Sailor Moon
Revealed
Chapter 4
Aino Minako hummed softly to herself as she walked up the path to her home. Just before she reached the front door she paused and looked about to make sure that no one was looking before kneeling down and letting Artemis out of her bag and on to the ground. "I'll meet you upstairs," she said. "I left the window in my room open before we left."
"Are you sure?" the white furred Moon Cat asked uncertainly. "I seem to remember one time you said that and I was stuck outside for half the night in freezing rain."
"That was two years ago," Minako protested. "Besides a little soul is good for your hardship… or something like that."
Artemis just sighed at the mangled proverb and trotted around the side of the house to the tree with a branch capable of supporting his weight conveniently near Minako's window. He would have preferred to go in the front door with Minako or at least through a cat flap, but Minako's mother was less than fond of cats to put it mildly and Artemis figured the extra trouble was worth keeping his tail intact.
Once Artemis was out of sight around the corner of the house, Minako straightened and continued on her interrupted journey to the front door, idly noting as she did that the car was missing from the garage, meaning that her father was working late again. They couldn't really afford the car on what her father earned, what with the exorbitant prices for registration and fuel, but her mother had insisted on it as some sort of status symbol and was not above raiding the royalties Minako earned as the model for the Sailor V video games and manga to cover the short fall, something that annoyed Minako no end, but as she was still legally dependent on her parents, there was very little that she could do about it.
With a mental sigh Minako opened the door, calling out, "Taidama," but not really expecting a response, figuring that her mother was probably too engrossed in whatever she was watching on television to answer. Frankly Minako was happier with things that way, for when she prised her attention away from the television, Aino Sumire could be a very difficult person to live with. At that moment, Minako was offering up nightly prayers to the kami and anyone else who might be listening that her mother's next weight loss phase could be put off as long as possible. Since she was disinclined to do any amount of exercise, but almost fanatical about watching her weight, Sumire periodically went on what could generously be called diets, though in Minako's mind they bordered extended periods of starvation, and if Sumire had to do it, she wasn't doing it alone, making her husband and daughter join her in them.
Minako was jolted out of her thoughts when it filtered through to her conscious mind that her casual announcement of her return had gotten a response. Minako looked up as her hands and feet swapped her plain white joggers for indoor slippers on autopilot. Standing in the door way to the living room was Aino Sumire, her blue eyes locked on her daughter and if looks could actually do physical harm to a person, Minako wouldn't be dead, but she would be in need of an ambulance right then. "And just where were you today?" Sumire asked, her voice frosty.
Minako frowned in puzzlement. "I was at Mako-chan's apartment studying with everyone else," she replied. "Just like I told you this morning."
"Are you sure?" Sumire asked archly, one eyebrow rising sceptically. "You weren't out running around Tokyo in a mini-skirt saving the Earth from monsters from out of space or what ever nonsense it is you Sailor Senshi are supposed to do?"
Minako couldn't help it. She had been so careful about her secret identities for so long that it had long since become automatic and she was so certain that no one would ever work it out that she let out a startled yelp of surprise. She stomped down on the startled exclamation almost as soon as it started and it emerged as more of a strangled squawk and the look of surprise that flickered across her face was gone almost as soon as it appears, but it was enough to give her away.
"He's right," Sumire said in surprise as the confirmation for everything that she had been told passed across Minako's face for just a split second. She would have missed it if she hadn't been looking for it. "The old coot was actually right," she said, mostly to herself, but loud enough to be clearly heard, her own surprise at the revelation temporarily over riding the implications of what that actually meant, but they began to catch up very quickly. Her eyes began to narrow as her mind went into overdrive contemplating the possibilities and an angry light began to smoulder in her gaze. "You little bitch!"
Minako flinched back from the apparent non-sequitur, stung and more than a little hurt by the insult, especially coming from her own mother. "What are you talking about?" she asked trying to diffuse the situation a little, though part of her knew full well that a storm was coming and it couldn't be avoided, only weathered.
"You were this Sailor Venus or whatever and you've been hiding it all this time."
Still not entirely understanding what her mother's anger was all about, Minako desperately tried to offer up an explanation. "I swore an oath of secrecy," she said, drawing back a little further. "I couldn't tell anyone."
"Bullshit," Sumire said. "You were just keeping this to yourself so you could enjoy all the benefits for yourself."
Understanding finally dawned in Minako's eyes and it awakened a spark of anger within her to answer her mother's. She was surprised that she had though that it might be about anything else, for if there was one thing that Minako knew was true, it was that in the end all the things that mattered in Aino Sumire's life came back to one thing and that was herself.
"I didn't get any benefits," Minako shot back, her voice rising in volume. "It isn't about wealth and power; it's about love and justice!"
That earned a cynical snort and crossed arms. "Sure. Running about in mini-skirts all over Tokyo has everything to do with love and justice. You were just too greedy to share it with your own parents. Do you know how famous you Sailor Senshi are? We could have made a fortune out of the interview rights alone."
"I had to keep it a secret for a reason," Minako said, but Sumire was on a roll and wasn't about to be stopped.
"You and your little friends just run around Tokyo making everyone wonder who you are but heaven forbid anyone else get anything out of your little secret. Instead of sharing some of this as thanks for all the effort I've put into raising you over the years, you have your fun and leave me stuck here in this dump."
"It wasn't about money," Minako replied, anger giving way rapidly to disbelief and pain that her own mother thought so little of her. "The fate of the world was on the line. If the wrong person had ever found out it would have meant the death of everyone on the planet. I disguised myself as Sailor V and deliberately drew attention to myself to keep the Princess safe before she awakened so that everyone else might have had a chance to survive, even if I didn't."
"I couldn't have been all that dangerous if you're here today. What's the worst that could have happened, you'd break a nail?" Sumire snapped, throwing her daughter's all too obvious pride in her looks; some might even say vanity back in her face.
"I could have died," Minako said, her voice beginning to become laced with hysteria. "I did die! Twice!!! It's only because of the Ginzuishou that any of us are alive to talk about it."
"Then why do it if it's so dangerous. You could have got someone else to do it."
"No I couldn't," Minako said, almost pleading in an attempt to get her mother to understand. "I'm the only person who could ever be Sailor Venus. And even if I could have given it up, I wouldn't have. I had to do this, especially when I finally met the others I couldn't just abandon them, especially not Usagi. She is our Princess and I would gladly give my life for her a hundred times over."
Sumire's disbelief was clear in the expression on her face, an expression far more eloquent than words could ever be. "Usagi? That little cry-baby? Why on Earth would anyone ever even think about putting their life on the line for someone like her? What could she possibly do for them?"
Minako finally broke down and the tears began to flow freely down her cheeks. "For love!" she wailed desperately. "She is the Princess and that alone would command out loyalty, but it's more than that. She opens her heart and loves impartially and for that I can't help but love her! We all do!"
Sumire recoiled in disgust at that and Minako shook her head fiercely. "Not that kind of love!" she insisted. "I know that kind of love and what I feel for Usagi isn't it. I am the Senshi of Love and Beauty and I should know, shouldn't I. Never mind that I can't find that sort of love for myself. I'm supposed to be the embodiment of love and beauty and I can't even find my own love because I'm too afraid that they will wither and die while I'm left all alone through the long years until Crystal Tokyo, or even longer."
That last part was not what Minako had intended to say, but a floodgate had burst inside her and all the pain was beginning to spill through, dropping to her knees and hugging her arms tight around her body as the tears began to flow even more freely, but Sumire had been able to grasp one thing through all the pain and sorrow in her daughter's voice. She knew that somehow Minako knew that she was going to live a long time, far longer than a normal human lifespan by the implications of her statement about the long years was any indication.
"You discovered the secret to immortality?" Sumire screeched, probably loud enough for the neighbours to hear quite clearly. "And just when the hell were you planning on sharing this with the rest of us you ungrateful little shit? Or where you going to let everyone else grow old and die while you skipped off, still young and beautiful so you could do what ever you want?"
Minako just stared at her mother, her face stricken and unable to articulate anything but a few mournful sobs while inside she felt her heart crumble into nothingness, leaving only a raw, aching void of pain behind. Still the tears came, the only expression that Minako could find for her pain as Sumire opened a mouth to speak again, but she was cut off by a male voice that said quite firmly, "Madam, I think you have said more than enough for one night and if you have even a shred of compassion in that cold shrivelled excuse for a heart I will kindly thank you to shut your mouth."
Sumire turned to look behind her for the source of the voice and frowned in irritation when all she saw was a white cat standing at the top of the steps. She was about to look away when she caught the cat's gaze and for the first time realised that those blue eyes held a glitter of very human intelligence in them and at that moment they were filled with fury and venom to match the voice that had just spoken.
"Never before in my life have I ever met someone so cold and callous as to do something to their own daughter and if anyone had ever asked me before tonight, I would have denied that such a person existed."
Sumire's voice went very wide when she realised that the voice did in fact belong to the cat and she could only stare dumbfounded for several long seconds as he padded down the stairs, while at the same time Minako managed to find her voice again.
"Artemis," she sobbed out in a voice thick with desperation, pain and loneliness, a voice that begged for comfort and consolation and Artemis was not immune to that and he padded silently to her side. He didn't even protest as Minako scooped him into her arms and smothered him in a too tight embrace.
"The cat talks," Sumire said, as she regained the power of speech.
"Yes, I talk," Artemis said as he twisted his head around to pin Sumire with a glare that could have reduced her to a little pile of ashes if such things were possible. "I am in fact fluent in both English and Japanese. I can quote several famous Japanese poems, I can compose haiku, I can recite from memory all of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Henry V, as well as large portions of MacBeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III and several other of his plays and several of the more interesting stanza's of Milton's Paradise Lost. I can debate logic and philosophy, though not very well, and my singing voice is pretty damn good if I do say so myself."
Sumire's jaw was clenched tights as Artemis delivered that stinging rebuke and she began to grind her teeth as blood rushed to her face as the final restraints on her temper snapped. "You self-centred, ungrateful, conniving, underhanded little bitch!" she yelled. "You kept all this from me for years, all this time going behind my back, as if your stupid little friends were more important than your own mother. You kept me in this hellhole just to keep your miserable secret when we could have been living high…"
Sumire continued, but it Minako didn't hear anything beyond that. Her one final hope that somehow, someway things might be resolved and everything go back to the way they were supposed to died stillborn in her chest and the only thing she could do was rise up and flee from the voice that did nothing more than cause more pain until it threatened to consume her and leave nothing behind. She was dimly aware of that voice rising in volume and becoming more strident as she fled, but she was well past caring and all she could do was run, blinded by tears and with no destination in mind but as far away from the place she had once called home as possible.
Minako had no idea how far she ran, or for how long, miraculously managing to avoid running into to anything or being flattened by traffic. At one point Artemis's raised itself, intruding into her consciousness for a bare heartbeat, but she couldn't tell what the words were over her own crying. Then strong arms were wrapped around her and a familiar voice spoke to her. Minako was able to pull herself together long enough to look up and see Haruka holding her while Artemis jumped from her arms to Michiru's and then with a wail of pure loss and despair, she threw herself into the Outer Senshi's arms and let the last of the barriers go and knew nothing beyond her pain until exhaustion overcame grief and blessed unconsciousness claimed her.
Author's Notes: slumps over keyboard Whew! That was not an easy chapter to write. I really put poor Minako through the wringer and while I apologie and hope that she will eventually forgive me, from an authorial point of view, I feel that it was nessecary for the sake of the story to put in a little more emotional 'oomph' and I hope you enjoyed it. Oh and if you feel this left things a little unresolved, your right. There will be a sequel chapter.
Things get a little lighter in the next chapter as Usagi tries to explain to Ikukko that Chibi-Usa was in fact her granddaughter and no she and Mamoru haven't been doing things that will make Kenji want to visit severe bodily harm on a certain Tux-boy. Then the sparks will fly as fire meets fire as the residents of Hikawa Jinja clash.
On that matter, I believe I should explain something. Most of the critcism I have been receiving has been on the fact that Amuro (aka Grandpa Hino) blabbled the senshi's secret without first considering why they would want to keep their identities a secret. It's a valid point, and I welcome the feedback, but as counterpoint I would point out that that is a logical reaction and Grandpa Hino is thinking with his heart, not his head. He knows that Rei is involved with something dangerous and something might happen to her and he also knows how the other parents would feel if something happened to one of the others as well (though with Sumire he may have been mistaken) and he honsetly believes that by telling their parents he is helping the Senshi. Right or wrong, he does mean well and is as fallable as anyone else.
P.S. To those reading my other works as well, my apologies for the long updates. I'm suffering a bit of writer's block and this is the only thing that Muse-chan can concentrate on, but I promise that they have not been adandoned and all of them have their next stages prtially written and they will be continued, though when I can't say.