Tokyo’s Child
Sunday 10:30 am
        “Excuse me please.”  Four girls yelled as they pushed their way to the entrance of the Juuban District Hospital, only to find that themselves face to face with 3 security guards just inside the glass doors.
        “Name of patient, room number, relation to patient, your names and identifications please,” droned out one of the older security guards monotonously, as though he had said it a thousand times already today, and already knew that the girls before him would be thrown out of the hospital sooner or later.
        “We’re here to see Ami Mizuno, we don’t know where her room is, but we are her friends, and um… our identification is… somewhere here… I think,” Usagi dug in her pockets for some identification of herself, as did the others.
        “Save it, everyone’s been in trying to see her, and everyone is her friend, mother, grandmother, grandfather… see, her mother works here, we know that you’re not her mother, and don’t try saying that one of you are her sisters either, she’s an only child.  I can’t prove you’re not her friends, but look at all those people out there, three quarters of them claim to be her friends, and we didn’t let them through, what makes you think we will believe you?”  He said as he pointed out to the crowd behind him.
        “No, we’re really her friends, look, let us see her, she’ll tell you that we are friends, I mean, she is awake isn’t she?”  Usagi protested.
        “Good try, but forget it, sorry, no comment, we are not going to tell you a single peep about her condition, if you really want to know, the doc’s going to have a press conference in an hour and a half, ask her then.”
        “Nyoga-san in room 301, I’m his wife, my identification,” said a newcomer to another guard.
        “We’re with her!”  Minako said as she flashed one of her winning smiles.
        “You seem like good girls, now go home before we toss you out like we did the other hundred who tried.”
        “You don’t want to throw us out now do you?”  Minako said with one of her flirtiest voices, using her powers of persuasion to the fullest.
        The guard smiled at her, “again, good try, but you’re young enough to be my daughter, now shoot, all of you.”
        The girls grumbled as they were shooed out of the hospital hallway, pushing through the crowd, they rounded the corner and ducked into the alleyway.  Making sure that no one was looking, Usagi pulled out her henshin stick and grinned mischievously.  “Sailor Moon… ni nare! (Transform!)  Make us into four way-cool medical specialists!”
        Four mature women stood in place of the young girls, they looked at the clothes that they wore and each other’s faces, and laughed.  “I can’t believe this is how we’d look if we were some successful person!  We look so… old!”  Makoto squealed.
        “Come on, we’ll walk in confidently and look for Ami’s mum.”  Rei said in a business-like voice, “and leave me to do the talking.”

        Deus Mercury looked down onto Earth, there were two objectives that he was pursuing in doing that; firstly, to see his precious ward again after six months, and the other, to look upon his father’s first steps on Earth as a mortal.  He wondered whether his father’s sacrifices worthwhile, but he knew that he would have to wait for the results of his trip.  His father would have no memory of his past life as a elite member of creation, not until his dreams were fulfilled… Until then, the younger deus would not be able to visit his father nor remind him of his past.  He would miss him, he knew that, when his father was placed into imprisoned sleep, he could at least visit and talk, now, all he would able to do was to speak into a screen to communicate.
        He shook his head in grief and punched in new co-ordinates into the computer: Princess Mercury, sweet Princess Mercury, lying on sheets of industrial bleach white, her face as white as those sheets, further enhanced by the unique darkness of her hair.  He pined for the opportunity to once again see his ward’s enchanting blue orbs of sapphire that glistened and glowed with brilliance, to see the smile that graced her lips and could light up the dark skies of the world.  In his mind, he began removing the dozen tubes that ran into her body, the needles in her arms, the patches on her skin, feeding her, monitoring her, she looked tiny, almost miniscule with all the equipment around her, utterly and completely helpless.  She was hardly the SailorMercury, one of the defenders of Earth: she was the little girl that he remembered again, asking for cuddles when her parents failed to physically show affection; sitting at the pond, watching the fish as she questioned the point of war; doubting herself in the when she became the elite group of senshi.  (Refer to Remember Me)

        Zoicite stared at the guard angrily as they pushed him out of the hospital; he cracked his knuckles against his palms and swore beneath his breath.  He frowned when he noticed four familiar women walking into the hospital, waving a pass of some kind, treated with the utmost respect.  He thought about Someieichi-kou, as Ami’s mother, as a doctor in the hospital, he was sure that she could let him in, yet somehow, since their last encounter, he doubted that he was in her ‘good’ books.
        “I have to see her, I have to,” he said to himself as he began to walk away from the bustle of the anxious reporters, “I’m going in to see her, somehow.”

        “Dr Mizuno, the specialists that you had sent for?”  The security guard said with a hint of questioning despite his differential tone.
        “Oh?”  She looked up from her work in puzzlement and smiled at the women before her, “of course, thank you for coming.”
        “They wanted to see the patient, but I thought that you might have wanted to see them beforehand.”  The guard said anxiously.
        “That is fine, thank you for checking with me, I appreciate that.”  Doctor Mizuno walked up to them and smiled, she waited until the guard had left, then cocked her head and looked at them in amusement, “now, tell me, what can I do for you girls?”
        “Girls?”  Rei asked.
        “I can see through your disguises, so you might as well de-transform.”  She watched in amusement as they powered down, “my daughter is unconscious and in quarantine at the moment, and we don’t have spare suits for you to go and visit her.  You will have to wait like everyone else until she can be placed in the wards, there is nothing I can do to help you.”
        “We went through all this trouble and we can’t see her?”  Usagi pleaded.
        “I’m sorry, but you will have to leave now, you can’t see her.”  Doctor Mizuno said as she opened her office door and asked them to leave.
        She watched them enter the elevator, and shook her head as she walked towards the nurses’ station for her charts of the patients on her ward round.  “Good morning, how are you today?”
        “Good morning Doctor Mizuno, its been a hectic morning hasn’t it?”
        “It certainly has, is my cart done yet?”  She asked the nurse with a smile referring to her cart of patients’ charts
        “Ur, Doctor Mizuno?”
        She spun around to face one of her younger residents standing behind her, “yes?”
        “I was thinking, you have approximately an hour left until the press conference, perhaps you would like to take a rest, have something to eat before then?  I wouldn’t mind doing the rounds for you today, you were here on my last shift, and you haven’t had a rest.  I hope you don’t think that I am being rude or imposing myself on you, but I think you need some rest.”
        “That’s very kind of you to offer, thank you, but there are a few patients that I would like to see personally, if you don’t mind seeing my other patients, I would be very grateful for that.”  Seeing him nod, she smiled and nodded her head in thanks, addressing the nurses, she said, “would you mind giving me the files of…”

        Mamoru stared at the television screens in front of him and tried to remember the relationship of his general and the senshi.  He remembered the infatuation that his generals had had, but they were not bounded to each other by links of royalty as he and Princess Serenity had been.  He wondered if the infatuation that General Zoicite had, had been returned by Princess Mercury, because something in the back of his mind told him that there was another man.  Which gentleman the Princess had finally found love with, he did not know, or did not remember, who that gentleman was he could remember either… but he knew that one of them was her true love.

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