Character Sketches #1, Sailor Mercury - Part II, "Mizuno the Senshi"
Chapter 4: In which Amy seeks closure, and in doing so reaches a decision.

"A twenty-year-old student was assaulted yesterday at about 2:50am, on the Johns Hopkins campus. the Woman, Amy Anderson, was taken to St. Agnes Hospital for observation. No suspects are being questioned at this time."

-Baltimore Sun, page B2, police beat section for Baltimore city

"Ami-chan? My, but she was the bookworm. But we hardly ever kidded her about it. In her own way, she was as integral to the team as Usagi. I guess that one of the things we depended on her for was her objectivity, her sang-froid, if you will. We could always count on her to stay calm, and never fall prey to those mood swings adolescent girls fell into all too often."

-Minako Aino, _The Autobiography of Sailor V_

"Buck up, Amy, it's a nice day outside!" Jen proceeded to open the drab curtains, letting the brilliant morning sunshine stream through the window. Thus illuminated, the room somehow looked more like a particularly clean double bedroom, and less like an antiseptic hospital room.

"Is it?"

"Yeah, about seventy, not a cloud in the sky...well, except for the smog, but--oh, I got your mail for you." Jen fished a stack of paper out from her bookbag and dumped it upon the nightstand.

"Gee, thanks," she said sincerely. She rubbed one of her myriad sore spots, and checked her watch. "Um, could you grab the remote, please? It's almost time for Sailor Moon to come on."

"You really do like that show, don't you?" Jen reached over to the remote control, which was inexplicably on the windowsill.

"I suppose I have a certain affinity for it. And after spending two days in the hospital, you tend to need the distraction." And the laugh, she thought. But she saw something else disturbing: an odd look in Jen's eyes as she proffered the device.

"Amy, have you done something with your hair? It looks different somehow. Kind of bluish."

Amy flipped on the TV, and the mangled American version of Moonlight Denetsu blared from the speaker. "Must be the lights; I can't stand florescent." Actually, it was the effect of not having a chance to dye her hair for two days. The disguise magic which had protected them until their discovery was supposed to eliminate all but the most determined. In theory, one could not tell that Sailor Mercury was Amy Anderson unless a) you saw the one turn into the other, or b) you reached the conclusion through logic, intuition, indirect evidence, deduction, and a hell of a lot of luck. And for the longest time, luck had been with them. But aside from her hair (which she had grown a bit longer), there were no magical wards to stop anyone from connecting Amy Anderson with Ami Mizuno. If Jen could somehow figure out...no, that was silly. Wasn't it?

"Oh. Well, it does look a bit on the blue side, or maybe purple. Anyway, you've got to get better soon! We've got a baseball game to go to, and I'm not going to have an empty seat next to me." She peered more closely at Amy's face. "Come on, Amy, look on the bright side! You weren't raped, were you? You're still alive, and the docs say you'll be out by tomorrow afternoon!"

Amy was listening to this as she leafed through the mail, and found yet another letter from Urawa. Damn! She hadn't gotten around to opening the first one.

"Um, do you have a letter opener, or...oh, never mind." She fished a letter opener out of the nightstand's drawer and slit the envelope in question. Jen crowded around her, squinting at the writing.

"It's in Japanese!"

"Well, of course it's in Japanese, silly! It's from Japan, and if you don't mind, I'd like some privacy while I read it."

"Geez, what am I going to do, instantly figure out kanji?"

"Katakana."

"Whatever." But Jen still complied with her friend's wishes, and moved off to the window to take in the view, such as it was. Amy proceeded to peruse the pertinent petite piece of paper.

Three minutes later, Amy looked up. Her hands were shaking after having read the letter several times.

"What, is it bad news or something?"

"It was...an old friend. He knew that I would get mugged."

"WHAT!?! Why, if he's mixed up in this somehow..."

"No, don't worry!" said Amy, trying to calm her friend down. "Urawa--"

"Urawa?"

"Yes, that's his name, and could you *please* stop interrupting?"

"Gee, sorry. Pray continue."

Amy pressed on. "Anyway, he's always had a kind of...sense of what's going to happen. I guess you could call it clairvoyance, but--"

"You mean that he can tell the future? Why didn't he tell you earlier?"

Amy made another one of her famous, lightning-fast logical leaps, and sighed. "He did."

"What?"

She's like Usagi, she thought angrily. Just replace 'what' with 'nani,' and attach some odango. "He did! I got a letter from him before the mugging, but I never got to open it. It was probably a warning."

"But then--" She left the rest of her deduction unsaid.

"Yes. He knew, somehow, that I wouldn't get to read it, so he sent this letter to make me feel better."

"But...well...if he knew that you weren't going to read it, why'd he send it?"

Amy's mind went back to a conversation she and Urawa had had so long ago. "Because the future is never get in stone. He had to make the attempt, because if there was the slightest chance that he was wrong, then he had to try."

"Hm. Must be a fun guy to have around at the racetrack."

"You could say that." You could say that he was a fun guy to have around anytime, she thought. Why hadn't he come back? Even after the world found out who the senshi were, she still didn't get a word from him.

There were some times that she felt that the universe was completely out of kilter. This was one of them. Over and over again, she had visions of a different universe: a universe where, years ago, they were never found out. where they fought a peril from another dimension, and met four new senshi, one of them turning out to be evil, only to be turned into good. Where they fought yet another evil queen, and Chibi-Usa met a new friend. Where they faced a being bent on galactic domination, and somehow prevailed, despite things getting unbelievably bleak, all the while meeting unreal numbers of senshi.

Over and over again, she saw this universe, and strangest of all, she wasn't in it. Sure, she saw Ami Mizuno and Sailor Mercury, but she herself wasn't there. It was the same here. A different Ami should be here, not her.

Jen, after waiting a good ten minutes for Amy to finish her thought, decided that it was high time for her to get to class.

The next day, Amy found herself at a rather nondescript police station, sitting behind the nondescript one-way mirror, looking at the certainly descript riffraff before her. All manners of low-life's were arrayed before her, all resembling the composite sketch that had been produced from her accounts. Now came the hard part.

"Um, number five is right out. So is number eight."

The detective standing next to her spoke into the phone, and the persons Amy had indicated made their way out. Amy squinted, and tried to bring back the memories of that night. The ringleader, he'd had...blonde hair? Or brown? The lighting had been so abominable then. Perhaps it was...him!"

"Number nine."

The detective raised an eyebrow; they were usually a lot less decisive. "Are you certain, ma'am?"

"Yes, dammit!"

He raised another eyebrow, and hoped that she didn't surprise him again; he was out of eyebrows. A secretary walked in with a stack of papers. The detective noticed her in mid-speech.

"Absolutely certain that it's number--hold it a minute, would you Misty--nine?"

Amy struggled to retain her composure. Something he had said...Misty nine, Mistress 9? She knew someone of that name. Had fought her. But that was absurd; the last enemy they had faced was Hastings, and he had been gone for ages, never to return. And yet, she was supposed to have met her.

But she shook it off. She couldn't afford to waver in front of this stranger. Later, perhaps...but not now. And not before she had taken care of one other thing. "Yes. I'm certain."

"Okay." He picked up the phone and spoke again. Amy watched two guards lead the man off. "Well, Ms..."

"Anderson."

"Anderson, if you'd come this way, please, we have some paperwork to fill out...."

That evening, as Jen went out to watch the Orioles' arrive at the airport, fresh from spring training in Florida, Amy sat hunched over a sewing machine. It had been remarkably easy to buy. She had enormous quantities of money laying around, rarely doing anything requiring leisure money. The hardest part had been lugging the machine into her room, and finding just the right shade of blue thread.

She was dressed in only a bathrobe, and had turned up the heat to compensate, despite the warm spring air. Besides its insulative properties, it also had a handy pocket for a calculator, perfect for figuring out nasty decimals. She had various measurements to calculate, and it simply wouldn't do to get them wrong. There was an image to uphold here.

"Ah, that should do it." She help up the garment for closer inspection. Perfect. She took out a measuring tape for the back bow, and tossed the article onto the bed. "Easier than I thought. But that ribbon is totally wrong..." She reached over and readjusted it in her hair. Maybe another shade of red...or maybe orange? Yes, orange would definitely do. It would compliment the mask perfectly.

She took an orange ribbon, did some trimming, and tossed it, too, onto the growing pile. Most of the elements of an abbreviated sailor fuku were already there. Her get-up was almost complete.

"Well, I just hope Minako doesn't sue."

Outside, a figure scurried by, hardly noticing the lit window. He had other fish to fry.