Walking Towards Light: Ami Redux
Act 3: Coming Home

Chapter 16: Desperate Times - wherein hero and villain meet at last and desperate times force Ami's hand.

Ami woke up with a painful coughing spasm. Her heart fluttered erratically in her chest. Coughing, Heart palpitations, dry mouth, the familiar stabbing pain of a cluster headache behind her eyes... Fuck.

She knew this. The symptoms all fit. She'd been drugged.

Ami shivered. This was bad. She was sitting, presumably in a chair. She tried to stand, but couldn't. Her arms were cuffed to the chair...and the chair was bolted to the ground.

She was trapped.

What the hell? Where was she? Ami looked around, gathering what information she could. She was in an office. Desk, chair, lamp filing cabinets, a goddamn spider plant even...the whole nine yards. A faint scent lingered in the stale recycled air. Her lips curled in disgust. Ami knew it as cadaver smell - another bitter reminder of her wasted days in medical school.

Aside from the smell, The room was completely soulless. It was a laughably bland office, given the circumstances. Ami turned her focus inward, still looking for an explanation.

She was still feeling the effects of whatever drugs she had taken. There was no way of knowing how long she had been unconscious for. How did she get here? Someone must have taken her. Her last clear memory was of waiting for Hotaru after school. Everything after that had a fuzzy quality to it. Something about a bar? She was drinking...and Makoto. Mako was there too.

Mako! Was she ok? Something must have happened. Mako would never have allowed this without a fight. Ami called out, unsure if she wanted an answer or not.

"Mako-chan? Are you here?"

A light, lyrical voice answered her with a laugh. The chair across the desk swiveled around slowly.

"Oh? Is that what her name was? I just gave my youma orders to find some way of making you talk. I suppose they found a little friend of yours or something? Oh well, irrelevant. What I needed to know if you still carried Metaria inside you. Too bad you didn't have the answer either. It's a shame the youma weren't able to complete their assignment fully. Now we have to do this the messy way."

A woman was seated here, a slight frown of distaste on her otherwise beautiful face.

Ami's eyes narrowed in thought. The woman across the desk. Who was she? She was familiar. Ami had seen her before...on posters...years ago. She was supposed to be dead. Minako said so.

Never mind that. Seeing was believing. Death wasn't all it was cracked up to be anyways.

"Pandora, I presume?"

The fallen idol Pandora. The last of the Dark Kingdom. Just the person she'd wanted to meet.

"Lady Pandora. Call me Lady Pandora. I insist on proper titles here, Mizuno-san. I have so very much been wanting to meet you. Would you prefer to be addressed as Sailor Mercury?"

Ami let her power ripple around her. No point in maintaining false faces now. Only one of them was leaving this room alive - or neither. Adrenaline burned past the last of the drugs in her veins in anticipation.

Mercury pulled at the cuffs again. Dammit. They were still unyielding. One on each arm, locking her to the arms of the chair and all of it solid metal construction. Sailor Jupiter or Venus might have been able to pull free, but Mercury doubted she could. Senshi super-strength or not, there were limits to the human body.

As usual, brute force was not the answer. Mercury forced herself to calm down. Breathe. Decrease heart rate. Concentrate. Think.

The soothing cool rush of the Mercury visor slid across her face in search of alternate solutions.

Off the bat, the visor saw past the illusion of Pandora's beauty. In it's place was a skeletal visage of misshapen muscle and skin that didn't quite cover everything. The deathly smell that lingered in the room now had a focus. The change was startling. Mercury knew she was staring openly at Pandora now.

Good. That seemed to piss off the bitch to no end.

Then her trusty visor gave her the best news she'd received all night. Jupiter was safe!

If the situation weren't so tense, Mercury would have laughed with relief. Mako was alright! She found the computer Ami left for her and activated it's emergency mode. The Senshi now had and audio-visual link to her visor.

A new message blinked at the bottom of her field of vision. "COMING TO YOU. STAY ALIVE".

Mercury stared at the words. That changed the situation considerably. Pandora had asked her a question. Now she was obligated to answer.

"Lady Pandora...please refer to me as Ami. Mizuno-san is much too formal between the two of us. I plan to see your end and since I don't expect I'll need to be Sailor Mercury to accomplish that... Ami will do. If that's not intimacy, I don't know what is. Judging from your presence, I sense this is personal to you too?"

The false politeness from Pandora was meant as a taunt. Mercury served it right back with a smile. If Pandora wanted to play mind games, she would happily oblige. Words were the only weapon she had right now.

"Bold words, Ami-san, for someone who is currently not in a position to be making them right now."

That much was true.

"You know I am Sailor Mercury. You know that I mean to kill you. If you had any sense of self preservation, I'd be dead already...so by that logic. You need me alive. Why?"

"Our beautiful Queen. She lives in you. You will bring her back."

Beautiful Queen? Metaria? The pieces were falling into place, the big picture was...unexpected. Ami needed to know more.

"Wait. Queen? You mean Metaria? Why the hell would I help you bring her back?"

"I never said it would be by choice."

Pandora opened a drawer at her side and drew out a darkly glowing orb.

"Do you recognize this Ami?"

She got her answer in Mercury's silence. Pandora continued, clearly enjoying the power she held over the captive senshi.

"No? I didn't expect you to. You failed and died long before you ever made it to Beryl's throne room didn't you?"

Beryl? What did she have to do with anything? That was so long ago. Mercury hadn't even been sure that timeline was still existent. Her visor automatically scanned the orb and confirmed what it was.

Mercury's heart twinged at the physical proof of what Sailor Moon had gone through to bring her back from the dead. What was she doing with that second chance?

"This orb acts as an Energy Conduit. Isn't it simply marvelous? I will take Metaria-sama's essence from your undeserving shell and she will be reborn. Only I could have found and reconstructed the device from the far ends of the Earth. All this I was willing to do for our Dark Queen!"

She sounded like a proud salesman giving a demonstration of the latest gadgets.

"Is that what you needed all that money for?"

"Oh, this and more. Much more. Research and development is an expensive process after all. Youma are no exception. Plus it took me years to find you again. What on earth were you doing in Germany anyways? Ah, no matter. I found you, and this little orb here reawakened the seed of my Queen inside you. That is all that is important. "

Mercury laughed out loud. The irony. All the effort spent fighting minions and chasing the money trail of the Dark Kingdom was a total waste. Pandora was going back to the beginning and handing her all the answers on a silver platter. She should have simply gave up and gone to get hammered at that bar to begin with. Life was absurd.

Great. Maybe laughing at a psychopath was a bad idea. Pandora looked livid now. She stood up and walked deliberately around the table.

Pandora stood a moment behind Mercury and then slowly dug an unnaturally sharp fingernail into her cheek. She clawed slow and deep. Down to the bone. Mercury ground back a pained moan. Blood welled up and trailed down her face.

At least Pandora wasn't going for the throat yet.

Pandora held the orb up to cut to catch the blood. The orb accepted the crimson with a weak pulse. Mercury felt a chill settle deep in her bones as the orb began to drain her energy with every heartbeat.

So that's why she was still alive. She was an offering.

"All this to revive Metaria? Pandora, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Pandora's cool corporate facade flickered.

"You do NOT address her so informally. She saved me. When your little friend Sailor V killed me, she found me. She brought me back. She promised me that I would never be alone again. She would love me. The world would love me. One day, I would rule as her queen. The new Queen of the Dark Kingdom. YOU TOOK THAT AWAY FROM ME!"

slap

Pandora was angry now. A slap to the face had Mercury seeing stars. Didn't matter. Mercury found a soft target and pushed on.

"It doesn't matter. She didn't want you. She chose me. She said so herself."

slap

Another slap. The cut on her cheek split open wider. Mercury bit her lip and tasted blood - still better than screaming out loud though. She mentally apologized again to Katarina. Karma was a bitch coming around but she needed Pandora angry. Anger was good. Anger meant that Pandora was distracted, off balance, and more likely to let vital information slip. Hopefully something useful.

There was yet another energy signature in the room that Mercury couldn't get a proper lock on. Her visor reported an energy distortion by the door, but she didn't have the freedom to turn and look.

Three distinct threats. Pandora, the orb and...something else.

"What are you planning? All of this can't be just to cry about how you weren't good enough to host the evil bitch."

Crack

Pandora punched her with inhuman strength. Her fuku protected her from massive internal damage, but Mercury felt several ribs give anyways. Simply breathing became a struggle. There was no holding back the scream that time.

Still, Mercury smiled through the pain. Her ribs weren't the only thing that cracked - the chair wasn't designed to withstand the force of two super-powered beings struggling. The right arm of the chair was broken and Mercury could slip free whenever she wanted. Her left arm remained locked in place however. Mercury tested the cuff again. No weaknesses. She had to keep Pandora talking.

"You have to know it's hopeless. I had Metaria in my head. I stabbed her in the heart then fed her to the Silver Crystal. She's gone. She burned."

The words were out of her mouth before she could consider the tactical advantage of pissing Pandora off further. Mercury was getting too weak to concentrate fully.

"You arrogant fool! She never chose you...she wanted me. It should have been me. You were just the byproduct of the doctor I brought in to make our youma protoypes work. It was never meant to be you...I was to recreate the Dark Kingdom, my own lieutenants, my own Great Youma. I would have made Metaria-sama proud."

Q.E.D. Pandora's jealousy...her attempt to recreate the Dark Kingdom where she felt she belonged...and she wanted to make Metaria proud? Hard to imagine, but there it was. Indirect proof.

Mercury understood - painfully well.

"Who were you Pandora? How did you come to love Metaria of all things?"

"Love? You don't get to speak to me of love. You with your perfect face, and your perfect life. It comes so easily to you that you can't understand what love is."

For once, Mercury didn't have the energy to overthink this. Words that weren't entirely her own came forth from her heart.

"I do. Love is everything. It's passion, and beauty, and energy. Love is wanting to be your best for someone. Love is fighting to make things better. Love is wanting to protect someone. Love can be pain and loss but it's worth living for because love is the great mystery. Anything could happen. Without mystery, is there any reason to keep going? Tell me, what is love to you?"

That wasn't bad, as far as potential last words went. Mercury was struggling to stay conscious at this point. Love. Her friends. They were coming for her. She had to stay alive for them.

'STAY ALIVE'. The words blinked one last time as her visor disappeared. Mercury no longer had the energy to sustain the device.

Pandora noted the absence of the visor with pleasure.

"Good. Now I am sure we are are alone now. I was wondering how long we'd have to keep up this charade."

Pandora recovered her composure, but Mercury had seen behind the mask for one critical moment.

"The other senshi. They must be concerned. So worried about their poor little Mercury being tortured by the evil Lady Pandora. They are going to run straight here to rescue you right? Perfect. You say you understand love. So much the better. See how you feel when I take away the ones you love. Just like you did to me."

A youma moved out of the shadows in the corner. The prototype "When". The last piece of the puzzle.

"Meet our final youma prototype, codename "When". The latest development in Dark Power, biology and nanotechology. As soon as your friends walk into this room, they will walk right into a distorted time field set up by my pet here. You will get to see them grow old and die right before your eyes. Won't that be something?"

Footsteps in the hallway. Time was running out. The orb was draining her energy steadily. She was quickly approaching the point where she wouldn't have the strength to fight even if she were free to do so.

The senshi were almost here. They were about to run into a deathtrap.

She had to stop this, but she was tied to a fucking chair. How could she be a Senshi if that simple thing stopped her. How could she fight?

Mercury struggled openly, pulling her right hand free form the broken cuff. There was no point in keeping that hidden anymore. She pulled at the metal cuff with all her strength. All pretense of calm abandoned. Time was running out. Pandora was about to win.

There was a way out. There had to be. She always found a way. She was Sailor Mercury. Senshi of Intelligence.

She saw weakness, and exploited it.

There was weakness here. There were limits to the human body.

Mercury channeled her power inwards, willing the ice to come to her aid. Power flowed into her trapped hand. The bones froze from the inside. It felt ironically like a fire burning within. Mercury hesitated a moment. She wondered if even her Senshi healing powers would be able to recover from what came next.

No matter. She'd found a way out.

Her bones were just about frozen to the point of brittleness now. Weakness. Mercury reached across with her free right hand and crushed the trapped left with all the strength she had left. With sickening crunch, she was free. Her broken left hand slid free from the cuff.

Mercury stood up, moving on will alone. It wasn't over yet. She estimated that she had seconds before she went into shock - or worse. The orb was still draining her life energy.

One attack. Three targets.

Time to choose.

Mercury looked at the woman who started her journey to darkness. Pandora was distracted, staring at the door and waiting for her youma to act. Even the orb was neglected in favour of that bit of theater.

Anger welled up in her soul. She drew upon it for power - she needed it now. No time for half measures. No second chances.

One attack. Just one and it was over.

The power was there. It was always there. It had always been there. It will always be there. Mercury looked down and let power rush through her, cold and deadly. The words came to mind as she drew breath to summon her element.

"MERCURY AQUA MIRAGE!"

A cataclysm of water roared at her target. The youma disintegrated instantly. It died without even making a sound.

Just in time. The senshi threw the door open and ran into the room.

A.N.
Darn. It looks like Sailor Moon Crystal just started using Mercury Aqua Mirage in Season 3. That kind of kiboshes the impact of it in this story a little :(. The interpretation of "Mercury Aqua Mirage" as a straight up murder device was inspired by it's comedic use in "Ami's First Love" where it basically OHKO's the monster of the week...and more interestingly, by it's possible aborted appearance in the Sailor Stars episode 191 "When A Light Butterfly etcetc." (Aka, the episode with the video game convention where Ami basically wins the tournament to talk to Taiki, and then a phage attacks). Mercury starts to power up for SOMETHING in that episode, but Taiki interrupts. I've always wondered what might have happened if he didn't show up...