Keeping the Score by Starsea

Keeping the Score

DISCLAIMER: A fanfiction set in an Alternate Universe, starring characters from the Sailor V universe, neither of which I own. Set to ‘My Vietnam’ by the artist Pink, which, again, I do not own. I can’t do funny disclaimers -_-


Another night, another youma. It stands in the ruined street and watches me, waiting for me to make a move. I wonder if it’s me or if they keep getting more and more stupid. Personally, I think they are. So does Artemis. But we’ve been in this business so long, a youma lasting more than five minutes would count as clever.

It gets bored. They always do. Most youma have a patience threshold of about ten seconds. Two minutes at the longest. But this one is pretty low. It charges, screaming. I wait until it’s about two metres from me and then flash the mirror at it.

Dusted.

As I snap the mirror closed, the poor spectators the pile of dust was trying to feed on start emerging from the wrecks of cars and buildings on either side of me. There is a smattering of applause.

I sigh: it’s not as if this costume inspires fear or respect. Short skirt, cropped top, a sailor suit for Kami’s sake. Oh yeah, it just screams ‘Don’t mess with me’.

And I have to use a compact mirror for a weapon. Not a scythe. Not a sword. Not even a staff. A stupid mirror. You can imagine how that makes ’em cower. Before I open it and turn them to dust that is.

In the beginning, they were a little patronising. ‘Schoolgirl dresses up to save pensioner’, that sort of thing. Now, it’s different. Now, when they speak or write about me, they call me ‘heroine’. ‘Saviour’. ‘The hope of the people’. What a load of shit.

If I was a ‘saviour’, I’d be able to save the world. But I can’t. I’m not the real saviour. The real saviour never came.

So I’m all alone in this game; the odds are stacked against me by about a million to one. One day or another, they’ll get around to finishing me off. And then there’ll be nobody left.

“Arigatou, Sailor V!” someone calls. It’s a boy. About my age.

I grin and blow him a kiss before disappearing into the night. Hey, can’t disappoint my public.

Daddy was a soldier
He taught me about freedom
Peace and all the great things that we
Take advantage of.


When I get home, my father is sitting at the table, going over bills. I’m still Sailor V, but I don’t care. Papa understands: when he looks up at the noise of my heels, he smiles.

“Hey baby,” he greets, as I sink into a chair, “how was it?”

“Same as usual, otou-san,” I answer, grabbing the small tot of brandy he keeps for me on cold nights like this. I lean back and toss it down like a true professional.

The alcohol burns my throat and then spreads throughout my chest. My trembling muscles start to relax. I set the shot glass down, and Artemis leaps onto the table to start lapping at the dregs. I don’t say anything: he doesn’t have to come out with me, but we both know I need the company. Artemis is the closest thing I have to a friend, which for any other eighteen year-old would sound pretty pathetic, but for the ‘hope of the people’ sounds pretty good. It’s a lonely business, trying to save the world. Especially when the world doesn’t do anything to help you.

I look at my father, pinching his forehead. He was one of the soldiers who were sent out to fight the Dark Kingdom when the government finally realised what was going on. He can’t walk anymore.

I remember being in the hospital, alone, watching him as I sat by the bed. Mother wasn’t there. She hardly ever came to see him. She said it was his own fault.

His eyes opened so slowly back then – even a simple muscle action like that was taxing. But I loved it when he looked at me finally, after so many weeks of sleep, weeks of silent tears and fierce prayers. Papa’s eyes are bright blue, like mine, and always kind. Always gentle. When he opened them that first time, he said, “I know who you are.”

And I laughed, because I thought that meant he didn’t have amnesia. “Of course you know, otou-san,” I said, kissing him on the cheek.

“Minako-chan... how long have you been Sailor V?”

Back then, the answer was six months, half-way between being fourteen and fifteen. Now, it’s six years. He said that he was going to support me in my work. He didn’t tell me how he knew. He still won’t say anything. He just smiles.

“I know that you can’t do everything,” he always says. “But, unlike me, at least you can do something.”

Looking at my father, physically trapped in a wheelchair, I understand more about freedom than fighting youmas has ever taught me. Freedom cannot be measured. It cannot be bought. It is subjective and indefinable. And I know that I would die fighting for it. I would die fighting for this ungrateful world, if only to bring back peace, to bring back freedom, so that humans can destroy the planet of their own free will.

I have no illusions about the human race. I don’t fight to save them because I think they deserve it, but because anything is better than the Dark Kingdom overtaking us and turning this planet into a world of death.

This is my Vietnam
I’m at war,
Life keeps on dropping bombs
And I keep score...


There aren’t many of us now: we hide out in the north of the world, in the subways and cellars of the ruined cities. In the beginning, some of us still had proper homes, with hot water, heating, electricity. I went out with my friends to help those newly homeless from the attacks. It was awful to watch them, the wives and husbands and children drawn back to the wreckage, picking among the rubble for treasured possessions... treasured people. It was better not to let them do that. We’d draw them away, carefully explaining that if they kept disturbing the debris, they might cause a cave-in. They might cause more death. They always stopped: they didn’t want more death.

Of course, it wasn’t as if they had a choice about that. None of us did. I stopped being Sailor V when the army stepped in, and considered myself out of the fight. I had failed: that was all there was to know. Until my father said those words. He wheels himself away from the table. “I’m going to bed. You shouldn’t stay up too long, Minako-chan. Hikaru-chan’s coming early tomorrow.”

Hikaru is my best friend: she and I always have a day out, every week. We go to the open ground, where the flowers are growing again, to meet the people how used to be in our high school classes. These days, I’m even glad to see Amano. He’s still an otaku by the way. You’d think, near the end of the world, there would be nothing to obsess over, but now he’s trying to figure out ways to invent jaw-dropping technology that will blow the Dark Kingdom into space.

Technology doesn’t work against them. Everybody knows that, ever since all the tanks, planes, and stealth bombs failed. But I can’t destroy Amano’s hopes.

He was going to be a computer technician. Hikaru was going to be a doctor. But the facilities aren’t there now. All the power stations were taken over, and so there is no electricity. The teachers all disappeared: couldn’t have the slaves educated, could we? But Hikaru and Amano still keep on trying.

After all, what else can they do?

I’m the only one who can fight the Kingdom now. As it was in the beginning, and shall be at the end. There is nobody else.

Mama was a lunatic
She liked to push my buttons
She said I wasn’t good enough
But I guess I wasn’t trying...


It’s bright this morning. The sun still rises and sets. Clouds mass, drop rain, then go. The world keeps on turning. This planet doesn’t care what happens to the human race, and why should it? It’s not as if we’ve done much to make it appreciate us.

Papa and I are going to visit my mother. She doesn’t live with us anymore. She doesn’t really live at all.

She exists in a small building on the outskirts of what used to be Tokyo. There are about fifty people like her who are put there, because there is nowhere else.

Once there would have been expensive drugs: bottles of pills, red and blue and green, like grown-up Skittles™. Now all they have is water, aspirin, and some old-fashioned laudanum to put them to sleep. The opium trade was quick to spring up again: so many people in pain, hardly any doctors or surgeons left to repair injured, broken bodies. I think of the golden liquid, falling onto eager tongues, drops of lazy sunshine measured out to make you drift away on a golden afternoon.

The door has a new coat of paint, and I smile for some reason. Artemis is curled around my neck, purring slightly. The vibration is soothing and almost ticklish. At first they didn’t let Artemis in, no animals allowed: but then they realised that the ‘patients’ liked him. He was quiet, soft, and seemed to understand their anguish.

Mother likes him most of all. It’s quite funny: back before the war, she used to absolutely hate him.

“Get that cat off the sofa! He’ll scratch it!”

“Out of my way, animal!”

“If you even dare to go for that fish-!”

And now, her fingers massage the white fur, and he kneads the skin beneath her skirt, tail bolt upright, purring like a Ferrari. She smiles: she does a lot of smiling now. She hardly ever moves.

She never used to smile.

“Minako, look at this score, do you do ANY homework?!”

“Minako, tidy your room!”

“Minako, it’s half-past eight, out of bed, now!”

“Why don’t you stop dreaming over those idols and film stars and think about a proper job? A girl like you would never impress a director!”

She said all those things, glaring at me, face red, eyes glinting, moving around my room like a red-haired hurricane. Why was she so bitter? Had she wanted the same things for herself? I never thought to ask at the time. I just let her insults blow over the top of my head and silently called her ‘a screaming harridan’. I was nonchalant. I didn’t reach out. I didn’t try.

Now, it’s too late. She smiles and plays with my hair, murmuring, “Such lovely gold hair. Like Aphrodite. Do you know Aphrodite?”

And I laugh a little, bitterly, though she doesn’t know it. She smiles at me. She likes my laugh.

“Yes, okaa-san, I know about Aphrodite.”

“Don’t you think the marigolds are lovely?”

“Yes, okaa-san, I picked them for you.”

“You’re so good to me. You remind me of my daughter...”

She thinks I’m dead. That’s why she’s like this: because one day, when I was fighting five youma at the same time, they blew up my house. Of course, they didn’t know it was my house, but they couldn’t have planned a better revenge.
I arrived home to find a smoking wasteland. My posters, magazines, CDs, video tapes... all gone. And my mother, bleeding and bruised, loaded onto a stretcher. I remember running towards her, screaming her name.

When she woke up, she thought I was dead. She thought I was in the house, you see. She didn’t believe that I was Minako. She still doesn’t believe. Perhaps it’s better that way. She obviously has fond memories of her daughter. I wouldn’t want to spoil them.

Never liked school that much
They tried to teach me better
But I just wasn’t hearing it because
I thought I was already pretty clever...


She was right about my test scores though. I constantly got bad marks at school. I was in my last year of junior high when I became Sailor V, thirteen going on fourteen. I spent my time dreaming of being an actress, a singer. Well, mainly an actress. My voice was not remarkable. However, I could dance, and I was athletic, good enough to play for the volleyball team. But academic results were more important to my mother. Despite my drama teacher telling her that I could get into one of the drama schools easily (perhaps even RADA with my English), she continually harped on my Maths, which was my worst subject.

Fortunately, Maths was Hikaru’s favourite, and she regularly tutored me through it, especially algebra and trigonometry. I hated the angles, the letters staring at me, waiting for me to make up the equation from the answer. It was all back-ward. Now, I almost enjoy doing that, it’s my life all over, but in school...

“Aino-san, will you concentrate?!”

“This is for your own good!”

“Late again!!!”

“You’ve got so much potential, if you’d only listen...”

And I’d sit there watching them, flushed, unhappy, irritated, smirking to myself inside: ‘You don’t know I saved your butt last night. You owe me your life. But I’ll let you get away with it this time.’

I was so arrogant. I even wanted to be paid for what I did – Artemis often despaired of me at first.

“Minako, this is your duty!”

“The world needs you!”

“Your payment is the happiness on people’s faces!” (That really made me snicker.)

After he’d lived with me for a while, though, and seen how my mother acted, he grumbled less. He understood that I needed money not just for posters and CDs and videos – though they were very important – but to prove to my mother that I wasn’t a failure. I needed to show her that being a fangirl wasn’t a waste of time.

I wanted to show my teachers as well. To sit on a television and casually confess that I hadn’t paid much attention, that I’d been a rebel, flash my perfect teeth in a sweet, apologetic smile to all those poor people.

Those dreams are dust in the wind now.

Duty is all I have.

This is my Vietnam
I’m at war:
They keep on dropping bombs
And I keep score...


Another explosion rises into the air, a cloud of orange and black. As if the atmosphere wasn’t poisoned enough. All of the children born during and after the war have asthma. Only the strongest grow out of it, and their weak chests leave them prey to bronchitis, even pneumonia.

I sigh to myself, hearing the screams and cries of the people.

“Don’t they get tired of this?” I mutter.

“They’ll keep going until they find the ginzuishou.”

I almost slam my fist into the wall beside me. A growl hisses between my teeth. “It isn’t here! It isn’t on this planet! Why don’t they just realise that and leave us in peace?!”

Artemis’s gooseberry eyes look at me sadly. “But that’s just the point, Minako. It is here. Somewhere on this planet. And humans provide such a rich selection of energy, they won’t leave this planet unless they find the crystal.”

I almost sob. I am so tired.

“What does it look like, Artemis? What is the ginzuishou?” I’ve asked this before, many times, only to get the same answer:

“I don’t know. If I knew that...”

Artemis’s ears droop. “If only she was here.”

“She?”

He is silent. I kneel down and stroke his head. “Artemis, you’ve mentioned this ‘she’ before.”

“Someone like me... I was so certain that she was here, but I’ve never seen her.”

Artemis had a girlfriend? You learn something new every day.

“Well, until that bloody crystal shows up, it’s my job to stop them completely destroying us,” I mutter, standing up. “Here I go...”

So I leap in; say my usual speech; and after a few choice insults and running around, I dust the youma. The street is wrecked as usual. The air reeks of unearthly flesh and blood. And there is the sound of applause from behind me.

I whirl round.

Oh. My. God.

I am looking at a guy who is almost a foot taller than me. He is dressed in pale, expensive silk; his cloak blows around him in the wind. Studs sparkle in his ears.

“Very impressive, Miss Sailor V.”

I fold my arms, and wish desperately that I had a more business-like appearance. I feel like trash in my short blue skirt, high heels and cropped top. He looks cool and sophisticated, and I am suddenly aware as never before of how cold and bare my legs feel, and how I must stink of sweat and blood even from where he is standing.

“Who are you?”

He smiles. “Don’t you remember me, Venus?”

A shiver travels down my back. Only three people know that ‘V’ stands for Venus: the Boss, Artemis and me.

“No.”

“Of course not.” His smile disappears. “We weren’t exactly on close speaking terms.”

I roll my eyes. “Listen, I haven’t got time to hang around. If you’ve got something to say-”

“My my, aren’t we hasty?”

He steps over the entrails of the youma and walks towards me. I smell Armani aftershave. He is very good looking. Fair hair that blows around his face... soft chestnut brown eyes... a broad chest...

And he’s an Enemy.

You’d think, being the incarnation of Aphrodite, Venus, goddess of love and beauty etc. etc. that I would have a scintillating love life. Well, you’d be wrong, because that would be logical thinking, and my life is not logical.

He takes my chin in his hand.

“Perhaps if I said the name Adonis...”

My mind flicks quickly over the references. Adonis, mythical lover of Aphrodite/Venus. Absolutely beautiful – well, no arguments here. Gored to death by a wild boar. This guy looks alive and well to me.

“I thought you were dead...” I murmur, saying the first words that come into my mouth.

“I died for you last time,” he whispers, tipping my chin up, his mouth closing in. “I died without ever speaking to you or touching you. I don’t intend to let that happen again.”

My gloved hands clasp his face. I don’t know if it’s magic or lust which has cast a spell over me, and I don’t really care. I am tired, so tired of death and madness and decay. There is nothing of those things in his eyes: only softness... love... beauty...

“MINAKO!”

A white blur passes between us, and red blossoms in my vision. Adonis is holding his face, cursing. Blood runs between his fingers. I look down to see Artemis, panting, glaring up at me.

I stare at Adonis.

“If you love me so much,” I say, “why are you my enemy?”

He stares at me, eyes dark.

There is nothing left to say. I finally know the face of the enemy who has been destroying this city over the past few months. I finally know who is responsible.

I will show no mercy.

What do you expect from me?
What am I not giving you?
What can I do for you to make me look good in your eyes?


I am tired. So tired of life.

As I lie here, his hands about my throat, I smile.

All my life, I have tried to impress people. My mother. My father. Artemis.

Even Adonis. I tried to impress him by being blasé; I tried to impress him with my fighting skills; I even tried to persuade him to come over to my side.

The losing side.

Tears are in his eyes.

“Doishite?” he whispers.

What’s he so upset about? I’m the one who’s dying. Isn’t that supposed to be my line? ‘Why’ are you killing me? ‘Why’ is the world so f**ked up? ‘Why’ the hell doesn’t the ginzuishou suddenly appear right now when I need it most?
Everything is very hazy. I think of my life. A waste. Once again, I have failed.

I failed to protect her.

Now I have failed to protect this planet, the world she loved so much.

Hime-sama, forgive me.

I close my eyes. I hear her call my name and smile. Light explodes in the sky and rains down on me. I am wrapped in a blanket of warmth, and I smile happily.

“Venus... Venus...”

I look into eyes of silver.

“What...?”

“It’s alright. You’re home, Venus. You’re home.”

“Hime-sama...”