Chapter 12
The great brass door was battered in, its hinges torn off in the violence of the assault. It was four inches thick and defended the first great hall of the palace, built in a time when life on the Moon had not been quite as idyllic. The heavy door had been formed in the famed natural forges of Venus with rare metals harvested from the heart of Jupiter. It was a work of technological and aesthetic genius, converted in a peaceful time to a showcase for the most talented engravers in the system.
Giant fists had smashed against it, warping the metal with each terrible blow. The final strike had sent the door careening to the the other side of the room, crushing a young Lunarian soldier as it went. The enemy had flooded through the open gate, trying to overwhelm the defenders who had barricaded themselves inside.
But, even with the death of their senior commanders, the survivors of the Moon Guard had continued their harried defense underneath senshi command. A stalemated firefight had erupted as palace guards had been frantically rounded up to assist in the defense of the great hall. Gray bodies piled up next to the wall as Beryl's troops attempted to force their way in.
Wave after wave of Beryl's troops had been immolated underneath the fury of the senshi attacks, and it seemed as though the invasion had finally been halted. But the bodies began creep closer and closer to the makeshift defensive positions that the defenders hid behind.
The man made his way over the mountains of the dead. The senshi had retreated, despite managing to hold off the attackers. Why?
He pulled himself over the barricade and stumbled over a body clothed in blue.
Sailor Mercury, her joints already stiffening from rigor mortis, stared hack at him glassily. The man reached his hand out to touch the congealing blood that smeared her neck. The sounds of battle wafted gently through the air and he stood up suddenly.
The man spied a sword on the ground and knelt to pick it up. He wove it around uncomfortably, then snapped it up in a half remembered fencing position. The enemy had left him alive. They would not make that mistake again.
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Kevin's eyes flashed open and he looked around frantically, before settling down into ennui. The girl next to him looked at him strangely, then shook her head. He could almost see what was going through her mind. Crazy Americans.
He stirred his coffee slowly then gazed towards the campus outside. The sun blazed down through the window, casting the long shadows of trees through the window. Well manicured hedges and flower beds wrapped around modern buildings, through which neat avenues connected place to place.
Kevin glanced at his watch before downing the rest of his coffee in a single gulp. He had class in twenty minutes, and needed to walk quickly to reach it. The sun warmed his face and he loosened his collar slightly to let air down his shirt.
The day was an especially nice one, with large fluffy clouds dotting a wonderfully blue sky. A slight wind had picked up, blowing the heat of summer away with a dying wheeze. The forecasts had indicated a heavy shower later in the evening, but for now Kevin smiled at the glorious weather as a gift from a friendly god.
The campus was bustling as usual, with students and faculty rushing from place to place as if they had some unalterable deadline that they had to make. A group of high-schoolers dressed in their pseudo-military sailor style walked along with a tour guide, no doubt bragging about the pinnacle of Japanese higher education.
So far, Kevin had not been impressed. His expectation of Todai had been that of a great and ancient university, where the search for knowledge would be held in cafes and classrooms, where policies and theories might be brought forth as stepping stones towards social good, where the marketplace of ideas would discern lesser from greater in the pursuit of ultimate truth. Admittedly idealistic, but certainly not unreasonable.
What he had found was an institution in the dual vise of tradition and politics, that could not move beyond its past and would forever be inferior because of it.
Perhaps no class better personified that than Kevin's Modern Japanese History course. He hadn't had especially high expectations for the course, but was not prepared for the excessive revisionism and almost fascist disregard of historical fact that the faculty exhibited. World War II had been passed off as an unfortunate event that had engulfed many nations and was caused by a number of factors. The colonial occupation of Korea was a minor historical footnote, with the positives of hydroelectricity and minor economic growth outweighing the negatives of forced prostitution, feudalism, and slave labor. The Rape of Nanking? A historical irrelevancy.
Kevin's Chinese heritage did not mesh well with those easy denials. His grandfather had been a soldier in the Chinese army, led by Chiang Kai Shek in the valiant but futile defense of Shanghai, his maternal grandmother a witness to the atrocities at Nanking. It sent a chill down his spine that such things could be ignored so easily, dismissed so casually.
In such cases, it was easy to determine right and wrong. Life usually was not quite as ideal.
As he passed by the school group, one of the girls smiled at him, winked, and giggled. Kevin reflected idly that some of his friends might have creamed their pants at such an event. He didn't quite understand it, the American fetish with schoolgirls. He supposed it had something to with innocence and purity, and the corruption of said qualities.
It was not a particularly enlightened commentary on American culture, but he preferred it to the one where he was trapped now.
A wistful smile played over his features. Not that Japan was all bad. Minako intrigued him, addling his mind much in the way that beautiful girls did to teenaged guys.
She was an extraordinary person, a tightly wound ball of cheerful ditziness and happy energy that could not help but enliven the people around her. Her blue-eyed gaze could elicit a smile with a single glance.
Yet within those aqua depths, Kevin detected something beyond the shallow facade which she presented. Intelligence was one thing and he had finally begun to pry open that bugaboo and show Minako that she was smarter than she wanted to admit. According to Artemis, his presence at the cram school had already improved her grades immensely.
But on an even deeper level, Kevin sensed that there was something amiss with Minako. Throughout his conversations with her, he had managed to glean the fact that she had never had a steady boyfriend. That revelation had piqued his interest.
He supposed that on some base level, he was attracted to her. Kevin suspected that most men were. She was a charming young lady, prettier and smarter than most. A perfect catch if you asked him.
Which made it all the stranger that she was unattached and had been so for some time. It was with those puzzling thoughts which he ascended the stairs to the social science building.
He had one more class for the rest of the day, a basic social psychology class which he coul pass without any reasonable difficulty. He had taken an abnormally rigorous basic psychology class back at Amherst and did not anticipate any difficulties with the material this early in the term.
He took his usual seat near the back corner of the class, where he could sleep without anybody spotting him.
To his immense surprise, someone came to sit next to him.
"Good afternoon, Bin-kun. Is anyone sitting here?"
Kevin was jolted out of his lethargy by the smiling face of Ami Mizuno. "Ami-san! Sorry, I didn't notice you. No, no one is sitting here."
"Thanks." Ami shifted the bookbag off her shoulder and to the ground. "How are you doing?"
"Alright, I suppose. A little surprised to see you here, I have to admit."
"I was recently granted special dispensation to take college courses here. It took a little while for the paper work to get through."
"Which is why you weren't in the first class?"
Ami nodded. "I hope I haven't missed too much."
Kevin snorted out a laugh. "You are enough of an overachiever that you don't have too much to worry about."
"Well, I will be relying on you to keep me up to speed." Ami reached into her bag and pulled out a notepad and pen.
"It would be my pleasure." Kevin smiled ruefully. "I guess I'll be teaching quite a bit while in Japan."
"You are an excellent teacher!" Ami grinned. "Minako-chan thinks you're one of the best she's ever had."
"You're making that up."
"No, I'm completely serious. Her grades are so much higher now. I think you must to be blame."
"I think you are overestimating my role, but I'm glad she's doing so much better now."
Ami fixed him with a penetrating stare. "It's been an amazing transformation. I don't think I've ever seen someone affect her so much."
Kevin's voice turned slightly suspicious. "Really, now. Am I missing some part of this conversation?"
"Not at all, Bin-kun. I was simply commenting on the fact that you're a positive influence on her." Ami's tone betrayed nothing.
Kevin pursed his lips. "Right."
She continued as if she hadn't heard him. "You know, Minako-chan is a rather complex girl."
He nodded. "Oh I do know that. She's really quite interesting. I'm not sure if I understand her at all."
"From her perspective, you've come closer than many others."
"Really?" Kevin's eyebrows furrowed slightly. "I thought her friends might be better in that regard than me."
"In case you hadn't noticed, you're her friend too. She finds you easy to talk to."
"Her words?"
"They are."
"Huh." Kevin started to respond, but was interrupted by the rapping of the instructor's meter stick on the ground, signaling the beginning of class.