Tokyo’s Child
The next day
        Ami sat at the couch that was in the little cubicle that would be her room for the next week to verify that her illness had not only passed, but would not pose a threat to the general public.  She was sick of seeing people walking by, waving, through the plastic wall, she was sick of seeing people wearing the ridiculous white bubble suits into her room in fear of infection, she was sick of the soft drone of music from the intercom in her room, and she was sick of the sun.  The rays of the sun that poured into her room, flooding her room with light as though taunting her for her sadness, as though saying ‘hah, I’m happy, the world’s happy, everyone is happy, it’s just you’.
        Her eyes felt dry from the days of crying, the sudden urge to let water flow from her, it seemed strange that the senshi of water would not be able to weld the water to come to her eyes, the feeling was so foreign to her body that she felt alienated from herself.  She hated the sensation, she hated that sun laughing at her, she hated those birds chirping, oblivious to her suffering, or perhaps to perpetuate her suffering, and most of all, she hated herself; for everything that she had done and everything that she hadn’t done.  She hated herself for being the perpetrator of Kunki’s execution, she hated herself for not stopping Asuka, she hated… she hated her life.  It wasn’t right, it wasn’t right that they died, it wasn’t right, and she would have to live with it for the rest of her life.
        As though just to make her life more miserable, a sheet of rain hit the window of her room creating a huge crashing noise, Ami was jerked back to the disgusting sound of water that was driving her sanity away.  Her face twisted in despair as she jumped to the makeshift table that was located at her bed and pushed the pile of papers onto the ground.  She did not look at the soft swishing movement that the papers had made while falling, nor did she seem to notice the scrunched balls of paper hitting the ground with unusual ferocity, she merely climbed into her bed and sat on her pillow.  Tugging her blankets around her chin, she cried without tears, her voice hoarse, her breathing rugged, rocking herself gently, she so remained until sleep overtook her conscious mind.
        Two balls of paper crackled and unraveled, the first was a rough pencil drawing of the face of a man, with Asuka’s nose, mouth and face, but with Lord Takeuchi’s eyes and hair, sitting on a vase.  The other was a single piece of paper filled with her uncharacteristically scrawny handwriting that had been written in a wave of sadness, she had spoken with her heart, not her head, in her mind, it was just another scrap of scribble amongst thousands that she had written, drawn and sketched in regards to the matters uppermost in her mind…

        I’m alive; he’s dead, straight, stretched out and stiff, in another week, he will be buried six feet deep in earth and say his final goodbyes.  He’s dead because I was selfish, selfish that I didn’t tell him the truth, that he thought that he was crazy because he saw something that did not exist in the common realm, people standing in space, energy rays coming from our hands, waves of water appearing from nothingness.  If I told him, he wouldn’t have killed himself; it was my fault, I killed him, I might as well have shot him with a gun; strangle him with my hands; aim my Mercury Ice Wave at him; there would have been no difference.  At the end of the day I can’t answer to myself, because at the end of the day, I was responsible, I was responsible for everything that had happened.  I am supposed to protect people, but I killed two people, and it wasn’t right, I was so egotistic, so wrapped up in saving my own skin that I didn’t think, I didn’t think of the others.  I didn’t think maybe, maybe Avarice was human, maybe he had family, maybe he was loved, I didn’t think maybe Asuka-kun needed the truth; maybe he needed to know that he wasn’t becoming his father.
        Ota-san said that it didn’t matter, as long as I had the right intentions, but I didn’t have the right intentions.  My intention of not telling Asuka-kun was so that he wouldn’t know my secret, yes, MY secret, it was for ME, and my intention of getting rid of Avarice wasn’t because he was endangering anyone’s life, it was MY secret that was in danger of being revealed.  Yes, it was all ME, ME, ME!  I hate ME so much, that is nothing in me that is pure, that is good, nothing, nothing at all, that makes me no different from the creatures of the Kuriverse that I have had a hand in killing for all these years, I had justified killing them because they weren’t human, and now, I wonder if I am.  Humans are distinguished from the creatures of the Kuriverse because of their humanity, because of the goodness within, I don’t either of the qualities, what makes me any better than any of them?  Nothing, I am just as evil, as bad, as… wrong as any one of them.  Lord Takeuchi, dear Lord Takeuchi, he was so kind, he was more human than I was, at least he knew what it was to love and sacrifice for the person he loved, me, and I watched him dissipate into thin air, without even letting hear the words he so wanted to hear.  He loved me, I knew that, but I put ME in front of him, ME wanting to leave, I crushed him, maybe… maybe I did love him in return, I don’t know, by now, it is a bit too late for me to explore the alleyway that has already been dug up and destroyed.
        Even protecting Usagi-chan, am I really protecting her?  Or am I just protecting myself when I go out there fighting, protecting MY world, MY wants?  Justifying my selfishness by saying that I am fighting for someone else, for the world, when it fact it is just me?  Is it all ME, ME, ME?  I don’t know.  Is it a selfless deed I am doing?  No, I can’t claim that.  I’m killing these creatures because they threaten my world, and somehow that justifies my actions, and its wrong, no wonder the Kuriverse hates us, the senshi so much, no wonder they hated me so much, even I hate myself.  We’re not any different from them, we are just as selfish, if not more, because we are only serving our needs, they are serving their master’s needs - they are the selfless ones, not us.
        I am selfish, I am egotistic, I am incapable of love, I am incapable of being loved, I have all the wrong intentions when I am pretending to save the world.  First it was Kunki-kun, then it was Asuka-kun, Lord Takeuchi even though I didn’t do it, I didn’t have the actus reus, but I did it, I was responsible, I made him believe that he was dying for the single moment of love.  Maybe he didn’t expect it, but he wanted me to open my heart to him, even if just for that one second before he vanished before my eyes, but I couldn’t, I was too wrapped up in saving myself, my own wants.  And now, I feel this rock of guilt crashing down on me, everywhere I look, the world is full of Asuka-kuns, Lord Takeuchis and young Kunki-kuns, everyone is wearing their masks.  I was sitting here drawing, I wanted to draw the flowers in my room, but somehow, the flowers ended up looking like Asuka-kun, with an amalgamation of Lord Takeuchi’s features.  Everything reminds me of my guilt, our forever separation, because I know that when I die, I won’t be accepted in heaven, because I know that I have got so much blood on my hands that Satan has already claimed me as his protégé.
        See, even this is about me, my selfishness, my ego, my baka-intentions (stupid), I start of mourning about someone, and it gets turned to me, me, me.  I deserve to die, I deserve to be in isolation, not because I will spread this Kuriverse disease, but because I might deserve the virus of egotism, because I deserve to be isolated so that I don’t teach people the wrongs of being selfish.  Perhaps the only redeeming quality that I have left is that I am willing, so willing to end it all here and now if I can exchange my soiled and revolting soul, and redeem their lives, but I know that I can’t… I know that if I end it now, I would somehow let Asuka-kun and Lord Takeuchi down, because they ‘gave’ themselves up for me, for my secret, for my life.  And in accepting their gift, their lives have become one with mine… I have been thrust the gift of the lives of others, and forced to live it for them, if I ended it all, I would be even more selfish, more disgusting.  So there’s no way out, if I live, I live with their blood on me, if I die, I die with not only their blood, but their hopes and dreams to my name as well.

        She heard the door of her room make a sucking noise as it was opened, then, the padded sound someone wearing the suits walking into her room.  She didn’t bother to look up, it was most probably another nurse coming in to take her blood, vampires, all of them, they might as well have just taken the world’s largest syringe and drawn out all her blood at once.
        “Ami-san?  Daijyobu?” (Are you okay?)
        Ami jerked her head upwards when she heard the voice of a familiar man, “hai,” she stated.
        “Just a little… down?”
        “Hai.”
        He looked intently at her face, red, but dry, he stood there for a while, completely silent; until he looked at the mess of papers and scrunched balls on the floor, and indicated at the scattered pages, “been taking it out?”
        “Hai.”
        “It’s alright to take it out, nothing to be ashamed of.”
        “Hai.”
        Bending down, he picked up the two pages of previously scrunched works, her picture, and her writing, “did you draw this?”
        “Hai.”
        “You have your father’s genes for drawing.”
        “Arigato.”
        He smiled, “so the lady speaks more than one syllable.”  Without really looking at the piece of writing, he handed it back to her, “it’s so easy to blame yourself, but he made a conscious choice, he made a decision to the best of his ability and saw it through.  Live with their souls in your heart, but don’t let them burden you, let them lift you up, because if they did this for the best, their intention was not to make you cry.”
        “Doctor Daiki… you don’t understand.”
        “Hai Ami-san, I don’t understand.  Maybe you drove them over the edge, I don’t know, but if you must blame yourself, even for one lousy percent, then you have to remember that they are more at fault for not settling it the wise way, by staying alive and working it out, he shouldn’t have tried to take the ‘easy way’ out.”
        “There are so many other factors…”
        “Factors that I don’t know about, factors that I don’t understand… There are always factors, and there are always secrets, so what?  They made a choice.”
        “Doctor Daiki, arigato, thank you for not asking, but you want to know the truth don’t you?  You want to ask, but you are too kind to ask for it.  I will tell you the truth, but you mustn’t tell anyone else, promise?”
        “Promise.”
        “Asuka Akiyama-kun is from the Tsujimoto family.”
        “THE Tsujimoto family?  The offspring of THE Tsujimoto?”
        “Hai.”
        His eyes nearly dropped out of their sockets and then he whistled through his teeth.  “Well, I would have never… him, the son of Kendo Tsujimoto.  I read that case when I first started out with the Police Academy, I presented a paper on epilepsy medication based on those findings to expand the role of science to detective work.  The poor kid, having to live under that cloud.”
        “He thought that he was epileptic.”
        “He thought he was going to kill, why?”
        “Because of what happened when he was abducted.”
        He stared at her, dumbfounded, he noticed her tightly pursed lips… she wasn’t going to say much more, but he decided to push on and try his luck “I see, what did he see?”
        “I can’t tell you that.”
        “Okay.”
        “But you might be interested in this letter that he wrote for me.”
        “You are letting me see it?”
        “Hai, but no one else.”
        “Arigato Ami-san, I promise that this won’t go into the open, and I’ll find a way to close the case, for you, and for your mother’s sakes.”
        “Arigato,” she said as she took the letter from her draw, then slid the piece of paper from the envelope carefully and handed it to him.

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