THE EXTERMINATORS
Chapter 11: "Past Due"
By Bill K.
In the dense mists of the temporal limbo, Sailor Moon looked up into the cold, contemptuous, artificial eyes of Viluy as the villainess reached down to grab her throat and crush her windpipe. The woman's platinum hair fell down around her face, obscuring what little light existed in the limbo and giving her already unnatural and cold beauty an ominous cast. She was emotionless as she gazed down upon her victim. That's what struck Sailor Moon as she struggled to establish contact with her numbed nerves and make her body work Viluy was about to snuff out a human life and it elicited no more emotion from her than if she was brushing lint from her shoes.
Establishing contact with her body proved to be hard work for her. The teen's brain felt like it was being pricked with a thousand hot needles and that sensation was blocking her from her body. She was just a brain now, alone and adrift in a boiling sea, with no way to move and death poised above her. At that, her vision barely worked, as did her other senses. Her ears buzzed and she was connected to nothing within her save that and her vision.
No, there was something else. She could feel her pink crystal through the haze reach out to her. It was still connected to her. It still drew energy from her and amplified that energy to power her Moon Scepter. Desperately Sailor Moon seized that. She clung to her connection with her crystal, focusing all of her fervent desire to push Viluy away until she could recover. The teen could feel the crystal respond, feel the power surging within her. But could she generate enough? Always in the past she had proven inadequate to the task, unworthy of wearing the mantle of her mother. And, in an instant, she could feel the surge peaking and dying away.
Viluy's finger touched her throat. No, she had to do it. Her mother depended upon her, depended on her for life itself. Her father depended upon her for the only happiness he would know in his otherwise sorrowful, solitary existence. Hotaru would never live to see sixteen if she failed. The Asteroids would be condemned to a scornful, animal existence, only to be hunted down and executed. The world itself would fall under the relentless march of Viluy and her androids should she fail. And then there was the image of Ami, condemned forever to live out her life as a slave computer program, not even worthy of being deemed human any longer. She couldn't fail. Too much depended upon it.
At the last moment, Viluy snatched her hand away as the fallen Sailor Moon began to glow pink. A crescent moon appeared upon the girl's forehead. Viluy studied it curiously, not knowing the implications. Suddenly she was hit full face with a burst of energy from the mark on Sailor Moon's forehead. The impact flung her away and she landed about thirty feet from the fallen princess, impacting hard on the surface of the limbo.
"This is a level of power not previously associated with this girl," Viluy thought, crouching on the limbo surface as she felt along her face for structural damage. "How do they do it? This defies all known scientific explanation!" Viluy scowled in frustration. "There's no way I can currently cope with an energy discharge like that. I'll have to fulfill my primary objective first, then devise something to neutralize that degree of power output to deal with her when she inevitably travels into the past in pursuit of me."
Suddenly Viluy's encoded mind flared with anger.
"She tore my face!" she thought, her hand discovering the gap in her synthetic skin and muscles that revealed the skull of gleaming reinforced aluminum alloy beneath. For a moment Viluy considered aborting the mission for repairs, if only because this hampered her ability to blend in with normal humans. "No. Better to do it now. The longer Queen Serenity lives, the more chance there is of her or her followers undoing all of my work."
The human android pushed herself up, flung open the Door of Time and plunged inside.
"I hate variables!" she swore in vexation as she disappeared into the centuries.
And, mere moments after she passed through the Door of Time, Sailor Moon's aura of power faded, leaving the senshi unconscious amid the swirling mists of limbo.
Viluy found herself in Juuban Park. She knew her destination year was 1984, but she wasn't positive of the location she'd find herself in. The pseudo-human paused to gain her bearings in the suddenly strange surroundings.
"Yes, I recall this place," Viluy said to herself. "But from where? The memory is - - is incomplete. The fault, no doubt, of my human linage. Had I been cybernetic from the start, the file could have been either retained or downloaded for storage. No matter. It will take moments to triangulate my position relative to the Tsukino residence and . . ."
Then Viluy saw her. A girl walking in the park with her parents, her blonde hair gleaming in the sunlight of the day. And, unbidden, Viluy felt emotional. She felt the anger and despair well up in her. Realizing that they were conditioned responses from her once human brain that was imprinted on her memory circuits, emotions associated with seeing the girl and her parents and the memories they triggered, Viluy tried to dismiss them and regain her detachment. But the emotions wouldn't go away.
For the little girl was five year old Wilhelmina Gustov, recently emigrated from Bremen, Germany, with her mother, Anna, and her new step-father, Motoki Bidou.
"Isn't this a pretty park, Yui?" the man asked the young girl. He was a wiry man of forty with slicked back black hair and somewhat handsome features. His black horn-rimmed glasses made him seem scholarly. The intense gaze in his eyes told those perceptive enough to see it that he was even more intelligent than he seemed.
The girl refused to acknowledge him. She was a healthy young child with striking platinum hair and nordic features that would be terribly cute if they weren't beaten into a scowl of disapproval. She wore a light blue dress and, coupled with her pale skin and hair, made her seem like an ice sculpture come to life.
"Yui, dear," Anna said, softly but with a stern undercurrent, "answer your father."
Anna was a woman who, at twenty, had been a popular beauty with an impressive facility for higher education. Big things had been predicted for her until, at twenty-five, she fell passionately in love with an up and coming robotics engineer and gave up her career to become Anna Gustov. Thought to be happy, particularly after the birth of her daughter, Wilhelmina - - Villy for short - - it was for only close friends of hers to know that the woman was indifferent to motherhood and chafing at being left behind by the academic community. It was only after her husband was implicated in a sex scandal with a minor - - a scandal more than one whisper said was arranged by Anna - - and her marriage a mere month after their divorce to Motoki Bidou, the Japanese industrialist her husband had been working with on robotics development that her friends began to see the extra heft to her still shapely figure, the stress lines forming under her eyes and the shrill, bitter tone to her laugh.
"My name isn't Yui," the child snapped angrily. "It's Villy!"
Her mother knelt down to the child. "We've been over this. We've been adopted into Motoki's family. That's the Japanese way. Your name isn't Gustov anymore, it's Bidou. And he's given you a new first name now, to go with your new life."
"I want to go home," scowled little Yui.
"But you spend so much time cooped up in your bedroom. Don't you want to get out and enjoy the sun and the flowers?"
"Home to Bremen! I want to go back to Bremen!" Yui spat bitterly.
"Bremen is in the past," Anna said, her anger rising. "Our life is here now."
"I HATE IT HERE! I HATE JAPAN! AND I HATE HIM! HE'S NOT MY REAL FATHER! YOU DROVE MY REAL FATHER AWAY!"
With the speed of a cobra, Anna struck her daughter across the mouth with her hand. Across the park, the synthetic humanoid that Yui had become flinched at the memory of the pain from the blow. Young Yui looked up at her mother, fearful and resentful, feeling betrayed and angry, and received no sympathy from her mother's pale blue eyes.
"You are my daughter," Anna proclaimed in a tone that would tolerate no argument. "You will live where I live and you will do as I command! If I say you will live in Japan, you will live here. If I say Motoki is your father now, he is. You have no say in this."
Across the park, Viluy recalled how much she seethed with rage that day. The words and the blow and the look of desperation in her mother's eyes told young Yui that she was not the most important thing in her mother's life, that her mother's fragile union with Motoki took precedence over her daughter, and that Yui would be sacrificed without a moment's thought should it help preserve her mother's alliance with Motoki Bidou. Viluy recalled she learned to hate her mother that day.
Motoki knelt down to the little girl and put his hand on her shoulder. Young Yui glared at him, petulantly challenging him to heal her the way her real father would have.
"It is said, Yui-chan, that to expend energy pining for that which is gone forever produces nothing but frustration and heartache," he told her. "The truly wise person focuses her energy into turning that which is left to her into something that can be enjoyed."
Hearing the words again, Viluy nodded at their wisdom. They had a profound effect upon her as a young girl. But so too did the callous, superior look she saw in Motoki's eyes that told her she was baggage that came with his bride, baggage that would at best be tolerated, but never loved because she wasn't Japanese and she wasn't his daughter by birth.
"I could do it," Viluy murmured absently to herself. "I have the strength and the speed now. I could cross the distance between us in a moment. I could kill them both before either one realized I was there." She felt her artificial throat constrict, another annoying residue of the emotional baggage from her former humanity. "It would certainly make for a different future. Perhaps - - perhaps even a - - a happier one."
Viluy shook her head suddenly.
"No," she admonished herself. "You are surrendering to emotional sentimentality. As painful as those years were, they shaped me into what I am today. To alter it would be long term counter-productivity. Killing them won't gain me what I seek."
Viluy turned her back on the scene of the parents and their combative child.
"Only killing Queen Serenity will."
Back in limbo, Sailor Moon suddenly felt a scratching at her cheek. It confused her, because she had no point of reference to judge it from. The last thing she remembered was Viluy's hands around her throat.
"No!" the teen gasped, lurching up wild-eyed. Her eyes darted around, but she could see no sign of Viluy.
"Sailor Moon?"
That was Diana. Sailor Moon turned to the sound of the voice and found Diana crouched next to her, looking up with concern.
"Did I startle you?" Diana asked sheepishly.
"Um," Sailor Moon heaved, "I guess. I thought someone was rubbing sandpaper on my cheek for a minute."
"Well, please forgive me for that," Diana offered. "I realize that licking a wounded pride-mate is, well, a bit instinctual and quite primitive - - but I didn't know what else to do to wake you."
"Where's Viluy?" the pink senshi asked, stroking Diana's fur to show all was forgiven. "She was - - last thing I remember was she was trying to choke me."
"Oh dear. I don't recall anything after she struck me. Thank heavens something stopped her. I'm not certain where she went, but if she's free, it's quite likely she's passed through the Door of Time into the past."
"Mom!" Sailor Moon gasped, lurching to her feet. She ran right to the Door of Time.
"My Lady, carefully!" screeched Diana. "Let me get a Time Key!"
Sailor Moon's hands flew away from the door knob on the Door of Time. In her panic, she'd forgotten how dangerous it was to venture in through the Door without a key. And she'd forgotten just how devious Viluy was.
"Diana!" the girl called out. "You don't suppose Viluy booby-trapped the door behind her, do you? So we couldn't follow her, I mean?"
"Doubtful, My Lady," Diana replied, a key in her mouth. "After all, the Door is her only means of returning to the future she's so adamant about scripting. It hardly seems logical that she'd damage it until she's returned."
"I guess that makes sense," Sailor Moon muttered. Diana looked up at her and saw the frantic worry bubbling just below the girl's surface.
"We'll get there in time, My Lady," Diana reassured her.
"Promise?" Sailor Moon squeaked.
"Yes," the gray cat answered. "Now concentrate on the moment in time to which Viluy has ventured."
Sailor Moon did as she was asked, clutching the Time Key so hard it made an impression in her right hand. She raised it to the knob and it turned on its own. The Door opened and the pair stepped through. In the blink of an eye, they found themselves on the boat dock in Juuban Park. Instantly Sailor Moon was off, Diana scurrying to keep up.
"Where are you going?" the cat asked. "Do you know where Viluy is?"
"No!" Sailor Moon called back. "But I know where she's headed! So all we have to do is find Mom and stick to her like synthetic adhesion and Viluy's bound to show up sooner or later!"
"Mama, I'm going now!" Usagi called out. Her little feet flew down the front steps and toward the gate.
"Wait, Usagi!" Ikuko called after her. Usagi's pretty face crumpled up into a frown, but she halted and turned. Her mother came out of the front door carrying two year old Shingo. "Now don't stay long at the park. Two hours at the most. And don't make me come get you!"
"Yes, Mama," Usagi sighed.
"And Usagi," Ikuko reiterated, "PLEASE don't talk to strangers."
"But Mama!" Usagi protested.
"Usagi, you can't automatically trust everybody. Please be careful."
"But Mama!"
"You can always stay here where I can watch you," Ikuko said menacingly.
Usagi huffed petulantly. "Yes, Mama."
"And don't wander off. Stay in the park."
"Can I go now? My friends are waiting!"
Ikuko sighed reluctantly. "All right."
"Go too!" Shingo suddenly protested, reaching out for Usagi.
"No, Shingo. You're too young to go to the park without Mommy and Mommy can't go right now," Ikuko patiently explained.
"Go too!" Shingo repeated emphatically. He began kicking and squirming. "Go too! Go too!"
"Well Mama says you're not going, Brat!" Usagi bellowed triumphantly.
"Usagi! Don't tease your brother!" Ikuko snapped, desperately clutching the squirming child. "Go on, have fun and BE CAREFUL!"
Usagi skipped down the street toward the park, the petulant howls of her brother ringing
in her ears. As she walked, her sense of triumph over Shingo changed to frustration and
disappointment that he would act that way. It seemed Shingo always wanted everything she had,
always wanted his way and threw a crying fit every time he didn't get it.
"Little kids are such brats," scowled the four year old. Then her scowl softened into melancholy. "I wish Usa-oneechan would come back. All Mama does is look after Shingo. Usa-oneechan was nice. And she was so pretty." Usagi smiled at the memory. "I hope she finds all of the bad fairies so she can come back."
Half a block from the park, Usagi passed an alley between rows of houses. A sound made her stop.
"H-elp," she head someone gasp again. It sounded like it was coming from the alley. Peering into the alley, all Usagi could see was trash bins and pavement stones. Then, behind one of the bins, she saw the figure of a woman.
"Are you hurt?" Usagi asked, innocently venturing into the alley toward the figure. At first she thought it was an old lady because of the white hair she saw above the trash bin. But the closer she got, the more she realized that it was a younger woman with silvery hair like she'd never seen before. The woman was moaning and she had one hand over her face. "Did you fall down, Ma'am? I do that a lot."
"Help me," whispered the woman. Usagi saw she was dressed in some sort of strange clothes, much like the trash collectors wore, but tighter and more colorful. She moaned again as Usagi walked right up to her.
"Did you hit your head?" Usagi asked, now right next to the woman and leaning in. "We can go see my Mama. I bet she can fix you up. She knows everything. If you need me to, I can help you walk."
The eye that wasn't covered looked up at Usagi. It seemed strange to the little girl, but she couldn't understand why. Then the woman smiled at her.
Concluded in Chapter 12
