Chapter Thirty-Two - There Wasn't Enough
***
"Usa!" Aiyana forgot her manners; she didn't even give a second look towards the Deltas encroaching upon her. She ran towards the window and flung herself through it, groping through the air towards any part of Princess Lady Serenity she could grab.
She did catch one of the pink-haired princess's arms. Usa shrieked in pain as Aiyana jerked on it - hard - to maintain control of the girl's body. And then she shrieked herself. One of the Deltas had roughly caught her ankle and was holding her as if she were a piece of paper.
"Shall I let her go, my prince?"
Aiyana's eyes widened. ~Prince?~
"Aw, Reizei, you spoiled the surprise," said Delta Tenkami - Prince Tamashiiro - in a teasing voice. "I wish I could have seen her face when she heard that. She always did have a cute shocked look." The voice was moving closer as Prince Tamashiiro covered ground and came towards the window.
"Should I drop them both?"
"Why would you want to do something so stupid?" Prince Tamashiiro asked. "They both may prove useful to me. Reel them in."
Reizei shrugged. Delta Hojo took hold of Aiyana's other ankle, and together, the two of them pulled in Aiyana and Usa, who fell inside the window with a loud *thud*.
Prince Tamashiiro's eyes quickly gazed over Lady Serenity, and he nodded slightly. Then he turned his full attention to Aiyana, assessing her carefully, eyes sliding over her figure so salaciously it made her squirm. He then brought his eyes back to hers.
It hurt to look in them. They were so close to her daughter's...
"Lock the pink one up in the room. She's got something to do with the royalty here, I know it." Tamashiiro had never taken his eyes from Aiyana. "Make sure she doesn't get out of here. As for Aiyana...well, she can just follow me. I have plans for her, too."
***
"Father," Prince Tamashiiro said, bowing politely to the emperor. Emperor Omega had situated himself in the king and queen's casual throne room - not to be confused with the formal throne room - and was reclining quite comfortably in the throne that King Endymion himself often sat. He nodded to his adopted son as he appeared in front of him.
"Tamashiiro. What's your report?"
"I've found a little pink-haired girl in the palace," Tamashiiro said, smirking as he concealed his next bit of news from the emperor. He knew that Emperor Omega would be much happier to hear that the assassin had been found. "She's presumbly the princess, and may have been trying to escape when we arrived. And guess who was helping her?"
Emperor Omega stared curiously at his son. "I don't care for guessing games."
"First Delta Khalidah."
The emperor's eyes widened. "You're not serious."
"As a dead man, Father," Tamashiiro said.
Emperor Omega sat his chin in his hands, stroking the features. "Perhaps she was trying to apprehend her instead," he said. "But I don't understand. We sent her here seven months ago to eradicate all traces of the royal family." He looked back up at Tamashiiro. "Is the royal couple still present in the palace?"
Tamashiiro squirmed. That was the only piece of evidence that didn't correlate with his suspicions of Aiyana's dissension. "No, sir," he said stiffly. "They're nowhere to be found, and there's no traces of them."
Emperor Omega seemed to brighten a bit as he contemplated this. "Maybe there's - no, there's probably a viable explanation for the existence of the princess," he said hopefully.
"Would you like for me to interrogate her?"
"Debrief is more the word I'm looking for," Omega answered, regarding his son warily. "She's the head of the military, the highest-ranking officer on this mission save you and I. Treat her with the same respect that you have in the past and the same respect - righfully more - than you would treat Hojo or Reizei."
Tamashiiro nodded, not a little unhappy.
***
"Where are they?"
Aiyana kept her eyes averted from Tamashiiro's. He'd brought her into the king and queen's bedroom - perhaps to mess with her mind a little more. He'd remarked himself about how hard killing was to her, and being in any bedroom with him made her more than a little uneasy. Her insides were screaming at her to bolt, but she just couldn't do it...she would look like a coward, and worse, a traitor.
"They're dead."
"The king and queen? I don't believe you. You're bluffing." Tamashiiro sat down directly in front of Aiyana and tried to force her to look at him. She turned away.
"So why did you jump out of that window to save the princess?"
"You need some way to lay claim to the throne, don't you?" Now Aiyana did look at Tamashiiro, but she kept her eyes carefully beneath his, right on the bridge of his nose. That was a trick she had learned long ago to make it look as if one were staring into another's eyes. "Princess Lady Serenity - that's her name here - Serenity would be a perfectly legal way for you to obtain the throne."
As she said it, Aiyana realized that Serenity wouldn't actually be the solution -- *she* would. Prince Tamashiiro would gain nothing by controlling Princess Lady Serenity, because she was not the heir to the throne. Aiyana herself was.
~Tamashiiro-san must never find that out,~ Aiyana swore to herself.
Prince Tamashiiro studied Aiyana carefully and stroked his chin. "True. Gaining control over Princess Lady Serenity would be much easier than taking the kingdom by force." His contemplative expression changed to a sly one. "But I don't want the pink one. I want you."
Aiyana turned away from him.
"You've definitely changed since being here on Earth," he said. "Much more spunk in you. Before you left, you were quieter than a mouse. What accounts for the grand transformation?" Tamashiiro eyed her again. "Where have you been all this time?"
"In hiding," Aiyana said quickly. He mustn't find out that she had been pregnant and given birth to his child. There was no telling what Tamashiiro would do upon finding that out! "I've been in hiding. In the ship."
"There wasn't enough food in that stock ship to feed you for seven Earth months."
"I obtained food otherwise." She eyed Tamashiiro in a way that said she was not going to expound on it. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
"So they're really dead." It wasn't a question. Prince Tamashiiro rose from the king and queen's bed and stared out of the port window. "That's very good. I didn't expect you to go through with it. That's precisely why I left you here. I wanted you to fail so that I could get your position." He chuckled. "Turns out I didn't even need you to fail. I just needed you to be away."
Aiyana glared at his back. "Speaking of position, how did you come about being the Second Omega, prince of the Omega Star Empire?" Her tone changed to a sarcastic one. "The emperor discovered you as his long-lost son?"
"Actually, no. None of his wives were producing any children. Emperor Baran is getting up in age, you know. So he adopted me as his son and the heir to the throne."
Aiyana frowned a little at the informal way Tamashiiro addressed the emperor...Emperor Baran was only what his family members used in respect. Everyone else addressed him as Emperor Omega, or "his majesty" and other titles as such.
"And all you did while you were here was kill the king and queen?" Tamashiiro continued. "You didn't disable the mainframe as you were instructed?"
"No." Aiyana stared back at him. "The mainframe...was heavily guarded..."
"Bullshit!" Tamashiiro crowed. "Even I have to admit that you have exceptional infiltration skills. Our empire is light-years ahead of this primitive rock, and you've crashed expensive mainframes back in Andromeda! That's not the reason, Aiyana, think of another lie to tell."
"I'm not lying," Aiyana said murderously, her eyes flashing that violent violet. Tamashiiro's own eyes widened...he'd never seen such an expression on her lovely face before.
"They have other means of protection. Magical means. They were hard to break. I broke through the magic, but their guards came in and caught me." She took a deep breath before she continued with her outrageous fabrication. "I got out before they closed in on me, but I wasn't able to crash the computer system completely. They've been searching for me for the last seven Earth months."
"So what were you doing in the palace when we came, then?"
"I came back to finish the job," Aiyana said simply, as if it should be obvious. "On my return I realized that there was a member of the royal family I'd neglected to exterminate. I was going to get her first, then destroy the mainframe." She shrugged. "And you came."
Tamashiiro sat back. It was clear he wasn't satisfied with her story, but it was the best she could come up with at the time.
"So," he said, "I suppose I should do a recall on the acting status of the other Deltas. They all go back to their normal numbers, and the Acting Seventh becomes First Epsilon once again. The only two ranks that were affected were the Epsilon and the Delta, so..." He shrugged, then gave Aiyana a small almost-smile. "Welcome back, First Delta."
***
"Endymion," Serenity whispered softly, stroking her husband's arm, "why didn't you just tell me? I wouldn't have been angry. I would have understood. That was a really hard period in all of our lives."
"I...it wasn't just the fact that it happened, Serenity," he said. "Usa can't inherit the throne now, do you realize that? She can't inherit the throne. Aiyana is my firstborn. She's destined to be queen!"
"That doesn't matter!" Serenity said to him, sharply. "All that matters is the truth. And we all wanted to know the truth."
The king and queen were at the Kogusunasu house, along with the Kogusunasu and Koikokoro families. They had decided to go there because it was close to the hospital, but not too close to the palace so as to put the monarchs in danger. The Amesuino and Hayashino families were at the Amesuino house, which was much closer to the hospital and the palace.
However, the Senshi of that household were elsewhere. They were busy doing the evacuation, leaving all the young children of the two families in the care of Hayashino Teruo and Megami and Amesuino Izumi. And of course, Aiyana and Chibi-usa were still in the palace...although King Endymion didn't know that.
"That story...is incredible," Minako breathed, staring in awe at the king. She then turned to look at the child, Mikomi. Masaya was bottle-feeding her in his arms, while silently listening to the king's story. He had been the only one of the Senshi's children allowed to hear it, being the oldest and the most connected.
"Aiyana is in danger now," he said gravely, the first thing he had said since Endymion had begun the story. "If this man from Andromeda finds out that she's the royal heir to the throne...things might not turn out so well for her."
"Why would that make a difference, though?" Minako asked.
"Because," said Sadayoshi. He was home from the hospital, having been bandaged and splinted very quickly, and the Senshi wanted him to be in one of the houses with the rest of them. Minako fussed over him a lot, and as much as he pretended to fend her off, he was enjoying the extra attention his wife was paying him. "This prince wants to take over Crystal Tokyo and the Earth. If he gains control over the heir to the throne, not only can he puppet the king and queen -" Sadayoshi turned to face the two monarchs, but they said nothing. It was obviously true. "-but he can also marry her and claim the throne legally."
"Why in the world would he want to do that?" asked Masaya, a little anxious at that statement.
Sadayoshi smiled faintly at his son's anxiety. "This prince obviously wants a clean revolution," he said. "Remember how he hadn't wanted to shoot us on the ship? He blasted our missile and warned us not to shoot again, because he didn't want to hit us. I'm thinking that he doesn't really want a large war between the planets. He wants to take us as cleanly as possible."
"I know that he can't possibly think we're going to give this planet up without a fight," Sanetoki said, clenching his fists. He had been deathly pale earlier, worried about his wife, and now he was filled with anger at the thought of this intruder thinking he could just take their planet. "There's no way. The Sailor Senshi - Earthians period - won't give up without a fight."
"To fight our enemy, we have to know our enemy," said Minako. She had been staring distraitly at the wall opposite her, but now she focused her eyes on Sanetoki. "You remember how when we fought Beryl all the way through Galaxia - we were never able to triumph until we knew something about our enemy. We must find information about this enemy..." She looked to King Endymion.
"The Omega Star Empire," he said softly.
"The only one who knows anything would be...Aiyana-san," said Sadayoshi, sitting up straighter. "Where is she?"
King Endymion could only shake his head, obviously worried. "I don't know. I wish I did...she's taking awfully long to get here."
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AN: Sorry this was so long in coming. I had a serious case of writer's block. I still have it for the most part...I'll be thinking on it, though, so don't worry. I *think* I know a way to bust it.
***
"Usa!" Aiyana forgot her manners; she didn't even give a second look towards the Deltas encroaching upon her. She ran towards the window and flung herself through it, groping through the air towards any part of Princess Lady Serenity she could grab.
She did catch one of the pink-haired princess's arms. Usa shrieked in pain as Aiyana jerked on it - hard - to maintain control of the girl's body. And then she shrieked herself. One of the Deltas had roughly caught her ankle and was holding her as if she were a piece of paper.
"Shall I let her go, my prince?"
Aiyana's eyes widened. ~Prince?~
"Aw, Reizei, you spoiled the surprise," said Delta Tenkami - Prince Tamashiiro - in a teasing voice. "I wish I could have seen her face when she heard that. She always did have a cute shocked look." The voice was moving closer as Prince Tamashiiro covered ground and came towards the window.
"Should I drop them both?"
"Why would you want to do something so stupid?" Prince Tamashiiro asked. "They both may prove useful to me. Reel them in."
Reizei shrugged. Delta Hojo took hold of Aiyana's other ankle, and together, the two of them pulled in Aiyana and Usa, who fell inside the window with a loud *thud*.
Prince Tamashiiro's eyes quickly gazed over Lady Serenity, and he nodded slightly. Then he turned his full attention to Aiyana, assessing her carefully, eyes sliding over her figure so salaciously it made her squirm. He then brought his eyes back to hers.
It hurt to look in them. They were so close to her daughter's...
"Lock the pink one up in the room. She's got something to do with the royalty here, I know it." Tamashiiro had never taken his eyes from Aiyana. "Make sure she doesn't get out of here. As for Aiyana...well, she can just follow me. I have plans for her, too."
***
"Father," Prince Tamashiiro said, bowing politely to the emperor. Emperor Omega had situated himself in the king and queen's casual throne room - not to be confused with the formal throne room - and was reclining quite comfortably in the throne that King Endymion himself often sat. He nodded to his adopted son as he appeared in front of him.
"Tamashiiro. What's your report?"
"I've found a little pink-haired girl in the palace," Tamashiiro said, smirking as he concealed his next bit of news from the emperor. He knew that Emperor Omega would be much happier to hear that the assassin had been found. "She's presumbly the princess, and may have been trying to escape when we arrived. And guess who was helping her?"
Emperor Omega stared curiously at his son. "I don't care for guessing games."
"First Delta Khalidah."
The emperor's eyes widened. "You're not serious."
"As a dead man, Father," Tamashiiro said.
Emperor Omega sat his chin in his hands, stroking the features. "Perhaps she was trying to apprehend her instead," he said. "But I don't understand. We sent her here seven months ago to eradicate all traces of the royal family." He looked back up at Tamashiiro. "Is the royal couple still present in the palace?"
Tamashiiro squirmed. That was the only piece of evidence that didn't correlate with his suspicions of Aiyana's dissension. "No, sir," he said stiffly. "They're nowhere to be found, and there's no traces of them."
Emperor Omega seemed to brighten a bit as he contemplated this. "Maybe there's - no, there's probably a viable explanation for the existence of the princess," he said hopefully.
"Would you like for me to interrogate her?"
"Debrief is more the word I'm looking for," Omega answered, regarding his son warily. "She's the head of the military, the highest-ranking officer on this mission save you and I. Treat her with the same respect that you have in the past and the same respect - righfully more - than you would treat Hojo or Reizei."
Tamashiiro nodded, not a little unhappy.
***
"Where are they?"
Aiyana kept her eyes averted from Tamashiiro's. He'd brought her into the king and queen's bedroom - perhaps to mess with her mind a little more. He'd remarked himself about how hard killing was to her, and being in any bedroom with him made her more than a little uneasy. Her insides were screaming at her to bolt, but she just couldn't do it...she would look like a coward, and worse, a traitor.
"They're dead."
"The king and queen? I don't believe you. You're bluffing." Tamashiiro sat down directly in front of Aiyana and tried to force her to look at him. She turned away.
"So why did you jump out of that window to save the princess?"
"You need some way to lay claim to the throne, don't you?" Now Aiyana did look at Tamashiiro, but she kept her eyes carefully beneath his, right on the bridge of his nose. That was a trick she had learned long ago to make it look as if one were staring into another's eyes. "Princess Lady Serenity - that's her name here - Serenity would be a perfectly legal way for you to obtain the throne."
As she said it, Aiyana realized that Serenity wouldn't actually be the solution -- *she* would. Prince Tamashiiro would gain nothing by controlling Princess Lady Serenity, because she was not the heir to the throne. Aiyana herself was.
~Tamashiiro-san must never find that out,~ Aiyana swore to herself.
Prince Tamashiiro studied Aiyana carefully and stroked his chin. "True. Gaining control over Princess Lady Serenity would be much easier than taking the kingdom by force." His contemplative expression changed to a sly one. "But I don't want the pink one. I want you."
Aiyana turned away from him.
"You've definitely changed since being here on Earth," he said. "Much more spunk in you. Before you left, you were quieter than a mouse. What accounts for the grand transformation?" Tamashiiro eyed her again. "Where have you been all this time?"
"In hiding," Aiyana said quickly. He mustn't find out that she had been pregnant and given birth to his child. There was no telling what Tamashiiro would do upon finding that out! "I've been in hiding. In the ship."
"There wasn't enough food in that stock ship to feed you for seven Earth months."
"I obtained food otherwise." She eyed Tamashiiro in a way that said she was not going to expound on it. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
"So they're really dead." It wasn't a question. Prince Tamashiiro rose from the king and queen's bed and stared out of the port window. "That's very good. I didn't expect you to go through with it. That's precisely why I left you here. I wanted you to fail so that I could get your position." He chuckled. "Turns out I didn't even need you to fail. I just needed you to be away."
Aiyana glared at his back. "Speaking of position, how did you come about being the Second Omega, prince of the Omega Star Empire?" Her tone changed to a sarcastic one. "The emperor discovered you as his long-lost son?"
"Actually, no. None of his wives were producing any children. Emperor Baran is getting up in age, you know. So he adopted me as his son and the heir to the throne."
Aiyana frowned a little at the informal way Tamashiiro addressed the emperor...Emperor Baran was only what his family members used in respect. Everyone else addressed him as Emperor Omega, or "his majesty" and other titles as such.
"And all you did while you were here was kill the king and queen?" Tamashiiro continued. "You didn't disable the mainframe as you were instructed?"
"No." Aiyana stared back at him. "The mainframe...was heavily guarded..."
"Bullshit!" Tamashiiro crowed. "Even I have to admit that you have exceptional infiltration skills. Our empire is light-years ahead of this primitive rock, and you've crashed expensive mainframes back in Andromeda! That's not the reason, Aiyana, think of another lie to tell."
"I'm not lying," Aiyana said murderously, her eyes flashing that violent violet. Tamashiiro's own eyes widened...he'd never seen such an expression on her lovely face before.
"They have other means of protection. Magical means. They were hard to break. I broke through the magic, but their guards came in and caught me." She took a deep breath before she continued with her outrageous fabrication. "I got out before they closed in on me, but I wasn't able to crash the computer system completely. They've been searching for me for the last seven Earth months."
"So what were you doing in the palace when we came, then?"
"I came back to finish the job," Aiyana said simply, as if it should be obvious. "On my return I realized that there was a member of the royal family I'd neglected to exterminate. I was going to get her first, then destroy the mainframe." She shrugged. "And you came."
Tamashiiro sat back. It was clear he wasn't satisfied with her story, but it was the best she could come up with at the time.
"So," he said, "I suppose I should do a recall on the acting status of the other Deltas. They all go back to their normal numbers, and the Acting Seventh becomes First Epsilon once again. The only two ranks that were affected were the Epsilon and the Delta, so..." He shrugged, then gave Aiyana a small almost-smile. "Welcome back, First Delta."
***
"Endymion," Serenity whispered softly, stroking her husband's arm, "why didn't you just tell me? I wouldn't have been angry. I would have understood. That was a really hard period in all of our lives."
"I...it wasn't just the fact that it happened, Serenity," he said. "Usa can't inherit the throne now, do you realize that? She can't inherit the throne. Aiyana is my firstborn. She's destined to be queen!"
"That doesn't matter!" Serenity said to him, sharply. "All that matters is the truth. And we all wanted to know the truth."
The king and queen were at the Kogusunasu house, along with the Kogusunasu and Koikokoro families. They had decided to go there because it was close to the hospital, but not too close to the palace so as to put the monarchs in danger. The Amesuino and Hayashino families were at the Amesuino house, which was much closer to the hospital and the palace.
However, the Senshi of that household were elsewhere. They were busy doing the evacuation, leaving all the young children of the two families in the care of Hayashino Teruo and Megami and Amesuino Izumi. And of course, Aiyana and Chibi-usa were still in the palace...although King Endymion didn't know that.
"That story...is incredible," Minako breathed, staring in awe at the king. She then turned to look at the child, Mikomi. Masaya was bottle-feeding her in his arms, while silently listening to the king's story. He had been the only one of the Senshi's children allowed to hear it, being the oldest and the most connected.
"Aiyana is in danger now," he said gravely, the first thing he had said since Endymion had begun the story. "If this man from Andromeda finds out that she's the royal heir to the throne...things might not turn out so well for her."
"Why would that make a difference, though?" Minako asked.
"Because," said Sadayoshi. He was home from the hospital, having been bandaged and splinted very quickly, and the Senshi wanted him to be in one of the houses with the rest of them. Minako fussed over him a lot, and as much as he pretended to fend her off, he was enjoying the extra attention his wife was paying him. "This prince wants to take over Crystal Tokyo and the Earth. If he gains control over the heir to the throne, not only can he puppet the king and queen -" Sadayoshi turned to face the two monarchs, but they said nothing. It was obviously true. "-but he can also marry her and claim the throne legally."
"Why in the world would he want to do that?" asked Masaya, a little anxious at that statement.
Sadayoshi smiled faintly at his son's anxiety. "This prince obviously wants a clean revolution," he said. "Remember how he hadn't wanted to shoot us on the ship? He blasted our missile and warned us not to shoot again, because he didn't want to hit us. I'm thinking that he doesn't really want a large war between the planets. He wants to take us as cleanly as possible."
"I know that he can't possibly think we're going to give this planet up without a fight," Sanetoki said, clenching his fists. He had been deathly pale earlier, worried about his wife, and now he was filled with anger at the thought of this intruder thinking he could just take their planet. "There's no way. The Sailor Senshi - Earthians period - won't give up without a fight."
"To fight our enemy, we have to know our enemy," said Minako. She had been staring distraitly at the wall opposite her, but now she focused her eyes on Sanetoki. "You remember how when we fought Beryl all the way through Galaxia - we were never able to triumph until we knew something about our enemy. We must find information about this enemy..." She looked to King Endymion.
"The Omega Star Empire," he said softly.
"The only one who knows anything would be...Aiyana-san," said Sadayoshi, sitting up straighter. "Where is she?"
King Endymion could only shake his head, obviously worried. "I don't know. I wish I did...she's taking awfully long to get here."
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AN: Sorry this was so long in coming. I had a serious case of writer's block. I still have it for the most part...I'll be thinking on it, though, so don't worry. I *think* I know a way to bust it.