Fan Fiction / Card Captor Sakura Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Yamato Gun IV ❯ Taking over me ( Chapter 7 )

"But who can decide what they dream? And dream I do... I believe
in you... I'll give up everything just to find you... I have to be
with you to live, to breathe, you're taking over me..."

A day has passed. I've returned home, thankfully, in time with little physical evidence I smoked any marijuana or attempted suicide. But something curious happened: The other Ami disappeared. Just poof and vanished out of her cell on Shakuras.

I'm pretty introspective today. Haven't gone anywhere, haven't done anything. Just sat and stared at the walls. Is this depression? No, I've felt depression, and this is nothing like that. It just feels... empty. Like something has been robbed of me. I have no idea what of any number of things it is. Mako? Three litres of my own blood?

The third option is the one I've done the most thinking about. Maybe it's not a physical thing I miss. Maybe I miss the carefree feeling of being high and not being weighed down by all the stress the last week has generated. But should I continue? I mean, I don't know any people that to my knowledge use anything, let alone sell it. How would I pay for it? And how would I bring a subject like this to my mother?

So far in my soulsearching I've come up with, in order, a lack of payment because I could get copious amounts of it from the Hyperion II if I so wanted, ethically horrible as it may sound, and letting sleeping dogs lie as far as letting my mom know. I mean, she'd be upset, right? Not to mention she'd want to know why I got started. And no matter how elaborate the lie is, no matter how believable, it's still a lie and she'll know. And if I tell her the truth, she won't believe it anyway, and then where will I be?

It all makes no sense. I never thought I'd say this, especially so soon, but I really could use a bowl or so right about now. Clear my head, get a good night's sleep, and start with a clean slate the next morning. Heck, it'll be the equivalent of buying a new slate. Nothing was ever written on it. It's pure.

Purity. I guess it's not something I should be talking about, considering. I mean, my mother'll get angry when and if she finds out I do marijuana, and I still might not, but she'll eventually get over it. I hope. But the others... Minako, Rei, Usagi... what will they think? Especially the latter... the most pure, caring person I know... I don't know if she could accept that.

I don't know if I should just put it off until Makoto gets better or not. I mean, she did say all that stuff about how marijuana being bad is all crap to her now, so it's a fair chance she'll continue if she survives. When she survives. And when she does, I could use the reaction from Usagi as sort of an acid test for how I should proceed.

No, I can't do that to Makoto. She's far too good a friend to me to use as a guinea pig like that.

I glance at the clock. 8:40. I could turn in now. Not like there's much I can do at this time of the evening.

I get into my pajamas, remembering what happened the last time I was in them. There's no evidence of that, either-I have to commend Raynor's universe for its healing and cleaning technology.

¯¯¯---

"I lie awake and try so hard not to think of you... but who can
decide what they dream? And dream I do..."

¯¯¯---

I don't remember last night's dream, but I'm sure this is tonight's. I'm back in the Imaginary world where I met Makoto's spirit, only it's not Makoto's spirit there. Instead there's a small ice blue birdbath-like fountain, spouting the clearest, purest water I've ever seen. I half-expect a few birds to be perching on the edge or flittering around inside it but there aren't any. I don't suppose many birds go into comas.

But if this is where you go, why doesn't anyone else remember this? Where are all the people in comas? Something else is filtering out the rest of the people. What is there about Makoto and I that sets us apart from everyone?

I put this on the back burner of my mind... no, that's not the right metaphor. I just minimize the window.

I walk over to the fountain and stare into the waters, and see my reflection.

Hmm. That's strange. Red eyes.

I wonder idly if there's a hypospray of The White Formula anywhere around... no, of course not, hyposprays don't go into comas. Nonetheless I look around, and lo and behold a hypospray is floating behind me. I pluck it from the air as if it was standing up on a shelf and deliver the solution in both eyes.

I turn around to look back at my reflection, and end up looking into a full-body reflection. My clone is standing where the fountain was. Red- eyed as well. "Hello." She says.

"Hello." I say. "Why are you here?"

"Why am I here? You're why I'm here, that's why."

"How could I be the reason you're here? Last we heard, you were with the Protoss. Yesterday we got the report you went missing."

"Do you know when I went missing?"

"No. When?"

"12:32 AM. Does that time seem familiar to you?"

"...Not particularly, why should... wait... I replicated that pipe and marijuana at about that time."

"Exactly. The paradox effect sprung, and that's why I stand here."

Paradox effect? "I'm not following."

"Oh, come on, don't tell me I know more about temporal mechanics than you do." That sounds immensely odd, coming from, well, me.

My clone takes my silence as confirmation, and continues. "The paradox effect happens when copies of a person appear in the same universe. One person disappears, and goes to their home universe, when that happens. But if something noticeable is changed, the two coexist."

"So are you telling me that you were high when I took that first hit, and disappeared as a result?"

"We knew that the difference between your version of the universe and our version of the universe was that we all smoked weed, and so Mengsk created a version of the camouflage virus that would only reproduce as many as they needed to maintain a constant amount of viral cells and THC, no more, no less. It was put into each of our Senshi, and kept each of us with a bit of a buzz, enough for the Paradox Effect not to notice but not enough to leave us slobbering idiots like your poor Makoto. Your smoking that bowl was a very, very large improbability, and was why Mengsk used that instead of something else. Besides, it was the easiest to maintain, and still kept us intelligible enough to know what we were doing."

"Which was killing off each of us."

"Not exactly. Mengsk remembers that Raynor still lives and breathes, and so decided to attempt to get you five incapacitated like Makoto is, but back in your home universe. Then we, camouflage virus taken out through an antiviral Mengsk's team of engineers worked round the clock to find, would come along as you five and take him out. With the Hyperion II down, the link would be broken and you five wouldn't be there as a threat. No harm to you, no harm to us, all harm to Raynor and his crew."

"Why?" I whisper, almost a hiss, anger starting to bubble up inside me. "Why would you do such a deplorable thing?"

"I don't answer to you. And when I wake up from this dream, I can come back here with some other change to exact revenge on you."

I've never felt this angry. My own self is acting so heartless, so smug, as if she knows she holds all the cards and can't wave them in my face enough. "Ice dagger." I say, drawing a line in the air. I'm not transformed, but surprisingly it works.

The dagger floats in midair. "What, you're going to avenge your beloved Makoto now? You won't. Because you know you're me, and I'm you. And nothing will ever separate that."

"You're wrong."

"I'm right, and you know it. Go ahead." A pause. "You won't do it."

I grip the dagger in my right hand, feeling its power. "You said you're me and I'm you?"

"You are, and I am."

"Then you should know what it's like to despair over someone you love. You should know what it's like to have everything you ever held dear taken away from you." A long pause, as a little wind picks up and ruffles the sky grass around us. "And most of all, you should know what it was like for me later on that night."

"Oh? And what was that?"

I grab her right hand and slice her wrist open. She screams in pain and holds her arm at the forearm with her other hand, trying to stop the blood flow. I pull her left hand away from her right arm and slit the other wrist, again drawing a scream from my doppelganger. "The pain of having three litres of blood course out of you through your wrists."

I push away from her and turn my back, walking away. Where, I don't know, just away. I hear the thud of her back on the grass, and her whimpers like the last time I used the dagger on her. "Hopefully you won't have to suffer long." I say coldly over my shoulder as I go.

I walk for what seems like hours. I don't seem to be going anywhere, but I am going away from the other Ami, who must be dead by now.

Eventually I come to a small lake. I look at my reflection again.

Strange. I've still got red eyes.

Something reminds me that I'm still in my dream. Maybe my subconscious is telling me what my decision should be about continuing to smoke marijuana using my eyes as a metaphor or example.

I could use a swim about now, I think suddenly. As if I didn't think it at all, but it was just placed in my head by someone else. I shrug off the notion and take off my pajamas and, now nude, wade out into the clear water. The water's very warm for being outdoors, a little warmer than body temperature.

I can see the other side of the lake, maybe a hundred metres from this side. Nothing I can't handle. I notice the lake's bottom is a shelf under me at the moment. It's about a metre and a half deep right now, and comes up to my neck if I stand flat-footed on the bottom.

I turn and start floating on my back, staring up at the sky. The cotton candy clouds suddenly give me a pang of hunger. I guess this would be what people call the munchies, even though I'm not high. Not consciously, anyways. I notice my mouth is dry, also. What was that called, I know there was some jargon for it... the pasties, that's it. Kind of ironic, considering the fact that I'm in the middle of a lake.

As if I really was high, I start to burn out. I close my eyes and drift off to sleep without realizing it.

¯¯¯---

I wake up again, seemingly drenched with sweat. But... almost not, as if it's not sweat. It's almost like I really did go swimming in that Imaginary lake.

I mull over the details of my dream, if it was a dream. I meet up with my clone again, we argue, I slit her wrists. I walk away, come to a lake, and start swimming. I float on my back for a while, then I'm back in my room safe and sound.

That dream disturbs me. Not because of my actions-I've killed before, albeit not anyone separate from the Negaverse and let alone myself. At least, not successfully. What disturbed me is that Makoto, either as the tree or as the person, never appeared, even in the background. She wasn't there.

I glance at the clock. 10:14. Good, Raynor'll be up, even with the four-hour delay. I hope she's better and not in the beyond. Please, whoever's up there, let her still live.

I get dressed quickly, my sense of urgency growing with each passing second. "Raynor?" I say into my communicator.

"Hi, Ami. You alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Listen, was there any change in Makoto's condition since we last spoke?"

"What? No, she's still comatose in the sickbay. I would have paged you if anything happened. Why?"

I'm not sure whether to sigh in relief or despair. I settle on frustration. "I had a dream where I was back in the Imaginary would with the paper flowers and such, and I met up with my clone, but Makoto wasn't there."

"You met up with your clone? What happened?"

"She explained to me why she disappeared, why she could exist in the same universe as I, and why she wanted to hurt our universe's version of Makoto, as well as the rest of us."

"She did? Well, why, then?"

"I'm on my way there, Raynor. I'll explain it there."

"Alright. I'll be in the usual place. Raynor out."

¯¯¯---

"So why did she want to hurt Makoto?" Raynor asks, sitting across from me at the large Conference Room table.

"To get us out of the way." I reply. "They definitely work for Mengsk, though it's not clear why. The plan was to put us in these comatose states for however long, in our universe presumably, and then do away with you and the Hyperion because he perceives you as the biggest threat to him."

"But why me?"

"I didn't find that out. She didn't say, and I didn't ask."

"Oh. Well, how did she disappear from Protoss security?"

"A dimensional safety known as the paradox effect. Basically if two almost-copies of a person exist in the same universe then one cancels out the other. She was still high enough to circumvent that effect because she had a modified Camouflage virus put in, also replicating the THC in her system but not enough to make her a 'slobbering idiot' like Makoto is."

"This is way too complex for its own good." Raynor says after a slight pause to collect his thoughts. "Mengsk must be completely insane by now to cook up such a half-baked scheme-no pun intended. So how did the dream end? What happened to Ami Two?"

"Whether it be in my dream or actually in the imaginary world I killed her. Slit her wrists like she drove me to doing. After that, I started walking, walked for hours in fact, and then came to a lake and decided to go for a swim. I fell asleep floating in the middle of the lake on my back and woke up from there."

Raynor tosses this around in his mind. "Your last name, Mizuno, means something in Japanese, doesn't it?"

"Roughly, 'Of the Water'."

"Alright... I'm just wondering. Nothing really specific, I'm just trying to figure out why you'd go for a swim out of nowhere."

"It's a dream. Dreams don't have to make a lot of sense."

"True, but this one's too close to recent events for comfort."

"There's still the matter of why, if it is my dream, and if I do miss Makoto this much, that she doesn't appear in my dream, as a tree or herself."

"What? As a tree, did you say?"

"Yeah. When I went to that world the first time, Makoto was there originally as a cream-coloured tree with auburn leaves-the trunk being her body and the leaves her hair. Her last name, Kino, means 'Of the trees', in case you're wondering."

"Oh. Makes sense. Did your clone appear as a body of water or something?"

"A small fountain. Like a birdbath or something."

"This is some messed up universe."

"Yeah. And so's the Imaginary one."

"Why do you keep calling it the 'Imaginary' universe?"

I try to remember why, and come up blank. "I'm not completely sure. It seems to be... I don't know, fitting."

"Hmm..."

"Hmm? Hmm what?"

"Call it a hunch, but maybe the two things are related, the word 'imaginary' and the world itself. Computer?"

The computer blipped. "Please search... what year are you in?"

"2003."

"Please search somewhere around the year 2003 for a connection between the word 'imaginary' and the world Ami is about to describe. Ami?"

"A field of paper flowers, candy clouds, sky blue grass and a purple sky."

"Working..." The computer replies. "The nearest match is a song by the band Evanescence, named Imaginary."

"How close is this?" Raynor asks.

"The song does not mention blue grass, or grass of any kind for that matter; however its chorus does mention all else Ami described."

"Interesting."

"Is this important at all?"

"No-at least I don't think it's of any importance-but I find it odd that an actual place exists that matches a song made 500 years ago by this universe's time."

"Evanescence... that's a very odd sounding word. Computer, what does 'evanescence' mean?"

"Evanescence. The act of fading away, similar to a ghost. To disappear into nothingness."

"To fade away, like Ami Two did." Raynor says. "This makes even less sense, and we've got more questions now than we do before the dream."

"Maybe there's something else that happened that relates to another song from this band. Hmm... something... Any mention of suicide?"

"Affirmative, in the track Tourniquet."

I look at Raynor. "Too close." I say.

"What tracks are Imaginary and Tourniquet?" Raynor says.

"Seven and six respectively."

"Where in Tourniquet is suicide mentioned?" I ask.

"It is the last word in the lyric, at 3:28 of 4:38."

"So around the end of the song, at which point... does Tourniquet have a lead-in to Imaginary?"

"Affirmative, a violin piece."

"Hmm."

"What else is there?" I think out loud.

"Confusion?" Raynor tries.

"Confusion appears in track 1, Going Under."

"Track 1? That makes no sense."

"Maybe it does." Raynor says. "I mean, clones would be kind of confusing, and that happened in the beginning, right? Computer, give us the lyrics for the stanza that mentions confusion."

Rock music starts up. A woman sings the lyrics in a low voice. "Blurring and stirring the truth and the lies, so I don't know what's real- so I don't know what's real and what's-don't know what's real and what's not... always confusing the thoughts in my head, so I can't trust myself anymore... I'm dying again..."

"That's odd."

"Wait, this band's got one major single out, Bring me to Life." I say. "What track is that?"

"Track 2." The computer replies.

"Computer, is there anything involved in the current situation involving my universe that would correspond to the lyrics in Bring me to Life?"

"Negative."

"Hmm. That's odd."

"Let's try again, maybe it's just that track. Anything in track 3?" Raynor asks.

"Track 3 is called Everybody's Fool, and following the current pattern would seem to correspond with Makoto's being incapacitated by the impostor Ami, as the second verse and chorus is" The same singer comes on with a different rock song singing "Look, here she comes now... bow down and stare in wonder... oh how we love you... no flaws when you're pretending... but now I know it never was and never will be... you don't know how you've betrayed me... and somehow you've got everybody fooled..."

The computer resumes speaking in its normal voice. "The song seems to be from Ami's point of view, as is Tourniquet and Imaginary, and to a degree Going Under."

"This is completely messed up. Completely." I comment, shaking my head in near-disbelief.

"Yeah, but we've uncovered a pattern." Raynor replies. "Anything in track 4?"

"Track 4, My Immortal, has a theme of a spirit or body that haunts the person whose point of view is the lyrics. This applies to Ami again in relation to Makoto being in a comatose state. It is also a slow song, which may represent the lack of activity for a short time in the same time period."

"Any ideas why the songs apply to me?" I ask.

"The lead singer's name is Amy Lee; no other mention of an Ami in the album."

"One more messed up point. Track 5?" Raynor continues.

"Track 5 is known as Haunted, which has a mention of hunting in the lyrics but otherwise negligible relation to the situation, now or at the chronological point in the events-the song is, however, faster and contains more energy than My Immortal, which could represent Ami's chasing down her clone."

"Well, that's a maybe, but still, there's a pattern. Track 8?"

"Called Taking Over Me, and relates to the current or most recent situation through several examples, including mentioning dreaming of a person in the first verse and a theme of a person becoming the person's entire reason for existence."

"So this is now... so maybe if this continues on we could glean something that'll happen next. Play track 9 and extrapolate what may happen."

"Track 9 is known as Hello." The computer said before starting to play the track.