Chapter Twenty-Seven - Desperation
***
King Endymion winced as he felt another small surge/loss of power go through him. Aiyana was really laying it on, he thought. He wished she would stop before somone noticed the awkward way he was walking. What in hell was she doing?
The two senshi and two generals in the communcations room had sent a messenger to go get him to come, promptly, to the communications room. He had sent back the messenger to tell them that he was currently poring over the verdict of his and Selenity's decision about Aiyana. That was true. He was thinking heavily about Aiyana and the repurcussions if she stayed here - or what would happen if she ruled that she go.
He knew Ami and her crew had something up their sleeves. Sailorneptune and Sailoruranus had professed no affiliates, and it was impossible to tell what they were doing. Those two always had their own agenda and he left them to their own devices. But Mercury and Jupiter - there was no telling what those two were ready to do, and what they knew already.
If anyone found out that he was Aiyana's father, and that Hotaru was her mother, then Aiyana would have a claim to Japanese citizenry and he couldn't banish her without due trial. Then the whole ugly truth would come tumbling out. Frankly, King Endymion didn't want to revisit a mistake he'd made over nine hundred years ago.
However, if he didn't banish her, and allowed her to stay here on Earth in Crystal Tokyo, there would be questions from Mars and Venus and their administration. Selenity might even have questions if she wanted to rule opposite him. And that would also cause some problems.
Either way, he'd have to tell them the truth, and that was not something that Endymion wanted to do.
He erased those thoughts from his mind as he entered the communications center of Crystal Palace. Sailorjupiter, Sailormercury, Zoisite, and Nephrite were plastered to the screen, watching a scene that did not look very pretty.
"What's going on?" asked Endymion. "What the hell is that?"
"Mars' and Kunzite's ships were hit by a large missile from the spacecraft," Zoisite replied, never taking his eyes from the screen. "Mars' was hit head-on, Kunzite's got a nick on the side. After that, the starship took off and must be looking for a place to land. We have no idea where they went; they cloaked themselves from our radar. Their positioning at the atmosphere was in the general area of the tip of Africa to the subcontinent of India, but the field is big because they were far away yet, and then they cloaked themselves and we lost them."
"However," said Sailormercury, "with all sense of practicality, they wouldn't land too far from here. They did seem to establish some sort of contact with our ships before deploying their second and third missiles, but we lost communication with Mars' and Kunzite's ships and Jadeite and Venus aren't answering. They probably went to attend to the other two."
King Endymion shook his head gravely. "You said Kunzite's ship got a nick. Was it the side closest to the cockpit?"
"No, your highness," Nephrite said. "The hit was on the opposite end of the cockpit."
"So maybe Kunzite is still stable along with his crew," said King Endymion. "Punch up some communication with the ship."
Zoisite did so and picked up the small mike, clipping it to the front of his uniform. "Kunzite, crew, are you all right, man?"
A loud burst of crackling burst across the room. Endymion grimaced.
"Your highness?"
"Ah...a little too loud for me," he said, cursing the hereditary nature of his powers. What the hell was Aiyana doing? Must have been testing out her new powers, or something like that, because she was really, really laying it on. It was beginning to make him mad. Of course, she couldn't possibly know that he could feel her use of his - now her - powers, but all the same...
"This is Kunzite."
"Kunzite!" Zoisite exclaimed. "Kunzite, are you okay?"
"Yeah, for the most part," the voice came back over. "Minako's hysterical, of course. I really am fine, though. The missile missed the cockpit but tore through the chambers, which is why I'm really glad I'd ordered everyone to the bridge. It did shake us back a bit, and a few men were thrown. One of them went through the glass at the back of the pit and he's got about three men around him fishing pieces of glass from his body."
This time, everyone winced at the thought of such a scene.
"Yeah, it's not pretty," Kunzite agreed. "We haven't heard anything from Mars' ship. It looks completely totalled and the cockpit was hit. Jadeite's afraid we've lost them."
"No!" Mercury and Jupiter said at the same time.
"Jadeite's marrying his ship to hers; if he can pry away the twisted metal from the hatch, he can get inside and check the damages. Venus is coming over here, but the marrying hatch has been blown off and she has to find another entry...oh, she just said she found one. She'll be inside in a minute." Kunzite sighed a little. "See if you can get Jadeite on his dial- up."
"Great," said Nephrite. "So how are you, really?"
"I'm actually on the floor," he said cheerfully, "and I'm not going to try to get up. I feel pain in my leg and I know there's something sticking through it. I only hope it's something like a chair leg and not a piece of my bone or something. But other than that...head's clear, body's okay besides the leg and some blood on my arm, not mine, I don't think. This guy...well, we're not cute, but Mars' ship probably looks worse. I'm going over and out so you guys can talk to Jadeite." Kunzite's voice blinked out, and the mike went dead.
"I'm going to try to get Jadeite's ship," Zoisite said, typing quickly in the computer. The communication went through and beeped several times, but there was no answer.
"They're probably all on Mars' ship, trying to aid the men on there and get ready for a landing back here," said Sailormercury. "You don't think Mars might have."
The five looked at each other gravely.
"I'm only glad the Usako isn't present," said King Endymion quietly. "She'd be a basket case."
The other four warriors nodded.
"What should we do?" asked Nephrite.
"I'm going to go in my office and call the hospital," Endymion said. "I'll tell them to get ready for the arrival of - how many were on Mars' ship?"
"There were about twenty men on each ship," Zoisite answered.
"The arrival of about twenty men in critical condition and about twenty more injured, but somewhat stable," Endymion finished. "I'm also going to draft a letter to send to them, as well as prepare for it if these-" Endymion almost spat the word out, half-amused. "-these aliens decide they want to come up to Crystal Palace." He stared back at the screen. "At least one of you remain here at all times in case one of the ships tries to contact you. If you have any other duties that you think you need to do, do them now."
The four of them nodded.
"Where are your children at?" Endymion asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.
"They divided them up equally," Ami answered with a warm smile. "Teruo conceded to be away from Masaya for a day and he's with Hitomi and Megami taking care of Yoshiko, Jiro, Ichiro, and Tenrei at Rei's house. Masaya is with Emi and Izumi at my house, and they've got Nanami, Manami, Yuriko...and Mikomi."
"Who is Mikomi?" asked King Endymion.
"Aiyana's daughter."
She knew. Endymion could tell, not by the way she looked at him, but by the way Jupiter regarded him - accusatory, and guiltily at the same time - that she knew. Mercury was too discreet to look at him in any other way, and she quickly turned her eyes back to the computer screen, not wanting to face him. But Jupiter - who had always been especially protective of Serenity - knew, and at that moment he knew that Mercury also knew.
They could use that as a weapon against him. So far, they hadn't. But did they care about him more, or Aiyana? The answer should have been obvious: him. They cared about Serenity, too, so they were holding off using that information for as long as possible. But in time, if he expressed a desire to send her off, they would use it.
But Jupiter didn't know that he knew. Mercury might - she was shrewder, had more finesse, than Sailorjupiter. It was obvious all in that simple stare that Sailorjupiter didn't know that he knew Aiyana was his daughter, and she wasn't going to ask, of course - Zoisite and Nephrite had no idea.
Before he locked eyes with Sailorjupiter long enough to indicate any kind of shock or other emotion at the news, he turned on his heel and left the room.
***
Aiyana smiled brightly. The essences of the plants she had sapped had given her all of her needed energy, and she was ready to circle the base of Crystal Palace to find her entrance. The sun was setting, and she had to find it before dark - it would be much harder to find the entrance in the dark. The sun set in the west on Earth...she thought. The king and queen's bedroom chambers were in the north wing of the palace on the third floor.
Aiyana turned around, and judging by the position of the sun, she ran towards the north. The entrance had been almost directly under the crystal staircase that led to the third floor, in order to find the room that the monarchs slept in easily. Aiyana used her senses of sight and touch at the same time as she felt for the tell-tale nick in the wall that would signal her entrance site.
Suddenly a thought struck her mind. What if the guards had found and further sealed her entrance? Then she would have wasted her time, all for nothing. Well, she would just have to hope they didn't find it. No one would have known how she had gotten in, right?
Her worries evaporated when she felt a small crevice in the crystalline wall of the palace. Yes, there it was. Did the palace have regenerative powers? Maybe the crystal had grown back together. But the crevice was still large enough to stick her fingernail in, and the tightness felt the same - her fingernail was just barely able to fit in there - so hopefully that was a good sign.
Aiyana stood back from the wall and stared at the small entrance site. Six months ago, a good kick would have sent the chink flying inwards, and she would have easily been in. Now, even with the extra energy afforded her by stealing that of the flowers', she still didn't know whether or not she'd be able to get inside.
"Well," she told herself, "summoning my powers together by calling on the guardian of Saturn worked before. Let's see if it will work this time."
She closed her eyes and clasped her hands together. "Guardian god Saturn," she said, "give me the strength to do this." Opening her eyes, she smiled broadly, then reared back and kicked the side of the palace right in the middle of the entrance they had cut.
Nothing happened.
Aiyana went tumbling backwards on the soft green grass, rolling quite a ways away from the wall. "What...it worked before!" she thought aloud. "What happened?"
She scratched her head.and the answer hit her. Before, she had been desperate, and her desperation moved her to call on the full force of her power and to believe it was there. At the moment, her full force wasn't working because the same desperation and belief wasn't there. She didn't have the faith in the power that she had before.
"Desperation...what do I really want, more than anything?" Aiyana aked herself, staring at the crystal walls of the palace. "Using my desire to carry on my mother's legacy isn't enough. I don't want to become Sailorsaturn; I don't want to do this. Wanting to see Mikomi again might not work either. I can always walk away and go home. What do I want that lies inside these crystal walls?"
The answer came almost instantly upon her. "I want to see my father."
With that thought in mind, Aiyana closed her eyes again, clasping her hands together, and collapsed to her knees on the grass below her. "Guardian god Saturn," she intoned again, "give me the strength to see my father!"
This time, the kick wasn't even needed. The force of her will was strong enough. She jutted the heel of her hand forward into the cut-away entrance. A bright violet light shone from within her hand, and the slab of crystal cut out of the wall fell inwards with a hard, hollow ~thud~.
Aiyana smiled crawled on top of it, sliding through the small entrance it afforded, dragging her sword behind her - Masaya had found it for her in a small cabinet in the hopital somewhere - and setting the slab back up against the outside of the wall so that the crevice wasn't fully visible. She and the Second Delta had made quite a tunnel to go through the wall of the palace, which was rather thick, and then to enter into the small chamber that appeared to be an office of some sort. He hadn't actually gone inside the palace, just cut the other small entrance for Aiyana to go into and held the crystal slab so it wouldn't fall and alert the entire palace to their arrival. Aiyana could still feel herself glowing with the golden power and she knew she had enough left to open the entrance on the other side of the tunnel.
Again she braced the heel of her hand against the middle of the crystal slab. She didn't care about sound this time - didn't care if the whole palace heard her, as long as she was inside. She reared back and hit it again. The same bright violet power glowed on on her hand as it glided forwards, and the second crystal slab fell in, leaving a small exit for Aiyana to crawl through. The office was small and looked pretty private; Aiyana was pretty sure it was one of the king's or queen's private offices and that no one besides one of them would be in there. No one she couldn't handle, as long as she had her sword.
She rolled through the entrance, pulling her sword behind her, and pulled herself to a standing position. As soon as she looked at the floor, she knew someone was there. Newly polished white shoes were standing on the floor in front of her.
Aiyana's breath caught in her throat, and she turned her face upwards to look into the eyes of her father.
-------------------
AN: Hah hah, cliffhanger! Kind of ironic that the room Aiyana and Tamashiiro busted is the same little office in which King Endymion has been hiding all his letters from Hotaru over the years, isn't it?
Send any and all questions to keskiivikko@yahoo.com.
***
King Endymion winced as he felt another small surge/loss of power go through him. Aiyana was really laying it on, he thought. He wished she would stop before somone noticed the awkward way he was walking. What in hell was she doing?
The two senshi and two generals in the communcations room had sent a messenger to go get him to come, promptly, to the communications room. He had sent back the messenger to tell them that he was currently poring over the verdict of his and Selenity's decision about Aiyana. That was true. He was thinking heavily about Aiyana and the repurcussions if she stayed here - or what would happen if she ruled that she go.
He knew Ami and her crew had something up their sleeves. Sailorneptune and Sailoruranus had professed no affiliates, and it was impossible to tell what they were doing. Those two always had their own agenda and he left them to their own devices. But Mercury and Jupiter - there was no telling what those two were ready to do, and what they knew already.
If anyone found out that he was Aiyana's father, and that Hotaru was her mother, then Aiyana would have a claim to Japanese citizenry and he couldn't banish her without due trial. Then the whole ugly truth would come tumbling out. Frankly, King Endymion didn't want to revisit a mistake he'd made over nine hundred years ago.
However, if he didn't banish her, and allowed her to stay here on Earth in Crystal Tokyo, there would be questions from Mars and Venus and their administration. Selenity might even have questions if she wanted to rule opposite him. And that would also cause some problems.
Either way, he'd have to tell them the truth, and that was not something that Endymion wanted to do.
He erased those thoughts from his mind as he entered the communications center of Crystal Palace. Sailorjupiter, Sailormercury, Zoisite, and Nephrite were plastered to the screen, watching a scene that did not look very pretty.
"What's going on?" asked Endymion. "What the hell is that?"
"Mars' and Kunzite's ships were hit by a large missile from the spacecraft," Zoisite replied, never taking his eyes from the screen. "Mars' was hit head-on, Kunzite's got a nick on the side. After that, the starship took off and must be looking for a place to land. We have no idea where they went; they cloaked themselves from our radar. Their positioning at the atmosphere was in the general area of the tip of Africa to the subcontinent of India, but the field is big because they were far away yet, and then they cloaked themselves and we lost them."
"However," said Sailormercury, "with all sense of practicality, they wouldn't land too far from here. They did seem to establish some sort of contact with our ships before deploying their second and third missiles, but we lost communication with Mars' and Kunzite's ships and Jadeite and Venus aren't answering. They probably went to attend to the other two."
King Endymion shook his head gravely. "You said Kunzite's ship got a nick. Was it the side closest to the cockpit?"
"No, your highness," Nephrite said. "The hit was on the opposite end of the cockpit."
"So maybe Kunzite is still stable along with his crew," said King Endymion. "Punch up some communication with the ship."
Zoisite did so and picked up the small mike, clipping it to the front of his uniform. "Kunzite, crew, are you all right, man?"
A loud burst of crackling burst across the room. Endymion grimaced.
"Your highness?"
"Ah...a little too loud for me," he said, cursing the hereditary nature of his powers. What the hell was Aiyana doing? Must have been testing out her new powers, or something like that, because she was really, really laying it on. It was beginning to make him mad. Of course, she couldn't possibly know that he could feel her use of his - now her - powers, but all the same...
"This is Kunzite."
"Kunzite!" Zoisite exclaimed. "Kunzite, are you okay?"
"Yeah, for the most part," the voice came back over. "Minako's hysterical, of course. I really am fine, though. The missile missed the cockpit but tore through the chambers, which is why I'm really glad I'd ordered everyone to the bridge. It did shake us back a bit, and a few men were thrown. One of them went through the glass at the back of the pit and he's got about three men around him fishing pieces of glass from his body."
This time, everyone winced at the thought of such a scene.
"Yeah, it's not pretty," Kunzite agreed. "We haven't heard anything from Mars' ship. It looks completely totalled and the cockpit was hit. Jadeite's afraid we've lost them."
"No!" Mercury and Jupiter said at the same time.
"Jadeite's marrying his ship to hers; if he can pry away the twisted metal from the hatch, he can get inside and check the damages. Venus is coming over here, but the marrying hatch has been blown off and she has to find another entry...oh, she just said she found one. She'll be inside in a minute." Kunzite sighed a little. "See if you can get Jadeite on his dial- up."
"Great," said Nephrite. "So how are you, really?"
"I'm actually on the floor," he said cheerfully, "and I'm not going to try to get up. I feel pain in my leg and I know there's something sticking through it. I only hope it's something like a chair leg and not a piece of my bone or something. But other than that...head's clear, body's okay besides the leg and some blood on my arm, not mine, I don't think. This guy...well, we're not cute, but Mars' ship probably looks worse. I'm going over and out so you guys can talk to Jadeite." Kunzite's voice blinked out, and the mike went dead.
"I'm going to try to get Jadeite's ship," Zoisite said, typing quickly in the computer. The communication went through and beeped several times, but there was no answer.
"They're probably all on Mars' ship, trying to aid the men on there and get ready for a landing back here," said Sailormercury. "You don't think Mars might have."
The five looked at each other gravely.
"I'm only glad the Usako isn't present," said King Endymion quietly. "She'd be a basket case."
The other four warriors nodded.
"What should we do?" asked Nephrite.
"I'm going to go in my office and call the hospital," Endymion said. "I'll tell them to get ready for the arrival of - how many were on Mars' ship?"
"There were about twenty men on each ship," Zoisite answered.
"The arrival of about twenty men in critical condition and about twenty more injured, but somewhat stable," Endymion finished. "I'm also going to draft a letter to send to them, as well as prepare for it if these-" Endymion almost spat the word out, half-amused. "-these aliens decide they want to come up to Crystal Palace." He stared back at the screen. "At least one of you remain here at all times in case one of the ships tries to contact you. If you have any other duties that you think you need to do, do them now."
The four of them nodded.
"Where are your children at?" Endymion asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.
"They divided them up equally," Ami answered with a warm smile. "Teruo conceded to be away from Masaya for a day and he's with Hitomi and Megami taking care of Yoshiko, Jiro, Ichiro, and Tenrei at Rei's house. Masaya is with Emi and Izumi at my house, and they've got Nanami, Manami, Yuriko...and Mikomi."
"Who is Mikomi?" asked King Endymion.
"Aiyana's daughter."
She knew. Endymion could tell, not by the way she looked at him, but by the way Jupiter regarded him - accusatory, and guiltily at the same time - that she knew. Mercury was too discreet to look at him in any other way, and she quickly turned her eyes back to the computer screen, not wanting to face him. But Jupiter - who had always been especially protective of Serenity - knew, and at that moment he knew that Mercury also knew.
They could use that as a weapon against him. So far, they hadn't. But did they care about him more, or Aiyana? The answer should have been obvious: him. They cared about Serenity, too, so they were holding off using that information for as long as possible. But in time, if he expressed a desire to send her off, they would use it.
But Jupiter didn't know that he knew. Mercury might - she was shrewder, had more finesse, than Sailorjupiter. It was obvious all in that simple stare that Sailorjupiter didn't know that he knew Aiyana was his daughter, and she wasn't going to ask, of course - Zoisite and Nephrite had no idea.
Before he locked eyes with Sailorjupiter long enough to indicate any kind of shock or other emotion at the news, he turned on his heel and left the room.
***
Aiyana smiled brightly. The essences of the plants she had sapped had given her all of her needed energy, and she was ready to circle the base of Crystal Palace to find her entrance. The sun was setting, and she had to find it before dark - it would be much harder to find the entrance in the dark. The sun set in the west on Earth...she thought. The king and queen's bedroom chambers were in the north wing of the palace on the third floor.
Aiyana turned around, and judging by the position of the sun, she ran towards the north. The entrance had been almost directly under the crystal staircase that led to the third floor, in order to find the room that the monarchs slept in easily. Aiyana used her senses of sight and touch at the same time as she felt for the tell-tale nick in the wall that would signal her entrance site.
Suddenly a thought struck her mind. What if the guards had found and further sealed her entrance? Then she would have wasted her time, all for nothing. Well, she would just have to hope they didn't find it. No one would have known how she had gotten in, right?
Her worries evaporated when she felt a small crevice in the crystalline wall of the palace. Yes, there it was. Did the palace have regenerative powers? Maybe the crystal had grown back together. But the crevice was still large enough to stick her fingernail in, and the tightness felt the same - her fingernail was just barely able to fit in there - so hopefully that was a good sign.
Aiyana stood back from the wall and stared at the small entrance site. Six months ago, a good kick would have sent the chink flying inwards, and she would have easily been in. Now, even with the extra energy afforded her by stealing that of the flowers', she still didn't know whether or not she'd be able to get inside.
"Well," she told herself, "summoning my powers together by calling on the guardian of Saturn worked before. Let's see if it will work this time."
She closed her eyes and clasped her hands together. "Guardian god Saturn," she said, "give me the strength to do this." Opening her eyes, she smiled broadly, then reared back and kicked the side of the palace right in the middle of the entrance they had cut.
Nothing happened.
Aiyana went tumbling backwards on the soft green grass, rolling quite a ways away from the wall. "What...it worked before!" she thought aloud. "What happened?"
She scratched her head.and the answer hit her. Before, she had been desperate, and her desperation moved her to call on the full force of her power and to believe it was there. At the moment, her full force wasn't working because the same desperation and belief wasn't there. She didn't have the faith in the power that she had before.
"Desperation...what do I really want, more than anything?" Aiyana aked herself, staring at the crystal walls of the palace. "Using my desire to carry on my mother's legacy isn't enough. I don't want to become Sailorsaturn; I don't want to do this. Wanting to see Mikomi again might not work either. I can always walk away and go home. What do I want that lies inside these crystal walls?"
The answer came almost instantly upon her. "I want to see my father."
With that thought in mind, Aiyana closed her eyes again, clasping her hands together, and collapsed to her knees on the grass below her. "Guardian god Saturn," she intoned again, "give me the strength to see my father!"
This time, the kick wasn't even needed. The force of her will was strong enough. She jutted the heel of her hand forward into the cut-away entrance. A bright violet light shone from within her hand, and the slab of crystal cut out of the wall fell inwards with a hard, hollow ~thud~.
Aiyana smiled crawled on top of it, sliding through the small entrance it afforded, dragging her sword behind her - Masaya had found it for her in a small cabinet in the hopital somewhere - and setting the slab back up against the outside of the wall so that the crevice wasn't fully visible. She and the Second Delta had made quite a tunnel to go through the wall of the palace, which was rather thick, and then to enter into the small chamber that appeared to be an office of some sort. He hadn't actually gone inside the palace, just cut the other small entrance for Aiyana to go into and held the crystal slab so it wouldn't fall and alert the entire palace to their arrival. Aiyana could still feel herself glowing with the golden power and she knew she had enough left to open the entrance on the other side of the tunnel.
Again she braced the heel of her hand against the middle of the crystal slab. She didn't care about sound this time - didn't care if the whole palace heard her, as long as she was inside. She reared back and hit it again. The same bright violet power glowed on on her hand as it glided forwards, and the second crystal slab fell in, leaving a small exit for Aiyana to crawl through. The office was small and looked pretty private; Aiyana was pretty sure it was one of the king's or queen's private offices and that no one besides one of them would be in there. No one she couldn't handle, as long as she had her sword.
She rolled through the entrance, pulling her sword behind her, and pulled herself to a standing position. As soon as she looked at the floor, she knew someone was there. Newly polished white shoes were standing on the floor in front of her.
Aiyana's breath caught in her throat, and she turned her face upwards to look into the eyes of her father.
-------------------
AN: Hah hah, cliffhanger! Kind of ironic that the room Aiyana and Tamashiiro busted is the same little office in which King Endymion has been hiding all his letters from Hotaru over the years, isn't it?
Send any and all questions to keskiivikko@yahoo.com.