because it doesn't work."
Ami sat on the bed and opened it. "What does it say?"
"Every time I try to scan, it says error."
While Mercury was great with technology, what Ami did with the compact computer was not even short of amazing. She handed it back to the older woman shyly, saying, "It was a simple problem with something you had scanned before. It completely locked your system up. All you had to do was delete the file."
Dalit's eyes widened as she took the computer. "Amazing. You have a true gift. Listen to me, Ami." She locked eyes with the two year old. "You have the spirit within you. You have the gift that belongs in a Soldier. I'm not saying you will be one and I wouldn't be surprised if you become one, but remember you have the ability to do anything you want. With the gifts you have, you surpass everyone here. Even me. Now go to Sasha and tell her not to worry."
She patted Ami's head and the little girl left the room. She didn't precisely walk, but she didn't run. Dalit sighed. She knew Ami didn't understand half of what she told her, but one day she hoped she would. And if Ami didn't become her successor then there was something seriously wrong in the universe that Dalit would have to fix.
She leaned back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. What would happen in the year? Would Ami fulfill all that Dalit knew she was capable of? The girl was very soft-spoken and her eyes were full of curiosity. What she had done with the Mercury computer not even Mercury could do.
"I hope you realize your true potential, Ami," she whispered. "And I hope my friends will have a better year than I will."