The Rebound Effect--Chapter 9
The Rebound Effect--Chapter 9
Okay, the first bit happens between the times at the end of part 7 and before part 8. Friday afternoon.
Part 9
During the course of a single day, Serenity's problems had transmuted greatly. She had wanted Usagi to take things a little more seriously, but she hadn't taken into account the fact that she was, by nature, a creature of extremes.
Now, the girl was taking things too far.
//Listen, Usagi, I'm sorry about what I did, but you really need to calm down//
//Calm down!?! How can I be calm when there's a war going on? I've got to lay plans and organiz-//
//No, you don't. Listen, don't let this become your whole life. That is just as grave a mistake as not caring enough about it. Believe me, I've seen both mistakes made in plenty, and neither leads to an ending that you would like.//
//So what am I supposed to do? Sit on my hands and wait for the enemy to attack? We've got to-//
//In this war, waiting is a sound strategy. Listen, the Dark Kingdom is very low on energy right now, that's why they are sending all these raids. Each raid costs them a fair chunk of what little reserve they have left and when you thwart their efforts, it's wasted. If you just concentrate on stopping their operations when they happen, you'll end up weakening them far easier than you would with a direct assault.//
Usagi wasn't very happy with Serenity as a person, but as a tactician, she still respected her fully. //All right, but we shouldn't just be doing nothing while we wait for them to strike again.//
//I agree. You and the others can spend some time training. Individually and as a group. These aren't the only foes that you're going to encounter and later battles will require you to work as a unit and starting to learn how to do that now will help. Ami, especially, is going to need to learn how to function in a team since that's where she is strongest.//
//Okay, I'll tell the others at the meeting tonight. Regular training sessions every day after school.//
//Actually, I think three days a week should be sufficient. You do have a life outside of your duties, you know.//
Usagi smiled faintly as she let herself be convinced. //Yeah, I guess I do. Wouldn't want to forget about Naru-chan..//
//Speaking of Naru, you can't tell her anything about this. At least not for a while.//
//Why?//
//It's not save for her to know who Sailor Moon and the others really are. To her or you. She doesn't have any secret legacy of power to fall back on when she's attacked, and if someone thinks that she knows... well, she'll be slightly more likely to be attacked.//
//Only slightly?//
//Well, in my world at least, Naru always seemed to attract youma attacks like a magnet...//
//Oh, great. None of them ever hurt her, did they?//
//Only her heart, Usagi. Only her heart.//
***
Kiyone drug herself out of the lake and collapsed beside Mercury. "I hate you, you know."
"Of course," Mercury smiled broadly. "At least you managed to keep the ship with you."
Kiyone wiggled out of the straps and let the heavy container fall onto it's side. "At least it was buoyant. You wouldn't happen to have a set of dry clothes laying around somewhere, would you?"
"Well, not exactly, but stand up." Kiyone did so and Mercury, well, she was still Eternal Sailor Mercury, held up her hands in a kind of X pattern with her palms touching. As Mercury concentrated, Kiyone could feel the water on her skin and in her clothing being pulled away. As she watched, Kiyone saw a ball of water form in Mercury's open palms.
Gently, Mercury set the ball down on the ground where it broke. "That better?"
Kiyone nodded. "Much."
"Well, looks like the welcome wagon is here." Mercury nodded in the general direction of the house where someone could be seem walking toward them. She let herself revert to her normal outfit. "Let's go be sociable."
Kiyone, meanwhile, was trying to figure out how to explain their strange arrival to what was probably a native of this planet. The Galaxy Police had strict rules about revealing themselves to primitives.
***
Things went far better than Mercury could have hoped and worse than Kiyone would have liked. For one thing, the young man didn't really think it was all that strange that they had fallen out of the sky. He also knew Mihoshi.
He didn't seem all that enthusiastic about seeing them, either. "Okay, you can stay here as long as it takes for you to fix your ship or find your lost relative or whatever it is you're here to do, but you have to follow a few rules. One, no killing in the house. I mean it. Two, I do NOT want to marry either of you so don't even start. Three..." he droned on for a while and Mercury and Kiyone exchanged looks. Apparently the poor boy had a very interesting life. Judging by rule 5, a VERY interesting life.
Kiyone sighed and gathered her courage as they finally entered the house. "Excuse me, Mr. Masaki, but could you just tell me where Mihoshi is? I have orders to find her."
"Let me guess, your here after her as some plot by an alien syndicate to take over the universe and for some reason, killing or kidnaping Mihoshi is the key to that. Listen, I've already told you that you can't kill anyone in this house, and the same goes to kidnaping. I'm sure if-"
"Actually, I'm her partner."
"Her partner... Kiyone?" Kiyone nodded and Tenchi laughed nervously. "We all just kind of thought she made you up. You know how she gets when she starts telling stories..."
"Yeah, I know how she is. All too well." Kiyone thought, //But maybe she's back to normal by now. Pleaseohpleaseohplease let her be back to normal.//
"Well, she's probably helping Sasami in the kitchen right about now."
"Oh, God, please tell me you don't let her cook."
"Oh, no, we learned our lesson the last time she caught the stove on fire. She's helping clean up."
Kiyone gathered her resolve and marched into the kitchen to face her doom. Mercury winced as she heard the sound of pans hitting the floor and a high pitched scream of Kiyone's name.
"Ah, well, looks like I might as well spend the night here before heading on into Tokyo," Mercury said. "You are sure it's no trouble?"
Tenchi smiled wistfully. "Nah, what's a couple more aliens in a house like this?"
"Well, actually, I'm from earth, Tokyo, actually." Tenchi brightened considerably at this.
"That's great! You have no idea how very few visitors we get that aren't from the other side of the galaxy." He paused for a minute. "Actually, we've had five today. This is really strange..."
"Oh, the other four were here to visit the shrine, I presume."
"No, the showed up to see Washuu. They said something about a woman named Setsuna sending them to find her or something."
Mercury looked surprised but quickly regained her composure. "I think I'd like to meet this Washuu."
***
By the time Tenchi and Mercury finally found their way into the area of the lab that Washuu was currently using, she was almost finished with her tests. Haruka and Michiru didn't look very happy about it, either.
Mercury didn't look too incredibly surprised at the sight of two of the other Senshi suspended, half naked, in a bizarre network of metal tentacles and probes, having already suspected their, or at least, some of the Senshi's, presence.
They, however, seemed quite surprised to see her.
"Washuu," Tenchi asked, "Is all that really necessary?"
Mercury looked over to the girl Tenchi had addressed. //She doesn't look old enough to even be a teenager,// she thought. //Then again, I wasn't much older than that when I started fighting monsters.//
Washuu sighed and pressed a few more buttons. "Well, I guess I'm about done with them." The tentacles slackened and began to gently lower them to the ground. Washuu turned to look at Mercury. "Oh, who's this? Someone else seeking the aid of the Greatest Scientific Genius and the Universe?"
"Didn't you forget Cutest?" Tenchi deadpanned.
"That goes without saying! Anyway, who is she?"
"Says her name is Mercury. She just said that she wanted to meet you." Tenchi turned to leave. "I'm going to go study. See you later, Little Washuu."
"Oh, Tenchi! You'll have to drop by so I can run a few tests later. These girls have given me a couple of ideas that I need to test out."
Tenchi laughed nervously. "Hehe, I'll think about it."
"You do that..." she let herself trail off as Tenchi walked out the door the turned to Mercury. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, first of all, what kind of tests were you running on my friends over there?"
Soon the were embroiled in a discussion of highly intellectual content. Haruka and Michiru used that opportunity to stealthily gather their clothing and slip away, hopefully out of that accursed lab.
***
The fragile bubble of hope that Kiyone had been building up for the last few days popped soon after encountering Mihoshi again. As soon as she had walked into the kitchen, Mihoshi had burst into tears and leaped toward her.
Of course, she still had a wet pan in one hand a dish towel in the other. The dishtowel she dropped and promptly tripped over causing the pan to slip from her grasp and bean Kiyone rather soundly across the forehead. Then Mihoshi had careened into her sending them both sprawling into a counter. Kitchen utensils and foodstuffs were scattered in all directions.
The young pigtailed girl, probably Sasami, proceeded to evict the two from her kitchen before they could do any further damage. Mihoshi then noticed the damage she had done to Kiyone, who was still groggy, and began wailing in ernest.
She drug her through the house and into the bathroom, going on and on about how sorry she was and how she'd make it "all better." Kiyone, for her part, just resigned herself to her miserable fate and let herself be pulled along.
//Well, I knew it was too good to be true. She's still as fried as they get.// Kiyone sighed. It had been too much to hope that Mihoshi had recovered from her overload by now.
Perhaps that needs some explaining. Very well, the Galaxy Police had used slight forms of genetic augmentation for centuries to give their human agents an edge in combat and other such activities over other races that might be better designed for that purpose. Recently, a radical new kind of the treatment was developed and a younger Mihoshi was one of the first to volunteer.
The results were immediate and dramatic. With the new therapy, an agent's reflexes, hand-eye coordination, and overall thought speed and intelligence were increased by up to three times what could be attained with previous versions.
However, the High Command had decided to watch the handful augmented agents in the field for a few years before subjecting more to the treatment. It turned out to be a good idea.
About three years after the experiment was initiated, the first subject went into sensory overload. Apparently, the brain structure of a human was incapable of handling such vast amounts of speed for prolonged periods of time. Fortunately, the agent had recovered after a few months or the whole project would have been scrapped.
But, in that four month period, the poor man seemed to have his physical abilities reduced by the very same factor by which the treatment had increased them, making for a clutzy, ditzy period.
Mihoshi had hit her first such period in the middle of their last assignment. The assignment that had left Kiyone stranded in deep space. That had been months ago, but some of the other subjects to undergo the treatment burned out for periods as long as a year.
Apparently, Mihoshi was on the long end of the scale.
Or, at least, that's what Kiyone had assumed from their encounter in the kitchen. Now, Mihoshi had stopped crying and was looking a lot like her old self.
"M-Mihoshi?" she asked warily.
The blond woman leaned forward in response and drew her into a deep kiss. Kiyone was startled for a few seconds by then gave in to the all to familiar sensations. Her Mihoshi was back.
After they broke for air a few seconds later, Mihoshi explained. "Sorry about that, but I have to pretend to still be going through the "phase" when there are other people around. They don't know about it and I don't really want to explain."
"So, you were still... when you got here?"
"Yes. These are nice people and they were very kind to me, even if I was a total idiot."
"Oh, so why didn't you report back in for duty? The Lieutenant seems to think that you've gone out of control or something."
"It's too important that I stay here. All the most likely heirs to the throne of Jurai are living in this house. They seem to attract some really big criminals and I might as well stick around and see what pops up."
"Jurai? On a backwoods planet like this?"
Mihoshi grinned. "Yeah, I know. It's a long story..."
"You'll tell me later, I suppose?"
"Of course." She kissed her again. "But we really need to get back out there before anyone gets suspicious. Hang on a sec, let me get back in character."
Kiyone grinned. Life was good, for once. Even if her lover did have to act like an idiot whenever people were around.
***
Back in Tokyo, the meeting at the shrine had broken up and the Senshi had returned home to prepare for their trip.
Usagi was going to tell most of the truth and say that she was going to visit a historic shrine in the Okayaman mountains with a her new friends. Her mother had met Makoto and Minako and seemed to like them, so it shouldn't prove a problem. Naru still wasn't feeling well, so she wouldn't be able to go, anyway.
Minako was opting for the same route as Usagi. Her parents were so pleased that she had managed to make new friends in a foreign country so quickly that they'd let her do just about anything that didn't seem dangerous.
Ami figured that her mother would be so pleased that she was doing something sociable that approval wasn't a problem. She couldn't count the number of times that she had heard "You've got to work on your social skills, too, Ami-chan. How else are you going to get past the personal interviews to get into med school?"
Makoto and Mamouro were both loners and wouldn't have to explain themselves to anyone and Rei was being specifically sent by her grandfather.
Things just work out neatly some times.
END
Well, I guess I could put forth a big defense on the Mihoshi/Kiyone thing, but there are a couple reasons that it happened the way it did. Mostly, I wanted to make her happy and of the possible options, I liked this one best. Besides, a little fanservice never hurt an anime (though it does hurt some fics). That was her curtain call for this arc, too. They might appear again in the second half of arc 2 or all of arc 3, if they ever get written, that is.
Part 10 might take a little longer than normal (ie, it might not show up tomorrow) if it's the ending segment for this arc, which it might be.
Tim Williams
https://www.angelfire.com/tn/twillia/
twillia4@utk.edu
