Silver Millennium Soldier
-17- Mars Heats Things Up
by
Mike Macdonald
(Age: 27)
copyright 10-14-2006
Age Rating: 18 to 127
Queen Anne's Bath and Body was a happening place ever since it opened four months before. It had the finest selection of body washes, conditioners, and perfumes that side of the country, which would normally restrict its patrons to those of the highest class. Whoever Queen Anne had been, she was surely a patron of the people, because the prices were so modest at her shop anyone could walk in and buy a one-hundred dollar bottle of imported perfume for a fourth of its market value.
The sign on the door said "closed". Sailors Moon and Mercury went in anyway.
It was in the back room where they found the merchandise: Three Ashley cabinets mounted against the wall with six shelves each, completely cluttered with crystal vials and jars filled with an assortment of colored fluids--every one glimmering now and again with a chilling light. Atop the desk was a briefcase just like the one used by the dryad at the school, filled with the telltale geodes of the Black Moon. Apart from the two armor-clad young ladies searching the interior, and the handful of pedestrians outside watching them with their faces flattened against the front windows, the shop was devoid of life.
"Looks like one of Jedite's agents has gone AWOL," Mercury said.
"Ya think?" Moon said, looking over the rows of bottles.
"You think he knows yet?"
"No idea. But better safe than sorry, right? Let's get rid o' these quick and get the hell out of here before he shows up."
With a shudder, the shelves began to frost up with their stock, the cursed fluid inside each bottle solidifying and losing its eerie sheen. In the next instant they shattered into snowy dust, and the shelves were bare. The briefcase, and the geodes it contained, met with a similar fate. Sailor Moon had her palm computer in hand as the pair of valkyries swiftly left the building.
"Luna, the shop's no longer a problem. Whoever was running the place musta took off when they saw us coming."
"Nevermind that," Luna's voice crackled over the speaker. "You're needed at the hospital. Get down there on the double and await further instructions."
Moon shrugged at Mercury, and they started running.
As the two Sylvan soldiers sprinted down the sidewalk amidst the stares and murmurs of startled pedestrians, toward the last and largest of the Black Moon's operations, a nearby fire hydrant burst into a streaming pillar; it shaped itself into a gargantuan water tendril, whipping and lashing like the kraken's own. They spotted the beast's summoner standing across the street, the only person in the area who wasn't running and screaming or cowering in fear at that moment; a tall, dark haired woman with unnatural blue eyes fixed directly on Sailor Moon. As the living stream swept down to crush the valkyries, Mercury froze it solid at its base, and the rest splashed harmlessly onto the pavement.
Now the woman ran toward them, pitching a pair of fist-sized water bullets at their heads; they solidified into giant balls of hail as they drew closer to Mercury, and exploded into a large cloud of mist. In ten seconds it dissipated, but not before Moon and Mercury made their escape. Tethys couldn't find them anywhere, and with a furious snarl she began barking orders into her phone.
**************************************
Cherry Hill Hospital was absolutely frigid.
From the parking lot, the structure was a titanic gravestone looming over the rest of the city. Every twelve feet a band of glass eyes had been wrapped around it, tinted to keep out the glare of the sun; they were so dark, they made the building look condemned.
Inside, the rooms were spacious like a warehouse and the halls marched on for miles, lit every ten feet by a long pair of eerie fluorescent lights. To give the interior a homey atmosphere for the patients' comfort, the hospital directors ordered every floor to be furnished with cushy chairs and sofas, healthy green plants in expensive-looking vases, and serene paintings of hillsides and lakes. This decision transformed the emotionless behemoth into a giant haunted mansion.
But it was cold like a morgue no matter how you looked at it.
The front desk was deserted. So, too, was the lobby save a few plants and a painting of a sunset. The television frizzled with static, but no sound. Once the glass doors closed the only sound in the world was the faint ticking of the small clock hanging on the wall.
Rei saw no sign of the blonde girl. Another premonition nagged her, pricking her spine with a handful of needles. Just like when she tailed the twins. It was screaming for her to turn around and get out of there.
A mechanical hum caught her attention as it grew louder by the second; it ended in an electronic ding, and the elevator doors just past the reception desk slid open to toss out two panicked nurses. One stumbled and faceplanted on the tile completely out of breath. The other made a desperate run for the front desk's telephone and began shouting at the police about a maniac on the sixth floor.
Curiosity getting the better of her fear, Rei walked past the fallen nurse, who was too winded to halt her, and entered the elevator. She pushed six.
When the doors reopened, the premonition slapped her in the face with icy hands. The halls on the sixth floor echoed with panicked sobs, and the air shivered with the aura of death. Rei rushed out of the elevator to investigate and found another nurse cowering in a corner of the hall to her right, and still another cradling a doctor with a bloody spot on his forehead that needed immediate attention. A child was crying in one of the rooms ahead of her, and in the next moment it wasn't hard to see why: Out of the room stepped a woman who must have been completely artificial, because it didn't seem possible that she was human at all. Her skin was a pale fuscia hue and gleamed like Plexiglas. She was completely nude but her body sported no features at all beyond a basic feminine humanoid shape. Her eyes were bright red and left a shimmering trail in the air when she looked in Rei's direction. Atop her head, in a somewhat kinky touch, was a nurse's cap.
Rei stepped back two paces and prepared to run.
The creature's face bore no expression. She turned toward Rei, opened both her hands and spread her legs as though she were in a western standoff. Her forearms began to elongate to almost double their original length and grew finer and finer toward her fingertips until her fingers vanished altogether; the right arm had become a two-foot transparent pike resembling a syringe. She pointed her left arm, now a huge machete, right at Rei's nose. The bizarre creature only took one step and stopped upon hearing a sharp crack that hurt Rei's ears.
Beyond the synthetic woman, at the far end of the hall, stood something out of a Norse legend: a striking maiden in white and silver armor, and golden hair shrouding her like a royal cloak. One steel gauntlet clutched a whip of blazing sunlight, sweeping it over her head and shaking the hospital walls with another loud crack to make sure she had the demon's attention. Amidst the brilliant metal plates and the shimmering golden curtain, two eyes with the unforgiving cold of the ocean stood out of place, commanding the creature to stand down. Rei recognized the valiant figure from various forms of media around the city and couldn't help but gawk a little.
The demon let out a cobra hiss and charged the valkyrie, machete raised and pike extended. With but one swift motion the maiden snared the pike with her brilliant whip--it moved almost like an extension of her own body--and threw the creature face-first into the wall with force that would have killed a normal human being. The synthetic woman was down, but not out; she was just getting started.
Sailor Venus took this time-out to give Rei a tender smile. "I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me," she said with a funny accent.
Rei shrugged and said, "I had nothing better to do, tell you the truth."
"Well, no time for chit-chat, Love!" Venus said, facing the demon as it stood again. "Get dressed out! Hurry!"
"I don’t know how."
"You have the pen, right? Will it! Come on!"
It couldn't have happened in more than a second and a half: Rei had only thought of Venus's suggestion, and of the odd pen in her pants pocket.
In an instant, her white khakis were gone. Her red and yellow long-sleeved shirt, gone. Even her new shoes were gone. Now, just like the blonde warrior in front of her, she was armored from head to toe, ready for combat in a Roman coliseum.
"Oh, god," she said. "It’s even tackier when I’m actually wearing it…"
Venus said in a chiding voice, "That’s top-o’-the-line mythril armor you’re bashing there! That getup’ll save your life! Now check all the rooms on this floor for Get Well cards, namely flowers! Hop to it! I’ll cover you!"
The demon swung her machete at Venus's head, missed, and was repaid with a steel gauntlet clothesline to the throat that put her back on the floor. With the immediate threat contained by her new ally, Mars's attention returned to the room with the weeping child, and there she ran.
A little boy was lying in the bed closest to the door in a restless coma, his skin pigment as pale as the hospital walls. In the corner of the room nearest to the bed, a mother and father were huddled, and the blubbering came from the small boy in their arms. He looked a lot like the bed-ridden boy, and he was too busy crying to notice Mars when she came in. The parents stared at her with tearful eyes, too frightened to speak or move.
The patient's life was fading by some unnatural means. If anyone could quickly discern the difference between a cold and a curse it was a Shinto priestess, and the source was easy to locate; an innocent-looking vase full of flowers on the bedside table emanated far more energy than any butchered plant was capable. Mars snatched the flowers out of their home and gasped: The plants had taken root in a glimmering black geode seething with a primal aura that, the moment she'd pulled it free of the vase, began to kick and scream and claw at her like a hungry animal yanked from its natural habitat. Whatever it was, it threatened the lives of everything around it, so with a mere thought she incinerated it in her hand, flowers and all.
With his disease lifted, the boy now slept soundly, and his family stared at Mars in confusion. They must have felt the effects of the cursed object when it was active, too, because the other boy was no longer crying.
Mars said nothing to them. She sat on the floor in the middle of the room and assumed a comfortable meditation position, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Her mind filtered out all distractions. Venus's ongoing battle with the vicious creature in the hallway. The sobs of others suffering on the sixth floor, and on every other floor. The air conditioning system that made the building so unbearably cold. The gentle ticking of the clock in the lobby downstairs.
She took another deep breath. Now she felt the feedback of the other cursed geodes, pulsating with ethereal abscess, licking at the hearts and souls of the sick and the weak. There were dozens of them on every floor, feeding off their victims like mosquitoes.
Out in the hallway, the demon nurse began to grow weary. In a desperate attempt to kill her opponent, or at least delay her enough for a getaway, she fired the giant steel pike from the end of her syringe at the valkyrie's heart, but the sunlight chain deflected it with no effort. This provided the opening Venus needed, and she retaliated with a volley of golden beams from her fingertips to the demon nurse's chest. They weren't lethal, but the amount of force they carried was enough to fracture something inside the creature and keep her on the floor, panting and gasping. The chain was once again in hand, ready to finish the job. A better fight than she expected. She would honor that with a swift decapitation.
A firecracker went off in one of the nearby rooms and caught her attention. Then two more. The Get Well cards she spoke of were erupting in bursts of flame one by one all throughout the hospital. She could already feel the oppressive force lifting from the building, and from the hearts of the suffering patients.
The new girl was a keeper, that was for sure. Venus smiled.
A sudden flashback of her first combat experience. No one had gotten the drop on her since that worst moment of her early training days. She'd gained such a firm grasp of her power that the malicious intent of any assassin could alert her of a sneak attack. The man at the end of the hallway was walking swiftly toward her. He'd appeared out of nowhere. She whirled around to send another glimmering beam down the hallway, but he dodged it nonchalantly and didn't even break stride. The drinking fountain near the bathrooms behind him tore itself from the wall with a groan and a splash, and hurled itself over the man's head and toward Venus's chest. She managed to send it off course with a lash of her weapon, still firing beams his way as he approached, but too frantically to hit her mark. Something about the burning green of his eyes disrupted her focus. A crackling flash and the long fluorescent light above the man tore itself loose and flew at her head. The chain intercepted it, and the next one, but turned them into swarms of stinging shards. Venus closed her eyes and diverted her face, shooting blindly. Still another light sailed into her shoulder and exploded, lacerating her arm, and another against her forearms as she shielded her face, and another and another. The man closed the distance between them quickly and put her on the floor with a swift kick to her ribs. She slid seven feet away on the tile when she landed.
Venus coughed and tried to steady her wobbling brain. Her arms, elbows, and cheeks were bleeding. Her ribs were still intact, but crying out in fury. She wanted to do the same but she couldn't breathe. The man wasn't interested in her anymore, which was nice.
"Imbecile!" he shouted at the demon. "I told you not to engage! Get out of here now!"
"I'm sorry, Master Jedite," the demon said.
Jedite repeated himself much louder, and the nurse was instantly running down the hall to the elevator, her pace hindered by the injuries she'd sustained.
Mars's business with the geodes was finished, so now she could spare a moment to keep the culprit from escaping. Stepping back out into the hallway, she had a clear view of the fleeing creature. Channeling all her focus to the center of her target's back as her left hand swelled with energy, Mars wound up, spun on the balls of her feet, and pitched a napalm softball across the building. It traveled at the speed of light and burst on impact like a grenade, catapulting her target into the elevator doors.
The creature's syringe weapon was shattered and useless, and the fierce light in her eyes was gone. All she cared about now was survival. She wobbled to her feet and bolted to the right of the elevators toward the windows, with Mars in pursuit. The demon almost made it around the corner to the stairwell door when another fireball hit her square between the shoulder blades, hurling the monster out of the hospital in a storm of glass and metal. She plunged six stories and smashed in the roof of a car in the parking lot.
Mars turned back to face the creature's master, but he'd vanished. Venus was on her feet again, approaching her comrade with a friendly smile to assure her good health, despite all the cuts on her head and shoulders. They both hurried to the broken window to confirm the kill. The monster was on its feet again, too, and staring down another pair of valkyries in the same mythril armor rapidly approaching from up the street. All three figures glanced up at the ruined window, which was still smoking from the blast.
"Don’t let her get away!" Mars shouted.
The demon took this as her cue to get moving as the two new gladiators drew nearer, one sending handfuls of crystalline darts her way, the other brandishing a glowing discus. The demon bounded across traffic to freedom, causing three cars to swerve into each other, and leapt onto the nearest building, scaling it with a spider's finesse. As she was halfway up the face of the building, the airborne weapon of the second gladiator, who could only have been Sailor Moon, missed its mark and crashed through the window adjacent to the demon nurse. It burst out another window the next floor up and nearly knocked the demon off, but despite her lacking one limb she scurried over the lip of the roof to safety.
"Idiot!" Mars shouted.
"Gimme a break!" Moon shouted back. "I haven't had much practice hitting moving targets!"
With a huff, Mars departed from the shattered window. The patients were stirring, to the everlasting relief of their families, their miserable sobs replaced with laughter and overjoyed babbling. Venus was knelt down in the hall, talking with a handful of children. One of them asked for an autograph.
Mars glanced into the boy's room. His little brother was sitting on the bed with him, giving him a great big hug as he sat up with sleepy eyes, and his parents were crowded around the bed with tears smeared on their cheeks. They didn't understand what had happened, but they were certain the black-haired woman had delivered their son from something horrible, and their eyes thanked her better than words ever could. Mars didn't smile or say anything, simply nodding and turning back to the elevator as she fished a cigarette out of her armor. She hadn't even lit it when the halls filled with the fire alarm's scream, and then it was raining indoors.
The children squealed and began giggling out of control. Some of the adults shouted and groaned. Mars removed the ruined cigarette from her lips and flicked it away in disgust. This could only be a premonition of how the rest of her life would be as an alleged super heroine. Not much of a change apart from the outfit.
Venus stood close by, soaking wet in the sprinklers' onslaught, beaming at Mars with an idiotic grin like she was waiting for a cue. Mars's face went sour again.
"What’re you grinning about?" she asked.
Venus jumped into a tap dance routine, belting out a song over the fire alarm's cry.
"I’m siiiingin’ in the rainnnn,
Just siiiingin’ in the rainnnn!
What a gloooorious feeeeling,
I’m haaaappy againnn…!"
Down in the parking lot, Sailor Moon and Mercury debated whether or not they ought to bother checking up on the situation in the hospital. From where they stood, it sounded pretty frivolous in there.
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