Title: On Razor’s Edge – Chapter 13
Summary: Crystal Tokyo has arrived. So has Ando Tanaka.
Warnings: This some is intense. Swearing, violence, some of it other thing graphic than the rest. All warnings lay upon, rated R to NC-17.
A/N: As unceasingly, thanks to the amazing Charlie ~ the sake of her editorial and personal support. You’re a swain! And to darling Spirit, too!
The piercing edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the solid say the path to Salvation is sour.
~ verse in the Katha-Upanishad
Ando had had a in preference sleepless night. Having felt something, anything, in the open atmosphere, he had finally abandoned his futile attempt to fall asleep and got up encompassing four, slipping into heavy winter clothing and snuck out of the palace through one of its many close passages. He’d aimlessly begun to walk in a circle Tokyo, letting his mind drift.
Rei had set off more distant lately; he knew why, of course. The midnight sessions in c~tinuance the rooftop had begun to take their allure on her. She saw less than Michiru and Hiromasa, and suffered because of it. Even though it had been over a decade ago, the decision to quit her life as a miko appease held her in its grasp. She (and everyone otherwise around her, himself included) had singly understood that her powers stemmed from her saintliness to her belief as much considered in the state of from her magical heritage, and one time the devotion was lost, so were her powers. Well, more of them. Ando believed that the bounty of the second sight would go sooner rather than later, but for of the rising threat of Wiseman, time was a article of merchandise they could no longer trade in.
Burrowing his nose deeper into the folds of his red scarf, he swallowed. It quiet made him nervous, having to semblance a strange enemy, one whose powers and attacks manifested differently for the cause that the shitennou had returned and the mould of the future had thus been altered. Setsuna was futile as ever, not willing to tell any information that might help them obstruct a catastrophe, and of course Takeshi was backing her each step of the way, uptight moron that he was. Ando had grown to heed brash Haruka and ruthless Michiru, absolutely because they, much like him, were willing to do everything in their dominion to keep Mamoru and Usagi safe. They refused to play by the rules whether or not the rules meant that the risks were exponentially higher. Setsuna however… well, in that place was no way Ando could value someone who had all the powers of the globe in her hands and refused to conversion to an act them for her loved ones. And the Minako act might be a factor, too, he had to own grudgingly. He checked his watch; it was well-nigh six in the morning. He beyond all question to go home; perhaps Rei was awake or Minako was just returning, and the same of them might surely keep him visitors for breakfast.
Turning a corner, Ando noticed that the day-star was ever so slowly rising besides the palace, casting the crystal in a hot red light. There was a smooth in the sky, probably taking populate on their well-earned holidays. He’d bear to take Rei to New York before long, show her the city and all his favourite haunts.
But then the colour unfold, and something dropped out of the smooth, and with beating heart, Ando realised that it wasn’t the first blush of the morning after all.
It was fire.
***
Takeshi had barked holy ~ at the phone, called for succor and military and ambulances, all under which circumstances dressing himself and making for the door. He didn’t wait for Setsuna.
As the means slammed behind him, Setsuna drew the blankets round her. Her skin was all goosebumps.
“And thus it begins,” she whispered, and closed her eyes.
***
“What carry into effect we do?” Usagi cried, clinging to Mamoru’s give . She was a fighter, but not a soldier. One enemy she could face, she could convince, she could redeem, but against these depersonified masses, she was powerless.
“Are these… tanks?” Hiromasa asked, stepping closer to the window. Looking up, his eyes widened in dismay. “Fuck, and planes. Fuck fuck fuck.”
“Hiro, not that come to ~ quarters,” Mamoru called out, and his broad friend stepped back.
Umino was walking up and from a thin to a dense state the windows, touching each one and murmuring talk in the long forgotten language of Elysion. Finally, he turned to his friends. “The wards decision hold, as long as it’s alone normal fire. But if Wiseman uses magic, we’re screwed. I don’t be sure what he’ll throw at us, in such a manner I can’t prepare the stately mansion for it.”
“Makoto and Ami aren’t answering the phone,” Rei afore~ quietly, sitting at the edge of the depression, phone in hand. She was dialing again, punching in Minako’s number this time. There was a conspectus beeping sound before the line went dead. “Phone lines are etc.. I’ll go get my communicator from my sweep, be right back.” She got up and slid from the bedroom, either step silent and certain.
Mamoru swallowed. “I should assemble Takeshi.”
Hiro nodded.
“And Ando,” Umino added, kneeling into disfavor and touching the crystal floor. The volcano’s ardor, buried underneath the palace, sealed let us go., was pulsing under his hand. “This isn’t advantageous,” he murmured.
Then the pose began to shake.
***
Ando raced encompassing a corner just as the East Wing exploded into a the masses little pieces.
Finally.
The word was right a whisper in his mind, an itch at the edge of his consciousness, moreover Ando caught the thought anyway. And there could be only person from whose will it had sprung. Ando frantically looked surrounding. He must be here.
“WISEMAN!” he hollered, hoping to protract him out. If he could alone find out where Wiseman was, he’d take care of it. He’d take care of it, and Rei and Usagi and Umino and Mamoru would subsist fine. They’d be fine. “WISEMAN!” If they had at all luck, any whatsoever, Minako hadn’t further returned home, wasn’t in the east pennon, wasn’t buried amidst thousands of niggard diamonds raining from the blood red firmament.
***
Tyres screeching, Takeshi pushed his base down harder, taking the corner of the walker zone with 130 km/h. Time was of the central nature; and unlike the senshi, the shitennou could not teleport as easily. He had to make his march to the palace the ordinary, the heavy way, and it was absolutely infuriating. He’d overtaken at minutest three camera crews in their great vans. They were like vultures circling a mere framework.
The phone connection was still not laboring, there was no telling whether Mamoru and Usagi were equal still alive. And Minako—
Takeshi brushed the judgment from his mind. There was none use in panicking. He had a way, and the first step of the delineate was to get to the palace as quickly as possible.
***
The concussion stopped after a minute.
“What the fuck was that?” Hiro shouted, extreme in his voice.
Rei crouched nearest to Umino, running her hand softly very the crystal and the flames that licked at it from below while simultaneously steadying herself. She drew in a make keen breath. “The stones are mild.”
“What?” Hiro break open out. “But the volcano has been contained through the Silver Crystal. Umino, you declared so! What the fuck is going forward here?”
Umino closed his eyes and set with food his palm on the floors, constraining it down with all his pressure. Sweat began to rise on his front, and he bit down on his lips.
“There’s…. they’ve— they’ve begun their magical assail.”
Usagi reached for Mamoru’s hand. She looked outside, getting as stop up to the window as Mamoru would give leave to her. “It’s raining,” she muttered. “It’s raining… shine?”
Hiro moved next to her, acquisition paler by the second. This lifetime, he was a beget, a husband, a handyman. The breed of man you asked to set your creaky door, your dripping gentle blow. Not the kind of man you’d ask to defend your palace. “They’re throwing bombs,” he said without inflection. “All over the city, look.” He pointed to the distance, where rays of fire shot up in the firmament, glimmering like the stars at night. “They’re targeting the crystals totality over the city. They must be obliged hit the palace. That’s why it shook.”
Usagi swallowed and enjoin her other hand in Hiro’s. “It’s a untarnished thing then that Aiko and Yoshi and Makoto are in the countryside. Let’s add to the number our blessings. Makoto and the children are unscathed, Hiro, and we will survive. We for ever do, don’t we?” She gave him a trivial smile, her blue eyes as hopeful during the time that ever. “We’ll be elegant.”
Across the room, Mamoru sought Umino’s eyes.
There were in ~ degree words necessary.
Umino shook his individual.
***
When the whole world explodes right and left you, there are only two things you be possible to do. You can fight like spiritual agony, or you can give up.
Minako Aino was a warrior. Unfortunately, so was the man who had revealed himself to have existence Ace.
Sobbing, she threw the gory. kitchen knife as far away in the same manner with possible and got up. It carry the point the walls with a dull tumult and clattered to the floor. Her legs were split, and her clothes were where she’d left them utmost night, in a pile next to the lie. Stripped off in excitement, forgotten in a short heap. Exactly as they’d been a scarcely any hours ago. Except that now, they were sprayed by blood.
Looking everywhere but at the denuded dead man sprawled out on the get the better of, lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling, she stepped from one side the ever-expanding puddle of kinship, pulled on her soiled dress and reached notwithstanding her purse. She was pretty trustworthy she had at least two shattered ribs and a fractured wrist, however Ami would take care of that later.
Oh God, how could she explain this to Ami? How could she make intelligible that the man she’d been oh with equal rea~n casually sleeping with was a creature of the Dark Kingdom? That her informer was actually one of their enemies? That she’d had to take up arms him naked, in his studio chamber, because he refused to let her abroad? Minako drew in a sharp vital spark. Oh God. Forget Ami. How could at any time explain this to Takeshi? She’d failed, failed completely. Feeling the creation swim around her, she reached exhausted and steadied herself against the wall.
It was ~t any use. She had to go put ~. She always had to. No thing what. She had to find a tendency of action.
She hadn’t been able to practise it to the henshin pen in her purse which time the fight broke out, but she had made it to the knife they’d divide yesterday’s pizza with.
Letting be about of the wall, she began to plodding student in her purse for her henshin coop. Time to transform, time to walk to the palace.
As the enchantment enveloped her, Minako looked straight in front, her vision swimming with tears.
But unruffled so, she could see it clearly plenty.
The red handprint she’d left on the wall.
***
More…
Ando whipped on every side of. He was in one of the inconsiderable alleys closest to the palace. There were a few souvenir shops in here, a bakery, a deli. Other than that, it was merely residential houses. Or rather, there had been.
He gulped.
He was positive he’d seen a torn up limb just a minute ago, lifelessly peaking through of the ruins. The bomb that had taken at a loss the east wing had found it’s sanguinary path to this small, nothing disclosed of the ordinary, completely non-magical street and made it look like a arbitrament of the sword zone.
The east wing. The element of the palace in which Minako had her rooms. In what one. he had his rooms. The wing Rei occasionally snuck into in the timely hours of the morning, when she wanted to light sleep with the sunlight on her external aspect. It was an extravagance she’d none admit to Usagi or Minako, but that which she’d told him concerning, once. She’d blushed so prettily that he had to kiss her. That had allure to the first time they’d—
Ando stopped dead in his tracks. He couldn’t observe this. Deface his memories of Rei amidst this wreckage. He had to declare by verdict Wiseman. Had to find him and take him aloud and then go looking for Rei and Minako and Mamoru and the rest.
Somewhere, this natural was hiding, letting bombs rain downward on the city. And he was doing event else, too, something magical. Ando could be perceived it, no, taste it in the open ~.
Edging closer to the palace, Ando closed his eyes. In the remoteness, sirens were wailing, and unless he was erroneous, someone was honking his car’s bony excrescence as if there was no tomorrow. Which puissance have been closer to the fact than anyone would guess. Trying to enclose the sounds out, he cast his thoughts into the remoteness, trying to locate Wiseman. But in that place was silence. No more sinister thoughts, ~t one voices. Nothing.
No way of verdict him.
***
The floors were pulsing; broad red spots spreading underneath the crystal.
“It’s acquirement warmer in here, isn’t it?” Usagi asked, unsure of whether or not to take distant from her big fluffy robe.
Mamoru nodded. “I be of opinion we should evacuate. I can take you everything to Elysion. It’ll be protected there.”
Hiro nodded his concur. “And let’s get Mako and the kids there too. Just to be on the unharmed side. Who knows how long the stately mansion can withhold the attack. If things be off wrong, I don’t want anyone adjacent the madman running the attack or the volcano erupting total over the city.”
“I be able to take care of this,” Rei afore~ quietly. “I’ll go into the catacombs and whisper the volcano to slumber again. We just need to contrary whatever Wiseman is doing. I be possible to do it.”
“Rei,” Umino before-mentioned quietly, “it’s too hazardous. I cannot guarantee that the wards have a mind hold against an extended air assault, magical or not. We need to allowance.” He turned to Hiro. “We require to get Ami, too. She’s at be in action.”
“I’ve left my home back once,” Rei interrupted, her tone shaking. “I’m not doing it again.” Getting to her feet, she brushed a few specks of dust off. Her eyes flickered red, a sign of Mars pushing at the edges of Rei’s consciousness.
“Oh Rei,” Usagi whispered and went to obtain out to her friend, but Rei stepped begone from the Queen’s touch. “Just give me an hour. I command spirit, I can control this.”
Mamoru ran a ~writing over his face. “I’m seizing everyone else to Elysion in ten minutes, except something happens. Then it’s sooner in some measure than later. I’ll come back by reason of you and Umino.” Umino swallowed. Of process. For a second, he’d supposition he’d leave to go Elysion by everyone else, but it was his powers feed the palace’s wards running, in the way that he couldn’t leave. If he stepped external the palace (particularly into another measure ), he’d leave the palace large open for attack. Finding the involuntary resolve, he nodded and got up.
“Good. I’ll appointment Ami and let her know through the pick-up. Can you teleport into the hospital to fetch her?”
“What do you unfair ‘good’?” Usagi asked, a list of items of panic creeping into her suffrage. “There’s nothing good ready this! Rei, I absolutely refuse to leave you here all alone. Nu-uh. Not going to happen. I’ll go with you. And Umino, you can’t stay here on your own! And what encircling the people? What’ll happen to them under which circumstances we run to Elysion?”
Everyone ferocious silent.
Everyone except for Hiro. He was looking at the celestial expanse, red with fire and light, helicopters circling. There were a few from news stations, but there were some that must belong to the charge.They were waiting for them.
“They die. Or they live on, because we’re no longer round. We’re their bait.”
***
Near the productions of the former southeast secret enchant, a swirl of golden glitter announced the arrival of Sailor Venus. As quickly as her feet touched the field, Minako detransformed.
“Oh my God,” Minako afore~ under her breath, unable to take in the aim of destruction around her. The east wing was gone. They was rubble in all lands; here. In the distance, explosions tore the city asunder. “Oh God.” Her bedroom, gone. Ando’s stead, gone. She turned on the speck, trying to process the information.
East Wing, gone.
Secret avenue, blocked.
Rest of palace, still established.
What else, what else?
She squinted her eyes. The palace was shimmering…. red?
Flames direct the South Wing.
Behind her, a car screeched to a come to a stop.
“Minako!”
She blinked.
“MINAKO!”
Slowly turnery around, she saw Takeshi running towards her. Around them, the nature was falling apart, and yet in the present state he was, dressed in a moor suit and an impeccably ironed clean shirt. His only concession to the current pecuniary standing was his lack of a join. A detached part of her managed to smile at how ridiculous it all was.
“GET AWAY!” he shouted. When he reached her, he pulled her gone from the rubble and back towards the car. “Get in, Minako. Damn it, gain in the car.” When he grabbed her carpus, she winced. Definitely fractured. But the anguish served to focus her attention once more, letting the shock fade away. Somewhere, a thing exploded.
“No, Takeshi, we strait to go in. We need to look whether everyone is okay!”
Gearing the car to counterpart, Takeshi hit the accelerator. “Are you harm?”
Minako didn’t bother checking her pretext. She knew very well what she be under the necessity of look like. Bloodied dress, body covered in bruises. “Nothing over bad. Ami will fix me up. I’ll appeal her— damn.”
Her phone was attached mute. And on Ace’s bedside slab. Fuck.
“Give me your phone.”
He pulled his phone from the interior pocket of his jacket and tossed it at her. She caught it through her left.
He noticed, of course. “What’s wrong with your direction?”
“I think it’s contrite,” she replied while dialling Ami’s numerate. “Where are we going?”
He opened his inlet to answer and closed it anew.
“Takeshi? Where are we going?”
“I don’t perceive. There are two tanks in encounter of the main entrance, a helicopter circling the West beginning, and masked armed guards in greatest part streets leading to the palace. And intelligence team all over the place. I’d hoped we could receive in via the secret passage, otherwise than that not only do I think it’s blocked, it’s alienated too visible. We’d be guiding them right to them.” He paused despite a moment as he shifted gears, and took them below the horizon the alley that would eventually be in advance of them to Makoto’s café. “You were immovable there with a big red x painted on your back, Minako.”
She brushed his make notes away, not having the time to analyse whether it is a scurrility or an expression of worry.
You wish reached Ami Mizuno’s phone. Leave a word after the—-
Minako hung up, and dialled Rei’s contain instead.
The person you have called is temporarily unavail—
Makoto.
Hi, it’s Mako, we’re currently busy, please leave a message—
Usagi.
The person you desire called is temporarily unavail—
“They’re not answering,” Minako related, her mind flipping through possible scenarios for example if they were a stack of cards. It was Ando’s reach the ~ of she dialled next, heart beginning to excogitate in her chest. Please pick up, please please please.
But there’s non-existence, and the call doesn’t approve through.
The person you have called is temporarily unavail—
Not bothering by the red light, he pushed his supply with a ~ on the accelerator. They sped through the crossing, past the barrage of recent accounts vehicles and ambulances and police cars heading towards the palace.
“Takeshi. Where. Are. We. Going?”
He clenched his maxillary bone.
“To safety.”
And sooner or later, suddenly, she knew.
***
It was vehement underneath the palace. Hot, pulsing, risky.
It was where Sailor Mars belonged.
Rei took a depth breath. Mamoru would take them tot~y away to Elysion now. Everyone further her and Umino. That was honorable. Umino was powerful, far more operative than he’d ever let in successi~, and as for herself… well, she was alto gether safe down here. Who to more intimate. see various meanings of good deal with fire than the senshi who commanded it?
Reaching shrewd inside her soul, Rei Hino unlocked the abstruse door to her second self, and exclusively of the help of her henshin impound or Usagi, transformed. Her eyes to the degree that red as the lava in stand over against of her, she stepped right into its fervid folds.
***
It had taken more navy than he would have believed potential, and a significant portion of it had been drained begone by his wife, who had resisted the teleportation to Elysion through every ounce of her body. But after this at least Usagi and Hiro were sound. It was a beginning.
Staggering, Mamoru reached on the ~side, and his arm found Hiro, who steadied him. “You can’t get along with you back yet,” Hiro murmured. “You privation a minute.”
Mamoru looked up and his eyes met his wife’s. More than in ~ degree other person he knew, Usagi looked like she belonged in this magical domain with its evergreen meadows, smiling flowers, and lovable air. But there were tears in her eyes; and she looked torn. Oh, he didn’t privation to be a mindreader to discern what she was thinking. She wanted him to have ~ing safe, but she also wished conducive to Ami to be plucked from the hospital and deposited into safety. She worried over Minako, Takeshi, and Setsuna, over Ando and Umino and Rei, and into the bargain every single inhabitant of Tokyo. If Makoto and the kids weren’t in the countryside, she’d probably have clawed his eyes out in preference than let him transport her to this place. Inwardly, Mamoru cursed, despairing over his hold ineptitude and his wife’s bountiful heart. She wanted to fight, to pass over everything better, and instead, he’d made her leave everything and everyone behind. A wound trickled down her cheek, and unseen by any of them, the flowers close the little pond began to wither.
“Ami first?” he asked, sentiment like a monster, especially with Hiro power to stand next to him, father of two, friend of all. They were running deficient in of time, and for the first time since donning the mask and the surpass hat with his wife by his interest, Mamoru knew that they would not wholly reunite. This time, it was not the same.
In a moment of grace, it was his brook-like friend who answered, doling loudly absolution, making the decision. “Ami ~ and foremost.”
***
They were like magpies, these quondam colleagues of his. Amidst death and plague, reporters ran, filming broken buildings and spilt hot spark, the wounded and the dead, and the attacks that kept adhering coming. They snuck behind tanks, confident as brass. He could feel their looks trailing him; he’d been recognized being of the cl~s who someone in the Queen’s employ. More than formerly, people had called him. Tanaka, they called, Tanaka! Hoping to practise ~ing his attention, get a statement, rather with tears running down his boldness. Of course, they didn’t be assured of a thing more than his distinction and position, didn’t know that this set upon was brought on by the shitennous’ reincarnation. Didn’t be aware of he was every bit as magical being of the kind which the crystals currently being blown to pieces all over the city. Fuck fuck fuck.
It was pandemonium, and somewhere in this mess, Usagi and Rei and Umino and Minako and Mamoru, of round, Mamoru, were hidden, and hopefully safer than those monsters in visible sight. A part of himself, detached and shocked at the identical time, noted that on this selvage of people he worried over, his prince was a mere afterthought.
Yessss
There, that was it. Where, in which place, where?
Revenge. Power. Mine.
Closer.
Ando closed his eyes, blindly influencing towards the thought. He stumbled completely something, some rubble on the overthrow, but didn’t stop. God, he hoped it was rubble. Hoped it wasn’t a body. He had to go on, adhering and on until he—-
Finally. Today, they die. They altogether die.
He opened his eyes. Behind the tidings van to his right. The view had vibrated in his mind, that’s how strong it was. It had made his hands have a pricking sensation. So much anger, so much recoil from.. Ando exhaled. He could end this. He could end this right now. Stop the man who stopped short of nothing. Wiseman was the direct of this operation; with him gone, the impugn would fall apart, and they could avail back to being safe and dysfunctional and because happy as people with two lifetimes credit of bloody baggage could be.
And it was good like lighting a cigarette out of not thick air, just like reading a go out of the way thought. He could do this, had terminated this a thousand times. Jadeite, quondam master of the flames. Former master of witchery.
Drawing on the power of the crystal, the palace, and the volcano underneath, he closed his eyes, called forward the fire, and with all his potency, hurled it in the direction of the covered wagon.
***
There was dust on every surface, and not a single soul inner part. If she was surprised that he check carried the key in his pouch, after all this time, she didn’t speciousness it. Even under these circumstances, the default of Attila in these walls was like a lick to the chest. He hoped that at more point in the future, he would ~ by heart to tell Mamoru about the moment the world was falling apart and Takeshi Nakamura had matter of no consequence better to do than mourn his dead dog. The figment might be good enough to cause to be his prince to smile. But like it was, there was precious weak to smile about now, and haply never again.
Michiru and Haruka haven’t answered their phones both. Minako had tried to contact Hotaru, likewise, but the call didn’t journey through. It was the same by Hiro and Umino. This only left the same of them and both of them were with pain aware of who this was. Even in the circumstance, awful as they were, things were achingly clumsy. Leaning against the dusty kitchen reckoner, he watched as Minako closed her eyes.
“You want to call Setsuna. Tell her to advance here.”
For a second, he wanted to declare . But this was the bed that he had made as antidote to himself, and now he had to song in it. She held out his volatile, a fake olive branch to realize them through this moment.
Of way, Setsuna answered her phone on the support ring.
“Yes?” Sometimes, he wondered whether there was a single question in the globe his girlfriend did not know the respond to already. It was her omniscience he counted up~ the body now.
“Usagi and Mamoru?” he asked, fatiguing to sound calm, but feeling anything but that, especially with Minako opposite him, passion-stained, broken-boned, in what used to have existence their home. He had to take her into preservation. Had he not met her in that place, in front of the palace, looking moiety dead, he’d have gone in, would get searched the premises. Had he paid with regard to Minako’s safety with that of his prince?
He had had a plot. A plan that he abandoned toward the woman he— He stopped himself. This was neither the time nor the place. It was the mansion that made him sentimental, that made him fail to obtain sight of what was important. “Alive,” Setsuna whispered and Takeshi sagged opposite to the counter.
“You need to get to to my old house.” Resolve had returned to him. They needed to regroup. Get Setsuna here, get Ami and Makoto here, and in that case find a way to save everyone besides from inside the palace.
There was a gravity of silence.
“Setsuna?”
When she spoke afresh, Takeshi thought she sounded surprised. “I… I would be seized of thought you’d be elsewhere at that time.”
Minako looked up, a seed returning to her eyes. He met her gaze unflinchingly.
And fair like that, the future had changed once more.
*** End of Chapter 13 ***
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