sailor nothing, pt5

chapter five
Shin, Journalist.

FILE SAILOR000.DOC

author's Notes for future (untitled) book

by Kongou Shin, Journalist.

(gonna do a brief bit about the truth and my background for intro before getting to confrontation; may change later to flesh out. meant to go as introduction / preface to book. will spellcheck later)

This book is about the Truth.

It's not a book of fiction. It's going to look that way at first, and I've resigned myself to the fact that most people will never see it as anything else... but it's the Truth. You can call me crazy if you want, but the nice thing about the Truth is that it's pure in and of itself no matter what you think of it. Truth is Truth. Your perception may vary.

But that's why I wrote (note: am writing? but it'll take place 'past tense' once I finish so I'll stick to that rather than go back and edit later) this book: to adjust your perception. To present you with the impossible Truth that you won't want to accept at first. It may be unsettling. It may be unbelievable. But it's good for you, in the end. I have a saying: the Truth will set you free, or die trying. Either you or the Truth.

Let me give you an example.

As a kid, I always knew I wanted to go into journalism. I saw people on TV giving the news, the weather, the sports... I loved it. It was better than being a movie celebrity; people who do the news are saying stuff that's important. Stuff that makes a big difference in the world. I wanted to make a big difference in the world too. So, I'd pretend to interview my stuffed animals as if they were diplomats, I'd make casette recordings of myself reading transcripts from the evening news. I was practicing. Getting ready.

I joined any Journalism clubs I could, since my parents moved around a lot. I usually reported fluffy stuff... things I knew would make people feel good, human interest stories. I liked making people happy with my news. If I could make the world a better place, a happier place, I'd done my job as a journalist. That was all that really mattered to me...

One week my dad had to go out of town on a business trip, as did my mother. The only relative available to house me in a place near my school was my uncle. I'm going to say his name right here, right now, even if he tries to sue me for libel: Kongou Akira, CEO of Syber Investment Concern. A stern man. A disciplined man. A respected businessman with great net worth and an impressive presence in the business community.

The week I was at his house, I was doing a general report on why investiment is important to the economy. It was the toughest subject I'd tackled since for a change, I had to do lots of research. That meant using the best resources. That meant talking with my uncle. Frequently. Questioning him on anything that could help my report.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize until too late that he didn't like kids. Really didn't like kids; he saw my questions as an ever-increasing annoyance, a pest that wouldn't shut up.

One day, after he had been drinking, he decided to shut me up. "You talk too much," he told me. "Children should be seen and not heard." He took a roll of electrical tape and taped my mouth shut. Then he taped my hands to a table leg. And then he raped me.

I don't think I had reaction to it I was supposed to have.

True, it broke my world in half. It shouldn't be possible. Not in Japan. Not in our great nation where nothing can go wrong, where crime is so low, where we feel safe walking down a street at night. And it did. I was two years younger than I am now, I knew what happened, I knew what it meant. I knew I was supposed to be absolutely shattered by it.

Nope. I got hard... like diamond. Sharp and edged. I got mad. I ran from my uncle's house and went right to the police. I told them what happened. I figured, we live in a good society, this is a crime, he hurt me, he's going to get punished.

The cops were less than helpful. It was a shaming crime, but I didn't feel ashamed; it wasn't my fault, I was not to blame. HE was to blame. And they were reluctant to do anything because, hey -- he's Kongou Akira! He's an IMPORTANT PERSON. It would ruin his reputation if he was arrested. They felt a little resentful that I'd bring this to them, to the police, heaven forbid!

But I pushed, and they arrested him. And he got off on the charges, since it was my word against theirs, and he bribed them enough to keep any real evidence from making it to court. The members of the diet he had in his pocket would assure that this cheap con would hold like a fortress.

What's more, I was immediately the black sheep of the family after that. My parents were shocked that I'd do something like this... because guess what? He's done this to other members of our family. And they kept it nice and quiet. They didn't warn me. They left me with him and they knew damn well his past...

Impossible. Unthinkable. How could this happen? How could the system fail, how could everybody fail me? But that was the Truth. Underneath the shiny happy world we live in where human interest stories breed, there's something nasty. Something horrible. But something True.

I had a new cause in life. What was important to people wasn't to make them feel happy; that's what led to my disaster. Happy feelings, gloss it over, be quiet about it. No... what people need is the Truth. Cutting, grating, unpleasant, uncomfortable, awful, TRUE. And I was going to give it to them whether they wanted it or not.

My focus shifted from television journalism to print journalism. My columns went from pleasant reaffirmations of life to hard acknowledgements of the rotten core that humanity has trouble keeping under wraps. I won an award for a column I did about a teenager considering suicide because of the evils that others perpetrated on her. I got confrontational like a hockey player. I got loud like a jet engine. I turned into the sort of person who would write this book.

Because as I said, this is the Truth, and it's impossible, and it's unsettling, and every damn word of it is True. And you're going to read it. And it's going to either open your eyes or reaffirm that you want them nice and closed... and if it's the latter, you have my pity.

(note- by this point I expect publishers/readers have either put the book down for good or will read on. anybody who put it down, i wasn't gonna reach anyway.)

----

(chapter on sailor basics goes here; I'm thinking intertwine the facts in chunks with my first experiences with Himei/Aki and Kotashi's evil twin. Change names to protect the innocent? Maybe if they demand it later, for now I'll use their names. It's not important who was involved, just what's really going down under everybody's noses, that's the Truth. The details are just details)

----

(after intro, get to confrontation, that'll be this. note/recordings s follow, flesh out with thoughts between, rework in next draft)

So, I caught 'em. I caught 'em red handed. What's more, I caught them during a great moral impasse.

Magnificent Kamen was the kind of guy who would kill to keep the Truth from coming out. But Himei? Himei couldn't go that far. I still didn't know enough about her, but I had to gamble on enough of her humanity remaining that she wouldn't stoop to murder to keep her 'alternative lifestyle' under wraps. And I KNEW Aki wouldn't do it... she was only a few days removed from normality, and unless she was as fragile as glass, she wouldn't be at that breaking point. (fill in later if it turns out Aki was close to the edge and I didn't realize)

That night, I confronted them and made my demand. I had thought about it quite a bit, really. So, as they walked back towards Himei's house, I followed 'em and wouldn't ease up on the pressure of Question and Answer. I figured I had as long as it took for them to walk to the park to their house before we got interrupted at this hour, so I had to make my pitch and make it fast.

Here's how it went down: [brackets indicate thoughts to merge in next draft]

(flesh out from transcript off my digital recording prog later)

ME: I warned you, Aki. I said it was gonna come out one way or another.

AKI: Y.. you were stalking me?! Just to get a news story?

ME: I prefer to call it 'monstering'. It's what we journalists call total coverage. Get in there, into the thick of it, throw caution to the--

HIMEI: You shouldn't write a story about this.

ME: You think you're gonna be able to stop me?

[Himei had a point here, and I knew that she wasn't gonna hurt me when she said:]

HIMEI: Nobody will believe you. Even if you publish, nobody will believe it. I can't stop you, no. I'm not like that. But you'll look like a fool.

AKI: She's right, Shin. And nothing's worse than having your peers mock you and shun you--

ME: I already get that. The only peers whose opinion I give a damn about are supportive.

HIMEI: Someone else knows about.. us?

ME: Just my editor.

[I had to be honest. It's called earning trust.]

ME: I haven't told anybody else. Seiki almost saw but we covered it up. Nobody else needs to know about this... yet. You're right, Himei, they wouldn't believe. But once I can compile enough of a story that WILL make them believe, it has to come out. I mean... come ON! A whole league of monsters preying on the innocent in Tokyo? Murders and worse happening right under our noses? That's not something that should be--

HIMEI: They're better off not knowing. They're happier not knowing. They can have normal lives and be happy with those normal lives without being constantly afraid of the dark and what could--

ME: What could grab them without any warning, without even deserving that sort of fate.

AKI: That's why we stop them. So they can't hurt people.

ME: So let me help you. Let me cover the story. The Truth will--

HIMEI: Nobody wants to know the truth. They want to be ignorant and happy.

[This was not an arguement I'd win here and now. That's the sort of thing that takes a lot of time. So, I moved to part two of my pitch.]

ME: They won't stay ignorant. I'm going to get this out one way or another. I'll hound you, I'll monster you, I'll get the facts with or without your help. And then they'll all know the Truth. You said yourself, you can't stop me.

HIMEI: [after a long pause] No. I won't do that. I probably should. But I'm not going to be like him, not now... I have to be human, not a...

[Himei got a little unravelled thinking about that. I could see a twitch.]

ME: Okay. Then I give you two options. One, I make your lives very inconvenient by interjecting myself wherever I can without your permission. I don't wanna do that, but I will if I have to; this is too important. Or two...

[Dramatic pause. Helps get them on anticipation.]

ME: ...you make me into a Sailor and I help you directly while compiling my book. I know it's possible, if it wasn't, Aki wouldn't be one right now after her incident. Logic dictates.

HIMEI: No. Not again. Never again.

AKI: You don't want to be a Sailor.

HIMEI: You heard Magnificent Kamen. He was expecting me to commit suicide. That might happen to you. It might happen to Aki. I might do it.

[That unsettled Aki; she was the one who twitched. There's genuine concern there... friendship beyond friendship. Strangers who are strange and pulled together by that, counterparts... (gotta go into detail on this later when I know more)]

ME: I think you'll find I'm tougher than you suspect, Himei. I'll hold up my end, don't you worry.

AKI: Shin... um... look, if we agree to let you in on this, you don't HAVE to be a Sailor. You could do your fact collecting or, um, whatever without doing that. If we don't have a choice... I'd suggest that. That's a better way.

[I'd thought of this. That was part three of the pitch]

ME: I could, you're right. But I don't want to. This is personal for me, Aki.

[I told them my Truth. If I was going to do this... if I was going to win their trust, to show that I had the committment and wasn't going to be the annoying outsider, I had to. And you know? I wanted to. I wanted to explain. They stopped and just listened, despite having arrived at Himei's street... Aki in horror. Himei in an emotionless trance. I think this echoed for her, and echoed real bad]

ME: ...that's why. These Yamiko... they're just like he was. They do the things he did. And it's like I said before, there are people out there who are not involved in this, innocents, who are going to be -- and have been -- victimized by them. You guys take them down before they can hurt. I want to take them down too. No, I'm not expecting that to 'heal' me. But just reporting the Truth is not enough, I learned that long ago. You have to make the world a better place with the Truth. You have to take ACTION. This is the action I want to take. This, and the book I'll eventually write, will be me doing my part to protect what I care for. To protect and arm them with the Truth.

[I let that sink in. Aki looked a bit pale. If she was unsettled by that, and if this job was really as bad as I suspected it was, she might be fragile after all. Himei didn't even react once while I told my story.]

ME: So that's the score. I want to fight with you. I believe in this with every cell in my body. But if you refuse, I'll have to fight you as well. I know muscling my way into the group isn't gonna score me any points, but I swear to Kami above that I will prove myself to you, to everybody. And... and that's it. That's my pitch.

HIMEI: [after another pause; does she freeze whenever she has to think really hard?] ...I can't stop you.

AKI: I don't know about this. You're right, I don't like that you're muscling in. I don't like this at all, even if... if this is important to you.

ME: I'm used to being disliked. I'll cope. It's for an important cause.

HIMEI: Your editor knows?

ME: He's the only one.

HIMEI: You're going to keep it that way.

ME: The book--

HIMEI: You can publish this book when this is all over. One way or another.

ME: Over?

HIMEI: We can't go on like this. Not forever. I don't want to fight monsters when I'm sixty years old. So either we... win the war, or we all die. Then you can publish. Those are my conditions on letting you in on this.

[Aki got unsettled by that, too. Had she even thought of how long she'd be a Sailor? Was her decision a split second impulse, or had she thought it out? What was her reason? But...]

ME: Deal.

HIMEI: Don't expect me to back you up in a fight. If you're dead weight I'm going for my enemy without you. I don't know who you are and I don't need to know. You'll just get hurt if you stay around me and I don't want to be hurt by you getting hurt.

AKI: Himei--

HIMEI: I'm going home now. Shin, come to the window on the left side of the house in five minutes... ten minutes, I have to explain this to him. Ten minutes and I'll have Dusty.. Sailorify you. Good night, Aki.

[She turned and walked down the street to her house. Aki stayed in a hopelessly lost moment, before wandering off.]

The rest was a by the numbers affair. Her cat didn't look happy about this (why was I not surprised to see a talking cat involved in this?) but he zapped me with whatever it was that turns you into a sailor. Himei explained that if I got a headache I should 'go where I feel I have to go' and that was the end of my orientation.

My thoughts, before I go to bed.

Himei... a tough nut to crack. 'You'll just get hurt... and I don't want to be hurt by youg etting hurt.' I understand that attitude perfectly. I felt that way for awhile, until I decided if I didn't start trusting people again, I'd never be able to trust anybody at all.

It's a gamble to trust in someone. To care for someone. That gamble could fail on you if they hurt you, or if they get hurt. Either way, it's hurt for you, and a conservative would hedge the bet by never putting that trust in a risky source. To someone whose trust has been shattered, EVERYBODY becomes risky.

It took awhile, but I forced myself to do it. I shoved aside the fear, I took the leap. My hated enemy his editorial highness is a good example. There was that one flub, that moment the other day when I thought he had shattered my trust... but now I trust him even more. He's defined WHAT he is, WHO he is. I can trust what he is and who he is.

Aki... Aki's too high strung for this job. She comes from the teenage equivilant of high society, the prim and proper, those in power. She fell from grace and has been doing remarkably well for that given how quickly she embraced Himei's way of life, but you can still see flashes of the old Aki. The one who fears rejection. The one who's afraid of being called a freak. The one who's in over her head. If this is a war, if this is going to be hell, then I hope she survives it.

As for me... I made my decision. I gambled. I took the risk and I'm going to have trust that I made the right bet. If all works, I strike back at my uncle and all like him and keep others from getting hurt. If it fails...

The nice part is that if it fails, I won't survive to feel bad about it.

----

(The next day's notes)

If someone you trust is hurt, it hurts you. If I get killed in this (journalists go to war just like soldiers to cover the war, I knew that even before my rude awakening) then I die.

But Kotashi gets hurt.

I think I'm dense. Either I'm dense or I'm intentionally staying blind and I don't like either answer. Maybe it's a gut instinct to protect myself in ignorance, to keep from being in that hurt-and-be-hurt situation, but...

My hated enemy likes me.

When I told the spinning yarn of my nightly adventure, he exploded. Not in anger. In concern. I basically signed my life on the dotted line of a Sailor contract and that meant putting myself in intense amounts of danger. If whacked, I couldn't turn in my column the next day to his editorial highness... but he didn't talk about that. He just talked about the possibility of me being hurt.

Me. Hurt. He didn't like that. It hurt him to think of me getting hurt. Come to think of it, he spazzed mildly when I told him aboyt what his evil twin did, about me possibly being hurt there too.

I don't think I wanna think about this a whole lot right now. Maybe later. When I'm more contemplative. Today has been a whirlwind of activity that needs to be recorded, transcribed, put down For The Record.

First, there was the encounter with my pagan editor from hell. There was his concern for my well being. I think I baited him out of that line of questioning by talking about how he can help me.

"I can help you?" he asked, repeating what I just said. (note, is this prose? fiction? I'm not writing a fictionb ook. But transcripts feel so dry. I want the emotion)

"I think so. This assignment is going to take intense amounts of research," I explained. "I'm going to drill them today, but I don't think these girls know a whole lot about the Yamiko beyond how to eliminate them. They had to come from somewhere, and for the book, I want to know where."

That got his gears a-turnin'. Kotashi couldn't resist a journalistic challenge. "I don't know if the school... nah, even the public library would have anything on this. They've kept it secret for a long time and the best we'd find would be folk tales and old stories of magic and samurai or something... legends. Where magic can exist and monsters are real."

"Monsters have always been real. And I find my magic in the printed word."

"Cute."

He likes to mock me when I get all melodramatic. I kind of like to mock myself by getting melodramatic. We work pretty well together.

"I'll turn in my drafts in progress, but I'm encrypting them," I warned him. "This is your excuse to finally rig your pocket computer's inbox to use PGP. I doubt these crawling demonic nasties are high tech, but there's the off chance that one of the humans they spawn from is some Internet god. I want full safties, signed, sealed, delivered."

He was already jotting it down on his computer's To Do list. Efficent bastard. I'm the one who turned him onto these handheld wonders. Or did he teach me the joys of portable computing? I forget now.

"It might take weeks, but we're gonna dig up every legend, myth and fantasy anybody in Japan's ever had about anything vaguely resembling these bastards," I added. "That's also your job."

"Eh? Why me? That's a hell of a lot of work."

"Do you want to wear the skirt and fight the evil?"

"I'll pass," he replied. "I don't look good in a skirt. But if I could fight the evil instead--"

"Don't go there, girlfriend. Himei's pissed enough about me diving into the fray, she's only tolerating your involvement. Let's not push it."

"You think you can get any info out of them? You didn't exactly befriend them."

"I might be able to yet. Earning trust takes time."

True, true.

From there on it got bad.

I was forced to stand in the hallway carrying a bucket for coming in 45 minutes late to English class. This is because I was busy saving the world.

I was just coming back from the Journalism Club Room when it hit me. The headache beyond headaches, the kind of dull pain that feels like the universe screaming out in horror from a thing that should not be

(metaphor sucks, revise later)

Guessing (correctly) that this was the signal Himei explained, I ran. I could somehow feel where it was pulling me to, and it wasn't on school grounds -- fortunately, I had my bike locked to the rack. ( Crime stats said bike theft was impossible in a nation of honor and shame like ours. I say touch my bike and I break your legs, hence the lock.)

A short pedal ride later and I was at the scene of the disturbance: a small mom and pop restaurant that I'd passed by on my way to school each day. Never ate there. Probably would not be eating there now.

Riding on adrenaline now rather than my bike, I burst through the door, ready to lay the ever lovin' smack down on evil.

Then I remembered Himei forgot to tell me how to change into my Sailor form.

Shit.

The scene looked like something out of COPS; some twentysomethingguy holding mom at knifepoint while pop pleaded for her life. Once I got there, everything went to hell.

Fortunately the Yamiko (I could feel that this was the Yamiko, don't ask me how) did not slip his hand and cut her throat in surprise. Instead, he turned and jumped me, ready to attack whoever dared to interrupt him.

Maybe I wasn't a Sailor, but I was still a kickboxing sort of girl. Those instincts snapped into sharp relief as his head snapped backwards nastily, knocking him out instantly. K.O. So much for the big evil scary monster. What I hadn't counted on was the less big evil scary monster who was behind me.

I only saw a flutter of a black cape before unseen forces hurled me across the restaurant. Wham, crashing right into mom and pop. (What am I writing, an action flick?) I fell to the ground on top of them, knocking them out while I stayed awake yet nastily bruised, in no shape to play Jet Li again. But in good enough shape to at least look at whoever was about to kill me.

I was told later that it was Dark General Neon. All that mattered to me was that I fucked up on my first outing and now was going down before I could do anything. A total and complete waste...

A voice shouted 'Nothingness.' Neon bent over backwards in a way no human could to escape the wild stream of black energy, then he twisted into himself and vanished. Got away, not killed. Then a voice shouted 'Amazing Grace' and the unconscious Yamiko was handled.

I finally managed to get to my feet, and this time the headache was not a sixth sense.

"So much for pulling your own weight," Himei spoke. She didn't do it in an icy, scornful way. She did it in a Himei way.

----

Now I feel like Aki. Am I in over my head? Did I go into the outdoors with gun and camera only to realize the bears were bigger than me? Did I make the right decision?

I gambled. I put my faith in a gamble and I took the bet. Time will show if it works out, or if I live... or don't live... to regret it.

But I'll say this, here and now, For The Record. I did it for the right reasons. What I'm doing, no matter how crazy or dangerous or poorly chosen, is a good thing in and of itself. This is just what I needed to do, for more reasons than I can list.

I just hope it doesn't explode in my face. At least not until I can get published.

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chapter five