Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ The Dark Successor ❯ Wake-Up Call ( Chapter 9 )

Chapter 9: Wake-up Call

 

Following the mistaken trip to Uncle Pete's, the group relocated at a nearby burger place. They pushed two tables together and squeezed chairs around to fit everyone. Hiryu phased out most of the conversation, though he noticed more than anything the things Ryo said.

 

"So your dad got promoted? You're gonna be rollin' in it now, right?" Makoto asked him.

 

"I guess so," Ryo replied.

 

"So what about you and Ami-chan?" asked Minako. "Are you two, y'know..."

 

The both of them blushed and looked away from each other and from the group until they found safe places to stare at for a brief recuperation. When he caught Hiryu's eye, Ryo awkwardly turned his gaze elsewhere and Hiryu was soon to follow, feigning interest in the nearest window.

 

"Look at those two," Usagi commented to Mamoru. "I bet they'd get along, if they could overcome their shyness."

 

"Maybe, maybe not," he answered. "Sometimes people relate to similarities, other times they grate on each other. But I'd like to see things work out..."

 

Partway through the meal, Hiryu felt an increasing tension, clawing at his stomach. Who was this guy? Confrontation was inevitable. He'd wait until later, perhaps after the meal. Trying to calm his nerves, he glanced around the table. Ami, the smart one, Rei, the one who didn't seem like she liked him at all... Rei looked back at him, and quickly buried any unease on her face with a pleasant little smile. Then next to her was a pink-haired girl he wasn't familiar with, though he'd heard her called Chibi-Usa. Then there was Makoto. His unease just grew at the sight of her, and he felt his heart beat harder.

 

Though he'd not gotten along perfectly with her, it was not her personality that gnawed at him. It was his near-certain realization that she was Sailor Jupiter. Of course, he learned this as his other self, and he could not dare expose anything as Hiryu. He had worried on several occasions of making an issue of it accidentally. She had said as Jupiter that she had seen him before in the halls... and Makoto was the only person he saw. It just had to be her. With that relationship in his mind, he could note the resemblance between them.

 

But did that mean...

 

He looked around the table. Could some of them be Sailor Senshi? His quick attempt at discernment yielded hazy thoughts. For some reason the Sailors seemed almost individualized in a sense that no one else could look like them. Had he not been given Makoto's accidental clue, he could have never drawn the line so clearly. It must have been the same sort of magical effect he could cause by changing between his forms. Though not that much changed about his appearance, the magical nature of the transformation created an altered classificationary tendency that caused onlookers to interpret Hiryu differently than Mazarin. Thus, with little difference between Makoto and Jupiter, they were still seperate, unique identities to the unaware citizens of Tokyo.

 

Hiryu wondered how long he'd been sitting here thinking... he looked around, and nothing seemed to have changed. Usagi, however, was looking at him curiously.

 

"Daydreaming?" she asked.

 

"Yeah, sort of."

 

"I do that all the time!"

 

"Yeah, no kidding," said Minako with a false smile.

 

"Hey!" Usagi replied. "I have better things to do than listen to schoolteachers all day! I can think about my Mamo-chan!" She wrapped her arms around Mamoru's arm while staring at Minako. Mamoru chuckled and kept eating. The group got a laugh out of this, except for Hiryu. Not that he would laugh anyway, but something else was bothering him now. His crystal had been acting up for awhile, but now it was warm in his pocket. He could hardly wait...

 

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The group dispersed at the end of their meal, some walking their respective paths home, others hitching a ride in Mamoru's car. Minako glanced around for Hiryu, but he seemed to have slipped out already.

 

"Guess he didn't really want to come. He looked bored, too..." she sighed. "He's so boring."

 

Ryo and Ami walked towards his new house, a block or two from the rest of the group, though the distance was continually growing.

 

"So, Ami-chan..." he said, looking for a topic.

 

"Hmm?" she responded.

 

"Well... do you still have that picture I gave you?" he asked.

 

"Of course. It's at home on my desk. What about you?"

 

"I keep your picture in my wallet..." The lack of topic was tearing him apart, but they had still found a way to express themselves to each other.

 

"Uhh..." he added, unsure of what to say. Her gaze was near him but not quite fixed on him. He wanted to know what he was supposed to do to bridge the gap. But it was hard. He had gotten okay at talking to her in the past, but now he was getting used to it all over again. He wanted to know what had changed about her, what was new with her, but that would take a lot of words to say. It's the kind of thing he needed to observe, the kind of thing he already was beginning to observe.

 

"A moment of your time?" an ominous voice asked from the shadows. The purple and pink dusk sunlight provided relative visibility while also allowing for pockets of black in parts of the streets. Ami squinted towards the source of the voice but could see nothing.

 

"I foresaw something like this," Ryo noted.

 

"I know his voice..." Ami said.

 

"I'll be but a few seconds here unless you resist," said Mazarin as he stepped forth into the light. Just as was his body, now his face was veiled in shadows, these cast by his hood. Black with a thick yellow trim around the opening, he seemed to have an affinity for wearing it at all times. He held out his gloved hand, with his crystal in it, which was glowing bright green. Ami's lips tightened seriously. She noticed Mazarin's attention was on Ryo.

 

"Ryo-kun, get out of here!!" she suddenly yelled, jumping in front of him and pushing him out of danger.

 

"Stand down," Mazarin warned venomously.

 

"I'll never let you touch him!" Ami replied, her eyes narrowed and solid.

 

"Thick-headed humans!!" Mazarin roared, casting his bare hand in her direction in a sweeping motion. The force of his gesture brushed her aside, bumping her against a wall. Physically bound by his dark powers, she fell to her knees.

 

"Bastard!" Ryo screamed, running towards the foe, thinking nothing of his chances. He threw a punch at Mazarin, who seemed to glide backwards on air, enough to clear his head out of the way. He then reached forward and clutched Ryo by the collar, pointing the crystal at his chest. Mazarin's minty green eyes glimmered through his hood as Ryo's' face tightened into a pained expression, and the crystal shone brilliantly.

 

Mazarin issued a command in the most haunting tone his voice knew.

 

"Oni, be free."

 

Ryo's eyes seemed to lose their pupils and he bore a mix of pain and rage as his mouth slowly pushed open further and further, seemingly unable to close. A trail of saliva started running down his chin.

 

"I... I can't sense the Oni!" Mazarin declared in shock, lowering the crystal somewhat. Its glowing did not cease, yet continued intensifying even when retracted. "There... there isn't one! But this energy is..."

 

"Hah..." gasped Ryo, starting to recompose himself. "The Dark... King... dom."

 

"Dark Kingdom?!" Mazarin replied surprisedly. Ryo groaned and fell to the ground.

 

"Ryo turned into a monster once, from the Dark Kingdom," Ami said, regaining her strength and returning to her feet.

 

Mazarin turned to her, ready to defend himself.

 

"I won't attack just yet..." she said, staggering towards him. "If you wanted to hurt me you would've done something else. I can already feel my strength returning. But I will do everything I can to stop you as soon as I've got my energy back."

 

Mazarin looked down at Ryo.

 

"Don't you dare do anything else to him," Ami warned, as threateningly as the timid girl had ever sounded. She was still on her way over. "Whatever you want with him, he's not the same as he used to be."

 

"Dark Kingdom..." Mazarin said softly, still thinking.

 

"Who are you?" Ami pleaded.

 

"My name is Mazarin," he replied, in an unusually soft tone. In his surprise, his uncompassionate nature had momentarily subsided.

 

"But... who ARE you?" she asked, kneeling beside Ryo, catching her breath, and carefully checking his vital signs.

 

"Consider me the heir to the Dark Kingdom," he said, turning his back on her and walking off. His short black cape flapped with his movement. He faded into the shadows of the newly fallen night.

 

Ami watched as he vanished, highly concerned at his final statement. Ryo grunted and sat up weakly.

 

"Ryo-kun!" Ami gasped, hugging him.

 

"Ami-chan..." he groaned.

 

"Are you okay now?" she asked.

 

"Yeah... what about you?"

 

"I'll be just fine," she said, relieving him greatly.

 

"Ami-chan, I feel so foolish. You stood up for me like that. It makes me seem like such a wimp."

 

"Ryo-kun, don't say that," she told him. "I could see you, even though I couldn't move. You went after him fearlessly, Ryo-kun. You're the bravest..." She started to trail off, unsure of the suitable words. "Oh, Ryo-kun, I'm glad you're alright!"

 

They stood up and made their way home together.

 

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"I don't get it..." Mazarin complained, perched atop his regular rooftop, examining his crystal. "There was no Oni in him... And even if he had been used as a Yoma, the essence would have left his body afterwards, unless... one of the Seven Shadows?"

 

He moved the crystal about in his hand. Its glow was still uncommonly radiant. "So that must be it. Does that mean the crystal was reacting to him? It houses dark energy, true, and that causes it to gain color and radiance. But it did not absorb energy from him. It's more like..." He couldn't think offhand of a comparison, but he knew that the crystal's awakening process had begun. He never imagined it growing so bright, so fast... Maybe soon...

 

Mazarin decided to forget such things for the moment, and try to get some rest. He slid forward off the railing and leaned himself against it as his equivalent to a pillow. The crystal, which he had sat down nearby, drifted into the air slowly and began to pour out a strange green light. Mazarin ignored this for now, though he sensed it. The output of energy finally got so intense that he opened his eyes with a sense of necessity.

 

The green light was forming quite a few feet away from the crystal. It began to take shape. A humanoid figure with lean, long limbs and the posture of a wild animal. Its skin was a silvery blue, and it was wearing a bluish toga. It had pointed ears and dark blue hair, pulled back into a braid reaching between its shoulder blades. The braid seemed surprisingly neat for such a sub-human composure and garb. Clawlike nails lay in wait for prey on its slender fingers and toes. A long 'blade' grew from the back of each elbow. Finally, with the fading of the light, the face of the being, which Mazarin determined to be an Oni, was discernible. A rather human face, but with an animalistic expression. A flicker of dormant rage in its eyes, and fanged canines peeking out of the slightly cracked lips.

 

Almost as soon as Mazarin could see the face, the Oni noticed him. It crept towards him, growling and quickly asking, "Who are you?!" Mazarin did not respond, and showed no fear.

 

The Oni galloped forwards like a wolf, at amazing speeds, and upon arrival at his feet, it shot to its own and caught Mazarin by the throat, jarring his hood off. The Oni snapped, "How did you release me?"

Mazarin lowered his head and glared at the Oni. "Get off of me, dog."

 

The whites of the Oni's eyes popped outwards, and its unpleasant expression soured into one of anger. Its clutch on Mazarin's neck tightened, and its middle finger pricked the skin. A bead of thick, dark red blood formed there. "I asked you, how the hell did you release me?!" The sides of its lips curled downwards after its question, like an animal bearing its fangs.

 

Mazarin's brow sunk further, giving even less view of the burning light of his eyes. An intense shock swept through he Oni, timed with the casting of the glare. The resolve of its body weakened inwardly. "I said heel, dog!!"

 

As if in a game of tug of war, the Oni reacted, tightening its grip and sending a trickle of blood from the pricked spot. "Answer me or die!" it demanded, not suffering from its rage but naturally acting on it without discretion, before it could experience the fire and agony of human conscience and indecision.

 

Mazarin, to the Oni's eyes, seemed to glow as his displeased expression swelled to a climax and he demanded, "GET DOWN, DOG!!" The impulse through the Oni's body struck it like a bolt of lightning, and its body was flung straight down to the ground like a used rag.

 

Time seemed to stand still. Mazarin paid no heed to the little stream of blood, which had stopped in its tracks. His neck was still sore and was feeling the constriction, but he was too preoccupied.

 

The Oni got up, though this did not involve it rising to its feet again, as it seemed to prefer a beastly, catlike posture. Seeming completely grudgeless, it looked up at him.

 

"You are not the Master, this is for sure... but your power is the same as his."

 

Mazarin cocked an eyebrow. "'The Master'?"

 

"The Master sealed me in his Dark Crystal, because he feared he was in danger. That was some sixteen years ago. I'm afraid the Master is gone now, as I cannot sense his energy, and he would never allow someone else to have his crystal."

 

"This crystal is now the property of me," Mazarin replied. "It was once my father's."

 

"Your father? That would explain your powers. Only the Master's son could awaken the crystal, and even that I would doubt. The Master's skills were both inborn and heavily refined. You are a child prodigy, it would seem."

 

"Hmph," Mazarin replied, unaffected by the compliment.

 

"You are truly worthy to be my master now, as you are of his blood," the Oni explained. "From this moment on, I am at your disposal. My name is Basu. What shall I address you as?"

 

"Basu?" Mazarin replied. "Fine. I am Mazarin. I'll tell you if I have any errands I need you to do."

 

"Errands, Mazarin-sama? Feel free to use me as your father did. My skills far exceed that of an Oni. I am a 'Greater Oni', one of two. One of your father's most unique creations, we function both on the capacity of a human and of an Oni, and we are undyingly loyal to our masters."

 

Mazarin sneered. "Greater Oni? An oxymoron like no other I've heard before. You look, act, and think like a dog, even to your own aware eyes. You're horrible. Leave me be, I'm going to rest."

 

Uninsulted by the scathing words of his new master, Basu slinked over to a distant side of the roof and settled his body down on the floor in a position any of us would find awkward. Within moments, he was in a content sleep.

 

Mazarin returned to his position of rest and crossed his arms. Perhaps he'd sleep tonight, but a nagging sensation lingered in the back of his mind, louder than usual...