Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Mizuno Ami, Sailor Mercury's LiveJournal:

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Monday, August 11th, 2008
11:27 pm	[thread: notinuniform] a regrettable moment. "... Mako-chan?" There's a knock on the door to Makoto's bedroom, carefully, before Ami reaches for the handle, then pulls back, then reaches for it again, swallowing. This is her fault. ... it usually is that way. She's been trying to fix things but she has to accept that nothing is going to change unless she actually does something about ... well, about this. "Do you have a minute?" And since it's her fault she has to be the one to solve it, isn't that how it works? (23 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
11:21 pm	[narrative] tired and wired; we ruin too easy Ami couldn't see. She could see. She couldn't. Could. Couldn't. Vision flickered in and out like carnival Christmas lights, and her ability to focus kept going with it. Something was wrong, something terribly wrong, a tightness in her chest, like the moments just before a teleport with the Glaive, and there was a weight to her arms that wasn't supposed to be there. They felt heavy, and she looked down, and Makoto was in her arms and she wasn't moving. Two minutes. She didn't even know what had happened, exactly, thinking about it; one moment it was just another outing in the city, just the two of them, and the next - There were tears stinging the edge of her eyes and people around them were coughing; something was wrong, she'd figured that out immediately, but she couldn't figure out from where - Someone began coughing up blood, little red splatters on the front of his salaryman's suit - People were shouting, shoving, running - Her hand broke from Makoto's for just a second, and she spun around to grab it again - and - She sucked in a gasp of air and coughed it back up almost immediately, and shoved the man in front of her to the side, hard; she heard a crack against the side of the train but she'd stopped caring. Somewhere between the train pulling to a stop and now she'd picked Makoto's limp body up and carried her out of there; she'd only stopped long enough to transform. She could move faster that way. The rooftops started to blur after a while, from tears and lack of focus and speed. Here she was, then, in front of the hospital with her girlfriend unconscious and hurt in her arms, and she couldn't even move to take the first step inside. Where was the - where - the door? The world swam out of focus again and lurched back in, violently. Her shoulder caught on the edge of it, and Makoto's legs pinned themselves between her chest and the door for a moment. Then she walked into chaos, and she screamed. --- "Oh. God." "Get that stretcher over here!" "She's seizing, she's seizing - diazepam IV, 4 mg start, let's go!" "Look at those eyes - what do you think - some kind of toxin -" "Probably. It would fit with what she's saying -" "Get those clothes off, we need to get that off her immediately -" "--you too, miss, uh . . . come with us, please?" "Some kind of gas -" ". . . holy crap -" "Does your mother know you're -" "Please, she'll be fine, just focus on yourself for a moment -" "Miss?" "Miss -" --- Consciousness. Fade up hospital blur, faint mumble of equipment and clothes-rustle; empty white noise and white walls. A bandaid on her arm - there must have been an IV there, earlier. Hospital clothes; her real clothes washed and folded in a chair by her bed. Henshin pen - with her clothes, along with everything else that was in her pockets, on the chair. One of the nurses recognized her. Where was Makoto? She started to stand. Her head swam painfully, and she fell back against the bed for a moment. The nurse on call in the corridor outside Ami's room gasped when Ami walked out, but Ami didn't care. She walked carefully over to the counter and leaned one arm on top of it. "Kino Makoto's room, please," she said. Room number obtained, Ami returned to her own room to get dressed. She was halfway into her pants when the first nurse arrived to try and tell her she might still need to be sitting down, she couldn't just wander around like she was - Ami looked at the nurse, then at the bed, and continued dressing herself. "We did everything we could for her, Mizuno-san," the nurse was saying, "but - she hasn't regained consciousness since you brought her in. Are you sure it's wise to see her? You aren't in the best of shape, completely." Ami tugged her shirt on. Had it always been this hard to get her arms to cooperate with her demands? "Do you think you can stop me?" "If I have to." Ami slipped the henshin pen into her pocket. "And do you?" ". . . only if you refuse to let me monitor you." Ami smiled. --- She was dismissed later that day, but it was some time before anyone managed to get her to leave the hospital. (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
10:57 pm	searching for innocence [for fireofmars] She's alive. It's funny how two words and one night's sleep can have such a drastic effect on someone's entire worldview. Well, funny if you're not the person in question, one Mizuno Ami, currently staring intently at her hand and trying to decide if a dream is really enough to risk the potential strain what she wants to try could cause someone she's . . . started to think of as a friend again. She doesn't want to cause Rei any more pain if she can avoid it. Ami looks up the stairs leading to the shrine, then slowly puts one foot in front of the other till she's walking up the stairs and committed to seeing the decision through. She's not sure this isn't just selfishness, some resurgence of desperate denial that Mako-chan didn't burn up in the atmosphere right in front of her eyes. She's not. She clenches her fist, bites her lip, then opens her hand and stares at it again. She felt Makoto's - that was no memory she had, and no dream. That was - something of Makoto still lived. Something - enough to make the chance worth taking? She hopes so. Ami clears the top of the stairs and sticks her hands in her blue and white jacket's pockets, shrugging to herself. No use leaving now. She has to try. "Rei?" she calls, as she nears the shrine entrance. She isn't sure whether the other girl is even here - nervousness kept her from calling ahead - but it seemed likely that Rei would be doing something around the shrine at this hour. "Hello?" (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
12:09 am	her memory of the way things were [for notinuniform] [Note: set after Ami, Minako, and Rei get together for ice-cream, even though it's being written before. THNMY?] It had been a good day, in Ami's opinion. She'd enjoyed getting together with Rei and Minako. It was nice. Mostly. But it was nice. She tucked it away in the part of her brain she kept free and clear of pain and suffering and sadness, a space that she tried her hardest to grow but only seemed to shrink smaller and smaller as the days wore on. She opened the door to her room, slipping out of her jacket and hanging her hat on the hook, and she closed her eyes. The salaryman in the alleyway, his pants down around his legs, hands wrapped and entangled in a woman's hair - her clothes making it clear she was his fellow employee. Minako biting into the coolness of her ice cream. The boy no older than thirteen, gun pointed at a prostitute's quivering jaw. Rei sweeping the temple, looking up with a warm smile. The day she heard strange noises and broke into the back room of a cafe catering to "special clientèle" and what she found there. The bad memories always seemed so much stronger than the good ones, but she tried so hard to cling to the good ones anyway. Bits and pieces of electronic kipple covered the floor, and Ami stepped carefully around wires and silicon wafers in various stages of insertion and various other kinds of homeless hardware, pausing to kneel down and check the status of her hastily-assembled observer program, since she'd had to hook it up to a separate system than her main units to avoid detection. "Hm. A few nibbles here and there, but no major invasions yet." She smiled, then got up to lean over a chair arm and run a servers-wide diagnostic, as she did every night, idly hoping that whoever it was out there wearing her face would slip up enough to leave a fingerprint behind on her system. She didn't expect it to be that easy, but she hadn't earned her reputation as a decker to be reckoned with by being careless. She'd spent the day after splitting up with Rei and Minako patrolling the city, anonymously in her hat and jacket and shapeless pants, finding what she could find and stopping what she could stop and hurting who she could hurt. It was . . . it felt right, sometimes more right than the rest of her life did, those patrols: the comfort of anonymity, of nonexistence, then bursting into technicolor power and breaking up the crimes of a grey world. Every transformation felt like a resurrection. She slipped into her pajamas, content she'd done all she could for one day, and fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. She dreamed . . . She recognized the tree; she'd fallen asleep under it before, after a great escape. But which one? Which trouble was she running from, and who? Where was she? An atrium, of some kind. Maybe - a greenhouse. This wasn't the only tree, but it was the tallest, the strongest. The wisest. She would sit under this tree for hours waiting for Jadeite, basking in its age; it was before the end of things, before his dazzling white uniform turned dull and charred with the taint of malice and hatred. It was in a city, and she was - waiting for someone. Or were they already here? Time moved strangely, in this place - this place itself was no place at all but many places, a collection of timespace. Pluto's safe haven, at the end of the war; her lone contribution to the war effort. She'd forgotten - so many things. Her dress gathered at her knees as she let herself slide down against the oak tree's trunk. She . . . was expecting someone. Hoping to meet someone here. She couldn't remember who. And she wasn't even sure this was the right time/place. She was no longer even sure she was who she was meant to be, today. But she had all the time in the universe, now, and the shade under the tree was heavenly. She could wait. (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 15th, 2007
12:27 pm	[NARRATIVE] trying to be heroic in an age of modernity [A lot has been left unfinished for various reasons (again), and we've lost several players for various reasons (again), and this is kind of not permissible in my book, because we are trying to tell a story here. So there needs to be some actual conclusions, here and there. One major flaw is the lack of conclusion to the Dark Kingdom plot, which desperately needs one, both for what happens to Ami and because it also provides the catalyst for much of Ami and Makoto's relationship afterwards, before Makoto dies. We had it all plotted out, so nobody involved is unclear on what happened during it, but probably everyone else is, so this is for your benefit. This is Ami's side of the story. Takes place immediately ater the last comment in this post; flashback sequences follow the chronology of this post, set about a week before the events of the Dark Kingdom invasion. Hope you enjoy it. [Note: This post should be read immediately afterwards, but understood to be happening concurrently.] ( trying to be heroic when all around me history sinks ) (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
11:03 am	ashjkdfh [text via senshi communicator!] I. Need backup. [/text] There are not enough words for the level of DO NOT WANT Ami feels right now. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 10th, 2006
5:31 pm	(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.) ✓ I miss somebody right now. ✓ I don't watch much TV these days.  (Too unreal.) ✓ I own lots of books.  (Far too many, really.) ✓ I wear glasses or contact lenses. × I love to play video games. × I've tried marijuana. × I've watched porn movies.  (dhljsg;hfdfj) × I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship. × I believe honesty is usually the best policy. ✓ I curse sometimes. ✓ I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.  (Like you wouldn't do the same.) × I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me. ( it goes on... ) (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 27th, 2006
10:01 pm	[DARK KINGDOM, Pt. 1] *scary noises* She'd fallen into bed, exhausted, grateful the next day would not be a school day, only to be rudely awakened by the - by the computerized alert system hooked into the Earth's satellite grid as an early-warning device in case there was any sign of high-grade magical energy sources being thrown around. It's five in the morning, Tokyo time, when the alarm wakes Ami up, her computer screen flashing angry and red. It sounds like a set of fire engines are parked inside her bedroom, and she wants the noise to stop very much and very soon, and she's sure her mother's awake now, too. (She only fell asleep half an hour ago, having spent the earlier portion of the night incapacitating several garden-variety robberies and ensuring a would-be rapist didn't get up for some time, not even when the police arrived. (Crime didn't pay when the Senshi were patrolling the city.) Ami sits up in bed, suddenly awake, her mouth dry with fear. She throws the covers off and sits down in her pajamas at the computer desk, her hands flying across the keyboard. First order of business: turn down the alarm, not so low she can't register any change in pitch, but low enough that it won't be nerve-wracking - any more than it already is, at any rate. The readings were coming from the ocean, and whatever was emitting the readings, it was moving fast - faster than anything human could move. She'd factored in the Senshi energy signatures, so they'd long since stopped registering, and this wasn't something that had come from outer space, it was definitely located right on Earth . . . Which meant it could be coming from one place, and one place only: the Dark Kingdom. Whatever that massive, terrifying blob of magical energy her detection system had locked onto, it was direct proof that the Dark Kingdom had found a new way out of their prison besides D-Point, and they weren't playing by the same old rules. And its eventual destination - she calculates its course based on its current trajectory, and waits for the projected line to finish drawing along the satellite image. Ami freezes as the realization hits her, all the warmth of the room sucked out and leaving her chilled to the bone. It would hit Japan in fifteen minutes. "This is bad," she whispers. "This is very bad." ( The first message she sends is simple, and she addresses it to Luna and Artemis. ) ( The next message she sends is to Rei: ) ( She sends a brief message to Usagi and Minako: ) ( Finally, she sends one to Makoto: ) She shoves away from the computer desk, spinning her chair around and sticking her foot out to catch on the side of her bed, gripping the wood with her toes. She springs off her chair, tugging her pajamas off for something more substantial. Someone's knocking at her door: her mother. Obviously. The alarm woke her up after all. Ami shrugs on a long-sleeved blouse and opens the door, smiling as placatingly as she could manage at her mother. Dr. Mizuno, for her part, looks about as worn as Ami feels. She gives her daughter a sad little smile and leans against the doorframe. "I suppose this means something bad happened," she says. Ami nods, pulling on a pair of pants. "Yes," she says. "Something very bad happened." "And the only people who can stop it are you and your friends." Dr. Mizuno keeps her voice as calm and level as she can manage; no quivering here, though the desire to do so is very clearly written in her eyes. "We always have been," Ami says, because it's the truth. "And if you go, there's a chance you might not be coming back?" Dr. Mizuno stands up, off the doorframe, staring directly at Ami. "Like before?" Ami pauses. She looks away, and down. ". . . yes. We might not all come back alive." Her mother surprises Ami by wrapping her in a big, warm embrace. Ami doesn't respond as quickly as she probably should, but eventually she returns the hug, and her mother squeezes her tighter. "Be safe, Ami-chan," Dr. Mizuno says, her voice shaking. She lets go of Ami, puts her hand on her daughter's shoulders, and smiles weakly. "I know I've said some things in the past, and I'm sorry. I just want you to know -" her voices catches, and she looks away briefly, "how proud I am to have you as my daughter. No matter what happens, remember that." Ami nods. She doesn't really know what to say to that. She wasn't expecting anything of the kind, that's for sure. ". . . thank you." Her mother smiles. "Now go. Your friends are waiting." So Ami does. She stops at the door to slip her shoes on, and then she's out into the Tokyo air, her pen slipping into her hand already. She can hear people screaming up ahead, and she only hopes she isn't too late. ( OOC NOTE FOR MAKOTO-, USAGI-, MINAKO-, AND REI-MUNS. IMPORTANT. ) (43 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 21st, 2006
4:38 pm	tears for fears [re: notserene, to: notinuniform] It is, perhaps, unusual for Ami to be the one knocking on Makoto's apartment door. It is also, perhaps, unusual for her to look like she's about to shake herself to pieces right on Makoto's doorstep. Such things are not normal for the usually-rational, thoughtful girl. ( Then again, she has not exactly had a normal day. ) So here Ami is, standing on Makoto's doorstep, lost in her own frantic funhouse-mirror mind, hoping the other Senshi will answer the door before she loses what remains of her presentability and sanity where everyone can see it. (33 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
11:17 pm	( The Chess Meme from Makoto's Journal ) I'm mildly unnerved that so few questions can produce such accurate results. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 28th, 2006
3:21 am	Kunihiro, on the Sidewalk, with the Crowbar ((Occurs before, during, and after this post.)) ( She isn't at home, but she is home. ) She rummages through her pants till she finds her palmtop, and sends Makoto (CC'd to Rei, now) a text via Senshi communicator that reads: we all need to talk makoto''s been sshot, it's alll over the news, and i hhave a moderatte concussion thanks to a crowwbar it appearrs the only one of us nnot sidelined is rei please responnd so i know you are allive and will nott bleeed to death, my brain is nnot functtioning at normal cpacity and i need to be reasssured of these thingss And with that sent, she took her mother's advice about resting to heart and promptly passed out for another hour. (30 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 5th, 2006
6:09 am	OOC - A brief list of useful devices Ami has invented/adapted in the past month and a half. ( Read more... ) She's rapidly* approaching what I believe gadgetqueen-mun once described as the "mad scientist event horizon," in terms of the point at which her intellect is developed enough that her ambitions are no longer the sole province of ideology, and now are in danger of being actualized before she might be able to properly evaluate the worth of the idea vs. the reality. Or her simply deciding that she is, in fact, right, and to hell with anyone who disagrees, because of course they'd mock her if they couldn't understand the depths of her vision. But this is, of course, only a possibility. *"Rapidly" here being subjective, and meaning more accurately "within the next few months", which is still soon. (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 3rd, 2006
3:28 am	School almost makes me feel normal again. It's been so quiet on the extranormal front lately. I don't like it. Well, I do, but it makes me nervous. (18 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006
12:45 am	OOC - What I Like to Call "The Dumbest Decision I Ever Made" But it won't leave me alone, so ( here's the ice elemental thing, in concise, clear terms: ) It's always fun when your characters have to ask themselves how human they really are, you know? Especially if they don't actually know the answer. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 30th, 2006
1:42 am	((Time has no meaning, yay!)) ((Set roughly two weeks after the Senshi returned to "normal" and one week before Makoto moved back into her old apartment.)) It had only been about a day since things had come to a head, and Ami and her mother had a "talk." Ami wasn't entirely sure she had recovered from that yet. She wasn't entirely sure her mother had, either. In fact, she was half-convinced her mother thought she was a freak. And insane. She really did need to talk to Makoto anyway. It was the only time these days she could tell herself she wasn't crazy and believe herself when she said it. So when Makoto mentioned over dinner there was some stuff she'd been planning they should talk about, Ami said sure. She knocked on Makoto's bedroom door. She knew she could probably go right in, and it wouldn't make a difference. She knew that Makoto wouldn't mind. Right now, though, she needed something comfortably traditional, and for Mizuno Ami, the politness was a comfort. "Makoto-chan? You wanted to talk to me about something?" (88 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 12th, 2006
12:37 pm	[locked from Makoto] . . . I can't even keep myself from hurting my best friend. I've done so many bad things. I just want to start doing something right again, but I can't even manage that. I wish I could stop reminding myself of what happened. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006
10:40 pm	Nabu didn't waste much time skedaddling away from the nexus at the sight of not one, but two Sailor Moons, and what she suspected was a disguised Sailor Venus, but the only thing that gave her that idea was she didn't know many people willing to wear a big red bow in her hair. Metallia-sama's name, her head hurt. She'd spent the day filling out paperwork - apparently, in the Dark Kingdom, they reward you for being vicious and successful by giving you all the work the Queen apparently is too high and mighty to bother with - and now she couldn't get the ache in her forehead to go away. It was pulsing like a heartbeat at this point. "I hate my life," she muttered, the room lighting up at her command. There were some perks to being ranked General, after all. "I did not need this complication. It ruins everything." She sighed, rubbing her temples. "And Beryl-sama will blame me for it. I'm dead. Unless I find a way to kill them without Beryl ever finding out about it." Her headache suddenly got much worse, and she yelped from the sudden pain. The only coherent thought that came to mind after that was: I really, really hope Marduk remembers to knock first. (46 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 21st, 2006
7:17 pm	I was wondering when things would finally calm down enough for the court to stop paying such close attention. Rapid promotion will have that effect, but eventually the shine will wear off. Now it has. Time to start doing things again. ((In lieu of actually posting what happened, assume that Nabu and Marduk followed through on their plan, killed Nephrite in public, were promoted to Dark Kingdom General, and have subsequently been laying low till the attention passed on and they were free to maneuver with minimal observation once again. There would've been a post to this effect sooner, but it refused to agree with me, and thus it never ame about, and so now we're all just moving right along like it happened, without actually playing it out. Got it memorized?)) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 6th, 2006
7:00 pm	Transformation Queen Beryl had given her a box when she'd met her in court that day, and Nabu had yet to open it. A gift from Beryl-sama was a great and terrible thing, and she didn't wish to risk it until she was certain she was prepared to accept the consequences. She sits on the edge of her bed and toys with the latch outside the slender polished black crystal container, idly wondering what it must be. Something pen-shaped, she muses, and then wonders where the thought of a pen, of all things, came from. She bites on her finger, idly, feeling the pinch of fang against her bodysuit and skin, and sets the container down. She looks at it. "Beryl-sama said it was a gift, refashioned from material created by Metallia-sama herself. To signify the true import of the promotion, and to . . . rechristen us as Lieutenants apart from the other youma." She furrows her eyebrows. It was a strange phrase - after all, she was a youma. What else could she be - human? Nabu suppresses a shudder. Beryl-sama wouldn't do that to a Lieutenant. At least, Nabu hoped not. She reaches for the box, picks it up, and opens it. And inside is a pen. For a quick, brief second, she has the strangest feeling of deja vu, and then it passes. She picks up the pen - a black star mounted on a blue handle - and holds it up. The light glints off it, and she miles at the feeling of general malaise that emanates from the object. Whatever it is, it feels like Metallia-sama, and that's what mattered. "Now what?" Nabu leans on her hand, holding the pen out in front of her. She tosses it in the air, once. When it lands in her hand, the words come to her like she'd never not known them. "Dark Power, Make Up!" She feels the crack of black lightning - and then there's a flash - and then everything goes white, and then she realizes she is the white, and then tendrils of thick, slimy black wrap themselves around her chest and arms and legs and neck and forehead, and then she hangs there suspended and then the tendrils shatter and reassemble themselves into a dark blue and black fuku - and then the light fades and there is only her. Nabu blinks. That couldn't have possibly only taken a moment. It didn't feel like it took only a moment. And yet, that is exactly how it feels now. "Huh." She looks down at herself - the gloves, the boots, the - incredibly short - skirt. A Senshi fuku. But . . . not. She can feel the difference - can see the difference, though she is at a loss to explain what the difference was. This doesn't make her sick to the stomach to stare at, like the costumes the traitors had worn did. She looks at herself in the mirror, and is startled to see her hair had changed color to match the colors of her uniform. At least her eyes have retained their normal catlike irises. Better than looking entirely human, even if she knew she wasn't. "So this is my reward - to redeem the image of the Senshi among the Kingdom after the traitors tarnished it so effectively." Nabu runs a hand along her gloved arm, and smirks. "A suitable assignment." She grins, and points her hand at the wall and shouts, on a whim, "Metallia Aqua Mirage!" To her shock and pleasure, something does happen - and the wall finds itself completely frozen over. Nabu laughs. Now to find Marduk. She leaves her chambers and goes to locate the other youma. (25 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 3rd, 2006
7:40 pm	It was a very good day. (Comment on this)