The Game Center Crown has a secret. At the Sailor V game, there's a code one can enter to open up a portal into an interdimensional space large enough to host a massive computer terminal, complete with numerous tools for data analysis and scientific research.
In short, it's a paradise for people like Ami Mizuno; a place she can conduct all of her most important experiments, and especially those related to her duties as Sailor Mercury.
She's been here most of the weekend. She came to the Crown after school on Friday, to study and to think. This got interrupted by a rampaging Makoto, and since Makoto left (and the ensuing conversation with Naru), Ami has been holed up in the Command Center, researching.
She's only left a few times since then, and every time it was to either get food, use the facilities, or a brief visit to Mamoru and Kunzite. Otherwise, she's been in that space between worlds, deep in research.
She's there now, dressed still in the same striped blue-and-white tanktop she put on after school on Friday, with high stockings and a blue skirt. She hasn't showered, but she hasn't slept, either, so she doesn't look terribly rumpled. Over this, she's wearing a white lab coat, with her reading glasses firmly planted on her nose as she reads through pages and pages of information on the massive computer terminal in front of her.
Luna has tried to convince her to leave, but that hasn't worked. Maybe she'll try other tactics; such as getting someone else to help.
And indeed, Luna is trying this other tactic.
It's night, late Sunday night in fact, things are closed, and Usagi's still in her pyjamas after having been brutally awoken by a cat on her bladder.
So she trudges into the arcade and plops down at that one Sailor V game. She blinks at it for a moment before starting to slump forward.
"Hey!" Usagi jerks back up as Luna's voice pierces her skull. "You need to bring her out, Usagi-chan! This isn't healthy!"
Usagi makes a grunting moan noise as she punches in some buttons.
Normally, Usagi probably would have noticed a lack of Ami. She probably also would have noticed Makoto's mood. And other things.
But she's been dealing with certain flowers that keep popping up in her home, and no one's called her.
Trudging down the stairs, her pyjamas are cute. Tank top and shorts, little bunnies hugging roses. And of course, bunny slippers.
"Ami-chan." She yawns and crawls into the hair next to the blunette, scooting it closer and hugging her friend. Who makes a nice pillow. "Is supposed to get you to leave."
Ami looks up, briefly, as Usagi slips into the command center. "Usagi-chan," she says, surprised. "What are you doing here?" she asks. There are bags under Ami's eyes; exhaustion and runny makeup have taken their toll on her usual attractiveness.
"You should get some sleep," Ami notes to her friend. "We're going to have a lot of hard fights soon." Honesty. Sober, honesty, with maybe a twinge of bitterness. "I think the problem with Fiore is coming to a head, and I think Mako-chan is going to need help, and ... Takashi is going to be a problem soon, too. And there's more," she says frustratedly.
"No, nevermind," Ami says quietly. "I don't want to burden you with it right now. You should get some sleep and I'll tell you tomorrow, when you've woken up. There's still too much to do."
A jaw cracking yawn! "Luna said you're stubborn. So. Here's me."
A shrug!
Usagi's eyebrows furrow together. "Well, I kind of figured with Fiore, with the plants every where and at home and Naru and Kyou-kun...but what's Mako-chan got to do with it?"
She's feeling a bit awake now.
That's why her shoulder droops with a groaning whine as she reaches over to shake Ami. "Nooooo, tell me. I'm already uuuup, and I'm not sure I can get Mamo-chan in the next one again. Tell meeeeeee, Queen Zombie."
Ami straightens in her chair when Usagi expresses interest. She's certainly not going to refuse her friend the knowledge; Usagi deserves it as much as anyone. Even if Ami's notes are incomplete on just about every front.
With a sigh, the bluenette removes her glasses and places them in the breast pocket of her lab coat, then turns to explain, "Nephrite pretended he was Tuxedo Mask to try and get Fiore to kidnap him. I don't know all of the details, but he nearly got himself killed in the process, and no one bothered to tell Makoto that he was doing this. She's ... kind of a little mad about that, and I'm worried she might be accidentally feeding off of dark energy created by her own frustrations."
She frowns, then says, "I'm still working on impact data for the asteroid that's coming. I've spent most of the weekend rerunning the figures Mamoru texted over, and I can't figure out how they figured out the density of the rock. So either the work was done really lazily, or they have gone to the asteroid, or ... I don't know how else they could have done it."
She hesitates only a few moments before concluding, "And finally, it turns out that Takashi Agera and Riventon are the same person. Which ... sort of makes me feel like an even bigger idiot for not figuring that out sooner. But this is an issue we can deal with once we've figured out what to do about the Xenian, the Xenstalks, and Fiore. Speaking of, the Tokyo Xenstalk has been destroyed. Which sortof implies the others can be as well. We should probably do that sooner than later, but it's going to require all of us."
"I'm sorry, Nephrite did what now?"
And it only gets...worse from there.
By the end, she's practically grinding her teeth to dust.
"Wait. Taka-baka is the guy who almost killed Mamo-chan back in like, October?"
And oh man, she can't even chop down that stupid stalk!
"I just...I'm..."
She hops up from the chair and paces. "Why was I not told of any of this! I am gonna strangle Kunzite! The Naru thing was one thing but this...this...AUGH!"
She practically slams her hands down on the console as she turns Angry Eyes toward Ami. Not At Her, but.
"Mako-chan kept saying how we have to all communicate better. And I agreed. And now, she's doing what I did. I just...AUGH!"
".. as far as I can tell, this all came out this weekend," Ami notes to Usagi gently. "I don't think it's a communication issue. I could be wrong. I don't know. They texted me to tell me about Takashi Saturday morning. Makoto's rage happened Friday night and I got the impression it was a recent occurence, especially since Nephrite was on their couch with a bound ankle, sleeping, when I went on Saturday. So at most, you're only about two days behind."
"Well, I guess it's better than it happening Friday and my not finding out until Monday."
She plops back in her chair, all slumpy. "What am I doing wrong?"
Then she waves her hands! "No, no, ignore that! What's got my Ami-chan stuck here all weekend?" Serious Face. "Have you had Ami-Time yet?"
"My favourite character in the game is a girl named Mei," Ami answers Usagi's question with something the poor bunhead probably won't get. But that doesn't matter. "I'm also quite fond of Winston."
"Anyways, I've been here all weekend for ... a lot of reasons," Ami explains quietly. "Checking their numbers, monitoring trajectories, trying to pinpoint the Xenstalks throughout the Earth, trying to get a sonic diagram of earth to see if they're all connected at some single source or if they're truly separate, and checking in on Makoto once in a while to make sure she hasn't hurt herself."
Oh, that's not everything. She grimaces a little and looks away, "And thinking a lot about how much of an idiot I was for dating a guy I knew was tainted by Dark Energy. And wishing he were here to help me work through all of this."
Usagi sighs, long and hard. "That had better be a reference to the game you were talking about. Otherwise I'm making you skip school tomorrow to have fun. And I realize this means science museums and...stuff."
Usagi rubs her eyes. "And here, I thought the biggest drama of the weekend were those damn persistant flowers he sent to my house... Okay. So, Mako-chan is mad. Dark energy? Her?"
And she leans against Ami, hugging her. Not for the bunny's sake, but for the Ami's sake. "Taka-baka....is a baka. And I am so mad at him now that I know he's Riventon. But...I do think he was legitimately trying to do right by you. Even if he's handling things now like the world's biggest dummy."
She pulls back a bit. "And it's not wrong wanting him here to help you through everything."
She speaks from experience!
Ami leans into the hug and sighs, putting her forehead on Usagi's shoulder. "In his own way, I think he cares for me. He's told Kunzite things he didn't have to; things which can help us, maybe."
She lets her eyes drift closed, and maybe that's a bad idea, because closed eyes and warm snuggles are toxic to the sleepless. "I just ... I tried asking Nephrite for help, and he goes to nearly get himself killed. And Kunzite knew I was going to be mad because he started with an apology, and then told me what happened with Takashi-kun. And I just ... thought I could rely on them, but now I don't even know what to think anymore."
Her next mumbled words are hardly above a whisper, and filled with little squeaks of sorrow, "At least with Takashi, he could claim dark energy as a bad influence. I don't know, Usagi-chan. I don't know if we can stop this."
Usagi nods. She...unfortunately understands. "When Kunzite told me about Naru, he told me he hadn't before to see if any of you would."
It's werd. That none of her girls told her about Naru stings less than the test (or that's how she sees it) Kunzite did...
A sigh, long and sad.
"Do you mean about the asteroid? I think we'll kick Fiore's ass. We'll kick it good. As for Takashi...? Eh, we'll still kick his butt in the end."
"Fiore's not the real problem," Ami explains to Usagi. "The Xenian is. Fiore's just ... a puppet," she explains quietly. "Right down to having the Xenien's hand on his heart. The Xenian's up on the asteroid, and I don't know what to do about it."
She leans away, then opens her eyes, a little bleerier now. "Do we have to kick Takashi's butt? Can't we just ... find some way to help him live on after purifying him, and .. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I can't fix everything."
Usagi nods. And her voice is soft. "I know. Which is why..." She trails off, not finishing, really. "You kind of did. Sailor Teleport." She nudges Ami in the side. "We beat the bitch, we can beat a flower."
Then she blinks at Ami!!! "...kicking butt is the one way I know to bring people back. It worked on most of the shittenou, and on Not!Mamo. I mean, we can try not to, but usually beating the evil out of people actually seems to have, you know, unexpected nonbiblical applications..."
Ami looks up at Usagi worriedly, clearly searching the blonde for something she needs. "I just ... I worry that this time we won't be able to bring him back," she says quietly. "It worked with Kunzite because of the weight of ritual surrounding his position. I can't ... use that ritual for Takashi. If we kill him," she says quietly. "If he doesn't survive I won't ... he'll be ..." she just loses th e words, and lowers her head.
"And I feel so selfish," she explains to Usagi, voice higher pitched, and a little stuffy. "I feel so selfish, because if he really is Riventon, then he's hurt a lot of people. Nearly killed people. Maybe he has killed people, I don't know. But I don't want him to hurt. I don't want him to suffer. I just ... I need to know that it's going to work. I need to know before ..." she trails off. "Because if I am as uncertain with him as I was with Kunzite, I'm never going to be able to finish it. I can't do it. I can't, Usa. I can't hurt him like that."
"I think...maybe not beating him up physically is the answer. Maybe just...proving him wrong."
She watches Ami, clear eyed and worried, for long moments.
And then, she gives a jaw cracking yawn. It's so hard and long that it causes her toes to curl. At the end, her eyes are heavy as they blink at Ami. "We'll think of a way, Ami-chan. Even if its not the greatest way, we'll come up with something."
One eye closes, then the other...
One eye opens, then the other...
Whatever she was looking for, Ami seems to find it, there in Usagi's face. She stills, then reaches up to rub at her eyes. The rubbing turns into a yawn, and she sighs and turns away.
But at least she's calmer, now; the crisis of emotion has been averted, for the moment. "Yeah. I hope so," she says quietly. "But first ... the Xenian. You should get some sleep, Usagi-chan. You're going to have to fight it," she says. "And it's going to be a tough fight."
Usagi, with a secret determination, shakes her head about much like a child would. "Noooo, if Ami-chan doesn't need sleep, neither do I!"
A loud, purposefully long yawn!
"I'm tough! I don't need sleep!"
Ignore the fact that Ami is now a cozy teddy bear!
(Or don't, that's also kinda Usagi's plan...)
Ami Mizuno blinks at Usagi, then blinks again, slowly. "USagi-chan, that's ridiculous," Ami says quietly. "I need sleep just as much as the next guy. We all do. It's not healthy to go without sleep," she explains. "So go get some, so that tomorrow you can be well rested if we decide to fight then. I promise, I won't be too much longer."
She shakes her head! Twintails fwip about with the force. "Nu-uh. I'mma keep my Ami-chan company until she needs sleep. I'm like a machine!"
Drowsy blinks, checks. Slight weave of the body? Double check. Interspersed with sleepy sounds? Triple check!
"And and and when you're done, we can snuggle like baby bunnies and fall asleep watching Mulan. And Luna can wake us up for class."