Chapter 6 – Duty Calls
Rei and Makoto instantly tensed, hearing the panicked cry. It could, of course, be anything. A mugger, perhaps, or a rapist even, but deep down in their heart of hearts they knew it wasn't. And whatever it was, it was their duty as senshi and the protectors of the planet to go save whoever the poor unfortunate was with the strong vocal cords and the operatic range.
'Why is it always around MY temple?!' Rei could feel the anger growing in the pit of her stomach, a burning hot little ball.
'Why is it NOW?!' A hint of a pout twisted Makoto's lips. None of their enemies had ever been particularly concerned with scheduling their attacks at senshi convenient times, but this particular wraith had really, REALLY lousy timing.
"We've got to check this out," Rei said, tugging Jed's arm as she turned to hurry down the stairs.
"What?!" he demanded, dragging his feet. "Are you insane, Hino-san?! For all you know it could be a rape or a robbery or a Yakuza hit going on down there. We'll call the cops and then go in the temple and lock the doors."
He made a quick and ultimately unproductive swipe for Neil's cell phone, intent on carrying out his will.
"Liability," was the only answer Rei could think of that didn't involve spilling her actual secret. Before Jed could process her answer, she'd hauled him off, exercising a strength he couldn't believe she possessed.
"Well we can't let them go alone," Makoto blurted out, deciding that Rei had the right idea. Neil accidentally dropped his phone as Makoto towed him along in her wake as she sped down the stairs. "Hurry!"
The trip down the stairs went a lot faster than up, the girls skipping every third or fourth step as they went. The guys were simply trying to keep up…and not fall so they would plummet to their deaths on the stones below. It was only when they reached the bottommost section that the four of them came to a halt, peering through the shrubs.
That was the moment when Jed and Neil came face to face with the fact that Tokyo really was a whole world away from anything they'd ever experienced before. To put it bluntly, they were gobsmacked. And quite suddenly terrified beyond all rational thought.
For the source of the screaming was a very round, very terrified salaryman, out late after a business meeting, whose be-suited body was clutched in the talon-tipped fingers of something that looked like it had crawled out of nightmares. It was covered in leathery looking scales and sported a pair of bony wings which seemed too small to support its immense body. Thick vile ropes of saliva dripped from its mouth as it snarled, slavering over its victim.
The phrases Rei and particularly Makoto used in that moment would have done a longshoreman proud, not that the gentlemen linked to them ever noticed. The wraith was the biggest they'd seen in several months. In fact they hadn't seen anything quite like it before. In any case, without Sailor Moon, it would take all four of the Inner Senshi working together to dust the beast.
But by general agreement, Sailor Moon had been given Valentine's off to spend with her beloved. If they used the general distress call, she'd surely hear it and come running, thereby spoiling what her court had desired most for her…an uninterrupted romantic evening with her soul mate, Chiba Mamoru.
Murphy's Law states that anything that can go wrong, will. Finagle's corollary to Murphy's Law simply adds that it will surely happen at the worst possible time. Tonight was that time. Through bad planning by Ami (surely not!) or bad luck, they were a minimum of two senshi down and up by two all too human (read: frail) sidekicks who had no clue that Rei and Makoto even WERE senshi. And they were running out of time.
"He won't last long," Rei whispered to Makoto, pointing at the victim. She could have shouted. Jed, staring at the wraith, transfixed, was completely beyond hearing. "We have to act now."
"B..but I can't," Makoto protested. "I can't attack with my powers."
"For kami's sake, why not?!" The raven-haired miko was in no mood for arguments. Their time was rapidly running out, as was the wraith victim's.
"Hello, baka," Makoto snapped, quite frustrated that Rei didn't see. "Think about it. I wield lightning. Electricity." She jangled her cuffed wrist. "Metal conducts. It could KILL him."
"Aargh!" Rei tore at her hair. "We have no choice. I'm hitting general call. I hope Usagi can understand." She jabbed the button on her communicator. Ami's special directional program would have to do to lead the others to their location. "Henshin anyway, Makoto. You have to help me at least distract that…thing."
She knew Rei was right. It would just be one, well two secrets blown to hell. Oh well, Mercury and Venus already each had someone who knew or had figured out about their double-life. This would just even up the score.
Amethyst and emerald eyes locked in a moment of understanding and resignation to what could not be helped. A curt nod was Makoto's only answer.
Neil abruptly was yanked out of his state of wraith-induced numbness by two hands dragging him forward by his collar. When his face was exactly level with hers, Makoto pinned him with a glare that was usually only used to reduce corrupt grocers and sleazy fishmongers to tears. Neil twitched, twisting in her suddenly very strong hands.
"Listen up. When I tell you to run, you run. When I say jump, Neil, you've got to jump. You hear me? Don't ask me why or how high. Just do it as fast and as high or far as you can."
"What?"
She shook him for a moment, then let loose raising both fists threateningly. "And one more thing. You're going to learn something important in just a minute and you're going to keep it under wraps because otherwise I'll give you ten very good reasons why you'll be sorry if you don't. But I'll protect you with my life. Understand?"
He nodded blankly, not understanding a thing, and she grinned, a light coming into her eyes that he hadn't seen before. The part of Makoto that relished the big fights was coming out to play. She yanked his arm up so as not to get in the way.
In the space somewhere between this world and the next existed the hiding place for magic things, and it was from this realm that two wands, ruby and emerald winked into being and dropped into waiting palms.
"Jupiter Eternal Power, Make-Up!"
Before Neil's stunned eyes, Makoto was twirling on her toes enveloped in brilliant emerald green light. There was a crackle of something that made the hair on his arms stand on end and a thunderous crash that nearly deafened him. Without warning white lightning enveloped her form and for an instant he was completely blinded by the auroral flash. As the dancing lights before his eyes slowly receded, Neil suddenly realized what was attached to his wrist…a stunning sailor soldier in pink and green. And she was wearing Makoto's face.
"Who…who are you?" he asked with the tentative voice of someone who'd suffered a major head trauma. She smiled faintly, familiarly. "You know, but for now call me Jupiter. Time to move your backside, Neil." She crouched, then sprang into the air, yelling, "Jump!"
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!" His scream rivaled the wraith victim's as Sailor Jupiter hauled him as close as he (n)ever wanted to get to anything like that monster.
Jed's mouth hung open practically to his knees, displaying the fine results of some very extremely expensive orthodontics in his youth. First there'd been a monster and then a Sailor freakin' Senshi had just appeared right in front of him. And before he could even turn to Rei to exclaim, "Did you see THAT?!" she plucked a star-tipped crimson wand out of thin air, thrusting it skyward.
"Mars Eternal Power, Make-Up!"
Searing heat, comparable only to a blast furnace, thickened the very air and Jed was certain he couldn't begin to draw a breath. And in the next second he didn't need to because he was holding it in tight lungs that were not even capable of function as an extremely lovely and extremely BARE Rei was spinning around before him. A burst of red-hot flame flared up around her, forcing him to look away from its glare. Only when the rippling waves of heat died away could he see again, and what he saw astonished him.
The mysterious, elusive and beautiful Sailor Mars, her tight cardinal and white fuku exactly as mouth-watering as described by his dorm-mate, was standing before him and she was…
"Rei?" he gasped, unable to believe his own eyes.
"Later," she snapped, dragging him with her as she ran out the cover of the bushes and to his utter horror pulled him face to oozing face with the Nightmare from Sendai.
"That's it exactly, Mizuno-san. Brilliant!"
Mizuno Ami, a serious-looking, petite girl with hair an unlikely, but completely natural shade of sapphire, was receiving praise for doing that which she had been doing for years…exercising the legendary brilliance that was, along with the blue hair, a legacy of her race. She did it quietly and unassumingly, her native modesty making it all the more startling when people noticed it for the first time.
"You've done it!" Zarek Veridian, flying high on caffeine and the giddy thrill of having at least a small part of his research project come to fruition, after months of day and night work, gave into the urge to dance a little jig, but he wouldn't dance alone.
Whooping loudly enough to startle the lab monkeys, he snatched Ami from her chair and promenaded her around the lab until she was dizzy but laughing. "You're crazy, Veridian-san."
"Nope, just over caffeinated, sleep deprived, and thrilled anyway." He flashed her a mega-watt grin that seemed to light up the whole room.
"Didn't I tell you to call me Zarek?" he asked teasingly. "I'm quite sure I did." He squeezed her tiny hands between his broad palms. Ami winced, feeling the handsome tanzanite ring her mother had given her bite into her fingers. For a man who rarely left the lab, Zarek Veridian was surprisingly strong.
A delicate flush tinted Ami's porcelain complexion pale pink. He had indeed...for about the last six months, ever since she'd been assigned to work with him. She'd never felt comfortable with it, though. Somehow it was easier to deal with the handsome, green-eyed lab tech when she could keep him at a distance, and refusing to use his given name was one means of separation. Keeping eye contact at a minimum was another means that she used to keep him at a distance. And that was why she missed the pained look that spread over the amber haired man's face, driving away his cocky smile, as a chill not unlike an extreme ice-cream brain freeze jolted his entire nervous system.
Ami was spared the embarrassment of answering him when her senshi communicator, disguised as an elaborate cell phone, shrilled loudly in the nearly deserted lab. Prying one hand free from Veridian-san's, she grabbed her communicator. She bit her lip as the device automatically translated Rei's urgent verbal directions into text which she rapidly scanned.
"It's an emergency. I've got to go," she blurted out, yanking her other hand from Zarek's. He flinched as the connection to something out of the ordinary broke leaving him feeling like he should have recognized something, but hadn't and was bereft because of it.
Ami pelted out of the lab and down the maze of corridors in the underground building, her shoe leather slapping on the industrial terrazzo floors. She left everything behind, from her purse to her lab notes and books to her periwinkle wool coat.
The loud bang of the door snapped Zarek from his daze and he blinked wondering what had happened. Horrified, he snatched up the first and last items, racing after her. "Wait Mizuno-san! Your purse! And it's too cold to be out without your coat!
Halfway across town, Aino Minako was staring glumly out the window, oblivious to the city sights, as the metro train rolled along.
"Perfect. Simply perfect."
Frankly, it had been a fairly cruddy Valentine's Day for her. And that was not acceptable when one was supposed to be the living avatar of love. It was HER holiday, darn it! It was supposed to be passionate. Or romantic. Or at least interesting. But noooooooo.
First, and most annoyingly, SHE hadn't even gotten a chance to meet someone. Then there was the whole ugly business with the cops. The noise complaint from the neighbors had been hypocritical in the extreme given their penchant for extremely raucous parties themselves. She knew. She'd crashed a few of them. But the police had not been in a mood to listen. She'd only narrowly escaped being hauled off to jail. (And wouldn't that have caused her mother to raise a stink?) Also, the people at the college…well, they had proven themselves to be completely uncooperative. Yes, meeting new people wasn't always easy, but you'd have thought that folks would have been a little more open to the possibility of romance, especially on Valentine's. Instead, they'd acted like Rei.
Which brought to mind another niggling detail…
Minako twined a honey lock of hair around a fingertip and stuck her tongue out as she thought back. Rei had acted almost completely unlike herself. She'd only bristled and stomped around a little bit, and that had been over the chaos that resulted from her tossing away the keys rather than about being cuffed to the cute blond man. Could it perhaps be that she actually liked the guy?
That thought brought a contemplative grin to Minako's face. Perhaps the party, abortive though it might have been, hadn't been a complete loss after all.
Heaven knew that Rei would have to be hardest nut to crinkle. She'd actually never planned into even bring Rei into the cuffing ice breaker…mostly because she knew it wouldn't have been fair to saddle an unsuspecting and unprepared male with the beauty with a buzz saw tongue, but then she'd caught a glimpse of…something, and before she herself knew what she'd been about, she'd snapped the rings around her friend's and the wickedly attractive man's wrists.
Yet Rei had, for her, scarcely flared at all…at least not after she'd vented out her first shocked reaction. And the young blond man had all but drooled over her friend, in spite of Rei's temperamental outburst. There was definitely something interesting going on there and Minako planned to keep an eye on it. The high entertainment factor would be worth it, if nothing else.
As for Makoto, she'd been the proverbial piece of pie…torte, whatever.
She'd been making her rounds of the room and spotted the tall, dark-haired male sizing up her friend, which wasn't all that unusual, but had then noticed that his gaze had ultimately come to focus on Makoto's face, not exclusively on her figure. She'd almost hugged herself with glee then. He was a nice guy. And although Makoto's taste in men had been all over the map over the years (evidently sempai could be anyone and anything) she figured it was a safe enough bet that the sinfully handsome, blue-eyed brunette would be right up Makoto's alley, especially since he was taller than she was, a point that was sensitive for the tall young woman. He seemed…right.
The two of them together, Minako knew, would be pretty as a picture and Makoto always did have a passion for aesthetics. When she'd seen him, of his own accord, making his way toward Makoto with a determined gleam in his eye, she'd all but tap danced.
'Go get her,' the born matchmaker in Minako had cheered giddily. It was just too, too easy. The sweetly dazed smile on Makoto's face when he'd touched her hand had only confirmed Minako's suspicions.
"Naturally," she murmured to herself, mentally giving herself the thumbs up. "The Love Goddess knows best, of course." And the night was still young. Well, it wasn't yet midnight anyway. She could still meet someone.
Her sunny, self-congratulatory mind set was disturbed as her communicator buzzed obnoxiously, surprisingly loud in the nearly empty train car. She checked it, groaning as she noted the all call status, which was bound to disturb Usagi and Mamoru on their special Valentines date. Who had she been trying to kid? Rei had positively no romance in her soul.
"May Cupid's thousand little darts knock you on your hot, hard, little head, Rei-chan."
Leaping from the train as it slid into the next stop at Shinjuku, Minako hot-footed it back across town. She was sprinting, making excellent time if she did say so herself, until she rounded a corner, slammed into what felt like a block wall, and her world briefly went completely black.