As far as Senator Hino Nibori was concerned, the whole world was going straight to hell.
It had all started several months earlier when one of the Sailor Senshi, the so-called protectors of the Tokyo and saviors of the species, had made a fatal mistake. He could scarcely recall the details, so much had happened since then. But the long and short of the story was that there had been an attack by some kind of monster – they had called it a youma – and they failed to kill it promptly. It had resulted in the death of one police officer, four civilians, and the injury of at least a dozen others. By the time they had managed to take it down, Nibori believed that their fate had been sealed. Because among the deaths was a very important politician – a man highly regarded among the citizens of Tokyo and a close friend of the senator’s.
Several people had spoken out immediately as a kind of knee-jerk reaction to his death. Nibori had been among them, condemning the Sailor Senshi as being feeble-minded children. He said they should have left the dangerous work to men of capability. He had called them witches, perhaps even like the demons they claimed to oppose. He said that their power was dangerous and that they should be contained, even eradicated if necessary, for the safety of the people.
People had taken him quite seriously.
Almost overnight, the love and hero worship for the nine or ten or fifteen (there had never been a clear idea as to what the number actually was) Sailor Senshi had transformed into an almost uncontrollable hatred. Merchandise was burned in the streets; teenage girls matching their physical description were interrogated; the sights they had been known to haunt were watched with an almost maniacal obsession. The government had once been worried about the environment and the state of the bus system; now they were worried about controlling the public. As well as rounding up the young she-devils who had started the affair by virtue of their existence.
Special sniper teams were dispatched. Suspects were followed everywhere except into the toilets. Family members were paid off for information – sometimes it was volunteered, sometimes it wasn’t. And other times money wasn’t enough and certain… other methods had to be employed.
Then other nations felt the need to get involved. The United States spoke out against the unnecessary tyranny and terrorizing of its own citizens, a fact that Nibori found hilarious given the habits of certain recent Presidents. Korea and China had already allied themselves with Japan, though whether they actually believed in the cause or if they had been promised secret technology, Nibori did not know. Other countries took sides until it seemed that the entire world was divided in a helter-skelter half.
As usual, Switzerland kept silent.
Things had only seemed to deteriorate from there. Oddly enough, sightings of the Sailor Senshi seemed to increase with the impending threat. Nibori recalled that several of them, the ones who he thought looked a bit younger, had a tendency to beg their oppressors to cease fire, to leave them alone, to realize that what they were doing was “wrong.” The other half had eventually begun to take an offensive strike against the other side, which resulted in some in-fighting among the ranks. It seemed that the Senshi could not even follow the old adage, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Then one of them had died. He wasn’t sure which one it had been. He had never been able to keep any of their names straight as they had never really mattered to him before all of this. He wasn’t even sure which side she had been on.
It didn’t matter after that. With the death of their comrade, the Sailor Senshi seemed to get over their differences. This assumption had been made infinitely clear when they took over a TV station. Then one of them had made an announcement that Nibori’s mind could not shake from his ears.
“If it is an Apocalypse you want, then we’ll bring you a fucking Apocalypse.”
Nibori sighed, shaking his head wearily as he read the latest status reports. In his mind, they were really meant for men in higher positions or men more accustomed to the arts of war. Nevertheless, it had landed on his desk. It was all thanks to those comments he had made early on in the conflict, permanently branding him as a key player in what was quickly shaping up to be the third world war. It was an accident, his fame, and one he normally would have regarded as luck. But during those days, he could think of nothing as being particularly lucky. Especially given when he was reading on the paper.
Still more civilians had been injured and even killed in the skirmishes in spite of the government’s best efforts. It would have been more helpful if the Senshi had held the same concern for the people, but apparently they had abandoned the crusade of the innocent. Thankfully, they weren’t attacking the citizens out right, probably for fear of losing their tentative alliance with Japan’s enemies. Nibori could no longer doubt that they would be more than willing to spill innocent blood if given the chance.
In addition to the personal cost, the property damage was astronomical. The Rainbow Bridge had been completely destroyed, and the Tokyo Tower had been damaged beyond repair thanks to a well-timed lightning bolt by the one in green, Jupiter (maybe). Still more monuments and buildings were falling victim to their supernatural powers and the more man made injuries that invading armies left behind.
And not one Sailor Senshi had been killed or captured. At least half the world was after them, and no headway had been made in that department. In fact, their enemies seemed to be improving.
According to the report, one of them, tentatively identified as Venus, had discovered a certain knack for manipulating metal. And all of their weapons were made of metal. It made it very difficult to shoot her or her companions when she could make the barrels of their rifles tie themselves into bows.
And another, Mercury, had gained the ability to actually freeze soldiers in huge blocks of ice. It often required an assist from the girl with the similar element, Neptune, but it did nothing to halt their effectiveness. And furthermore, the fire wielder, Mars, could then launch an attack and cause the ice encasements to explode from the sudden temperature change. And the soldiers along with it.
Still more were reported as having talents previously unknown to either side. Whoever had some sway over plants could now command them at will, forcing trees to swing their branches and vines to strangle. The one who commanded wind could make it spin around and around, creating deadly cyclones that lasted far longer than any tornado was meant to. It had been announced that while Pluto could not stop time, she could apparently slow it down just fine. And there was another one, and she had probably discovered some new ability, but what did it matter? She carried around a giant scythe. She didn’t need anything else.
There were other such developments, each more frightening than the last. It was exhausting to read. Nibori set the pages down, removing his wire-rimmed glasses so that he could rub his eyes hard enough for them to threaten to leap from their sockets.
“I miss being a powerless factotum,” he muttered, wondering if he would have found his comment amusing on any other day.
Before he could give this thought any more consideration, he heard his doors burst open. He replaced his glasses before he looked up, but he quickly wished he hadn’t. He could see chaos beyond his doors even as two blondes closed them behind the current intruder. But he scarcely paid attention to them.
All he could really see was that one of the Sailor Senshi, the one dressed in red, was stalking forward, quaking with barely suppressed rage.
Though he hardly thought it was necessary since she hadn’t exactly been subtle about her entrance, Nibori pressed the panic button that he had installed on the underside of his desk. Once it became clear that the Senshi might one day come after him, he had developed a healthy amount of paranoia. Apparently, that day had come.
He got to his feet, holding up his hands in what he hoped was a placating manner. “Now, look here, Sailor…” he trailed off, not remembering her name. “There’s no need to do attack me directly. You’ll lose your allies. You’ll--"
“I’m not here to attack you,” she spat, her voice sounding strangely familiar to him. “I’m here to talk to you.”
Nibori was puzzled. As he understood it, the one prone to making speeches was one of the blondes. “Talk to me? But why--" he cut himself off, deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “What would you like to talk about?” Nibori asked, pressing the call button several more times.
She stared at him for a moment, her dark eyes both condemning and surprised. She scoffed, shaking her head. When she spoke again, he happened to notice that it was trembling. “And Minako tried to tell me that you’d know me.”
Nibori narrowed his eyes, puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t follow."
“Look at me,” she demanded, thumping her hands down on his desk and leaning in impossibly far. They were uncomfortably close, making more nervous than he had been before. “Look at me and tell me who you think I am.”
Nibori found this to be a pointless exercise as he was certain he had never seen this girl in his life. Surely he couldn’t be associated with any witches or whatever the hell else they could be called. Maybe in passing at a party or a secretary that hadn’t worked out, but he couldn’t say that he knew her straight off. Still, to humor her and to reassure himself, he studied her features intently.
She had skin whiter than some of his starched shirts that he worse when he wanted to look good for the press. She had full, pouting lips that looked as if they were in sore need of moisture, especially given the way the bottom one was literally split open. Her eyes were nearly the same color as the bruise that hung upon her cheekbone. He didn’t know many women with that eye color. In fact, he could only think of one. And as he took in the shape of her face, the slant of her eyes, her slender frame, and even her voice, he realized with rising trepidation that she looked almost exactly like his dead wife.
He felt his skin turn pale. “Oh, God,” he whispered. “Rei.”
“Your daughter,” she surmised for his benefit, curling her lip. “Your daughter is a Sailor Senshi.”
Even though it gave her even more of an advantage over him, Nibori sank down into his chair as his legs failed to support him. His daughter – the girl who was so much her mother’s daughter – was one of the people he was fighting. He had heard men order that she be killed. He head heard soldiers curse her for her fire and her strength. He had seen men wailing in the hospital wards, begging for someone to shoot them and put them out of their misery because of the severity of their burns. He had thought of her as an enemy. He had thought of her as evil. And now he was not only having to think of her as human but as a human whose life was of some consequence to him.
“Christ,” he whispered, finding that being a practicing Catholic enabled him to better break the second commandment in such situations. “You’re… You’re really…”
She nodded brusquely, briefly reminding him of himself. “Yes.”
It was now his turn to shake. “Oh, God. If anyone ever finds out…” He shook his head in despair, already running through the worst case scenarios, none of which ended well for him. “The ramifications of this are--"
“No!” she barked, once again slamming her palms down on his desk. She frightened him into silence, the combination of her tone and the deadly look in her eyes filling him with terror he had never thought possible. She stood stock still, back rigid and chest heaving as her mother’s hair spilled over her shoulder. He noticed with some sorrow that the ends were singed.
“Don’t you dare stop to consider the political ramifications,” she instructed fiercely. “I am not part of your agenda. I am not something that your precious constituents are going to disapprove of. I am your daughter. And whether you like it or not, you are going to listen to me.”
Nibori wondered if he had to listen whether he liked it or not or that she was his flesh and blood whether he liked it or not. He decided that it was best not to ask. He merely swallowed the grapefruit-sized lump in his throat and nodded, waiting.
Rei looked at him for a moment, perhaps expecting him to renege on his silent promise or even pull a gun on her. He didn’t. He briefly wondered if he would have if he’d had one, and then decided it was best not to think of that at all. He didn’t want to know what the answer would have been.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” she asked him, her voice dangerously low.
Nibori took offense to her accusation and narrowed his eyes, regaining some of his nerve. “What I’ve done? You and your friends have declared war on Japan and even beyond that, and you’re asking me about my conscience?”
She didn’t so much as consider his point. “We only reacted to what you did. What you and your precious politicians and your toy soldiers did to Usa…” She trailed off, looking as though someone had plunged a dagger into her heart. “To my friend.”
“They did what was necessary,” Nibori recited without thinking.
Rei looked ill, but her nausea was quickly eclipsed by rage. “You killed her!”
Nibori was affronted. “I did nothing of the sort.”
Rei shook her head. “No, you didn’t pull the trigger. But that doesn’t matter. You were one of the first, if not the first, to stand up at your friend’s funeral and release a diatribe against us. That’s what started this whole mess. Your words. Your stupid, pathetic, meaningless syllables strung together to form a death sentence!”
“I did not start anything,” he countered, sitting up in his chair. “You’re the ones who failed. You’re the ones who let those people die!” He paused to breathe, surprised at how much this still affected him. “You let the senator die!”
“I know!” Rei shouted, her voice strangled and raw. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think we’re all wracked with guilt over what happened?”
Nibori ignored her opining, finding it insincere. If they were really sorry, they wouldn’t be doing this. They wouldn’t be putting other people at risk because of their grief. They were deluded and doing nothing but proving his point. They should not have the power they wielded.
“You said that you would protect the city,” he reminded her. “Now you’re attacking it. Do you really expect me to shoulder the whole of the blame?”
She pursed her lips, momentarily looking enough like his wife that he had to turn away from her. “I do expect you to accept your portion of the responsibility for what’s happening.”
“Why?” he asked, his voice coarse and quiet. “You’re not taking any.”
“We know what we did. We made a mistake,” Rei insisted.
“You should never have been put in a position to make that mistake,” Nibori maintained. His nerve was almost fully returned now, enough to begin to stand up. “Damn it, Rei. How did you get yourself mixed up in this?”
Rei shut her eyes, clenching her fists. He kept an eye on them. “Here we go. Now you’re going to act like my father.”
“I am your father,” he reminded her sternly.
“Since when?” she asked, her voice snarling acid.
Nibori may have been white a moment before, but now he was sure he was flushing pink with rage. “Don’t you dare take that tone with me!”
“Don’t you take that tone with me!” Rei repeated. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
He once again looked down at her hands, and his mouth went dry when he saw how violently they were shaking. “Are you threatening me?”
“I’m warning you,” Rei said, as if there was a distinction in the terms. “I am not in the best mental state right now, and I would hate to do something I would later regret.”
Nibori shook his head, walking around to the front of the desk so that there was no longer a piece of furniture between them. “Witch or not, you’re still my daughter, damn it. I asked you a question, and you are going to answer it.”
Rei scowled at him, clearly insulted by his attitude. She responded nonetheless. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Nibori scoffed. “That’s a child’s answer. You always have a choice.”
“It was destiny!” she shouted.
“There’s no such thing as destiny!” Nibori yelled back. “You create your own destiny. You don’t rely on some preset plan to determine your way.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rei countered.
Nibori shrugged his shoulders sharply. “You never bothered to explain it to me. Now it’s too late.”
Rei looked appalled. “Are you lecturing me on not being open with you?” She gaped for a moment and then yelled so loudly that his ears began to ache. “You abandoned me with your father-in-law! I maybe saw you once a year, and that was if I was lucky. You’re never hugged me, never shown any sign of affection. You have done everything within your power to avoid me, and you’re telling me that I should have come to you? When?! When would you have told your secretary to stop telling me that you were in a meeting when I called?”
He looked at her for a moment, trying to think of what he could say to that. What could he tell her after all this time? Could he really tell her that he’d been terrified of her? Could he tell her that he’d given her to her grandfather because he didn’t know the first thing about her or raising a child? Could he tell her that every time he looked at her, he saw his beloved wife, and it made him want to grieve all over again? Could he tell her that once he had heard her voice on the other end of the line and thought it was her, that she was haunting him? That he had drunken himself into such a stupor that he had to be hospitalized for alcohol poisoning under an alias?
He knew that he could not. It was too late for understanding. It was too late for a lot of things.
He shook his head. “Rei, how could you do this to me?”
He realized that he had said the wrong thing too late. His daughter suddenly became even more enraged than she had previously been, her voice jumping up an octave as she answered back. “And now you’re making this about yourself? You are just… unbelievable.”
“Because you’ve hurt me, Rei,” Nibori snapped. “You’ve hurt me by joining a… vigilante group hell bent on destroying the world.”
“That was not out intent,” Rei persisted. “You made that our intent.”
“I have not forced you to do anything!” Nibori hissed. “Take responsibility for your own viewpoints. Don’t blame it on me.”
“You’re the ones who killed her!” Rei screeched. Nibori realized for the first time since they had been arguing that she had been fighting back tears and that she was now losing rather miserably. “She was supposed to save the world! She was supposed to save everyone! She was going to be the leader of a new era. As close to a Utopia as we could manage. She was going to lead us back to Eden, and we would have been happy. She was the kindest, sweetest, gentlest… best person to have ever been born to this wretched place. She loved each and every one of you, and how do you repay her? You shoot her in the chest while she was trying to protect her husband!”
Nibori shut his eyes, finding that Rei’s words were enough to turn his stomach. But then he’d been feeling queasy since she entered the room. “Rei, please.”
“Oh, have I offended you?” she asked. “Has my dead best friend offended you?”
Nibori opened his eyes again, once again trying to be firm, though it was becoming harder now. “Rei--"
“No!” she yelled hoarsely, tears now coursing down her cheeks at full force. “You don’t get to call me that anymore. Nobody does. Hino Rei is dead. She died the day the future Neo-Queen Serenity was shot in the chest defending the heir to the throne of Earth. I’m Sailor Mars now. That’s all.”
Nibori stared at his daughter as if he could actually see her sever all ties. He envisioned her taking a pair of bloody scissors to whatever thin bond held them together and cutting it, denying her name, denying her heritage, and denying him. It stung, paining him in a way that he would not have expected.
“Is this what you came here for?” he asked. “To inform me of what a disappointment I bore?”
The look she gave him after that almost made him think that it had stung. Her eyes closed as if he had slapped, and he almost wished that he had. But he valued his limbs and he knew now that she would not hesitate to take them from him if he gave her a reason. He kept his arms at his sides and watched her lower lip tremble.
“I wanted you to see reason. To make you see what you’d done. Maybe to get you to help.” Rei hissed through her teeth. “But I’ve changed my mind. Even if you would give me your help, I don’t want it.” She opened her eyes and said another one of those sentence that would haunt him until his grave, no matter how soon it would be dug for him.
“I hate you.”
Nibori didn’t know quite how he felt about that. Nor did he know what to say to it. For a moment, he thought that maybe he didn’t know anything at all. Certainly not his daughter. And that was enough ignorance to make him tremble.
Then someone else cleared their throat.
Rei and Nibori both turned to see one of the soldiers standing inside the doorway, holding the double doors closed with some difficulty. She seemed to be embarrassed by intruding upon a family moment, but he didn’t miss the look of disdain she sent his way when she had the time to spare. “Sorry about this… Mars, but we really have to go.”
Rei wiped at her eyes furiously, sniffing childishly and moved forward. She spared her father one last scathing glance before going closer to her gold-clad friend. “How much time do we have?”
The other girl looked sheepish. “Well, you see… The thing is--"
She was cut off as the door went flying open, sending her sprawling into Rei’s capable arms. The other blonde came tumbling in after her, rolling end of end with one of the security guards. After the third roll, she managed to get the upper hand and decked him across the jaw, sending two of his teeth and a spray of blood flying into the air.
The first girl straightened up but still kept a grip on Rei’s forearms, either to comfort herself or the girl who had once been his daughter. She laughed mirthlessly and said, “None.”
The other one, who Nibori could now see was at least a head taller than the other two, pulled herself off the ground, glaring at the other blonde. “Would have had more time, but this one wanted to give you privacy.”
The girl – Venus, the one who made all the speeches – shook her head. “Oh, it’ll be fine. You are so tense lately. Have you and Neptune cut yourselves off in wartime?”
If Neptune was mentioned, then this one must be Uranus. She blushed furiously and snarled at Venus, curling up her bloody fist. “Venus, when all of this is over, I plan on knocking you upside the head so hard that your brain will flip in your skull.”
Venus shrugged nonchalantly. “It would probably be an improvement.”
“This is how you people mourn?” Nibori asked, surprised by his own forwardness. He looked up to see security guards and special agents alike run into the room, assuming the appropriate positions for apprehending them. “Feeble jokes and violence?”
“Do you have a better idea to keep from going crazy?” Rei… Mars asked him.
Nibori stared at her, watching as she shifted before his eyes from a girl to a warrior. He saw determination and power. He saw strength he had never thought her capable of considering how fragile she looked. He saw an almost god-like quality about her, and he felt himself in awe and in fear of her.
And for the first time, he saw himself instead of his wife.
“Surrender now or we open fire!” one of the soldiers shouted at them.
“Let us go or I open fire,” Mars countered, violet eyes flashing.
Nibori saw that some of them shifted uncomfortably with her threat. Or maybe it was a warning. “We will kill you if we cannot take you alive.”
Venus sighed tragically. “Darn. Apparently I’m going to die a bloody, horrible death, and I’m wearing the wrong underwear.”
Neither Mars nor Uranus was amused.
“We will give you three seconds to lay down your…” he struggled with the term. “Transformations and give yourselves over to the Japanese government.
Nibori felt his heart come to a complete stop.
“Three…”
They were going to open fire.
“Two....”
On his daughter.
“Stop!” he shouted, finding his legs were moving before he was cognizant of having instructed them to do so. Within seconds, he was standing in front of the three women. He heard a mixture of panicked gasps and even a scream, though he could no longer tell what came from which girl. He spread his arms out, taking care to make sure that Sailor Mars was completely shielded.
“One.”
But they had already pulled the trigger.
He watched with a kind of cold fear as what seemed like over a dozen bullets came shooting out of their chambers. Everything moved slowly in front of his eyes, briefly making him wonder if maybe he had been wrong and one of those girls was actually the time wielder. As they came closer and closer, he closed his eyes, finding that he did not want to look upon his murderers before he died.
And in those last few seconds, he felt himself come to a resolution. Even if she hated him. Even if he could no longer really think of himself as her father. Even if he had done wrong by her and even if she had now turned her back on everything he valued, it didn’t matter. She was as much a part of him as she was her mother, and he would not let that die.
“Father!”
He inhaled and opened his eyes, shocked out of his reverie.
Venus was suddenly standing next to him, her arms outstretched and her brow furrowed in concentration. Just before the bullets would have hit them all, they came to a complete stop, briefly hanging upon the air as if suspended by invisible wire. A moment later she blinked and the bullets fell to the ground, completely harmless.
She smiled smugly and said, “I wish all of our enemies had used bullets.”
“Senator Hino!” one of the soldiers asked, his voice shaking at the display of magic he had just seen. “What are you doing?”
Nibori turned around to look at Sailor Mars, who was staring at him as if he was a ghost just risen up from the grave. He could see a thousand and one questions floating in her eyes. And he could sense that even though she didn’t know right at that moment, she would find the answers all on her own, without benefit of his help.
“Go,” he instructed harshly. “Get out of here. All of you.”
“But Senator Hino!” someone shouted indignantly.
Nibori turned back to them, brown eyes flashing. “Let them go, or I’ll have her send the bullets back where they came from.” He glanced over at Venus, who was waving at their attackers with amusement and – if he was not mistaken – flirtation.
And even with that display of what he would normally label incompetence, he couldn’t help but think that he’d been wrong about all of them on some level. They could have done their jobs. Maybe they would have been able to bring about that Eden his daughter had been talking about. But what did it matter now? The one they would have relied on was dead, and that was one thing he could not blame on them. And neither could anyone else.
“Let them go,” he repeated softly, though all three of them were gone by the time he got it out of his throat. He never got to say goodbye.
The lead soldier stalked forward, holding Nibori by the arm. “Senator Hino, do you realize what you’ve done?”
He nodded wearily. “I think I may have just saved my daughter’s life.”
He saw the officer pale in shock. “Your daughter? But… But Senator Hino--"
“If you are going to arrest me, would you mind giving me a few minutes?” Nibori asked coolly, going back to his desk. “I need some time.”
Now utterly confused, the soldier did little more than nod and motion for his comrades to follow him. None of them knew what else to do after what had just happened.
When he was once again the only one left in his office, Senator Hino Nibori retook his seat behind his desk. He straightened his papers, moving them off to the side in a calm and orderly fashion. He once again removed his glasses, letting them hang around his neck on the chain he had inherited from his father. And then he folded his arms on the top of his desk, laid his head upon them, and wept for the first time in what must have been over a decade.
His daughter was gone, and only Sailor Mars was around to replace her. And he knew with frightening certainty that he was never going to see either of them again. After so many years of avoiding her and dodging opportunities to bond with her, he no longer had the option. And that filled him with more grief than the loss of his wife.
As far as Senator Hino Nibori was concerned, he was already in hell.
