"Mercury Switch" by Devin de Gruyl (The rounding-the-corner-into-the-home-stretch Kid) Part 9 --- Time can be a funny thing. Usually it just tools along on its merry little way, and you're never really aware of it until you look at the clock and realize that, while you've been daydreaming or something, a full hour or more has passed. Other times, minutes can seem like hours, and so much can happen during that period that it isn't even funny. Like right now, for instance. The next three minutes of my little "adventure", which I'm about to relate, are without question the longest three minutes of my entire life. At three minutes to go before Maiyra's transference became permanent, I saw Skippy charge at Sailor Jupiter, who had hit him from behind with some kind of lightning attack just moments before. At 2:55, I started in towards my rampaging body, hoping to put an end to this nonsense once and for all. At 2:53, I stopped dead in my tracks. I could hear something in the back of my mind. It was very faint, and it was only one single word, but it was clear as a bell, and there was absolutely no question as to where it had come from. That word was "Wait." So I did. 2:30 to go now. I got a mental image... a suggestion of sorts, in the form of one of Ami's memories. 2:15. I looked away from where Skippy and Jupiter were tangling, and towards the corner, where Maiyra was still working her computers. I noticed that, every time Skippy made any kind of offensive gesture, Maiyra would do something with a control panel. 2:00. <"Our enemy is the one who is MOVING the jets..."> ...my enemy was the one who was CONTROLLING my body... <...THAT'S IT!!> 1:55. I prepared myself for another attack. This time, I didn't let Ami try and run the show; I simply carried out the advice she was giving me from the back of my head - what she had been doing since this morning, and what I *should* have been doing all along. Working *together*, as a team... she the coach, me the quarterback. "Mercury Bubbles --" I felt more cold air rush around me, and a giant bubble appeared in my hands. "-- BLAST!!!" The bubbles shot out, bathing the entire warehouse in a dense fog. You almost literally could not see more than an inch in front of you. Fortunately, I could still see relatively clearly; I guess Ami was mostly immune to the effects of her own smokescreen, which made sense. 1:45. I thought, as Ami told me which course of action to take. Under cover of the Mercury Bubbles, I ran forward, leapt into the air, and delivered a savage judo kick to... ...Maiyra's computer bank. 1:40. "NOOOOOOOO!!!" Maiyra screamed, as the entire console shorted out in a mildly spectacular display of sparks and smoke. 1:35. Peripherally, I saw Skippy suddenly go stiff and fall face-first to the floor, freeing Jupiter from its clutches. Our gamble had paid off; we'd destroyed Maiyra's means of manipulating my body, and freed it from her control. Now, the path was clear to put me and Ami both back where we belonged. 1:30. But... As the Mercury fog dissipated, I could see Maiyra standing behind the smashed remains of her control panel. Right there, right in front of me, was the cause of all this misery. Given that, I don't think anyone on Earth could possibly blame me for what I did next. 1:25. "You BITCH!" I snarled. I grabbed Maiyra by the lapels of her lab coat and *slammed* her against the wall. Again. And again. I swear to God, I wanted to kill her for what she'd done. And I probably would have - had it not been for one thing. 1:10. "Ami..." Through my rage, my senses registered a hand being laid gently, but firmly, on my arm. Unwillingly, I tore my gaze away from Maiyra to the owner of that hand. It was Sailor Moon, her face and body still bearing the marks of the Sailors' battle with my possessed body. She was shaking her head. "Don't," she said, simply. "But...!!" "No," she repeated. "I can't let you do it." 1:05. I could have ignored her. I could have just destroyed Maiyra right there. I was certainly capable of it. I would have even been doing the universe a favor if I had. To this day, I cannot explain why I didn't. 1:00. I shut my eyes and turned my head away, so I wouldn't have to watch myself do this. I released my grip on Maiyra's collar. "Go," I muttered. "Get the hell out of my sight. Now!" Maiyra's voice sounded puzzled. "You're *letting* me go?" "Go!" I growled. "Before I change my mind!" I didn't notice how she left. I didn't care. All that mattered was, she was gone, and good riddance to her. 0:55. I let out a deep, deep sigh, then turned to face Serena fully. I felt angry tears burn the corners of my eyes. "Why did you stop me?", I demanded. "Why!? She *deserved* it!" "Maybe," she said, gently. "But would you ever have been able to live with yourself, if you had killed her?" I didn't have an answer for that. 0:50. "Point..." I sighed again. "...taken." Serena smiled. "I knew you weren't a killer, Ami..." "OK, that's it," I suddenly blurted out. "I want to know *why* you keep calling me 'Ami,' even when you KNOW I'm not her!" In response to that, she simply looked at me and smiled, enigmatically. Before I could process what THAT could possibly mean, my sense of time suddenly snapped fully back to attention. 0:45. "Oh my God!" I shouted involuntarily. "We've gotta be almost out of time!" To my left, Sailor Jupiter nodded and motioned towards Venus. "Quick, help me with his body!" Together, and mindful of Lita's broken arm, the two girls lifted my lifeless body up and back towards me. By this time, Sailor Mars had regained her feet too, and had come to stand alongside me and Sailor Moon. "I hate to have to ask this," she said, "but, do any of you have any idea how to work these machines?" 0:30. "Um... I was hoping one of *you* did?" I muttered uneasily. "Kuso!" Rei muttered under her breath. (I didn't bother to ask what THAT bit of Japanese meant.) "NOW what are we gonna do?!" "There's only one way," Sailor Moon said. Without another word, she reached for the brooch on the front of her uniform. 0:25. "NO!!" Mars shouted. She lunged forward and grabbed Serena's hands. "You don't know what that'll do to you!" "It'll be all right," she replied. "Remember, I healed the Four Sisters with it, and it didn't kill me then - this shouldn't be any different!" "Are you sure?" "Unless you've got a *better* idea..." 0:20. I cleared my throat. "Um, whatever it is you're talking about, may I suggest you make up your mind about it - like NOW?" Mars made an "I give up" motion with her arms. "I guess it's the only way, now... OK." She put her arm around Serena's shoulders. "Good luck..." "Rei..." Serena's eyes were huge. "...thank you." Then, she turned to me. "You'd better stand over there," she said, motioning me towards my prone body. 0:15. I knelt down beside my body, pausing for a moment to look it over, to fix that image forever in my memory. "Guess this is the last time I'll get to see myself from the outside," I mumbled under my breath. "Huh?" "Nothing," I said. "Just... just talking to myself." Ten. I turned back to Serena. "OK... zap me back home, or whatever..." Nine. Sailor Moon held her brooch aloft. Eight. The cover popped off, revealing a gleaming crystal inside. Seven. A bright light from the crystal enveloped me and my body. Six. Serena closed her eyes and began to intone: "Moon..." Five. I felt myself beginning to separate from Ami. Four. "...Healing..." Three. I started to get the sensation of flight. Two. "...ACTIVATION!!!" One. Just before I lost consciousness, I felt a dam burst in Ami's mind. It was a memory of hers - that much I knew. But that was all I had time to realize... Zero. Blackness. --- When next I was aware of anything at all, I felt the warm touch of sunlight beaming in on my face. I opened my eyes, just a crack, expecting to find myself still in the warehouse. I was wrong. Instead, I could see that, wherever I was now, I was in an apartment of some kind. On the off chance that I'd dreamed the whole thing, I put a hand in front of my face. When I saw that the hand was mine, and not Ami's, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was back in my own body. Finally... finally, it was over. Or was it? As I came more fully awake, my brain began wondering several things - minor details such as and I looked around the apartment, trying to get my bearings. Whoever lived here had apparently set me on their couch, wrapped me in a blanket, and allowed me to sleep it all off - awful nice of them. All around me, I could see the simple, yet functional, furnishings that denoted a low-rent, bachelor (bachelorette?) apartment - low table, a well-worn chair, a TV and VCR mounted on a cart that had seen better days, kitchenette off to one side -- "So, you're finally awake." The voice startled me out of my inventory-taking, and snapped me those last few inches back to full consciousness. I turned in the direction it came from, to find Lita standing there, with concern in her eyes. There was something about her that didn't seem quite right, but I couldn't put my finger on it... "I was wondering when you'd wake up," she told me. "Do you even know what time it is?" "Um... no," I answered honestly. She pointed to her wristwatch. "It's after six at night, buddy. You've been sacked-out in my living room all day!" "All day?" She nodded. "I brought you back here after last night - I was just about to call the hospital, thought you were gonna go into a coma on me." Hospital? That word made me think of something... ...hospitals... doctors... treatment... *broken bones*... I gasped as it suddenly hit me. "Your arm! It's OK!" Lita looked at her formerly broken right arm, which now bore no evidence of ever having been injured. "Well, I wouldn't say THAT," she said, flexing it tenatively. "It's still pretty sore and all..." "But... but how? Why?" "I heal pretty fast - call it a fringe benefit of being a real-life superhero." She smiled. "That sling you made me was just the trick; it put the bone in just the right position to start healing. My body was able to take it from there." She noticed my puzzled expression. "No, sorry," she answered my silent question, "I don't understand it myself. It's just one of those things I've learned to accept on faith, y'know?" "Um... yeah, OK," I said. I didn't really understand what she was talking about, but I was just glad she was going to be all right. I grinned. "Glad I could help..." Without thinking, I started to stand up. I threw off the blanket that was covering me - but just as I did, I heard Lita suddenly exclaim, "No! Don't --" Too late. I got to my feet... and only then did I realize why Lita said that. Underneath that blanket, I wasn't wearing any pants. "Gahh!" VERY quickly, I ducked down, grabbing the blanket in an attempt to cover myself. After everything else that'd happened, to be caught in my underwear in front of a girl was the LAST bit of humiliation I needed. I shot my glance up towards Lita, who I noticed was enjoying my discomfort just a *bit* too much. "What'd you do with my pants?!" I demanded to know. She tried, without success, to stifle a giggling fit. "I... (heeheehee) I, er... (hahaha) ...I had to take 'em off... (heehee)... I'll go g-get 'em... (hehaheha)" I didn't mean to be mad at her, but my reply of "PLEASE do." came out far more icily than I would've liked. Lita managed to get her laughing under control. "OK," she said, and started off down the hallway to her left... but just before she vanished from my view, she stopped and turned around to face me. There was a devilish glint in her eye I wasn't sure about... "Oh, and Darren?" "Yeah?" ¨Don't flatter yourself." She winked and disappeared down the hallway... just avoiding the pillow I tossed at her rapidly retreating back. While I was waiting for her to come back with my jeans, I sat on the couch and tried to sort through my thoughts somewhat. The practical details of how I was going to get back home now, how I was *ever* going to explain all this to my mom and everyone else... I put those aside for the moment. I was more concerned about something else. That thought, in turn, led me to another concern of mine. I thought back to just before I'd felt myself lose consciousness in Ami's body. Just as I felt myself start to pull away from her, I'd suddenly been hit by a final rush of her memories... memories that I hadn't gotten before from her, when I'd transformed. They were, I realized, the "missing pieces" - the part of Ami's memory that she'd deliberately repressed. That intrigued me, out of sheer curiosity if nothing else. I hadn't had the time last night to review those memories, but now... What was so terrible, that Ami didn't want to remember? I concentrated on that little fragment of memory... Then... what? I couldn't tell. Past that point, the memory was too fragmented, too spotty to make much sense. For whatever reason Ami had chosen to block this from her mind, she had done a very good job of it. Sighing, I gave up for the moment and simply waited for my "host" to return with the rest of my clothes. Two minutes later, Lita reappeared with my pants. "Here ya go, fresh from the dryer," she said brightly. "This should make you feel less like Crayon Shin-Ch --" She cut herself off as soon as she saw the almost haunted look in my eyes. "What's wrong?" "Hmm? Oh! Nothing, nothing at all..." I said, maybe just a bit *too* quickly. "Uh-huh." Lita folded her arms across her chest in a gesture of mock annoyance. "And I suppose you also have a bridge you'd like to sell me..." I couldn't help but laugh a little. "OK, OK, so I'm a horrible liar. Go ahead, sue me." "I would, except I probably still wouldn't be able to buy the evening paper if I did," she joked. "You wouldn't at that. ...Anyway, the truth is, I'm... worried about Ami. How's she doing?" The smile faded from Lita's face, and she exhaled deeply. "We don't know. All I can tell you is, she wasn't at school today with me and Serena - and that NEVER happens, of course, so we both got real worried. Serena tried to call her at home on our lunch period - she got her mom instead, and she told her that Ami had locked herself up in her room, and wasn't coming out for any reason. Far as anyone else knows, she's still there." She shook her head sadly. "Poor kid... wonder what's wrong with her?" I blinked at the sudden emergence of that thought, but shrugged it aside. "I feel like there's something I should do..." Lita simply looked at me. "Like what, for instance?" "Well --" My eyes suddenly went wide. Those thoughts... they weren't just random words. I realized that they were parts of that last rush of memory I'd gotten from Ami! Of course, they didn't make much sense at all... for all I knew, they could have just been random bits of a nightmare Ami had once had. Then again... those images WERE resounding fairly loudly in my mind... "Uhm." I cleared my throat. "Something wrong?" I nodded. "I think something *is* wrong, and it has to do with Ami. But first, I've gotta ask you a question..." The look she gave me couldn't have been stranger if I'd suddenly started doing a striptease for her right on the spot. "Okaaaay..." she said, tenatively. "I'm listening..." "Lita... what do you know about the North Pole?' The moment I said those last two words, I knew I'd hit paydirt with something. There must have been something truly horrific associated with that phrase to make someone as fearless and as self-assured as Lita turn absolutely bone-white, as she was doing now. Lita started to say something, then stopped. She started to say something again, then stopped again. Start, stop, start, stop. And all the while, she was trembling violently, as if she were about to faint, or cry, or perhaps both. It was exteremely unnerving, even disturbing, to see Lita like this. Instinctively, I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. I was amazed at how tense her shoulder muscles felt in my hand... "Lita?" I asked, gently. "Do you want to talk about it?" Under her breath, I thought I heard her mutter "I was afraid of this..." Then, after a moment to compose herself, she looked me dead in the eye, and I could see a whole catalog of conflicting emotions in her eyes. Her voice, however, was relatively normal. "...I'm sorry... I didn't mean to zone like that, really. It's just that..." "That what?" "Um... can I trust you, Darren?" "Sure." "I mean it. I don't want *anyone* to know what I'm about to say. It does NOT leave this room, understood?" "I wouldn't dream of arguing with you," I said truthfully. She smiled slightly at that, then continued. "OK then... you want to know about the North Pole, right?" I nodded. "What happened? I'm assuming you had a battle there..." "You don't know the HALF of it," Lita sighed... and with that, she began to spin a tale so bizarre, so unbelievable, that if I hadn't just spent most of the last 36 hours as a female superhero, I would probably have laughed in her face. As it was, however, I could only sit back and be shocked by what Lita was telling me. It went like this... but maybe I should let Lita explain it in her own words. After all, it *was* her story. "It was about a year ago... we'd been teleported up to the North Pole - and yeah, OK, there's not supposed to be any land up there, I know, but there we were - and we were supposed to be kicking Queen Beryl's Nega-butt all the way back to the Dark Kingdom. But, it didn't quite turn out like that... "It started when we ran into these five monsters that Beryl'd sent after us once we hit her home turf. They were using these illusions of our friends to try and confuse us, to lure us into their clutches." She let out a slight chuckle. "They actually managed to fool Serena with that trick several times - no matter how often we stopped her, and told her that it was all a trick, she just kept right on running for 'her' Tuxedo Mask! It was almost comical --" "Hold on," I interrupted. "Tuxedo *who*?" "Tuxedo MASK," she replied. "Um... it's kind of a long story... the short version is, he's Serena's boyfriend, and he'd been captured by this Beryl person. One of the things we were gonna do there was try to set him free again." I just nodded my acknowledgement, even though I couldn't really understand what she'd just said. I was more concerned about where this story was leading. "Anyway," she continued, and here her voice turned slightly bitter. "After we'd finally gotten Serena calmed down enough to recognize an illusion when she saw one... *I* go and fall for the same damn trick!" She grumbled angrily, took a deep breath, calmed herself, and resumed. "I ended up getting pulled about a hundred feet in the air; these monsters had tied me up in their tentacles and just hoisted me into the air like I was some kind of prize trophy, or something. Then they started shocking me with waves of electricity..." ...I could detect her voice was becoming slightly more nervous, slightly less steady, by this point... the other shoe was getting ready to drop, I could tell... "...I say something corny, something like how they can't use my own element against me... So I used my Jupiter Thunder... at close range, it took out two of the five of them..." She sighed deeply. "But..." And there, she just let it hang. I waited patiently, realizing that whatever was coming next, it was obviously gonna be the part of this that had spooked her so severely before. After a minute had passed without Lita saying a word, however, I grew slightly impatient. Finally, I asked, as gently as I could, "But *what*?" Lita gave me a significant look, sighed, and closed her eyes. "But... since I did it at close range... the backlash of the attack... "...it killed me." I gaped open-mouthed at what she'd just said. Surely, she didn't mean... "Killed, as in, you just didn't have anything left to fight with, right?" "No," Lita snapped suddenly, and I jumped back as a result of her sudden flash of anger. "I mean 'killed' as in DEAD! As in six feet under! As in the Grim Reaper, the permanent dirt-nap, ALL that stuff! I was gone, kaput, deceased, call it what you want, it still adds up to D-E-A-D, dead!" For one of the few times in my life... I didn't know what to say. I simply stared at her. After a few moments, Lita seemed to take hold of herself again. "Aw jeez... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump at you like that, really. But... well, you can imagine, this isn't something I like to think about; I doubt we've even discussed it among *ourselves* more than once since... since it happened." "Dead?" I repeated softly, almost to myself. "*Dead*? Then... h-how... why...?!" "...am I standing here right now?" Lita finished. "That's a very interesting question... "You see, the next thing I knew after I died... I was standing beside Sailor Moon, along with everyone else - I later found out that they'd all been killed too on this little 'adventure' - and we were uniting our powers to destroy Beryl, and her master Metallia, once and for all. "After that, it gets fuzzy... Serena was lying there, dying, her every last bit of life-energy spent by what we'd done... she made a dying wish on that crystal of hers, or something - it wasn't for herself, it was for all of her friends, that they could be brought back to life... and lo and behold, the bloody thing resurrects all of us. "There you have it. That's the story of the North Pole." I was absolutely flabbergasted. I tried to think of something, *anything*, to say after that. I think "Wow..." was the best I could manage. It also cleared up one giant question mark in all of this. "I'm surprised Ami didn't tell you any of that while you were with her," Lita said. "I mean, yeah, she wouldn't *want* to talk about it, but still, I would've thought --" "That's just the problem!" I shouted, suddenly. "What?" "She DIDN'T tell me!" Lita said nothing, but gave me one of those "You'd-best-be-explaining- yourself" stares. "Lita... when I transformed into Sailor Mercury, I picked up all of Ami's memories and life experiences... except one. She'd deliberately blocked it off, because she didn't want to even think about it." Lita nodded, suddenly seeing where I was going with this. "The North Pole?" "Exactly! ...Thing is, when Sailor Moon seperated us, as I felt myself pull away from her... I don't know what I did, but I must have triggered that part of her mind... and --" "...and that's how you knew what to ask me about." "Yes, that's it exactly! But you know what ELSE that means..." Lita shot to her feet. "It means, if she HAD blocked that on purpose..." I stood up too. "...and I blew that memory cap on my way out..." "...then, she remembers everything now..." "...and, she didn't ALLOW herself to come to terms with it..." "...so, she's feeling the full emotional weight..." "...that's been building for a year..." "...AND SHE HASN'T COME OUT OF HER ROOM ALL DAY?!?", we both finished in horrified unison, as we both reached the same conclusion at the same time. I felt a bottomless pit open up in my stomach. "I've got a very bad feeling about this, Lita..." "Me too." I could tell, just by looking, that Lita was thinking exactly the same thing I was - hoping, praying it wasn't true, but acknowledging the possibility nonetheless. "Me too..." I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point after she said that, we ended up in each others' arms... both of us holding on to each other for dear life, out of fear for a mutual friend... afraid to let go, for fear we'd both fall apart if we did. --- End of part 9. Author's Notes: Sorry, nothing to add this time. I've got to jump right into part 10, lest I leave THAT door open for too long. Till next time... Sailor Moon is TM and Copyright (C) 1992 Naoko Takeuchi / Kodansha / Toei Animation / Bandai. English Language Adaptation is Copyright (C) 1997 DIC Productions, L.P., a Division of the Walt Disney Corporation. Any other trademarked names used herein are TM and Copyright (C) their respective owners. All rights reserved. No claim of ownership, expressed or implied, is made or intended in the use of these trademarked names, characters, and likenesses. - Devin de Gruyl 4 July 1999