Chapter 13 – Don't Stand So Close to Me
Minako sighed, resting for a moment on her broom and casting her eyes upward toward the heavens. Rei's ancestral shrine was just so large and she felt like she'd been sweeping forever. She had no idea how Rei and her grandfather managed normally, even with Yuichiro around to help while Rei was at school. It was so busy.
She supposed that if any sort of silver lining could be found in the current dangerous situation, it was that it had really brought the Inner Senshi back together again as a complete team. The Hikawa Jinja hadn't played host to so many of them at once in more than a year. Yes, they'd fought together against the wraiths, but it just hadn't been the same what with all of them off in college. Even at the same school they'd been scattered, like pieces of a puzzle. But now here she was again, helping out with Rei's chores and taking deliveries, Rei was still fighting with her sacred fire, determined to regain her visions even if it half killed her, Usagi was busy helping Rei's grandfather prepare for shrine rituals, and even Makoto, sporting a Cleopatra wig from Minako's costume closet to hide her now very green locks, was assisting Yuichiro in selling charms and fortunes to an eager public. Their pieces were being put back together once again.
Makoto's green hair was, of course, the reason for the only absent Inner. Ami, Minako supposed, was still working on figuring matters out. She'd promised to call the second she heard anything. Idly, Minako twirled a lock of her own hair around her finger, gazing pensively at the color. She couldn't explain it, but it DID look more golden than it had previously, like she'd had glorious highlights put in. Poor Mako-chan, she thought, had not been so lucky. Though, she reflected, the green tint of Makoto's hair hadn't seemed to put off the male population any more than Ami's blue had.
As Minako lowered her gaze from the puffy clouds to the ground again, she happened to glance down the long flight of stone stairs. Hopefully she would not have to sweep those as well. Though, with Rei giving the orders…
The sight of a man in a black uniform just beginning to ascend the stairs at street level made her groan aloud. "Oh sweet kami, not another delivery."
She'd been fielding delivery men all morning. Bright and early the first one had shown up with a delivery of a single exquisite Casablanca lily for Rei, but no note. Seeming bemused, Rei had accepted that one personally, trying not to notice when the deliveryman practically panted at the sight of her. She'd brushed the delicately ruffled white bloom against her cheek and breathed deeply of its sweet fragrance.
But when the single perfect blood-red rose had appeared a half an hour later, Rei had begun to lose her smile. When the stalk of purple hyacinth (which Makoto had helpfully identified, along with imparting the information that in the language of flowers it was supposedly a plea for forgiveness) arrived, however, Rei had gone into a rage and closeted herself in the fire room, refusing to budge. Makoto, embarrassed to have sparked the incident, snuck off to help Yuichiro, and Minako had been stuck fielding the floral deliverymen, who came at regular half hour intervals.
Since Minako figured it was a crime against nature to get rid of such lovely flowers, even if they were from an enemy, she'd gotten a vase from Rei's grinning grandfather, and had been seeing that the flowers ended up in water. By this time there was quite a bouquet and it looked like there would be another new addition momentarily.
"Between the drooling over us and the stairs, that poor delivery man is going to have a heart attack before the day is out," she murmured to herself. "The florist needs to cut him a break." She called loudly to Rei, who she knew could hear her through the thin wall screens. "Looks like you've got another one, Rei-chan!"
The hidden miko let out a screech of frustration that had Minako rolling her eyes. It wasn't like Rei was actually dealing with the situation herself. If anyone had reason to screech, it was Minako herself. She was the one forced to deal with the slavering floral deliverymen. And while Minako was no stranger to male admiration, she couldn't help but think that things were getting more than a little out of hand now. It was downright disturbing being transformed without warning into a sex goddess, and that, coming from a Venusian, was a decidedly odd perspective…but there it was just the same.
At least, she reflected with gratitude, prolonged exposure to the senshi seemed to blunt the odd new aphrodisiac effect. Yuichiro was no longer acting like he wanted to toss one of them over his shoulder and carry her off, and consequently, Makoto was no longer having to threaten to beat him to death with Minako's broom. And Rei's grandfather was finally acting no more lecherous than normal. Some things were only relatively better.
Minako took another quick glance downward. The man was already well up the stairs, moving fast. She looked harder. The sun was in her eyes, but the man's hair, what little of it she could see under the cap he wore, was very fair. "And it looks like he may be delivering this one in person.
"I'll kill him!" Rei screamed from within, causing a few overseas visitors to the shrine to look quite startled and warily inch away across the courtyard. "I swear by the holy flame, I'll do it! Very painfully and with extreme malice."
Minako blushed, waving a hand. "The shrine's head priestess is conducting an exorcism, trying to drive away evil spirits," she murmured as a cover. The tourists, pacified by the explanation, which Minako wasn't even sure they'd understood, nodded and drifted away to buy souvenir charms and fortunes and take snapshots of the famous temple's gardens and buildings.
Once they were out of earshot, she called back to Rei. "You might want to rein in your homicidal tendencies as long as the tourists are here, Pyro. Because you're scaring them…"
As a hand descended on her shoulder without warning, Minako jumped and let out a cry of alarm. She whirled in a defensive posture, brandishing the bamboo and willow broom like a staff. A cloud of dust rose as the broom's head smacked into a navy blue peacoat. A moment later the makeshift weapon was wrenched from her grasp.
"You really are trying to kill me, aren't you?"
Minako flinched, looked up, and kept on looking up…way up. But even as she looked, she knew the worst had come to pass. The timbre of the stern, no-nonsense voice was unmistakable. She could still hear it threatening to arrest her for disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, and possible kidnapping, and even worse, threatening to call her mother. And that had been before she'd accidentally plowed headlong into him later that night, knocking them both momentarily senseless before she'd fled.
It was the silver-haired cop from Valentines night.
He was staring down at her, his pale grey eyes glittering in frustration. He had the broom in a death grip, seemingly afraid she was going to bruise him again, or at least further damage the starchy perfection of his uniform. Minako suddenly wished she had a hole to crawl into for a few years.
She forced a sickly smile. "Welcome to the Hikawa Jinja, officer. How may I assist you today?"
Just then Rei slammed the sliding door to one side. The prayer beads in her hand were clutched as if she was going to garrote someone with them. "Where is the bastard?" she snarled furiously. "He's going to die at my hands this time!"
Minako buried her face in her palms. "Rei-chan," she hissed as the police officer before her stiffened at the mention of possible murder. "It's not him. It's the police"
Startled into silence, Rei froze, her face going crimson as her robes and the highlights in her hair as her mouth dropped open. Horrified, she withdrew, slamming the door shut again and leaving Minako to try to explain matters to the police officer she'd just unwittingly assaulted. She was going to end up behind bars soon. She just knew it.
"Is there something I should know about going on here?" inquired Assistant Police Inspector Kazuhiko Kane in forbidding tones, silver brows knitting together. He was deadly serious. The furious raven/red-haired woman had looked more than capable of committing homicide, and he wasn't about to let the matter go without finding out what was going on.
"Heh…" Minako tried to laugh it off, though she was somewhat less than convincing in her light tone. "Just…um…men troubles. Rei-chan didn't really mean what she said. She wouldn't hurt anyone. Really."
'Much anyway', Minako mentally added, also mentally crossing her fingers to ward off the lie. "She's just a little upset right now. Just a kind of…lover's spat. It'll work itself out." She waved her hand toward the flowers, as if they would speak for themselves. The police officer didn't need to know that Rei had actually had nothing to do with keeping the blooms around. "It's nothing for the police to concern themselves with, though."
A sudden thought occurred to Minako, and she drew back, her azure eyes going wide in alarm. "What are you doing here today, officer? You can't mean to arrest me now. It wouldn't be right after all this time…"
Her voice had pitched upward toward the hysterical and she missed the faint hint of warmth that warmed the icy gaze of the police officer before her. Only someone who was very intimately familiar with him would have spotted the change. In spite of his foreboding, by-the-book expression Kane was very amused. He firmly believed that everybody had at least one cross in life which he or she must bear. Recently it seemed that the antics of this scatterbrained blonde were his.
"You did hit me with a broom," he pointed out helpfully, his eyebrows snapping together as he noted the large, smutty dust mark that now marred his blue jacket. He whacked at the mark, brushing away as much of the grey stain as possible.
"But I didn't mean to," yelped Minako, having melodramatic visions of herself clapped in handcuffs and being dragged down to the police station, doing a perp walk, having to throw herself on the mercy of the court, and maybe even winding up in prison. She knew the man before her was the sort of stuffed vest, stick-in-the-muck, straight-arrow-to-the-extreme cop who'd do it to her too. She could still hear him lecturing her. Only the intercession of his superior, who had, luckily for her, turned out to be an old boyhood friend of her father's, had saved her skin on Valentine's Night. "I only reacted because you scared me."
"You also knocked me down the other night and left me lying there," he pointed out helpfully…and a bit accusingly. "You didn't even check to see if I'd been hurt or had hit my head."
Guilt assailed her. They had collided very hard due to her carelessness. She'd even lost consciousness for just a second. "Sorry," she said, sincerely apologetic. "I was trying to get to a friend's house on an emergency matter," she offered by way of an excuse. It wasn't much of an explanation being that she couldn't tell him that she spent nights fighting monsters while in a miniskirt, but it was the truth as far as it went.
"An emergency?" he asked skeptically, his gaze flickering lightly over the sunny curtain of her hair and the perky bow that held her mane in place. "A real one? Not a fashion crisis or something of that sort"
"YES!" she insisted, sniffing with sudden irritation. As if she was some dingy blonde who didn't know an emergency from a non-emergency. As if! She thought back over the years. Some of THOSE emergencies she'd been through would have turned the man's hair prematurely white…if it hadn't already been so.
"I see." He shook his head, arching a supercilious (at least in Minako's opinion) brow. "Well, you really ought to be more careful, Aino-san."
She glared at him. It wasn't what he'd said, but his tone that was objectionable. "I will," she retorted in clipped tones.
Kane looked surprised for a moment, opened his mouth, then shut it without a word.
Minako rolled her eyes. "Well, if you're not here to arrest me, officer, then what are you doing here? We're very busy here today, so…" She let the sentence trail of meaningfully. As far as she was concerned, if he had no official business, then he should scamper along on his way and let her get on with temple chores.
And the sooner the better.
"You know," Kane said suddenly, running his intense silver-grey gaze over her robes, "when your sorority sisters told me you could be found here, I didn't believe them at first. A girl who could throw a crazed party like you did…you just didn't seem like the miko type to me. Still don't," –he paused, his gaze moving from the honey blond top of her hair to her sandal-clad feet– "…although, you do look the part and you seem to have an idea of what you're doing…"
"How dare you?" Minako bristled, interrupting his musings. "I'll have you know, I've been intimate friends with the shrine keeper's granddaughter since I was fourteen years old." And then some, she mentally tacked on. "I've been doing this sort of thing since junior high. I know all the dances and songs and how to do all the miko rituals...like…like I know the back of my palm," she finally sputtered.
She did too. Rei had taught them all well over the years.
Kane grinned. "You mean hand."
"What-ever," growled Minako, not willing to be corrected by HIM. She couldn't help but wonder at his ability to get under his skin so easily…as if he mattered or something. She never cared when Rei or Mamoru or Ami corrected her over a malapropism. Finally she tossed her head in a cascade of silken golden strands and turned smartly on her heel. It wasn't as if she gave a hang about his opinion. And let him keep the filthy broom. It wasn't as if the temple didn't have others.
A hand with a grip as unyielding as stone landed on her shoulder, preventing her from storming off in high dudgeon. "One moment, Aino-san."
She let out a gusty sigh and whirled. "What is it?"
"I believe you left this behind in our little…crash. I thought I'd return it to you. It looked expensive."
In the sunlight the gold trinket in his hand, despite its broken chain, glittered richly and the heart-shaped lilac-pink stone mounted within shone rosily. Minako blinked at the dazzling sight. It was her Kappa necklace. Although new, when it had disappeared on Valentine's Night, she'd given it up as lost forever.
"Oh," she muttered, vaguely embarrassed. "I guess it must've caught on your uniform buttons." She made a swipe for the piece of jewelry as she said curtly, "Thank you."
Somehow, the jewelry evaded her grasp and she scowled as he smiled blandly. How she'd missed, she had no idea, but it was aggravating. He was aggravating.
"What's your rush? You should identify it properly first," he hinted. "Are there any distinctive markings you can tell me about to prove that it's yours?"
Minako's scowl deepened. "The rush is that the stone's not meant for day wear. The color can fade in direct sunlight. And you know it's mine, otherwise you wouldn't have returned it to me. It's even got my name engraved on the mounting."
Kane flipped the necklace in the air, catching it a split second later before she could make another grab for the piece. "Bi-na-su," he sounded out, using a somewhat archaic reading of the characters etched on the backing of the stone before doing that eyebrow arching thing that made Minako feel like developing a twitch of her own. "Venus?"
"Minako. Mi-na-ko," she hissed acidly, holding out her palm with clear intent. Under her breath she mumbled, "Obnoxious baka."
She knew he heard when his eyes narrowed faintly, but he maintained an otherwise controlled bland façade. Holding it up again, Kane fingered the faceted pink stone. "I've never seen a gem this exact color before. It's a little bit pink, but also a little bit purple-grey, I think. It fades in the light you said? How odd. What's it called?"
"K…ite something. Ken…zite maybe," Minako sputtered, her color running high. "I don't remember anymore, but it doesn't matter. What does matter is that you're going to ruin it if you're not careful and that thing wasn't cheap, so hand it over right now or you're guilty of stealing my property." She crossed her arms over her chest grumpily. "I'd hate to have to report you to your superiors, officer."
Kenzite wasn't right. Kane knew that…he didn't know why he was sure of that fact, but he was as certain of that as he was that he was the youngest Assistant Police Inspector on Tokyo's police force and that one Aino Minako had the most gorgeous, albeit pink face he'd seen in all his years.
He froze. And where the hell had that thought come from?
Just then the gem seemed to fracture the sunlight into a thousand and one rosy shining sparklers, bathing them both in its radiant glow. Kane flinched and froze in the shimmering light as the word 'Kunzite' whispered through his brain like a sultry but fleeting kiss.
Minako lunged.
"Gotcha!" She crowed triumphantly as she snatched the piece from his grasp and the little trinket disappeared protectively up one flowing sleeve of her kimono. Her property back in hand, she aimed a cross little kick at the shins of the police officer, who was standing stock still, and pronounced. "I really do not like you, officer. Good day, sir!" before she marched away grumbling, slamming the temple door behind her as she went to answer the telephone that had begun shrilling away inside.
Somehow the blonde's mildly spoken rebuke and then chill dismissal seemed to sting more than any other woman's cry of, "I hate your everlasting guts, you horrible pig! Choke on it and die!" would have. Kane blinked wildly as he regained his senses, his grip tightening so hard on the broomstick that its bamboo shaft cracked. He was left with only one remaining question.
"What exactly just happened here?"
(Author's Note: 100,000 What's My Line points to anyone who gets the joke behind the title of this chapter)