Under a Rainbow Sky - Part 9
Lunaryon
Dual Aurora Wave
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Under a Rainbow Sky
Part 9
And now you lean all the way over to give Ami a hug. "I don't think you'll need me to do that, but I'll be there to do that for you if you need me to."
She smiles again. "Thanks…"
"Was there any more that you'd like to tell me?"
A pause. "Well, I did ask him some more questions…"
You sit back in your chair, more normally. Luna shifts, hopping down from your lap and stretching. She's held her peace through some of the things you heard from Ami's recorded interview of Jadeite, even more so than Rei. You wonder if that's despite the fact that she remembers the Fall of the Silver Millennium, that terrible cosmic disaster that Jadeite had no small hand in causing, as though it was only about three or four months ago… or if it's because she remembers it that way.
She pads over and curls up against Rei's feet, to your surprise. You pout at Luna; she rolls her eyes and chuckles softly.
Turning your attention back to Ami, you ready yourself for whatever questions that she might have asked the former dark general.
She's been smiling at you for a moment, by the time you look at her. And as she meets your gaze, she pushes the button to restart the recording.
"...So. You've guessed that I don't exactly… remember, not precisely. You were from Mercury. What was it like before everything?"
"Before everything. Everything is a strong word… It's been a long time. A long time in Beryl's little hell, and a century or so in exile before that. And I… sometimes wonder which of my memories are real, and which are the twisted whispers the witch teased out of my head and fed back to me after she had me by the brains. But in spite of it all, I do remember Mercury, though I'm not entirely glad that I do, these days." Jadeite pauses.
"Of course, what Mercury was famous for was its- you'd probably call it magic, but it would translate more accurately as technology. That's how we thought of it. A people of science. So many things that touched the lives of so many were developed in the halls of the Academy, or in the guild laboratories across the planet. But that wasn't all there was to Mercury. Even in a world where magic is universal, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to be fully practicing sorcerers, applied or theoretical, any more than most of the people of your Japan today do any work with, say, engines-"
You look up into Ami's eyes. She looks even more lost in thought than usual, as though strongly affected by these words, though she's heard them at least once before, of course. Is she remembering Mercury, the way you sometimes remember the Moon by way of Serenity?
You missed a bit of what Jadeite said, there. "-and through it all, there was a certain pride. Of all the planets, you see… Earth was Earth. Mars was Mars, but even without the water management spells the planet would probably have stayed livable until the axial tilt got out of hand. They had a roof, after a fashion, but it wasn't essential. Venus had a stable ecosystem, though an odd one in ways- there were about two days a year. Those all were worlds that kept themselves alive. And then were the ring-habitats around Jupiter, the sky-cities, and the stations farther out. But those were made things, vast and beautiful but not, in themselves, worlds. But Mercury? Mercury was a world, a real one, that demanded constant maintenance by magical skill and prowess. Balancing the Roof of Heaven wasn't easy. I don't know if I deserve to call the people of Mercury 'we' anymore, but… we… had to produce people who were good at what they did. That, or be forced to evacuate. Only
"That's the second time you've talked about a 'roof,' I think. Is this about the 'Roof of Heaven' you mentioned earlier?"
"Oh, yes. The Roof of Heaven… you might call it a great construction, you might call it part of the world itself. One of those things that blurs the lines between the two… A defensive ward around the entire planet, in its way, to absorb the direct, continuous sunlight and particle radiation falling straight on the sunward side of the world, reradiate some of it from ever-shifting angles to create an artificial cycle of day and night throughout the sky, and reflect the rest away as long wave infrared."
"The entire pattern of day and night was… artificial?"
"Yes. On the Martian day cycle, of course, with twenty-four and two thirds of your hours. We weren't savages." You hear a faint sniff. "Of course, there were subtleties. Artistic displays, written in the sky, both static and mobile. It was a very public form of art and widely respected. There were some… some beautiful things on Mercury." Silence, for a time. "Buildings, hills, even mountains of synthetic diamond with tunnels and carvings to catch the rainbows in the sky just right at night and refract them as… as… I don't know if Japanese has the words for that form of art. Or, let's see… the sculpted garden terraces. The parklands. The amazing things you can do with low-gravity architecture when you really trust your magicians. And none of it would have been possible without the Roof of Heaven- the whole planet would have been… more or less as you know it today."
Ami's voice in the recording is soft, gentle. "It sounds amazing."
"Don't pity me for missing it." Jadeite laughs darkly, bitterly. "I'm in no small part to blame. And of course, it wasn't all sculpture and rainbows and lollipop orchards. There were a lot of more, ah, pragmatic engineering concerns at work. Producing a proper night sky on the sunny side of the planet. Manipulating weather patterns by creative tuning of inward-bound radiation. Not accidentally burning the sails off orbiting starships. That sort of thing."
"Wait, do you mean solar sails? For propulsion?"
"I don't see what the sun has to do with anything, but yes, for propulsion."
Ami stops the recording. "So… uh, that got into a bit of a thing about Silver Millennium spacecraft." She looks at Rei. "Apparently, when Cendrellion talked about stranding us 'without sails,' she wasn't joking. They weren't made of fabric and they didn't catch wind, but before the Fall, spacecraft navigated Yuuno's "Dimensional Sea," and to some extent drove themselves through interplanetary space, using something that Jadeite chose to describe as sails. And… now that I think about it, I almost remember." She looks almost plaintive. "Don't you? Any of you?"
Luna stirs against Rei's feet. "I do. You're right, Ami."
Ami licks her lips, eyes darting over to you, then to Rei, and finally down to Luna at Rei's feet. "It was after that side conversation, and a few other details, that I asked the question that I was the most worried about. In fact, part of why I asked everything I did before this was because, well… Luna, you said it was important to make him comfortable before asking him about this. And I asked myself what you'd do, Usagi, and I don't know if I got it quite right, but… well, I asked a lot of other questions."
Luna perks up, stepping away from Rei's feet and hopping up to the little table beside Ami's chair. "Oh, so you did ask him about the other Dark Kingdom generals!"
Ami nods. "Too important to avoid, even if I wanted to." She presses her 'play' button again.
"This might be pushing a little, Jadeite. I understand that, but… Is there anything that you can tell us about the capabilities and tactics of the other members of the Shitennou?"
There's a beat of silence, followed by the sound of a slap. You look at Ami, concerned. She shrugs and pauses the recording. "He slapped his own face. He seemed almost scared of answering, but.. He did. At length."
At first, Jadeite's voice is soft, hesitant. "Well… ah. If… If I'd been having this conversation in a royal interrogation room in the old days and wanted to live, I'd start by warning you about Nephrite. But he's… changed since then."
"How do you mean?"
"In the old days… well, he was the third of us, apart from Anyo- Zoisite now- to come down to Earth. Moved to Marduk's court from Jupiter. And from his first day off the ship, he was… a bit alarming, when you got close to him, when his reserve slipped. There was a sort of devilish lightning in his veins. Plenty of people used divinations in those days, but he'd really use them, and get results. Eerily good ones, sometimes. And he knew things. Things… well. Let me explain. You see, I did quite a lot of the work Beryl needed done, in designing the architecture for things like life energy transfer in those days. You might say I was the technician, Kunzite was the warrior, Zoisite the spymistress, and Nephrite… well, that was the odd part."
"He was all three at once?"
"Oh, no no, but Beryl would send Nephrite to talk to me about things and that man had lore I didn't know, that I'm not sure anyone had. In hindsight, I'll tell you honestly, I can't imagine where in the solar system, or for that matter out of it, he could have learned things like that. I… I want to blame him for more of what we did than I deserve to, but with all fairness I think he did more to make it possible for us to bring about the Fall than anyone else, except Beryl herself."
"He sounds dangerous."
"He was. Terribly so. And there was, like I said, that lightning, that power upon him. Secrets from his divinations- and that man, at his peak, well. Your Sailor Mars' forebear, Lady Tyr, was seldom counted among the greatest foretellers of the known cosmos in those days. Not because she was not, but because she lived in the same solar system as Tethys and-" Jadeite says the name fearfully- "Kóre. Whose reputations… rather outshone her. I dimly remember a time when I worried that Beryl's entire plot would be foreseen and torn apart, and I more strongly remember a time when I knew Nephrite was taking care of everything. Now, it is often held that the defender has the advantage in a conflict of foretelling, but believe me when I say that Nephrite must have been doing something very, very impressive."
"I… see."
"Nor was that all there was in his bag of tricks; he'd drop hints about what we were doing that I never figured out. He was certainly the only one of us Beryl ever talked to as something roughly like an equal." Jadeite's voice softens. "Honestly, sometimes, thinking back… I'm not sure he was ever mind controlled at all."
"But then why would he do such horrible things?"
"I don't know. He didn't actually seem to be enjoying himself nearly as much during the Fall as… as…" There is a pause. "As the rest of us were. Were, I'd like to say, made to…" Another pause. "But he acted like he had a plan and it was working… well, until something washed over us and I don't remember anything between then and waking up in Point Zero. And Nephrite… at some point while he was in Point Zero, he changed. The lightning in his veins, as it were, seemed to fade. Beryl… well, Beryl changed too, or kept going in the same directions she already was, but she stopped treating Nephrite like a respected senior subordinate, and more just a subordinate. We always wondered if he'd snap back to the way he was, and there were flashes of it now and then, but… no, he's not the man he was. Not even now that we've all surfaced again. And for that, you should be thankful, powerful though you are. Because even now, he's not to be taken lightly."
Ami stops the recording. "I asked Jadeite a few questions about life energy, then. It got technical. Then we circled back around to the other Shitennou."
"Now, Kunzite… you've fought Kunzite, haven't you. Personally?"
Not personally, but Sailor Moon has."
"And Sailor Venus, of course. Heh. I'll admit I was something of a fool. When your princess confronted me at the radio station, do you know? I called her 'Shukra.' "
"You thought she was Sailor Venus in disguise?"
"Well, what was I supposed to think? Long blonde hair, crescent styling, and the other three of you were accounted for here in Japan smiting my youma. Of course I assumed she was Sailor Venus! But Kunzite, well, I won't lie. He laughed and told me I wasn't ready for the real reborn Sailor Venus.That the real one was in Britain, and that he was having to take life energy supplementation quite extensively to keep up with her. That the 'Sailor Moon' I'd talked about was just some latter-day modern impostor, likely with no more power than any number of these modern Fallen mages, maybe dolled up with an old relic or two. I suppose we were both fools, in our ways. Hah! Now, where was I… Yes. Kunzite always had more of a personal zest for strength and combat than me or the others. We joked about him being a bit of a throwback to the old, old, old days of Mars, before the priesthood, though that was so far back that even for us it was practically prehistoric time. He learned a lot of ways to fight. All sorts of different styles, at one time or another. When he was young, he even left the solar system and toured as a soldier of fortune overskies; I can't remember all the places he talked about having bounced around in those days…"
"We know he's not just a big muscle, though. Sailor Venus fought him for too long; we know better"
"Oh, I wasn't trying to say that he was just muscle. The thing about all that time, away in wars, having misadventures, that kind of thing, is that he puts a high value on strength. Resolve. Being able to adapt in an emergency and salvage what he can from a bad situation. He's… ambitious in an unusual way, I'd say. Even before Beryl got her hooks into us, sometimes I'd look at him, looking at King Marduk, and somehow I knew he was thinking, 'I could do it better, it should be me,' and wondering if there way a way to make that happen. I think he'd have shaken out of it, in time, as Endymion really came into his own, except… well, Beryl started happening to us."
"Did that change him, or just keep him the way he was?"
"Good question. But no, he sort of… focused inward, on having strong followers along with personal strength, on propping himself up with them, one might say. He was quite the battle planner, and you could count on a force he'd put together to get a lot done, unless they were badly overwhelmed or badly out-thought. And no matter what went wrong, the thing to remember about Kunzite is that he never completely breaks down, and he'll never stop trying to save what he can. I know you've beaten him badly not that long ago, but even if Beryl hasn't given him more resources, I'd wager that he's out there, somewhere, still active, and already quite dangerous again."
There's a pause, and then Ami says something. "Venus and Moon talked about how he seemed kind of… unstable. Confused. He didn't recognize the idea of having a 'prince,' the way you did. And when we think he was talking about Beryl, he called her his 'Princess,' for example."
Another pause, before Jadeite replies. "I… don't know entirely what to make of that. He seemed stable if… eccentric… when we spoke in the last few months, though I imagine he was having, ah, a significant emotional event when you saw him, heheheh."
You recognize smug Ami quite well, even over a recording. "I guess you could say that."
"Hmp. Well, it could be that Beryl's control was doing something strange to his wits. We all had… episodes, now and then. I still do, sometimes, when the wind flutters at the ragged edges of what she did to my head, though they're far less serious and much easier to keep in check. I could probably work out what was going on if I had a chance to talk to him, but the trick would be getting the chance."
"That certainly does sound tricky. Now, that's Nephrite and Kunzite, which leaves… Zoisite, yes?"
You can hear Jadeite chuckling over the recording again.
"Zoisite… of all of us, Anyo's changed the least, I'd say. At least outwardly. It's hard to tell what goes on in his mind sometimes. There's a lot of convolution, a lot going on underneath her surface. Never a straightforward woman."
Wait what? And apparently Ami caught it too, going by the recording.
"You just said 'he' in one sentence and 'she' in the next. Is Zoisite… Or… Anyo? a man, or a woman?"
"Eh. Usually."
"I'm sorry, I don't understand." Recorded Ami sounds very confused.
"To be clear, Beryl gave Anyo that name, 'Zoisite,' much as she twisted me around to accept 'Jadeite.' But as to your actual question, a lot of people who knew Anyo, even before Beryl, even before she came to Earth at all, thought that he somehow knew what people expected of him. So that she could be different than you expect as often as possible. With many decades of experience, I can tell you that if you try to predict whether Zoisite's going to appear as a man or a woman, you will be caught by surprise. There will probably be jokes at your expense. Somehow. It's less trouble not to worry about it, or to figure it out as you go along. The only patterns I know of were… well, one in the past, and one that I think still applies. In the old days, there was a while when I think Beryl must have been encouraging Zoisite to take male form more often… in hindsight, probably because Beryl was trying to keep him at a bit more distance from Endymion. When we surfaced recently, that 'encouragement' seemed to be gone… but there's still another pattern, which is that when Kunzite's around, Zoi usually acts manlier than if not."
"Wait… what? Why?"
"You wouldn't have had reason to worry about it, I gather, but they're involved these days. Kunzite generally pays more attention when Zoi's at least moderately boyish."
"Oh…"
You feel your face heat up. You glance over to Rei- likewise. Ami's paused the recording. She looks at you with a stiff expression. "I felt more or less the same way you seem to. But I thought I should at least play that back for you, so you'd know. Anyway, I kind of changed the subject after that." She starts the recording again.
"So, aside from that, if 'straightforward' is what Zoisite isn't then what is she?"
"Hmm… how to explain Zoisite. Well, subtle, devious, flirtatious often enough. But… he's a dancer. Not always literally- that too, sometimes- but a dancer. Nearly always thinking of an audience, never approaching something entirely directly. Thinks in systems, in manipulations, in layers. If you want something built to solve a problem, ask me. If you want to be warned about a problem, ask Nephrite. If you want a problem smashed flat, ask Kunzite. You ask Zoisite when you want to have people to solve that problem, and the one after it, and the one after that, too. And they'll follow him."
"Zoisite inspires exceptional loyalty, you mean?"
There's a brief pause. You kind of wish you could read the look on Jadeite's face, but it looks as though Ami didn't think of that. "She can, when she cares to. And can feel it in return. Honestly, I think Beryl's mind control may have made Zoi outright better at that than in the old days, at least on Earth. Because she was never entirely serious about most of what she did, in the decades I knew her for… until Beryl got to her and made him so."
"It made Zoisite focus?"
"In a word, yes. She's still subtle and devious and, very often, flirtatious. But working with us, he'd really have a lot of success, more than I might have thought of only from knowing her on Earth before then, at winning over the loyalty of the youma. Getting them working together. He invited me to South America a couple of times, you know. I never bothered to obtain the local language, and the translation spells aren't always perfect. But even I could tell that Zoi not only had youma working together with more trust than I'd call normal. And, if you can believe it, working with humans."
"You mean, like Cendrellion?"
"No. Exactly not like Cendrellion. Now, remember, what I've heard about the Glass Sisters' plans didn't surprise me. I remembered their beginnings, and approved some of them at the time, though they'd evolved quite a bit since I turned myself in and almost all the details had changed or been improvised. But Cendrellion, it seems, had a fairly clear idea of where she wanted any humans working with her organization to be- as slaves. Before the gymnasium she found me, at least, tolerable as a commander… but for reasons of her own. Reasons that I sincerely doubt would have survived my leaving the cause. Very different. Zoi has humans working for her voluntarily, has made them enchanted weapons, has created a front organization they actually believe in and that isn't pure mind control: the 'Dark Liberators.' "
"The ones behind those towers in the news."
"Oh, yes, those. I've been keeping an eye on the news about them. They seem to be working out fairly well for Zoi, though not as well as he'd hoped. Which… I should probably explain this. It's a bit subtle."
"I'm listening."
"Here's the thing. Zoisite's good at what spies call 'tradecraft.' Organizing networks, infiltration, gathering power and assets to accomplish things under someone's nose. If Beryl never actually had Nephrite under mind control in the old days, if he joined her voluntarily, I'd have to say that catching Zoisite was probably her biggest single victory. Certainly more impressive than catching the likes of me or Kunzite…" Jadeite pauses. "If Zoisite doesn't have much of the entire South American continent eating out of his hand by now, and it sounds like he probably doesn't, then this 'Sangabriel' character must be quite good himself."
"Sangabriel?"
"There was… you might call it a videophone call, between us, not long before I gave myself up. Zoi was talking about how she was finally sure who the real mind behind a lot of the supernatural opposition she was dealing with. Some major demigod of the continent's main religion, I gather. She hadn't run into him face-to-face, but some of the followers would mention him… usually before they vanished in a flash of protective barriers, or just before some maniac with a flaming sword or a bunch of knives tore into the interrogator and hardly any of Zoi's team would get out alive. Can't say I know much about this 'Sangabriel' character, but it sounded like Zoisite was having fun trying to outmaneuver him, at least. Though again, that was a couple of months ago."
Ami stops the recording. "Now, that name sounds pretty familiar if you know Spanish, but I guess the main reason it matters to us is that somebody's keeping a good-sized chunk of the Dark Kingdom busy. Or was a few months ago and hopefully still is."
You nod. "True. Do you think you know anything about that?"
"Yeah, but just from him dropping the name… well, I'm not quite sure, but I think-"
The door clicks open. You look up, to see the face of one of your friends. And then half a meter down as Minori steps through and closes it behind her.
Wait, you never told her the code… Oh. Right. Minori's from the future. Briefly, you wonder whether this means that reminding yourself not to re-use passwords, the way Luna talks about, would cause a paradox now. But the thought is driven from your mind as Minori clambers up into your lap. You look down at her, and ask your little girl the more important question.
"Hi, sweetie. How did you get to the Crystal Millennium building?" Did your parents bring her here? Are they here?
But Minori just answers "Missed you, Mama," curls up in your lap, and goes to sleep with precious invincible insistence.
A minute passes. You lightly stroke Minori's hair, not wanting to wake her up. You look at Ami. Very softly, you ask her the polite, reasonable question.
"You were saying something?"
Ami shrugs. "It's not urgent. I'll tell you later." And she smiles at you, seeming content enough, for this moment.
