Chapter 20-Je Me Souviens [I Remember (Myself)]
Just as Usagi was about to get into bed, Minako's communicator rang. She eyed it nervously, wondering what she should do. Minako, judging from the singing and the steam issuing from the bathroom, was taking a shower. Pressing the flashing green button, she smiled brightly at her brunette friend. "Mako-chan!"
"Usagi? Why are you picking up? Where's Mina?"
"Well, hello to you, too. She's taking a shower."
"Sorry, Usa-chan. You surprised me; I was expecting Minako to answer. Listen, can you and Mina come over?"
The blonde, in the act of putting down her meatballs, dropped her hair-ties and asked, "What, now? You think my parents would let us do that?!"
"Usagi. This is important. Rei and Kasen–you remember, he's Jadeite–are both back, and it seems that we have a lot to talk about. Sneak out if you have to. And Rei's grandpa is off on a training retreat for the week, so no one will be at the temple except us."
"Okay," she agreed softly. After Makoto's face disappeared from the screen, she rapped loudly on the bathroom door. "Minako? Minako!!"
"Nani?" a cheerful voice sang out. ‘Taking a shower always relaxes me. Especially after talking to Kouseinou. He was so weird tonight.' Despite the hot water pouring over her body, she shivered.
"Makoto just called on the communicator. Rei and Kasen are back at the temple, and we need to have a talk."
"Now?"
"Now."
"Okay, okay. Open the window."
Usagi squawked, "Nani?"
"I said, ‘Open the window! And be quiet!"
"It would be easier to hear you if you turned off the water. Um...Minako...are we going out the window?"
"Of course," Minako responded impatiently, toweling herself dry rapidly.
"Are we climbing out the window?"
"No, we're jumping."
"Oh. Okay." Two seconds later... "Nani?!"
~ * ~ * ~
When they arrived, with Usagi in her pajamas and Minako in her senshi uniform, the latter apologized, "Sorry we're so late. It took me ten minutes to convince Usagi I wasn't suicidal after I told her we were jumping out the window."
The others laughed, but she whined, "Mina...is it my fault you've been acting seriously weird lately? I mean, you came back late tonight looking spooked, and then you started acting depressed and gloomy until you took a shower."
No one could hear exactly what Kasen muttered, but it was something along the lines of "Girls and their mood changes."
Rei smacked him, and the mischievous look on his face disappeared.
Minako, on the other hand, blushed. "Hey. I had a good reason to be upset. You'll never guess who...just happened to be in the park tonight. It was Kousei. Er...Kouseinou." She flushed darker as she added, "He's Kunzite. We knew each other before, except...I sort of didn't tell you."
While the other three looked at her accusingly, Kasen frowned perplexedly. "What? Kouseinou was in the park? What was he doing there?"
"He...sort of...wasn't. I called him up for a chat through our bond. It's still there, from the Silver Millennium."
The dark-haired girl turned to the blond-haired man she was practically sitting on. "Do we still have that?" she asked.
Minako blinked. "Whoa...wait a minute...when did this happen?"
"When did what happen?" Kasen returned nonchalantly.
"You–Rei–this?" she stuttered incoherently.
The brunette sighed. "I've been trying to understand that too. You have no idea how strange it is to see them like this. And now I keep getting visions of the past stuck in my mind whenever I look at them!"
Rei's face was flaming, and Ami asked, "Minako, weren't you going to tell us about Kunzite and yourself?"
"Oh. Right. He was very strange. He kept thinking I was haunting his dreams or something...and I wasn't, I swear! Stop looking at me like that! And then...I got angry at him, because he was being a complete bastard and I had no idea what he was talking about, so I um...told him off and teleported back home."
"Great...so, Rei, what did you and Kasen do tonight?"
"Makoto! We didn't do anything. We were talking. And that's the important part. Now listen up, minna. Several years ago, Mamoru encountered a strange alien being, and he remembered the Silver Millennium earlier than he should have. Our entire time line has been, essentially, changed. We had a talk with Setsuna, who agreed to try and convince Haruka and Michiru that we have to defeat that evil. Things were not supposed to happen this way. The generals were supposed to have been found and brainwashed by Beryl, who was supposed to escape from wherever Queen Serenity sealed her away to. And there were supposed to be these other two aliens, after we died and got resurrected. But then again, none of this happened, so..."
"Wait a minute. We died? Again? How many times do we have to die in this life?"
"According to Pluto...many."
"Good estimate, Rei. So helpful."
Usagi sighed and asked, "So what happened to Mamoru?"
Kasen answered, "He got a twisted version of the truth, and he wanted to rebel against the future. He let the evil into his mind and heart, and over time, his control waned. The thing began to take over, corrupting him, and mutating him. His soul was diminished with the thing living off it for so long, and his powers were out of practice, he couldn't fight back. One of the most prominent lies that the being fed Mamoru was that you senshi were the cause of the end of the Silver Millennium, and the fall of the Golden Kingdom on Earth. Thus, all the revenge, retribution, etc. plots. Mamoru–we were instructed not to call him Endymion...I think it's because Mamoru never really got in touch with what he was like in the past. He lost his spirit so early in this life that he never identified with Endymion of the past."
Slowly, Makoto said, "I think I understand about Mamoru now...and the evil...but what about you guys? The generals?"
He recoiled slightly, for the subject was a touchy one.
At that moment, Haruka burst in, followed less tempestuously by Michiru. Her blazing, sky-blue eyes lit upon the unfortunate victim, and she pointed, with a vicious stab of an accusing finger, at Kasen, demanding, "What, in the name of kami-sama, is he doing here?!" The act of tenderness that finished her was the blond general smiling cheerfully back, his eyes of a different shade of blue equally forceful, as he put his arm around Rei possessively.
~ * ~ * ~
Half an hour later of much explanation and many placating comments, the enlarged group was finally able to return to the original topic of discussion.
Minako, trying to summarize, recapped, "So you were the first one Mamoru er...brainwashed? And you didn't want your memories back, but when you finally got them, you suddenly became de-brainwashed. Right?"
"Yes," he answered uncomfortably. He still had not adapted to well to the sudden conversions and reversions of his mind, and some darker impulses lingered threateningly in his mind. He didn't know what would happen next, and he didn't want to think about what Mamoru would do to him if he returned to Kataki Corporation. In short, Kasen's life was basically ruined. By now, he had probably flunked out of university, since he had attended none of his classes. He couldn't remember the last time he had seen his parents.
"But if the other generals have their memories...how are we going to get them back?" Makoto wondered aloud.
Kasen sighed. "Well, it's not as simple as that. Kouseinou is...well...he's an exception. He resisted for the longest time, and when we trapped him, he was completely brainwashed. Even more so than us; we just had our memories warped. He probably has everything replaced with ‘loyalty to Mamoru.' That means he's either the easiest or the hardest to revert back to his normal self. Kousei is harder for me to understand. From what I understand, he knew a little about what was happening, and he had his memories, but for some reason, he felt that this future was inevitable. So he just went along with it and submitted to Mamoru easy as pie. I have no clue about him. We sort of congregated, still, when we were...er...converted to the evil side, but Kousei wasn't really a part of it. He became a loner, and no one really knows what he's thinking. But he gets the job done, and the Mamoru-creature-thing doesn't really care about us."
"And Yosouya?" Ami prompted, her fingers twisting together nervously.
He put his hand up to his forehead. "Yosouya is the biggest headache. Basically, he's been subjected to the most brainwash power. But he also has the most touch with his past self, Zoicite. He regained his memories after hitting his head on a pool. Then he had this fever-like thing that was really sent by the invader...he was actually sort of lucky. I had extreme vomiting. So his mind was wiped blank of the present, and he was stuck babbling about the past. Mamoru sent Kousei and myself into his mind, and we found that he's got this protector Mercury-type figure in his mind. She's a projection of his mind, I think, created by his memories from the past. They were strengthened more than ours, because they were the only thing Yosouya had. Then Mamoru had to go and try to corrupt everything again, which made things worse. He's stuck in the past, and he's been very strange. He doesn't seem to know if he's in the present, or the past, and sometimes he addresses us by our general names when we're not in uniform. Yosouya is Mamoru's chief failure but also his most useful tool, since he can create whatever he wants–for the most part. You have to watch out for him." The last part of his words were directed towards Ami. "He has the tendency to be more than slightly unstable now." She did not reply, and questions from the other senshi issued forth.
Suddenly, she interrupted, "Wait a minute, Rei...where are Phobos and Deimos? Where is everyone?" All the guardians, it appeared, were missing.
Minako and Usagi exchanged a nervous look. "That's odd. Artemis and Luna never came back...they went out for a stroll. We were in such a hurry to leave that we forgot about them."
"The last time I saw Aoao, she was Phobos and Deimos...outside...with the Outers' guardians," Makoto said softly. "That was two hours ago. I haven't seen her since."
The air fairly tingled, and all eyes turned to Ami, who was turning paler by the minute.
Kasen asked, "Rei, didn't you say that the guardians went on shifts when they watched the corporation? Whose turn was it tonight?"
"Koori's," Ami replied, her voice distant.
~ * ~ * ~
Minako and Usagi managed to sneak back home that night without being noticed, and if Ami's mother had checked on her last night and found her daughter missing, she didn't mention it the next morning, while engrossed in her morning coffee and reading some hospital-related papers. However, during the school day, they were all so tired that the teacher sent Ami to the nurse when she was discovered to be dozing off (a shocking event), and Ami was able to take a nap on the nurse's cot. Rei, having developed more discipline through her meditation and fire-readings, was able to stay awake, although many of her other friends commented that she seemed "out of it." The other three, however, were less fortunate. Usagi received detention–yet again–but this time, she had company in the form of Makoto and Minako.
They were also distracted by the thoughts of the missing guardians. They agreed that they would formulate a good plan that night, which was a Friday, and execute it on Saturday, to try and rescue them–and to defeat the evil, of course. But the outlook was grim.
After school, Rei returned home to check that Kasen, who had chosen to stay in the temple, was still safe and sound. She found him hard at his books, and after enjoying the amusing sight, took a much-needed nap.
Ami, on the other hand, had to work. And she did not relish the prospect of facing Yosouya. The certainty that the guardians must be trapped somewhere in the building did nothing to comfort her, and she was antsy and ill-at-ease the entire time. His murky green eyes seemed to be fixed on her, and she spilled paper clips and staples, knocked over objects, and upset stacks of paper several times. When she mentioned the uproar the office was in, he coolly replied that both Kasen and Kouseinou were missing. After that, she could hardly wait to go to the temple and deliver the surprising news. Minako, she quickly deduced, must have done something that had stimulated his memories or something or other that had, in a sense, healed him. Ami began to feel more cheerful about the dangerous venture ahead, and she was feeling confident as she bid her supervisor farewell.
She departed in high spirits, but when she was about to exit the building, she found that she could not open the door. Other people who were leaving the corporation gave her curious looks, and they passed through with ease. An unknown stranger courteously held the door open for her, but she found that she couldn't pass from inside the building to outside. Her feet seemed disconnected from her mind, and anxiety and fear crept into her mind. In the stronghold of Mamoru's power, she would be forced to remain if he desired it. Mumbling an apology, she turned back, claiming that she had forgotten something upstairs.
~ * ~ * ~
Kyosei stood on roof of the many-storied building. He was detransformed, but he felt that he could see the translucent, ethereal form of General Nephrite hovering beside him. With a sigh, he released his breath explosively. At the same time, a dark cloud seemed to be expelled from his body. Willingly, he let it go, and slumped against the granite railing tiredly. He had felt the need tugging at him ever since he had felt a change in the link between himself and Kasen. Soon after, the dull gray bond that linked him to Kouseinou lightened in color until it was a silvery-white. He knew where they were, but he couldn't join them. Yosouya was still tinged with shadowy darkness, and he wouldn't leave him here.
He glanced at the shimmering distortion of space beside him. The general inclined his head gravely, but the relief in his eyes was evident. A rift opened in the air beside them, and the inky mist drifted in sullenly. It wasn't that he had been purely evil. Under the influence of the corruption of the evil that inhabited Mamoru's soul, the darker urges present in every person had been strengthened and emerged victorious over purer instincts. Those dark sides had gained more control over mind and body, which was why they had withstood Mamoru's rule and carried out his orders for so long. Slowly, their spirits had been eroded away as those primal instincts had taken over. Confusion and chaos had been rampant in the gens' bodies, but three factors had contributed to the banishment of the seemingly inherent darkness: the activation of their other selves, the generals, the pull to the awakened senshi, their other halves, and the awakening of the Moon Princess and the Ginzuishou, which countered the evil in Mamoru and the disintegration of the Golden Crystal.
But a new internal battle raged inside Kyosei. How could he have been so abysmally stupid in the beginning? He could have resisted. Instead, he had given himself willingly into the hands of his demon-inhabited prince. The fight he had put up wasn't considered pathetic. It was nonexistent. The stars had tried to stop him. They had warned him, and they had stayed by him even while he had not been quite himself. He wasn't even sure what his true self was anymore, and he was able to admit that he was scared of the very likely possibility that such a thing could happen again. It wasn't normal that something like this should happen.
The stars were always present, whether they were visible or not. Kyosei looked up to them, as he always did, for guidance and answers. This time, the only thing they offered him was an image of carnage and slaughter. When he questioned them again, recoiling from the picture they gave him, they responded with a new vision: of himself, his facial angles shadowed by darkness, his face and soul consumed with that same blackness. He was kneeling before a massive throne, upon which sat a voluptuous red-haired woman...Beryl, he remembered, with a disgusted shudder. Beside him were his three comrades. Now he recognized the previous scene of lost hope: the falling of the Moon Kingdom, which he had contributed to. Was it that invasion of the soul, when he had been brainwashed in the past, which had infested his soul with more darkness than he could have imagined? It seemed to be the explanation the stars opted for. Kyosei wondered dismally if he was doomed to be conquered by the darker part of himself in each life he was born into.
His art ached painfully when he thought about Makoto, of both the past and the present. The thought gave him new resolution. She was likely to hate him for all eternity, but he'd consider that hatred justified. It would only be intensified if he kept standing there like an idiot and wasting time. Kyosei leaned further over the railing. All the employees seemed to have left the building. The lights were dimmed, and silence prevailed. Trepidation crept over him–he didn't think Mamoru would react favorably if he tried to leave...
~ * ~ * ~
Minako groaned as a beeping noise met her eyes. Reaching over, she flicked on the light after fumbling around unsuccessfully for her communicator. Usagi, who slept in the same room, grunted and rolled over. Minako looked in her general direction blearily and tried to focus her eyes. They widened when she saw that a crescent moon sigil, emitting a phosphorescent glow, was present on her friend's forehead. Trying to clear the fogginess from her mind, she pressed the glowing green button. "Mako? Ugh." Wrinkling her nose at the scratchy sound of her voice, she cleared her throat and continued, "What's going on? What time it is?"
Her brunette friend looked equally tired but much more awake. From the little screen on the computer, Minako could tell that she was extremely. "Sorry, Mina. Rei just woke me up from a nap, too. Have you–have you heard from Ami?"
Her stomach dropped alarmingly, and her pulse began to race. "No...kami-sama, did she go work today? When Kasen's missing? Of course Mamoru would be so angry...and...oh no..."
"No one's responding to her communicator. And Rei tried to do a reading already, to see if it was just a mistake. All she's getting is this dark mass that seems to be determinedly in her way."
"We're in so much trouble..." Her voice trailed off as she glanced over her shoulder at Kouseinou, who was looking equally concerned.
~ * ~ * ~
In the empty elevator, she put a hand behind her back, reaching into her subspace pocket...and a hand gripped her wrist roughly. She spun around with a yelp, and her cerulean-blue eyes darkened as they met hard green eyes. "No–Zoicite–please, let me go."
His voice was as cool and polite as always as he replied, "I'm sorry, Mizuno-san, but I have my orders. It seems that Mamoru finally realized that a senshi was spying on us."
Desperately, she tried to wriggle free. She already knew that it was no use to scream or to try and get help from anyone in the building. The power Mamoru emanated was wrong, and in this vicinity, her powers were close to useless. It permeated the entire building. The place was saturated in darkness. "No, you're making a mistake. You don't want to do this. Please, Zoicite. I can free you. I know what confuses you. I know what can help you." She tried to keep her eyes fixed on his, although his tightening hold was becoming almost unbearable.
"Who are you? What do you know about me?" he questioned forcibly.
"I–what do you want? I'm Ami." Suddenly, Kasen's words from the night before resounded in her mind. She remembered the current instability of his mental state. "Souya-kun, you remember me, don't you? It's me, Ami-chan."
He blinked perplexedly, and when his grasp on her wrist slackened, she stepped back slightly, massaging her wrist behind her back as she reached for her transformation pen again. She let a curse escape her lips when he grabbed her shoulders roughly and slammed her against the walls of the elevator. She wondered, briefly, why it had suddenly stopped its movement.
"You won't trick me that easily. Give it up."
Her mind groped for a different tack. Kasen had said he was fixated on the Silver Millennium...yes, that was right, the past as the stronger influence. She reached her hands up to grasp his wrists this time. "Zoicite, stop. You're hurting me."
This had more effect upon the blond-haired man, and his eyes began to clear slightly. They had been turning dull and cloudy recently, like a stagnant pond.
"Ami..?" he asked slowly, disbelievingly.
"Yes," she whispered. Then, she received another shock that day, as he lowered his lips to hers, drawn almost against his will.
Immediately, he broke away from her. "Ami...kami-sama, did I hurt you? Are you all right? I can't believe–I don't know–"
Ami looked up into his green eyes, as clear and crystalline as they had always been before, and she couldn't speak. Tears trailed down her cheeks, and before either of them could say anything else, all went dark.
~ * ~ * ~
AN: Quite a lovely chapter, isn't it? Thank you for the encouragement and the reviews, minna ^^. I appreciate them!! Also, I'm really sorry about the formatting. Hopefully, I replaced all the chapters so it's readable now. Hm...I know it seems a little odd right now, but I'm really just writing this story to get it over with. I estimate about 5 more chapters, although three of them are basically aftermath stuff. Of course, I could always change my mind >.<
Ah, the meaning of this chapter: Je me souviens is French. There's a verb tense known as reflexive, and you use it for a lot of things. Basically, as in parentheses, it's "I Remember (Myself)" although that's a bit odd ^^;;. Not exactly so. Knights return next chapter. So do the guardians... Sort of. Hope the mess isn't too convoluted ^^;
~Ice
Paths of Thorns
