Fan Fiction / Card Captor Sakura Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Yamato Gun IV ❯ Haunted ( Chapter 4 )

"Still can't find what keeps me here when all this time I've
been so hollow inside... I know you're still there..."

"One Minako Aino, 90 minutes at 450º, coming up." Raynor says to nobody in particular. "Do the honours, Schezar."

"Closing the oven door as we speak." Schezar said as he pressed a few buttons and the Minako clone disappeared.

"Alright. Now that that's done, I have myself to hunt." I say.

"Just try to bring her in with her mouth and vital organs still functional. We need to figure out why she did this." Raynor says.

"Leave it to you to take all the fun out of it." Schezar comments.

"Hey, I left out a lot there that could be spilled, cut off or otherwise damaged." Raynor replies.

I get out my minicomputer, deciding I'm not going to waste any time acknowledging that conversation. Nonetheless I can't help but sigh tiredly as I say "DigiPort Open!" once again.

I wonder if it's possible to get frequent flyer points on this thing... no, of course not. I'm as bad as Makoto sometimes.

¯¯¯---

I reappear pretty much where I left, in the alley behind the Arcade. I quickly page Rei. "Finished the delivery already?"

"Yeah. Listen, you picked up the trail?"

"Minako attempted to scan the area, but so far we've found nothing. For all we know we could have been searching for the Easter Bunny."

"So that's what this egg-shaped button's for!" Minako exclaims in the background, making me, Rei and Usagi laugh. "Alright then, where are you?"

"We're at the shrine."

"On my way. Mercury out."

I close the link, then transform and start sprinting. Buildings, trees, pedestrians, all become a blur to me as I hit highway speeds.

Damn it, there's too much foot traffic. I jump to the rooftops and continue running.

Not a minute and a half later I finally clear the last building and hit the ground... then mentally curse myself as I remember the thirty-eight steps that lead up to the shrine. Stupid, stupid, stupid... I chide myself as I run up the set in about four seconds. "Hi." I say as I clear the last few steps. "No change in the situation, I'm assuming, since I paged?"

"What, you expected your clone to be stupid enough to walk by the shrine while four senshi are on their tail?" Rei said. "Maybe if they chose Usagi instead of you..."

"Hey!" Usagi says. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Rei, flashing me an evil grin, turns to Usagi. "It means-"

"Rei! Usagi!" I yell, making them both freeze in their tracks. "Thank you." I say in my normal voice. I turn to Minako, holding the scanner. "The scanner?"

Minako hands it to me. I sit down on one of the benches beside Rei and crack my knuckles, looking over the buttons and screen. "Oh, for-would you believe these Terran have the same button interface for this Scanner as the Star Trek universe has for the Tricorder?" I say as I type commands, scanning the known persons database for Ami Two.

"No, I wouldn't. And I'm not even going to ask how you know that." Minako says.

"Ah, here we go." I ignore Minako's comment as I continue to type. A faint blipping sound fills the air. "Homing program. Direction, distance, even a map of the terrain from there to here."

"Thank Mars for the techie." Rei says. The others dramatically start bowing down to me, as if I'm some ancient Egyptian god announcing my presence or something.

"Thank Raynor for the scanner." I counter. "Alright, she's almost directly west of here, 274º specifically... and... five clicks, and counting. Her speed's about sixty km/h."

"What are we waiting for?" Rei says as the three of them transform. "Lead on."

"Leading." I reply as I resume my running along the rooftops, and the others follow.

More blurs. I get a reading of the current speed-seventy-three. Too slow, she's maintaining the speed of sixty. It'll take us far too long to catch up to her. Time to pull out all the stops.

A surge of energy floods my senses as I give the mental command for a slight adrenal rush. My speed pushes ninety as I go into overdrive.

She's close. I can see her now.

During a long leap I glance backwards. The others have fallen behind considerably. Damn, I was hoping for a little backup.

I summon my Ice Dagger. Non-life-threatening injuries. I think. Easiest way to incapacitate her... hmm... ah. I know.

She seems to not notice me gaining quickly, because she's not panicking or trying to accelerate, or even going in another direction. My advantage. I spring from a ledge and dive for her, stabbing her in her right leg. She screams and falls to the ground, her and I skidding to the other side of the roof where we hit either a large ledge or a wall, I couldn't see.

She tries to get the dagger out of her leg. "Don't! It'll explode!" I warn, but that doesn't stop her from trying. She only succeeds in separating the handle from the blade.

I think quickly, pulling out the part of the blade that's sticking out and flinging it away. When it explodes, her and I are picked up and thrown about ten feet to the side, and are now in a corner. She's curled up in a ball now, whimpering.

The others catch up. "Whoa, Merc! What did you do?" Venus says, staring at the streak of blood from where we were to here.

"Stabbed her in the leg." I reply. "Whatever works."

A crucial mistake of mine was to not take the handle of the blade from her when I could. Damn it, I should have been more careful. In a blur of motion, she swings wildly and connects with my right leg, like I did with hers. Red fills my vision and pain floods my senses as I buckle and scream in agony, dropping to the ground. "AMI!" the other three Original Senshi say simultaneously.

Moon and Mars hold Ami down while Venus moves to get the dagger. "No! It'll explode!" I repeat my earlier warning, stopping her. "You have to do it a certain way..."

I pull it out slowly, carefully, stopping once or twice because of the pain. I finally get it all the way out, and then anger takes over as I grab Mercury by the front of her blouse and pull her roughly to me, bringing the dagger-my blood still glistening a pinkish color on the blade- to her neck. "You evil... sick... bitch... you deserve to die..." I spit. My voice has the most hatred and malice in it I've ever heard from anyone.

"No, Mercury!" Venus tries to talk me down. "We need her alive, remember?"

Logic slowly regains its control over my conciousness and I let her go before I make good on the threat. I let Mercury Two drop to the ground, where she curls back up into a ball, and the dagger follows her and disappears into a snowclowd. I slump against the wall and detransform so I can heal faster. The energy spent from my body has taken its toll, and now that I'm coming back down from the adrenal rush I feel more tired than, I think with a mental smirk, Makoto. Just when you thought you saw the ultimate tired...

Before I can do anything else, I'm out cold.

¯¯¯---

The activity has all but ceased for the moment. Ami Two is in questioning with the Protoss. Mercury have me-what am I saying, after what she did, to me and Makoto, she deserves no mercy. The Protoss are going to attempt a mind-meld or something like that to try and find out what the hell is going on.

There's been no change in Makoto's condition. They said the Virus has slowed its production of THC, but not enough for her condition to improve. They're puzzled by this, but say there's a slight DNA mutation in this strain of the Camouflage Virus which could explain it. Curiously enough, the estimated production/flush rate is about the same. It's as if the virus wants Makoto to stay asleep, or at least completely incoherent, without killing her.

I've got something to occupy my time, however-Minako, Rei, Usagi and I are in the holodeck target program, testing the new attacks. "Alright, R- er, Mars, you're up first." Raynor says.

Mars concentrates hard, then reverse-intones "Mars... Fire Dagger!"

Much like my Ice dagger, Mars draws a line in the air with her finger, and it fattens into a dagger that looks like, well, a flame. It glows as if it's an actual flame, and has two points, one higher than the other. The handle looks like it's made of volcanic glass with still-molten lava as its trim. "Cool." Mars says, examining the weapon.

"That's almost like mine," I comment, bringing out my Ice dagger again to compare with Mars'.

"Yeah, almost."

"So what's its special function?" Raynor asks.

"Special function?" Rei repeats, confused.

"Each of the new weapons we've seen so far has had a secondary function-either long-range for blades or close-range for bows and projectile weapons. I'm just wondering what your dagger's would be."

"I guess yours would be like mine." I say, setting up to throw the blade at a target.

I throw the blade, and the shards it splits into hit the target and explode. "Oh. I don't know. Probably like yours..." Rei says, taking aim at a target at the other end of the room.

She went to throw the dagger, but held onto it. The blade sprang to life and shot off towards the target. Odd, the pillar of fire doesn't seem to want to go upwards like it should.

The target tries to dodge it, but Mars whips the handle to the side and the movement travels down the column and hits the target, blowing it up. For effect, Mars cracked the Flame Whip in the air, then brought it back into a dagger. "Impressive." Venus says.

"Thanks."

"Although I'm not surprised you got a whip. It suits you."

"And just what is that supposed to mean?" Mars says, turning to Minako. You can see the flames in her eyes.

"Nothing, nothing at all." Venus says with a nervous laugh and a sweatdrop that could have extinguished the dagger. "Just complementing the weaponry. Nothing more."

"Alright then." Mars says, flipping the dagger up into the air. A volcanic cloud formed around it, and when it disappeared the dagger had vanished.

"I'm not going to even pretend to want to know what just happened." Raynor says, his eyebrows coming dangerously close to his hairline.

"Good." Mars, Venus, Moon and I say simultaneously.

"Moving on," Raynor says hastily. "...What's yours, Venus?"

"Let's see. Venus..." She reverse-intones. "...Cupid's Bow!"

A small vortex appeared, like the Moon Rapier. Venus caught the Bow, then stuck the obligatory action pose. "Cool. But where's the arrows?" Moon says.

The bow is a glowy gold, and looks like Kari's, almost, but a little smaller. And there's no blade in the handle or a quiver. "Energy." Venus explains.

She goes to draw back an invisible arrow and one made out of energy appears, ready to be fired. Venus takes aim at a long-distance target, and lets the arrow go. It left a glowing streak in the air as it flies, and when it hits the target it exploded. "Well, the long-range checks out. What about short-range?" Raynor asks.

"Hmm..." Venus thinks for a second. "Oh, I know." She says.

She twirls the bow around and it seemed to melt into a circle. "What's this called?" she asks.

"A Chakram, if I'm not mistaken." I reply.

"Don't those have the bladed part all the way 'round? This thing's got a grip here." Venus points out where there isn't a sharp edge.

"Maybe some Shakrans have grips?" Usagi offers.

"Chakrams." I correct automatically.

"Whatever."

"I guess they could have grips." Venus replies to the original question.

She flips the Chakram in the air and it remelts and unfolds back into the bow, then holds it backwards and, like a rubber band, flicks it to the ground back into the reappeared vortex. "That's cool."

"Another thing that's cool is that you five all have blades of some sort." Raynor comments. "Mars and Mercury have daggers, Venus has the Chakram, and Usagi has her Rapier. Wonder what Jupiter has?"

"Hopefully we'll be able to find out." Venus says sadly before we all detransform.

"She'll be alright... The camo virus might just die off and she'll come down again."

"What happened with the other Camo Virus patients?" I ask. "Did the virus ever die off within a close distance of the person's death?"

"Once... The patient had received a shrapnel cut from an A'Athrak- this sea urchin thing that explodes if provoked-and the virus latched on to it. The poison in the shrapnel is very, very weak, designed to take down small slugs and the like, its prey-and so it took a while before the stuff actually did any damage. It in itself was a hallucinogen, so the guy acted like he was on an acid trip the whole time before going into cardiac arrest. This took two days for the virus to manufacture that amount of chemical, and at about a day and a half it didn't look like it would make enough to kill him before the viral died off. Unfortunately the virus went into overdrive just before they all started dying, and it was too much for him. We think it's a kamikaze mechanism."

"So is she going to be alright?" Usagi asks. "Or is the same thing going to happen?"

"So far the virus is making enough to match how much is leaving her system, effectively keeping her asleep until it dies or ups the dosage. And from experience the latter's probably going to happen before the former. But there's still the matter of the DNA mutation in this strain. That's the big question mark."

Raynor's D3 blipped and he pulled it out of Hammerspace, opening it.

¯¯¯---

RynØr: Y'ello.

Kinomotochan: Hi! n.n

RynØr: Hey, Sakura! What's up?

Kinomotochan: We've got a small problem on our hands.

RynØr: If you tell me you've got kamikaze clone Cardcaptors in your universe I'm closing this link.

Kinomotochan: Should I ask?

RynØr: I wouldn't recommend it.

Kinomotochan: Ok then.

Kinomotochan: A Card is missing.

RynØr: Meaning?

Kinomotochan: Meaning it's either in this universe or on your ship, and will use its effects to generally run amok and cause havoc. Fortunately it's only Confusion.

RynØr: What does that one do?

Kinomotochan: It possesses someone and makes them have arguments with themselves in their mind.

RynØr: I c. Confusing, at the very least.

Kinomotochan: Nothing too big, but to exorcise it you have to be not confused when it tries to confuse you, and it tries to prevent that by giving you a massive headache.

RynØr: Well, you look in your universe. I'll page you if we find the card here.

Kinomoto: Thanks. In its true form it's a pile of black... black something.

RynØr: Ok, thanks. Raynor out.

¯¯¯---

"Great..." Raynor said flatly as he closed the link.

"What?" Minako asked.

"We've got The Confusion Card out of its card form and possibly here on the ship."

"The Confusion Card?" Usagi says timidly. "Oh no, what are we gonna do!... What does it do, anyway?" She adds, making the rest of us laugh. After a few seconds Usagi starts laughing herself.

When Raynor stopped laughing, he replies "It makes you have an argument with yourself."

"I thought that'd be Mirror." I say, then immediately regret it as a sudden pang of familiarity nips at my senses.

"Sounds like the reason we've got clones running around." Minako comments.

"The card involves you having arguments with yourself in your mind." Raynor explained. "Completely contained within yourself. Anyway, in its true form it's this shapeless black mass, so if you find it call security and call in a code 42."

"Code 42?" I ask.

"Pickup of hazardous chemicals and organisms. Basically, we put the object in question into a forcefield so it can't go anywhere, and then do whatever is called for to get rid of it, in this case shipping it back to the CCS universe."

"I see."

"So are we done here?" Usagi asked. "It's almost dinnertime, and I really should be getting home before my parents get worried."

"Me too." Rei added.

"Oh, shoot, problem." I say as I realize my plans for today that never got off the ground. "I already said I was going to stay at Mako's overnight." I think for a second. "Maybe I could stay here, in another spare quarters?"

"Shouldn't be a problem." Raynor replies.

"Good. I don't want to leave Makoto here by herself anyway."

"I guess we can all arrange something to stay here." Rei says. "None of us are going to want to leave either."

"We're staying, no matter what." Minako agrees.

"So I guess I'll see the three of you after dinner." Raynor says.

"I guess you will." Usagi repeats as the three of them walk to a terminal beside the door leading out of the holodeck and DigiPort out.

"You going to be alright?" Raynor says to me. "You seem closer to Makoto than they do."

"Yeah, I am, kind of... she seems to be the one who understands me the most. Most people, they only see the brain. They don't really see me. But Mako... she sees me. Same with her, some people only see the brawn. I know the girl."

"I know how that feels. I was top of my class in the academy. They made up awards just to give 'em to me. And, as a result, some people only saw that. They saw someone completely absorbed in their field."

"But if they got to know you, instead of assuming all the time, they'd know otherwise."

Raynor smiles. "Poured from the same mold, we were."

We stop for a moment and notice the-conservative estimate, one and a half feet difference-between him and I. "Okay, maybe not in the physical sense." He corrects.

"Doesn't matter. What matters is what's here-" I hold my hand to my heart. "And here." I point to my right temple.

"Exactly." Raynor says. "Yeah, you seem like you're gonna be fine."

"I certainly hope so. So what's the special for tonight?"

"Would you believe you came in on another Bengalaas night?"

"After today, I'll believe anything..." I say as me and Raynor walk out of the holodeck.