Chapter 8
The alarm clock would ring at precisely eight o'clock in the morning. Its owner had chosen that time quite carefully, struggling to find the perfect balance between leaving enough time to arrive at his appointment punctually and maximizing his sleep time. At best, it was a difficult decision. At worst, it was a veritable nightmare of cost benefit analyses which would likely satisfy none of the criteria that he had in store.
There had to be enough time to hit the snooze button two or three times, for Kevin never woke up on the first ring. However, if he set it back too far, he might simply sleep through the minute long alarm, not even bothering to hit the snooze button at all.
Additionally, he wanted enough time to get in breakfast. Not too short, of course, because that would rush him too much. It might destroy the balance of his day. But certainly not too long, for that would simply be inefficient.
Finally, the owner had calculated out the various times it would take him to reach his destination, to the point of running time trials the previous day. It was a delicate process, determining alarm times, and one not to be taken lightly.
When one added a second alarm to the mix, the result was a problem more complex than Oppenheimer or Kant or Keynes had ever dealt with.
Of course, none of these concerns actually affected the operation of the clock, for it still recorded the seconds as accurately as ever, ticking down those arbitrary units of time until it would fulfill its purpose. Reflecting the wishes of its owner, it rang at eight in the morning, not a moment before and not a moment after.
Kevin blearily gazed at his alarm clock before yanking the plug out of the wall socket and hurling it across the room. As proof to its sturdy American design, it bounced off the door and rolled underneath the bed. He smiled dreamily before falling back into a confused slumber.
However, the next thing to prod him into near consciousness was a far more insidious enemy. At approximately eight thirty, the sun shone directly through his window, quickly warming the body beneath the covers with rays of golden light. He fidgeted uncomfortably, then tumbled out of bed, unable to stand up to the damning warmth which brought him to the perspiration point.
Kevin stumbled around clumsily, before he wrapped his hands around a glass of water and took a sip. Or tried to rather. Somewhere along the line, his brain hadn't communicated to his mouth to open, with predictable results.
On the plus side, however, the water did manage to wake him up.
Kevin shook his head, trying to vanquish the heat induced headache. It was expectedly ineffective and the American slowly moved his way to the bathroom for a cool shower.
The night before had been a strenuous one. Artemis sought to test the limits of his new protege's powers, through a series of tests and practice runs which lasted until four in the morning. And when Kevin had felt like collapsing, the cat had shown him how to tap into his own powers to gain strength and endurance beyond what normal mortals could achieve.
It had been a tremendous experience. Thee energy and power at his finger tips invigorated him, as a fix would a crack or heroin junkie. In a single instant, he had felt invincible, able to take on things greater than himself in a single heroic clash. They were extraordinary, incredible the powers he had at his command. The ability to create impenetrable force fields, to cut through walls with the simple power of the mind, to lash an enemy with a psionic attack that could bring the strongest of minds to ruin.
Yet, his egalitarian sensibilities were offended by the almost arbitrary power which had been bestowed upon him. And even more dangerously, he was frightened by the sensual ease which he took to them. Kevin was notedly cynical about Artemis's high minded proclamations about the defense of good. The magicks he used had been developed to cause pain and discord among the enemy, whoever that enemy might be.
In his mind, the use of magic posed a double edge dilemma. If used with great compassion and moral strength, it served as a noble force. If used with anything less than the strictest moral rectitude, it became selfish and destructive. And all that depended on the principles of those who employed it. Hardly the most reassuring of thoughts.
'It is a dangerous force.' He decided quickly as he stepped out of the shower. 'Far too dangerous to be used by the likes of me.'
Yet if Artemis was correct, he didn't have much of a choice in the matter. He had duties to fulfill and people to protect. And that mandated his use of magic. But that line of reasoning was woefully seductive. It justified too much, constrained far too little.
Kevin's eyes narrowed with concern. He did not completely trust himself with those powers yet. There was a lot of risk should something go wrong.
It was with those troubling thoughts that he left his apartment to search out his professor and begin research in earnest.
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Even at the relatively early hour, the city was bustling with activity. Minako gazed out the window silently, before being brought back to attention by the polite cough of the ever discreet senshi of water.
Ami smiled at her easily and spoke in low tones. "You seem preoccupied. What's on your mind?"
Minako looked back in surprise to see the blue haired girl gazing at her inquisitively. "Sorry, Ami-chan. Just a little scatterbrained right now. Blond and all."
Ami rolled her eyes slightly, before taking a slow deliberate sip of her soda. "With the others, you might have been able to get away with such an excuse. But, come on Minako-chan, I know that there are far more machinations going on within that blond head than you would even admit to yourself."
Minako giggled. "You know me a little too well, Ami-chan. Maybe too well for comfort."
The blue haired girl shrugged knowingly and folded her fingers in front of her. "You took that risk when you befriended me. Don't even start on me knowing you too well."
"I know, I know." The blond giggled again.
They were an unlikely pair, Minako admitted to herself. Sailor Mercury had not abandoned her studious ways, nor her open disdain for some of the boy-chasing antics of her friends. Yet Minako felt a deep kinship to the blue haired girl. Although they were quite different in temperament and thought process, Ami understood her best of any of the others.
The senshi of water had always sensed that there was a deeper story to Minako than the surface cheeriness told. And strangely, Minako did not mind. Ami, in her typical discreet manner, had never commented about it, but that knowing smile revealed quite a bit about her ruminations on the matter.
"But..." Ami betrayed another grin and said rather formally. "You are not answering my question. What is on your mind? The American boy you were talking about perhaps?"
Minako blushed. "I don't always think about guys."
"But that's what was on your mind, yes? I wish I could meet this intriguing person that occupies your thoughts so much. Perhaps, you have an inordinate interest in this fellow."
"Have you ever found somebody interesting...not in a romantic way...just someone that you would love to get inside and figure out?"
Ami smiled wistfully. "Urawa-san. You feel the same about this, Bin-kun?"
"We went sightseeing together around Tokyo the other day. And somewhere in between the parliament building and Tokyo Tower, we just start talking about things. Almost private things."
Dryly, "You didn't give away our identities, did you?"
"I'll admit, I was tempted at one point or another. He's just very agreeable and very easy to talk to."
The blue haired girl suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. It was a spiel she had heard not a few times before. Such relationships would run their course quickly and Minako would move on to the next victim. In a way, it worried her a little. Mina-chan, for all her many admirers, had never had a steady boyfriend of any sort. That in itself would not have been troubling, had Ami not also sensed a deeply rooted fear of commitment in the senshi of love. She could not fathom where or why it had come about, save that it probably had arisen before they had ever met.
Ami pushed those thoughts from her mind. It would be irresponsible to speculate and she suspected Minako would tell all when she felt ready enough to.
She smiled again. "Sounds like a very interesting young man. I shall have to meet him some day."
"I hope you do. I think you'd like him."
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Kevin blinked in despair, then tossed the stack of papers into the air. The lighting in the room was roundly terrible. It was a basement office, a comparative rarity at the University of Tokyo, given the relatively common earthquakes in the area. Kevin suspected that it might have been a holdover from World War II, because it was a most unpleasant place to be in.
Glaring fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, providing a poor replacement for the lack of natural light. The room was depressingly sterile, with little life to the concrete walls surrounding it.
His professor had left half an hour before, to glean some more information from the academics who had provided the initial research on youth cellular phone use. Kevin was going through their seminal works, trying to identify a research area which they had not devoted much time to. It was not a particularly successful endeavor.
He sighed with resignation and began to gather the papers together again, to make another run at them. Although his eyes burned from the harsh light, Kevin welcomed the reading as an opportunity to take his mind off the many things which had complicated his life only days before.
As he delved into Hashimoto's curious works on the effect of text messaging on culture, he thought briefly of Artemis's warnings and woeful proclamations of an imminent invasion. They made sense, of course, and he instinctively trusted the cat's judgment.
Incomplete as his memories were, Kevin felt a distinct familiarity with Artemis's name and took that as a positive sign.
But his most salient memories were of a darker time. His section had been called into action to help execute a flanking assault meant to draw Beryl's forces away from their main axis of attack.
It had failed miserably. The armies she commanded brushed aside his incursion with arrogant ease. His men had been killed and he left for dead in the dust of that battleground.
He grimaced and bit at his lip until he noted the coppery tang of blood. Kevin wiped at it absentmindedly, then tossed the tissue towards the trashcan. It bounced off the rim and rolled underneath the table.
He made no effort to pick it up.