She Only Cried Once
***
I don't own Sailor Moon.
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Aiyana looked on in carefully concealed disgust as she watched the
young doctor, Koikokoro Masaya, scarf down a bag of potato chips.
Earth people certainly can eat, she thought to herself. If they
only knew what reality was like.

"So, Khalidah-san," he said, once his mouth was clear of chips,
"what is this you said about you being changed so that you don't have to
eat?"

"The scientists on my home world devised a way to make people have
no need for nourishment," Aiyana answered.

"Okay..." said Masaya. "But, how? I mean, metabolism is one of
the five life processes. That all has to do with--"

"Food consumption, digestion, excretion," said Aiyana, regarding
Masaya with cold blue eyes. "I know."

"Good," said Masaya. "So tell me how you are able to not eat and
live, due to some scientific research."

"I don't know," said Aiyana. "I am not a scientist."

"Well, what did they do to you so that you don't have to eat?"
Masaya asked, looking at Aiyana with intense smoky-blue eyes. Aiyana
felt that creeping tingly feeling arise in her belly again, as if a
thousand tiny butterflies were fluttering around in the middle of her
stomach. Something about his eyes--

"They injected me with something," Aiyana answered, averting her
eyes so she wouldn't blush again. She had never felt this way before
and she didn't really like it. Much. "Some kind of elixir of
something-or-other."

"But why would they want you to stop eating?" asked Masaya,
crunching on another handful of potato chips.

"If you think about it, how much time do people waste a day
eating, drinking, and sleeping?" Aiyana said. "At least five jikoku of
sleep each night, and a half jikoku for each meal. That's six and a
half jikoku a jidai. Fifty-two jikoku an isshukan, two hundred eight
jikoku an ikkagetsu--think about how much you can do with six and a half
jikoku each jidai, if you weren't doing those things! And in the Alpha
Star Empire--"

Aiyana clapped her hands over her mouth. She'd accidentally given
away her home stars!

"You're confusing me!" Masaya said. "What's a jikoku? What's a
jidai? What's an isshukan? What's an ikkagetsu?"

Maybe he hadn't caught that. Aiyana took a deep, shaky breath,
and said, "A jikoku is a unit of time. I think it's equivalent to about
two Earth hours. Each jidai, which is like an Earthen day, is made up
of sixteen jikoku. Which is about thirty-two hours. Which is like a
day and a third, on Earth. An isshukan is a eight-jidai period, which
is like a week, I guess. An ikkagetsu is like a month, except that
there are four isshukan in a ikkagetsu, which is thirty-two jidai. So
it is like having a thirty-two day month on Earth, except the days and
weeks are really long, do you get it?"

"Got it," said Masaya. "And if you think I didn't catch that
slip-up, you're wrong. I just chose to ignore it."

Aiyana turned bright red, closing her eyes in embarrassment.
"Well, that is not the first slip-up I have made on this assignment."

"The other one was a good one. What would have happened if you
did kill the queen? Is your empire planning an invasion on this world?"

Aiyana remained silent.

"So, it's embarrassing to *not* kill someone?" Masaya asked,
putting down the clipboard.

Aiyana felt a bit more at ease when he put down the board. It
meant he wasn't recording her life. "Well, it was an assignment. It's
especially hard if you're one of the few females in the military. No
one expects very much from you. Which is why I was surprised to get
this mission at all. Which makes it worse--and thus more
embarrassing--that I failed."

"So you must have been a good soldier, even if you were a female,
judging by the way you chose to do things. I bet my mother walked right
past you, didn't she? The one in the short orange skirt?"

"Yes, she did," admitted Aiyana.

"And I hate to say this, but the queen's really lucky someone was
there to hit you over the head. We might be having her funeral and
you'd be on your way back to wherever you're from."

What?

"Hit me...over the head?" Aiyana wondered.

"Yeah. You didn't feel that? When they found you, there was a
big pool of blood around your head, a huge gash in the back of your
head, and someone had totally zapped your energy. Everyone thought you
were dead at first, until Haruka-oji checked your pulse. It wasn't
pretty."

Aiyana drew her hand to the back of her head, burying it in the
violet tresses. She pushed it to her scalp, until she felt a lumpy,
hard formation in her head. A scab. She drew it out, shuddering.
Although it would be covered with her thick violet hair, that gash would
produce a nasty scar at the back of her head.

Scars.

"So I take it the people at your home speak Japanese?" Masaya
asked, changing the subject at her discomfort.

"No," she said. "I...already know the language."

Masaya raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He turned over his
clipboard.

***

Second Omega Prince Tamashiiro Matsudaira smirked as he put down the
memoranda he'd received from the Council of Thirteen, commonly known
as the Alpha Council. The first three were questioning him about the
whereabouts of a young female Gamma he'd had under his charge, but he
had no idea where she was. She was probably dead by now.

First Delta Aiyana Khalidah had been Tamashiiro's nemesis on the
military scene since she had first entered into the military at Kappa
level. She'd risen up through the training levels of Kappa pretty quickly,
and now she was being appointed at Sixty-Fourth Iota. That was pretty good
for a female, although there were many other females at Kappa level at the
time. She really hadn't bothered Tamashiiro much at the time. He was Twelfth
Epsilon and three levels over her head.

But what did give him a scare is how quickly she rose through the
military works. Before he knew it, she was First Iota getting promoted
to Fifty-Sixth Theta. And then, while he made slow progress to the
position of Third Epsilon, she weaseled her way to the position of Fifth
Zeta. By the time he made it to First Epsilon, she was in his old position
at Twelfth Epsilon, and he'd had his first experience of working with her.

She was a quiet young lady, usually very subservient and doing the
wishes of her overheads. She always did her work quietly and
efficiently, and was usually done ages before the other men. At first,
Tamashiiro had been pleased, but after a while he had actually began
looking for opportunities to find flaws in her work. He never did. She
was always the first up, dressed, and showered in the morning, always
the first done in the drills. And she lived up to the expectations of
the military. She was the very canon of the military--help the
fellowman, keep the standards high. There was even a time when she had
helped Tamashiiro himself.

Tamashiiro frowned faintly when he remembered that. They were
doing scenarios on dusty mesa cliffs, and he had been trooping ahead of
his comrades, leading them with a straight march ahead. Epsilon Khalidah
had been striding just as straight not many places behind him. The
other twenty-two men and two women were stumbling along wearily.

He remembered clearly the feeling he'd had--the proud feeling of
leading his troop, then, the horrifying feeling of his ankle cracking
virtually in half due to a false step, then the terror he had felt as he
felt the piece that his broken ankle was on crumble away, causing him to
slip down a 3,000-foot gorge.

The next thing he had felt was abject relief as he felt an arm
shoot out, lightning fast, and catch his arm. He had stopped squirming
and stood absolutely still, then looked up into the eyes of his savior.

It was young, then about fifteen-year-old Epsilon Khalidah, holding
onto him and staring down at him with steely blue eyes. Eyes that held
a look he'd never forget. A look of determination and strength--but
with just a tinge of untold sadness and yearning.

He had gasped, surprised at her strength. He felt more of it as
she single-handedly pulled him over the edge of the gorge, him only
using one of his legs as a brace of support. She was incredibly strong
for such a young lady.

She had pulled bandages and a splint out of her backpack and had
silently bandaged his ankle. He remembered her slowly massaging it, and
he had been extremely surprised at the softness and the soothing touch
of her hands. He had been surprised to know that one of the highest
ranking females in the military had a method of keeping her hands soft.
And she smelled very sweet, as well. Not dirty and dusty, as she should
have. She smelled like some sort of fragrant flower that Delta Tenkami
remembered, but had not seen for a long time.

What kind of woman are you? he had thought.

The next thing he felt was excruciating pain as she set the bone.
He had screamed, embarrassingly.

She said nothing, just stared with those frigid blue eyes of hers.

He looked back at her, discomfited, but she went back on with her
work. The others still hadn't caught up. She splinted it. And then
she said the first words she had ever said to him.

"You'll have to get a doctor to cast it when you get back to the
camp."

He felt strange at that time. Weird, as if some immeasurable
feeling...some warmth had welled up inside him, and he felt completely
different. Staring into her eyes, he didn't even feel the pain in his
ankle anymore.

When the other men and women came back around the corner, two had
helped him up, and he had limped back leaning on one of them. The
Second Delta took the lead. And she had walked, head bowed, quietly
following directions.

But since then he saw her in a new light. Before, he had seen her
as a weak little mouse, placid and timorous. But now he saw her as a
powerful warrior, someone who truly had inner strength and power. The
power was loose, unrecognized, uncontrolled, but it was still there.
Incredible power, encapsulated in one petite teenage girl. Someone to
be conquered.

He had slowly left the Epsilons, becoming a Delta, the highest
ranking official in the military. But he kept hearing reports about
her--favorable reports. A lot of them were coming from the Alphas, the
legislative body of the Omega Star Empire. And he would think back to
that day in which she had helped him in her serene, dutiful way. And he
found himself feeling more passionately jealous of her--tumultuous
infatuation. He admired her and...well, he hadn't hated her, but he
felt negative feelings towards her at the same time.

Pretty soon the young lady made headlines when she became the
first female Delta--Seventh Delta--when the First Delta had been
promoted to the Supreme Court of Justice, as the Betas were officially
called. She became the patron of all kinds of new scientific methods to
save time and labor with elixirs and tonics injected through syringes,
along with other people like her in lower ranks. Yet, she still
remained her faithfully reticent self.

But what she didn't know was that the hell was about to begin.

The Delta didn't like the idea of having a woman in their ranks
who was steadily rising. First it had just been the little insults, the
insinuations. But as she rose from Seventh, to Sixth, to Fifth, to
Fourth, and finally to Third Delta, the men began to hate her. For a
time she was even right under Tamashiiro's nose, at Fifth when he was at
Fourth, and they'd been sharing a bunk. The other men felt threatened
by her. And that's when the physical abuse began.

Tamashiiro remembered what the other Deltas had done to her. As
First Delta, he really should have done something. But he turned around
and pretended as if he couldn't see. He had felt resentful towards her
too, even though he couldn't place the other feelings he had, and
although at first he had never laid a finger on her, he did more than
all five of the other men had ever done.

They hit her, beat her, sometimes more than one at once. Smacked
her, slapped her, clubbed her. But they couldn't break her. She
remained just as strong as ever. Tamashiiro remembered that most
clearly about her. He had never seen her break.

A few months later she eclipsed him and took his position as First
Delta. The Deltas were shocked, even respectful at first. Tamashiiro,
however, was furious that the young lady had beat him out of his
position.

But she remained strong, like a wooden block. She only lost it,
she only cried, once.

It was her birthday that day, Tamashiiro now recalled. The
emperor and the Alphas requested that she come before the council.
Later he found out that it was to wish her a happy birthday. Many
favored soldiers were given commendation and good wishes on their
birthdays. That made him irate. He had only twice received special
commendation, which was much more than most people ever received; she
had been called before the Council of Thirteen at least seven times.

When she came back, the Deltas had a little birthday surprise for
her.

They had left her, destitute and alone, in a corner of the
darkened room. They had been laughing. But he--and he alone--had
realized that she was sobbing. He was shocked. He had felt...remorse.

He had gone to quickly eat dinner a while after that--leaving her
alone--and when he came back, she was in bed, asleep. The incident
seemed forgotten, for the moment.

But he could hardly forget it.

He was glad when he heard that she was going to get a mission off
the planet, a covert mission as an attempt to add to their empire's
borders and silence the troubles that had been brewing in a nearby
galaxy. She had left on that mission about a month and a week ago and
had not returned since.

Later, Acting First Delta Tenkami (as his name had been then) had
received a memo. It said that he was requested by the Alphas. When he
appeared before the council, they asked about Delta Khalidah. He replied
that she hadn't returned. Sighing, the First Alpha told him that the
Emperor requested a successor and wanted him to become the Prince of the
Omega Star Empire. Nothing like that had ever happened before, but the
elderly emperor had no wife and no sons or daughters. So he requested
that he adopt a successor. This easily happened, and Tamashiiro became Second
Omega Prince Tamashiiro Matsudaira.

Afterward he realized that if Delta Khalidah had come back as
scheduled, she would have become the first adopted princess of the Omega Star
Empire--beating him out of position again--and would have become the
first Empress of the empire without a husband, unless the emperor had
married her off, which he doubted he would do. The emperor thought very
highly of Delta Khalidah, and believed that she could run the empire
smoothly without help from a man. "After all," he often said after
stating this opinion, "she did beat all of you men out of your
positions, didn't she? She was the highest ranking in the entire
military--men included." Now the emperor never tired of talking about
how attractive, how graceful, how serene, and how dutiful the young
Delta had been, as if she were his own daughter.

Tamashiiro grinned when he thought about it. The First Delta was
probably dead by now, either by getting herself killed or getting
executed by the government there. She had been gone way too long. The
Alphas were already considering installing another Epsilon into the
Deltas, just as a precaution. For right now there were only six Deltas,
and there were supposed to be seven.

His grin faded into another of his famous smirks when he did think
back to the young Deltas. His father--for he had begun to think of the
emperor as such--was right: she was rather elegant. Shy, but graceful,
serene. And certainly attractive. He remembered fondly the soothing
touch of her hands.

And the vision of her crying, sitting defenseless in the corner of
the room, haunted him. That made him incensed. He hated the feeling of
not feeling in control, at the top, having authority...especially over
this unknown, intruding feeling. And he knew the only way that he would
feel triumphant over this haunting vision is to have the First Delta,
conquer her, bring her back, and discover all her powers, her secrets,
her mysteries.

And if she was still alive, that was exactly what was going to
happen.
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AN:
-jikoku: hour
-jidai: day
-isshukan: week
-ikkagetsu: month

Oh, and with the names. In Japanese (and on Earth), the names come surname-
personal name. In the Omega Star Empire (where the second part of this
chapter mostly takes place; Prince Tamashiiro's reflection) the names come
personal-surname.

If I missed something, e-mail me at keskiivikko@yahoo.com