Character Sketches #1, Sailor Mercury - Part II, "Mizuno the Senshi"
Chapter 7: In which old and new are brought together.

"I had a terrible dream the other night. Mamo-chan left me, and I was all alone...I woke up with him at my side, and all of a sudden I thought to myself: how do the other [senshi] do it? How do they make it without their own Mamo-chans to love?"

-from the diary entries of Usagi Tsukino

"One thing I will always remember: no matter how bleak things got, no matter how badly we were outnumbered, we still had hope. How anyone in our situation could not have hope in something better and stay sane is a mystery to me."

-Minako Aino, _The Autobiography of Sailor V_

Jen and Amy sat at gate D-2, watching the 747 pull towards the jetway. Mamoru and Urawa were onboard, and they'd be disembarking shortly. Jen was busily pumping Amy for details.

"Come on, what do they look like?" she asked, practically hanging off Amy. Jen was quite a one for appearances, and was not a little interested in the availability of the gentlemen who were coming.

"Well," said Amy, finally relenting lest they make an even bigger scene in the concourse, "Mamoru is pretty tall, black hair of course-"

"Of course."

"-and...I guess you could say that he's a real ladies man. Don't be surprised if he gives you a rose when you meet him. And Urawa...he's--right there!"

And indeed, it was an older, wiser Ryo Urawa who was walking up the jetway, surrounded by other disembarkers. Amy wrestled with her emotions for a split second. Then, as was becoming more and more common, her emotions won out over her common sense. In a scene out of a 1940s romance, she raced up to embrace him.

"Urawa-san!"

"Ami-san!"

"It's been so long!"

"Hai!"

Mamoru simply hid in the shadows, watching the two reunite. Or rather, he tried to. Jen, however, had other plans as she slowly strode towards him.

"So, how ya doing there? Come around much?"

Jen's impromptu (and, to be truthful, very bad) Mae West impersonation completely caught Mamoru off guard. He frantically attempted to extricate himself from the situation, which was currently being made worse by the stares of passers-by.

"Uh...err..." Finally, he hit upon a solution.

"I no speak English good. You Japanese speak?"

Jen deflated faster than a marshmallow in a vacuum chamber. "Uh, that's okay, really, AMY!"

Amy looked over from where she and Urawa had been catching up on events. "Is something wrong?"

"You betcha! There's a really hot guy here, and he doesn't speak English!"

Amy regarded Mamoru suspiciously, trying not to laugh. Mamoru looked back, and the unspoken communication passed between them. For Usagi's sake, and for Mamoru's sanity, Jen had to be fended off.

"Oh, I forgot about that. Mamoru barely knows a word of English; guess I'll have to be translator, eh Mamo-chan?"

He replied in Japanese, with language that definitely didn't need to be heard by a youngster.

"What did he say?" asked Jen, who was practically drooling.

Amy floundered for a moment. "Um, he said that he's sorry that language is a problem that he hopes will be solved before he leaves." There, she thought, just ignore the part about her Jen's genealogy.

"Cool! Okay, Mamoru, we've got to teach you some English, okay?"

He said a few words to Amy that made her blush.

"Well?" demanded Jen.

"He said, 'maybe later.'"

A more faithful translation of what he had said will not be reproduced here. Suffice it to say it involved hot wax, the genus to which Jen's parents belonged to, her late night habits, and exactly what she could do to herself.

"Amy," said Mamoru in Japanese, "we need to talk." He glanced at Urawa, who was now making small talk with a rather disgruntled Jen. "Now."

"Hai." They walked over to the window which looked out at the airport's nighttime operations.

"Look, I don't know why you came here-"

"No, Mamoru-san, you know exactly why I came here. You know it, and I know it."

They stood in silence for awhile.

"Do you know what it's like, Mamoru? Do you know how it feels to wake up knowing you've killed your mother?"

"My parents-"

"Your parents died in a car accident," she said coldly. "No fault of your own. You didn't make a conscious decision to make them die, dammit!"

"Amy..." He trailed off. For there to be some bitterness, even after all these years, was understandable. But for her to be this angry....

"And stop your damned thinking!" He looked at her in surprise. "Yes, you don't think I can figure it out? I can read a face just as well as you can, Prince Endymion. And I'll have you know that-"

"Ami." The name came out hard and brittle, like an old cookie that has lain forgotten for months in the jar, and is taken out with the mistaken impression that it is still fresh. "Ami-san, don't do this to yourself. Just calm down before you say something you'll regret."

"Regret? Regret?" She spoke the words as if they were lost, somewhere, like a dog, and she was calling to it. "Why--I mean what would I regret? killing my mother? No biggie, happens all the time, ne? Running away from my duty, and the ones I loved? Hey, no problem! Losing control over your emotions, not knowing whether the next moment will find you happy or sad?"

She was sobbing now. Mamoru didn't know whether it was a good or bad thing. Public embarrassment, to be sure, but this had obviously been eating at her for quite awhile. Looking up, he saw Urawa and Jen draw closer, looks of concern on their faces. He made a gesture for them to keep their distance, but Urawa ignored him. Amy went on crying.

"It wasn't good enough, dammit. All the awards, the admission to Hopkins, just like ashes. Like ice...oh kami-sami, how could I do such a thing?"

Ever so gently, Urawa placed a well-built hand on Amy's shoulder. "It's all right, Ami-chan. Everything's okay."

She whirled on him. "The hell it is! And you, with your damned letters and telegrams and clairvoyance! All your worthless notes, saying how much you cared for me?" She was beginning to shout, and passers-by were growing interested. She spat on the ground. "*That's* what I think about your feelings!"

This clinched it for Mamoru. He had heard from Usagi, Rei, Makoto, and Minako in particular that Ami had changed. Judging from this display, it hadn't been for the better. "Ami, you must understand that we *do* care about you, and-"

"Care? CARE?!? Jesus Christ, everything I ever cared about died years ago, understand? It died in a cave, in Greenland, with one damned kick."

"Amy," ventured Jen uncertainly, "listen to me." Understanding Amy was becoming increasingly difficult. In addition to the pain of her mood, Amy had begun to speak with mixed Japanese and English. Jen hadn't even been able to follow that last sentence. "Amy, stop this. We'll just go home and have some coffee or warm milk, but you've got to stop this. You're destroying yourself!"

In that moment, Amy turned towards Jen, and they saw eye to eye. Jen looked deep into those eyes of blue, and was absolutely horrified by what she saw. She realized that no matter what else may happen: no matter how Amy behaved, what she did, or how she looked, it was over. She had seen in Amy's eyes a bleakness and despair she hoped to God or Allah or whoever was in charge she would never see again. The pit of misery in those eyes could swallow a city, a country, a planet, or a capacity to truely love.

There would be no more love for Amy Anderson. that was clear. The appearance of love, perhaps, the illusion. But there was nothing but emptiness left in Amy's soul. When she finally answered, it came out as a whisper.

"There's nothing left to destroy."

Meanwhile, David was racing to BWI. The tale of how this came to be was a long and convoluted one.

It had begun that morning, when the results of the admissions office's check on Amy Anderson had returned. 'Twas the season to review applications for admissions, and the office had taken its own sweet time getting the information to him. Thumbing through them, he was quite interested. Apparently, the girl had virtually no history before the destruction of Tokyo. That was partly understandable; the losses during those weird events had been incalculable, and there were many who still hadn't buried their dead. The bodies had simply disappeared, buried under rubble, or considering the stories people told about *what* had destroyed the city, perhaps even worse.

But for there to be no dental records, no school records, not even a birth certificate: and this from a person who claimed to have been born in a hospital *outside* the destruction radius. Interest piqued, he called in a few favors in Japan and came up with some more information.

Apparently, she had gone by some other name in Japan. His connections hadn't been able to trace it, but it wasn't that important. They had found out that whoever this girl was, she had had some sort of item with a Ryo Urawa, who, after a routine check, was found to have just *happened* to have bought a ticket to Baltimore from Neo-Tokyo.

From there, it had been relatively easy to add two and two and get five. Thus, he raced down I-295 to the airport, unheeding of traffic and the myriad little things that surrounded him.

As is so often the case in life, it was the little things (in this case a not so little Ford that ran him off the road) that counted.

The foursome staggered into the dorm room. Amy had been a wreck for the greater portion of the night, and so they had simply gone to the lodgings Mamoru had arranged for. It was now ten in the morning, and Jen had no hope of getting to her classes on time. Then again, two other things took supreme precedence over class.

The first was Amy. In the past hour she seemed to have been getting out of her funk; she could now move around without being told to. They had managed to get her into the room under her own power, and allowed her to amble into her tiny bedroom, where she still was.

The second was the date. April 1st. Opening Day for the soon-to-be-World Champions. It was now that her two tasks intertwined; she had to get Amy sentient enough to get to the ballpark at 11:35 for all the pregame fun. In her (supposedly) measured opinion, a day at Camden Yards was just the trick to boost their spirits.

Jen had been about to ask Urawa about the possibilities of their accompanying Jen and Amy to the game when a scream came from Amy's room. Urawa, Mamoru, and Jen looked at each other for a microsecond before racing off to the room.

Once there, they saw Amy near her desk, holding a piece of paper.

"They have David."