Eight

Piece Together The Truth

Aiyana stood in front of the full-length mirror in the hospital room. She was rather perturbed--her pants wouldn't fit over her stomach anymore.

She sighed and dropped them to the floor just as the door to her hospital room swung open.

"Aiyana..."

Aiyana stood stock-still, not even turning around, just knowing that Masaya could see all of her undressed body--front and back--in the mirror in front of her.

"I'm sorry...let's do this over." After what had seemed like an eternity of Masaya's eyes roaming all over her body, taking in every nearly perfectly formed detail, he executed a sharp military turn and walked out of the room.

Aiyana tried hard to swallow back her tears of embarrassment and tried to slow her rapidly pounding heart, but to no avail. A tear rolled down her cheek. It might have seemed strange...but she had reason to fear a man, any man, walking in on her. Even as sweet as Masaya was, it was too close, too familiar...

Aiyana remembered a day that she had the plushy Delta barracks to herself. She was the Fifth Delta then. The other Deltas had gone to some social function, but she had chosen to stay behind. Once alone she took a long, hot bath...when she had climbed out, the Fourth Delta accidentally walked in.

It was a true accident, unlike the many other occasions in which the Deltas had degraded her. She had dried herself off, instinctively looked around, and then had let her towel fall around her feet--only to hear an unearthly gasp. She didn't even have to turn around to know who it was.

She had stared down at the floor, and he hadn't moved either. His eyes were fixated on her, trailing up and down and all around her figure. Suddenly his hand had reached out...his fingers lightly grazed her shoulder, then the fingers of his other hand on her other shoulder. His hands had spread down her front.

She hadn't done anything, just stood there, while the Fourth Delta had wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close to himself. Then, just as quickly as he had come, he fled, leaving Aiyana to slink to the floor of of the bathroom, shuddering.

Aiyana was so deep in thought that she had completely forgotten where she was, that is, until Masaya's strong knock came from the other side of the door. It made her jump practically three feet in the air. She settled back down on the ground, shaking.

"Aiyana? Are you dressed yet?" he asked in a concerned voice.

Aiyana pulled the jeans back up to her waist, trying in vain to zip them up, and quickly put a large pink shirt on and was dismayed to see a little of her waist poking through. She was three months and a week pregnant. "Yes."

The door swung open and Masaya walked back in, red-faced and sputtering. "I am so sorry I did that," he said. "You were so quiet, I thought you might have been asleep..."

"It is fine."

"No, it's not. I promise, I'll knock from now on." Masaya shook his head as if to shake it of the entire incident and smiled one of those heart-rending smiles. "So, what was the problem?"

"My pants don't fit anymore."

Masaya stared at her stomach and burst into laughter. "Well, I'd quite forgotten about that. Naturally you'd begin to grow out of those clothes Ami gave you. You need some maternity clothes and I'm afraid all of our mothers have given them away. I mean, my four aunts. It's been two years-- three, actually--since anyone has had to wear any, since little Yuriko's two years old--wait, she's almost three...anyway, it doesn't matter. Those weren't even Ami's clothes. She's way too short for you to fit any of her clothes and I think those were clothes my Aunt Set had left here for when she's on earth. Anyway, I'm babbling."

"Yes. You are."

Her blunt answer made him laugh again. "I'll ask Ami to pick you up some maternity clothes. You have a right to get some free as long as you're here."

"No, I don't. I don't have any rights. I committed a crime. I'm in prison. Prisoners don't have any rights."

"You're not in prison. You're hospitalized. And you have rights. Including the right to clothes that don't squeeze the stuffing out of your stomach...can you feel it kicking yet?"

"What?"

"The baby." His cobalt eyes were once again fixed on hers in the stare that made her want to blush furiously.

She swallowed her embarrassment and averted her eyes to her own protuberant stomach. "No."

"Oh." His energy seemed to drain out of him, and Aiyana saw for the first time that he was anticipating this...he was very drawn into this issue with her and her baby. But why?

"I wonder whether it's a girl or a boy." He sighed and laughed at himself. "Well? What would you prefer?"

"A girl...or a boy...I don't know." Aiyana hadn't thought about it. She really hadn't thought about having the baby at all. All she had known is that she was pregnant...she was cursed with her illegitimate pregnancy, mother to the child of the Second Delta. Her parents, if alive, would have cried themselves to death if they knew. The thought made a sob catch in her own throat.

She swallowed it and turned to Masaya. He seemed to know what she was thinking, at least to a certain extent, because his eyes were friendly and sympathetic. They were like an extension of himself, and they seemed to reach out to touch Aiyana, encumber her in a warm embrace.

She turned away, smiling, and said, "I haven't really dwelt too much on what I was going to have to face up to...all I thought about was that I was pregnant. I knew I wanted to have the child, didn't want an abortion..."

"NO!" Masaya said vehemently, and clapped a hand over his mouth. "Ah, kami-sama. I didn't meant to exclaim like that...it's just that I love children." He smiled sheepishly. "I guess you could tell that, since I'm a pediatrician."

"Ami says you're a good one."

"Yeah, whatever."

"It was the healing."

"What?"

"The day I healed your scar." Aiyana turned back to Masaya. "That's why I collapsed. I forgot that I get weak after it happens. It just took a little longer to kick in for once."

Masaya nodded, staring at Aiyana thoughtfully. He sat down in the chair, but she remained standing. Since the day they had first went jogging, they had decided to continue every day, and she was already beginning to look healthier and stronger. She could stand up alone, although her complexion sometimes went pale when she did so. And she had developed an appetite--a meager one, but one that was still there, and much better than some elixir of life forcing her not to eat or sleep.

"About your question, Masaya..."

He looked up.

She smiled a little, blushing. "I think maybe...I want a girl."

"There it is."

Sailor Mercury pointed to a small blinking blip on the computer screen. It was still an unidentified object, floating softly across the skies of the Milky Way Galaxy. It had reached the halfway mark across the Milky Way. Although the object was still moving rather slowly across the skies in terms of space, it was moving steadily, getting closer every day.

"A satellite, maybe?" Sailor Jupiter said, staring at the screen.

"That's no satellite," Sailor Uranus said. "Not at that speed. It would move a bit faster. Besides, satellites float a bit more...this is moving with a definite destination in mind, it seems."

"Well, how would we know?" Sailor Mars said. "After all, it would be an alien craft. It might move a little differently from our satellites."

"Any satellite would move like that, Rei-chan," Sailor Mercury said. "They explore, look for information. This thing is from outside the galaxy, and it isn't stopping to look at anything closely. It's definitely moving towards something...on our side of the galaxy."

The other Senshi fell quiet and thought a minute.

"Are you still getting those feelings about the assassin being connected to that UFO, Michiru-san?" Sailor Venus asked Sailor Neptune.

"It isn't so much a feeling as a flash of a vision in front of my eyes, telling me that...that there's something going on between the two that is a link. But it could mean nothing, could be a false instinct...like the flash I got of..."

The Inner Senshi turned to her, but she cut off again, like she had the night of the assassin's first attack.

"Of what?" Sailor Jupiter asked.

Sailor Neptune shook her head. "Never mind."

Sailor Venus sighed. "If you don't tell us these gut instincts you have, Sailor Neptune, we will never figure out this mystery behind the girl and the UFO and whether or not they are connected. What is it with the secrecy lately?"

Sailor Neptune shook her head. The flashes of Hotaru she was seeing she wanted to keep between her and Sailor Uranus right now. Ever since the young woman's disappearance, Sailor Neptune had felt an aching gap in her heart...if there was some way that this girl was the key to closing the gap, she didn't want the Inner Senshi to get in her way.

"I mean, doesn't Serenity...Usagi-chan...matter to you any? Neptune? Mercury?"

"Of course Usagi-chan matters to me, Rei-chan," Sailor Mercury said, narrowing her eyes angrily at Venus. "I love Usagi-chan just as you do--as a sister. I would never do anything to hurt her."

"And I feel loyalty to Queen Serenity as well," Sailor Neptune said.

"So then what's this big wishy-washy phase that we're all going through? Mercury and Neptune are clamming up, and everyone else seems unsure about what to do or what to say. We've been at each other's throats for weeks since seeing this thing. It's been getting us all jittery. We act as if we've never had an intergalactic threat before!"

"Venus," said Sailor Jupiter, "that was different. We were younger then. We didn't have families--families that are dependent on us, waiting for us when we return from battle. We're so out of practice..."

"Crystal Tokyo has had a peace so long that we've lost our fighting ethic," Sailor Mercury continued. "When's the last time we had a threat? When we were all sixteen, and Galaxia came. Now we're all over one thousand years old. We haven't fought in so long, Venus."

"We're still Sailor Senshi," Sailor Venus insisted.

"She's right," Sailor Mars chimed. "Although we haven't fought in long, we have our powers and our instincts. After all, when the Silver Millennium ended, we were all reborn in new bodies with new families. There was a period of years. And yet, we found it within ourselves to fight once again."

"And protect our queen," Sailor Uranus added. "That is the most important thing--that Serenity lives. She has always been the most important thing to us, and our lives have always been devoted to protecting her. That is still our main objective. That is what we have to do."

To that, all the Senshi could agree.

"How's our progress?"

The Eta pilot turned around. Smirking, he gave the Delta officer a thumbs-up sign.

"Everything is going according to schedule, Delta Hojo. It seems that these aliens have discovered our presence in their skies, but they have yet to figure out exactly who and what we are. They still think that we are an artificial satellite of some sort, although some are beginning to speculate otherwise. But none of them have yet figured out our origin."

"Good." First Delta Hojo Junichi smiled. "Everything must go smoothly, as it is now. The prince will be quite pleased with our progress." He looked back at the screen. "So we're not losing sight of our target?"

Another Eta, the co-pilot, turned and looked at Delta Hojo as if he couldn't possibly be talking about his flight crew. The Etas were the pilots and aircraft maneuvers of the Omega Army, and they happened to be quite arrogant, even though Delta Hojo had three levels of seniority over them.

"Of course not," the co-pilot said. "It's quite clear. A small blue planet, nto too far away in this galaxy. About halfway across one one of the outer lashes of the spiral."

"Of course, the trail is not very hard to follow with the tracking serum within that girl there," the Eta pilot said, smiling again as he squinted at the display. "It leads us right to the planet, without veering off course."

"Yes." Delta Hojo rubbed his hands together. The other men, three of the other Deltas, were in the back lodge. The four men were ready to do what they had to do on this blue planet. "It will not be very hard at all to do what we were sent to do. The creatures do not seem to be very bright on this planet called...Earth."

"Aiyana?"

Aiyana turned her eyes to meet Masaya's. He was staring at her, while she was laying on her back in the hospital bed. It was aching, a dull and yet agonizing pain that was unlike anything she had ever felt before. She suspected it was the fault of the small life-form growing inside of her stomach, which was slowly poking out of her clothes in what was to her a rather ungainly manner--which was funny for Aiyana, since she never had cared about her appearance before.

Then again, she thought, feeling the urge to smile Masaya's way, I never had a real reason.

"Yes?"

"Remember the first day we had gone jogging, and I said that you could file for asylum on Earth?"

"Yes." How could she forget? Ever since Masaya had said the words, she had been thinking about the possibility.

How tantalizing the prospect. She wouldn't ever have to go back to the Omega Star Empire, which had always been a dark, miserable place for her, as far back as she could remember. Even for the short time--two months and a week now--that she had been on Earth, she had been enjoying her time here...as much as a pregnant seventeen-year-old with malnutrition and back pains could enjoy a new planet. She felt a connection with the planet itselt that she couldn't explain, just felt...

She'd first noticed it the first time they'd gone jogging. She'd tripped and fallen, flat on her face, only catching herself from the pain of slamming herself into the ground too hard by throwing her hands out at the very last moment. But when her hands touched the ground, she felt this jolt of an electricity-like feeling that kept her in push-up position, face inches from the ground, saved from the pain and humiliation of breaking her nose or something similar. Heat seemed to radiate from the very core of the planet, warming her cold body--whipped by the sharp April wind. She had picked herself up feeling very strangely, staring down at the place she had fallen. The picture of the space had implemented itself in her mind very hard, and she found herself wondering whether she was crazy or not for remembering a square patch of grass.

"What were you talking about, when you said something about your people?" Masaya continued, jilting Aiyana from her thoughts. "You said that your people were opressed, working long hours. You seemed really passionate about it...until you collapsed."

Aiyana sighed. Of course, the fantasy vision of her living on Earth would never work. She was too different from these people...they were so unlike her. They would never accept her into their society, their world.

"My world..." Her voice trailed off as she stared at the ceiling, her thoughts and visions travelling back to another world, very far away from this one, and very different. "It's so different from here, Masaya."

"Where is it?"

"At the end of the galaxy," Aiyana replied. "Very far, nearly one hundred thousand light-years...all the way across the Milky Way. Almost out of it.

"A few years ago, the small system was found by a benefactor from outside the galaxy, but still not very far away. The system was fairly falling apart, and the logistics were going down...the benefactor, a smaller system of two planets, offered to help the bigger system out with their government plan. They fairly took over and have been revolutionizing the bigger system. The bigger system is known as the Andromeda system, and the smaller, the Alpha System. The two planets there are known as Centauri and Proximi. The planets in the Andromeda system are Almach, Mirach, Alpheratz, Caph, Schedar, and the central planet, Ethiopia."

"They're both smaller than our system," Masaya noted.

"Yes. The Alpha system set up a new government, and it's rulers were the leaders. They insisted that when other planets saw our beautiful empire set up so nicely, they would become jealous and want to break us apart, so they roused up a large military and divided us into different sections in a hierarchy. The Deltas, the caste I was in, was the highest military caste, right under the aristocracy. The military is considered the greatest honor for any normal citizen of the empire and they are elevated even above the common people."

"So...your whole government system was created because some empire from the far reaches of space decided to help you set up a proper system of government?" Masaya raised an eyebrow, leaning forward. "That doesn't sound too realistic. If it were as idyllic as that, then why did you have that outburst about people being worked to death in a sort of economic depression? The benefactor wouldn't have done that to a people they were striving to help."

"True. I guess it was because a few weeks ago, a Rho class member barged into the Beta Council and...well, you see, Rho class members are those who basically live off of the government's help. The Beta Council, which is a legislative body for the empire, doles the money out to them. Well, this Rho class member somehow made it past the Epsilon guard that stands around the Beta Alcazar and barged into a Beta meeting, where the Betas were reading out statistics to the Deltas...it was boring...anyway, the Rho member was babbling some of the things that I said that day..."

"And they stuck out in your mind?" Masaya said.

"Well..." Aiyana shifted uncomfortably. "Well, of course the things she was saying weren't true--"

"How do you know?"

"The Omega Empire isn't like that," Aiyana insisted.

"Have you ever lived in the civilian class of your empire?"

"Yes," Aiyana said. "They have my history on file in the Beta Alcazar's archives. I did used to live in the civilian class, the highest one, Lambda. My father was a Lambda scientist and my mother, a university professor. Their lives were devoted to science."

"Which is why you agreed to being the guinea pig to your empire's scientific experiments with these elixirs."

"Yes."

"But you don't remember any of this, do you?"

Aiyana turned to Masaya, her eyes flashing that violet again. But they were not angry--rather, they were troubled, disturbed. "What makes you think that?"

"You say the alca-whatever has your history on file, and you didn't give any particular details about your parents. Besides, before when you told me you had lost them both, your eyes...didn't seem to show any emotion."

Aiyana looked up. "I loved my parents," she said sharply.

"How can you know that, if you don't remember them?" Masaya asked.

"I loved them," she said, eyes flashing again. "I know that much, at least. I can feel that."

"But see, look at it this way...the empire knew that, being alone at the age of...you must have been younger...you would definitely feel loyalty to your parents. You don't remember anything about them. Don't you think that, perhaps, they might have...tweaked...your history a little bit to make you a bit more open to the military life and the sciences?" He paused, then added sarcastically, "Let me guess. You had an older brother in the military, too. A fighter pilot who eventually got promoted to the level you're at now. And he died on a covert mission."

"How did you know that?" Aiyana said, eyes widening.

Masaya shook his head sadly. It was beginning to come together...this poor misguided girl had been used by this empire that she held in such high esteem. They had made up a history for her out of the blue to make her feel more devotion to their military. They'd lied to her!

"You've always wanted to fly," he answered simply. "They wanted you to want to fly."

Aiyana's eyes were turned downwards again, but Masaya could tell--from past experience--that tears were collecting in her eyes. She was a smart girl, and she was beginning to piece together the truth as well.

"Aiyana..."

"Please," Aiyana said, holding her hand up. "Please, just leave me alone...please go away."

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