Chapter 13: 仮面外す - His Story

Hugo Zehren had slept very little last night. It felt impossible to nod off despite how physically drained he felt. His body was still buzzing from the events he had lived through. That mysterious woman, the people she had bewitched. Saving Ami. It was blurry enough to have all been a dream yet too vivid to have been anything other than real life.

After getting home, somehow, his answering machine had blown up with messages from his mother and sisters. Once his guests were tucked up and secure, he had paged Audrey's beeper. Mere seconds passed before she presumably found a payphone and was able to call him. His family was safe. His mother wanted to know where he was, Helen asked if Ami was with him – and Sophie wanted to know if he knew where Seb was. That was one question he couldn't answer. He hadn't even crossed Hugo's mind at all. Still, he promised to let them know if he called or turned up at his place.

He had other things to worry about, though.

The first of which came when Ami had finally stumbled out of his bedroom in her superhero regalia as dazed as he had felt the night before and mind filled with nonsense ramblings. Just the look in her eyes told him that he would have to explain everything, and it was going to be hard.

'Sailor Mercury.'

It had seemed strange to say it aloud. Hugo heard the distant humming of Ami's mind as hundreds of incoherent thoughts, some in English, most in Japanese, rushed through her head. She clearly didn't understand how he could possibly know that name.

Ami's eyes widened. 'But... how?'

She tried to stand, wanting to pace but her knees wobbled the moment she shifted weight to her feet.

He jumped up to steady her.

'Maybe, maybe you should stay sat down?' he suggested in a lighter tone. She obeyed, as if in a trance. The look in her eyes was a mixture of shock and curiosity. Feeling his own heart-rate start to pick up, Hugo spoke his next words carefully. 'I think it's time we corroborated our stories.'

What do you mean? she thought.

Without thinking, he answered as if she had spoken aloud.

'I mean, compare a few things.'

'Yes, Hugo!' Ami chuckled. He's so funny... cute... her mind whispered unconsciously as she continued to speak. It was hard for Hugo not to blush. 'What I mean is what could you have to corroborate with me?'

That was a good question. He hoped that if he could be clued into the things Ami knew about what was going on around London. With that strange woman. Then perhaps the last few months of his life would begin to make sense as well.

'I don't know... yet,' Hugo admitted. "We'll soon see.'

Ami took a deep breath, nodded and she leaned forward.

'There is definitely one thing I need to know,' she began while thinking;

How did we escape?

'How did we escape?' Hugo said for her.

'— did we escape?'

She stared at him and smiled sheepishly, a little befuddled at her mouth trailing behind her thoughts and his words.

Hugo chortled in amusement, 'To be fair I don't think I needed to be psychic to guess that would be your first question.'

'So, how?'

I'm a little worried you might think I'm lying or insane, he told her silently. She made no response but of course, she didn't! She couldn't hear him!

'Give me a second,' Hugo whispered quickly. 'I need to think how I'm going to… phrase this?'

It was a relief to know she couldn't hear his thoughts. He looked her up and down, still in her "battle-gear", though it seemed a poor choice of words to describe what she was wearing. A swimsuit with a short skirt that barely covered the top of her thighs, and high-heeled boots. It didn't seem terribly practical… but then what did he know? I guess it allows for… freedom of movement? he considered, giving it another once over. It iswell-fitted, crossed his mind, and he blushed. Looking away, he took a steady breath. Yes, I'm definitely relieved she can't hear me, Hugo thought with resolve. Though, silence will get me nowhere either. Given she looks like that – and don't look again or she'll think you're a pervert – given she's a costumed hero of sorts, maybe she'll have a clue about what the heck is going on with me.

That was his lifeline and he clung to it as he chose his next words.

'To be honest I'm not entirely sure how we got away.'

'You... don't?'

'Well, I can tell you how, but it'll sound mad.'

Mad, she thought. Madness? Angry. No... Something in Japanese. Japanese. More Japanese. Mentally unsound. Insanity. Oh, I see!

'In what way?' she asked. Her little inner monologue had only taken a second or so, but Hugo's lips had broken into another smirk. She tilted her head, 'Hugo?'

Hugo glanced her up and down again.

'Maybe you want to slip into something more comfortable?' he suggested. 'You know, less formal and more… "Ami"?'

It took her another moment to realise he was talking about her "Sailor Mercury" garb. At that, she blushed.

'Okay, um,' she stuttered and laid a hand gently over her throat as if she meant to grab at a necklace that wasn't there. He felt her heart hum in panic, then relax as she realised something. Awkwardly she rocked from side to side. 'This might sound silly but could you, um, shut your eyes?'

Hugo obeyed without a second thought. As he did he sensed a blinding light shine in front his closed lids. It lasted only seconds, but he dutifully kept his eyes closed until Ami gave him permission to open them. Then he did. She was back in the same clothes she had been wearing the night before, nervously clutching a purplish-blue stone streaked with grey-green that hung around her neck. He wondered if that was the source of her power, or if it was just a stone she wore for comfort.

'You're like a superhero,' he teased.

'I suppose,' was all she said as she retook her seat.

Her expression was expectant.

'Well, I'm "Ami" again. Will you answer my question now, Hugo?'

How do I start? and clapped his hands together and took a deep breath. 'You want to know how we escaped, right?

'It's a good place to start,' she offered.

'Then let me preface this—start this—by admitting something.'

'What?' Ami looked about ready to slip off the edge of the sofa in anticipation.

Hugo lifted his index finger pointedly.

Then he paused. He didn't know how to begin. Should I start with the weird thing, the weirder thing, or the thing that keeps me up at night? That was the thing scared him so much he could feel his fingers begin to shake. He had to distract himself, quickly.

'Actually, there are several things,' he confessed, tone almost comical. Ami even giggled as his finger curled down with his words. So funny, she told herself, but Hugo queried whether she would be laughing once he has satiated all of her questions. 'All of them are pretty strange,' he sustained. 'One is downright embarrassing; another is probably going to present itself sooner rather than later.'

Hugo's eyes flickered to the bathroom door, expecting the handle to start shaking any moment. It was still. Ami didn't seem to notice. He swallowed the growing lump in his throat, mouth parched from how anxious he felt.

'The final one is scary, for me, but I feel all of these things are relative to what happened last night.'

'Then I want to know,' she assured him. 'Not just to satisfy my curiosity but because… I…!'

I want to know what's been on your mind.

'I want to know what's been on your mind.'

Her mind and words reverberated through him in such a way he felt a sad smile breach his lips.

'It's not going to be easy to explain.'

Ami's brow knotted in sympathy. 'Then pick whichever is easier first? After all,' and she looked down to hide her face, her cheeks noticeably flushing. 'You've already worked out my secret.' Sailor Mercury. 'That's pretty embarrassing from a certain point of view.'

I suppose, Hugo agreed, only nodding. It certainly helped him decide which part he was going to tell her first.

Slapping his thighs dramatically, in a "can-do" fashion, he muttered a final, 'Right!' and stood up. 'Wait here.'

He turned to walk towards the front door. There he saw his long green military-style coat and red scarf where he had left them the night before. His hands shook as he picked them both up and brought them back.

He held them up.

Ami watched him carefully.

'You've seen these before, right?' Hugo began, heart, thumping in anticipation.

She nodded, 'Your coat and scarf?'

'Yeah...' he agreed, hesitated, then remembered something. It was a big old coat he had bought a while back because of its one, very special feature. Not that he had bought it with the intention of using it in this way at the time. But when one needed to change their appearance at a moment's notice, this feature was very, very useful. His sister Helen, would-be shrink that she was, explained to him once that humans tended to focus more on what people wore and rather than their faces. The clothes he wore day-to-day would change, sure, but outside Hugo wore a long green coat and red scarf.

That was the rule he had set himself.

'Do you remember one of our first conversations was about how I liked to several good quality things and wear them until they fall to pieces?'

'Yes, like your boots.'

'My boots,' he chuckled and looked down to wiggle his boot-less toes. The boots in question were also by the door. The brown ones, and the black ones, the tartan ones… not that the boots themselves mattered. 'Also, pretty much everything else I own, too.'

With that, Hugo lifted his coat. 'Like this coat. Watch.'

Steadily, he reached inside one of the arm sleeves until his hand came out the end and then pulled it inside out. Then he did the same with the other one. Exposed beneath the forest green coat was another colour. Navy. Hugo shook it out, so the entire coat became a navy coat with paler stitching.

Then, he put it on.

Next, he grabbed his red scarf and performed the same trick. This time he reached into a small gap at each end of the woollen material and twisted. Suddenly, the scarf, like the coat, was a deep blue. He wrapped that around his head.

Finally, came the clincher. He reached inside the breast pocket and pulled out what looked like a pair of glasses. He unfolded them and held them up without putting them on.

Ami stared at him, with her mouth hanging open.

'Am I… making myself clear?' Hugo stammered, feeling his own cheeks start to flush.

He put the mask on to cover the top half of his face. As a finale, he twirled in the long, cape-like coat and held out his arms to present the final product.

'Ta-dah!'

With that, he was now the Masked Knight or, what had the Sunday paper called him?

'"The Guardian of Old London Town,"' Ami choked.

Hugo bit his bottom lip nervously, then tipped his mask as if it were a hat. 'In the flesh.'

'But you've been active for a whole year?! How did you… come to be doing this?'

Hugo removed the mask properly, 'I could ask you the same thing, Sailor Mercury.'

'I asked you first!'

He snorted, 'Yeah, I guess you did. However, I need to do a switcheroo to change the way I look; you just proof in and out of costume. Can you explain that?'

Her mouth closed, opened and then closed again. That was hard to explain, obviously. Hugo had always suspected there was more to the world than met the eye, but Ami's appearance proved it to him. It went a long way to explaining the strange things that had been happening the previous year – and gave him hope that the other, really strange thing he had been going through had some sort of logical explanation.

I hope, he thought again.

'Magic is real,' he offered as an explanation. 'That much is clear.'

Ami inclined her head, 'I guess so. It would take a long time to explain the technicalities around it but… yes. What you see is a magical transformation. In some ways, Sailor Mercury is a leftover piece of myself from another lifetime. That's why I can change my form as I do. You on the other hand…' and despite everything, she smiled. 'It took effort to come up with all of this!'

She edged forward a little more.

'So, why?'

Hugo really didn't have an amazing answer for that.

'It just happened that way,' he shrugged. 'It was like, one minute I'm living a normal life, the next I come across those people the breaking windows of some jewellery shop. Instead of calling the police, I felt this weird urge to deal with it myself. I'd never thought about vigilantism before in my life, but it was uncanny. Like I was the only person who can deal with this situation. So, I jumped into the phone box but instead of calling 999, I… turned my coat inside out and wrapped my scarf around my head. You know, in case there was CCTV.

'Then… I became the Guardian and just confronted those "Core-Zombies". Zombie is a good word for them, I think. I pulled the alarm and was surprised when they didn't attack me. Instead, they stared at me in confusion, as if they didn't quite know whether I was a person or a "core". It made them easy to subdue. Eventually, they did start grasping at me, but they're not all that graceful.

'Finally, when I heard the sirens, I hid and watched. Next day, I'm on page four or five of the Metro. "New Vigilante Saves Jewellery Shop". I thought that would be the end of it but… it wasn't. It just kept happening. I kept accidentally walking in on these sorts of attacks and each time I'd just confront them myself. It felt natural, so I didn't question it. Eventually, I just decided to accept my fate and purposely be on the lookout for them. I knew where they would hit up, so it seemed like it would be easy and sate this odd thrill I got from stopping them myself.'

He paused, conscious of how long he had been talking. She didn't seem perplexed, rather, she seemed to be strangely enjoying his tale of how "The Guardian of Old London Town" or "Masked Knight" or "Masked Stranger" – whatever anyone wanted to call him had come to be. There even seemed to be a hint of empathy in her small smirk, especially when he had said, 'I knew I was the only person who can deal with this situation.' Like she understood what he meant all too well.

It helped him to feel calmer.

'Occasionally, though, I had to stop a few actual crooks who weren't seeking whatever a "core" is – just expensive gold watches they could sell on the black market,' he added. 'But, by that point, I figured it was all the same and stopped them too. It was harder seeing as they often were armed but also nice as they'd wet themselves the moment I'd do something as simple as switch the lights on and announce myself. Say what you like about the "Core-Zombies", they at least have no fear.'

Core-Zombies, Ami thought to herself. I like that term. She inwardly decided she would use it herself in future, and Hugo felt oddly triumphant, too. She was so accepting of this information it almost felt as though he would wake up any moment and find the last hour or so had never happened. Though it wasn't the most glamorous of explanations, Ami seemed to accept it and even managed to parody his own remark earlier;

'You're like a superhero.'

Hugo snorted.

'Not as impressive as you. Incidentally, I didn't buy the mask until, like, the third time I had to do this.'

Ami stifled yet another titter, thinking how ridiculous it was he would feel the need to even say that.

'What?!' Hugo snickered along. 'By then I started to think it was becoming a trend, so I figured the mask was a good investment!'

'It seems you were correct.' She cleared her throat through snorts of laughter. 'So, you were the one who helped Colbert, too?'

Kris's uncle, Hugo remembered. That had been the first time he had seen "Sailor Mercury". That evening had just been a routine patrol for him, and a regular old capture, so the last thing he had expected to see was another vigilante there. His success had resulted in a few idiotic copy-cats, though never a girl in a sailor-suit acting as if she were a would-be Sailor V. He hadn't seen the face clearly that night, but he somehow felt it was Ami. Truth was that he had sensed something different about her from the moment he laid eyes on her.

'You saw me,' he said simply.

Ami's heart skipped a beat. That was the first time I saw the Masked Stranger.

'I saw you, too. It was so obviously you.'

'Humans aren't supposed to see through the disguise.'

'It's not that much of a "disguise", Ami. Not to me, anyway.'

The fact you could see it was me, she thought, shows you are not an ordinary human.

Hugo heard Dan's voice in his own head. "It's like you're not human." That thought had terrified him at the time. Now, it angered him. Stupid Dan!He would have to deal with him later…

'You're already pretty special with your ability to mind read, so it might help you see through the magic that is supposed to disguise me,' Ami suggested.

'Perhaps.' Hugo didn't want to dwell on that point further. 'Maybe it also stopped people from seeing through my pretty piss-poor – pardon my English – disguise. Colbert pretty much saw me dead on but didn't recognise me.'

Ami blinked in confusion.

'Cole… saw you?'

'I knew it was only a matter of time before they attacked him, so I'd staked him out a little bit before,' Hugo explained. 'He lives right by me, yet it was the one area that had seen only a little activity. The closest they'd ever got before was the campus. They only ever attack places where they can find gemstones. If there are enough people wearing jewellery it can be enough to lure them all out, too. Probably the craziest thing was when they targeted our library for no other reason I could find other than many students were wearing necklaces and earrings!'

Ami placed her hand on her own necklace. Was that the night we first really talked, or the night I found the goshenite?

Hugo left that thought unanswered and continued with his story.

'Occasionally these sorts of "new age" shops get targeted, too,' he explained, recalling the various weird and wonderful places he happened to stumble upon the Core-zombies. Somehow, he always managed to find them. 'If a place has all that crystal-healing trash Kris's uncle sells, they'll go there. I found out via Kris she believed in that voodoo a little while back and she rather helpfully provided me with a list of all her uncle's competitors. That helped me get an idea of the places they would attack. Something was keeping Colbert safe, it seemed, until that night.'

He stopped to take a breath.

'I've been keeping a record of their movements. Their attacks are becoming more frequent and it's seldom the same people doing the attacks. They're all just popping up like dandelions. Screeching for their beloved "core".'

Core.

'You think that's why they attacked the museum we were at last night?' Ami asked, twiddling her necklace some more. 'They tried to rip your mother's necklace off.'

'Mum…?' Hugo murmured, under his breath. He would have to call them again. 'They called, by the way,' he interjected. 'They got out okay.'

Ami smiled, 'That's a relief. I told them to just get away so I… wasn't sure.'

He nodded and carried on. 'Maybe it was the jewellery. People were dressed up so there would have been a lot of jewellery,' Hugo pondered for a second. 'However, I think it was that statue that really drew them in.' Ami's mind seemed to hum in agreement, remembering whatever sight she had seen last night when those people attacked. He could only imagine it was like his own; a group of mindless zombies biting, sucking and pulling at that sculpture as if she were made of rock candy rather than stone. 'I guess she must be made of the same minerals they're looking for?'

'If all you have said is correct, that would make sense,' Ami decided, slouching in the sofa for a moment. Then, she quickly sat up again and leaned forward. I need to stay focused, she told herself. He said there were other things.

Hugo flinched slightly when he heard that. 'You're right, I did say there were other things.'

'So?' She didn't even flinch that he had answered her before she had spoken, accepting this back and forth they had of him reading her thoughts before she could vocalise them.

Hugo hesitated.

He slowly began to shrug off his "costume" and throw it over the back of the sofa beside Ami. The euphoria of revealing himself had passed and now the dread had returned. He perched on the edge of the coffee table in front of her. How am I going to explain this bit? He hoped that it would be as easy as her "poofing" into her Sailor Mercury outfit was. Magic. Not that he had ever felt remotely magical. Says the guy who reads minds, he added self-mockingly.

'Well, since one of them hasn't arisen from the black lagoon yet I suppose I should tell you more about me… and my powers.'

Ami was so drawn in by his mention of his powers she didn't bother to question what "arisen from the black lagoon" was meant to mean.

'What happened to me last night has happened before, several times. Now I know your secret, Sailor Mercury, I'm hoping that you will be able to help me understand why it's happening, how it's happening— and reassure me that I am not just losing my mind.'

Ami's brow furrowed. 'Please tell me, Hugo.'

He took another breath. Then a second, as the first hadn't felt quite enough.

'I get these… blackouts.'

'Blackouts?'

'Yeah, um, like...' What's a more direct synonym? Hugo pondered. The last thing he needed was her to misunderstand this part of the story. As he searched for an apt word to describe it he could only think of the medical term. 'Like a syncope. Fainting? Losing consciousness.'

Ami nodded, seeming to understand now.

'I can see why that would be upsetting for you especially,' she whispered.

Yes, Hugo agreed.

Not that his coma had been precluded by these symptoms. That literally had happened out of the blue. No warning, no rhyme nor reason. One minute he had been fine, the next he was out like a light for nearly two years, only to wake up as if nothing had ever been wrong with him. A medical mystery inside and out. He had been submitted for every scan imaginable and still did have checks done to ensure there was no brain damage. There was certainly no physiological reason all of this was happening as far as he could see. His brain was as healthy as could be. That was why he was paranoid that he was just starting to lose his marbles.

'I don't always outright faint; sometimes just my eyes haze over and other times I can feel faint without actually losing consciousness.

He looked down at his hands and realised he was shaking. He clenched his fingers tight to make them stop.

'As ridiculous as this might sound, it feels like I'm shifting between two places at once. One eye sees one thing, and the other sees something else somewhere else. Then, sometimes I actually do… shift places.'

'Shift places? Like, walk?'

'No,' he swallowed. 'Like, teleport. Shunkanido. Momentary movement.'

Her eyes widened. He had purposely used the term that would truly make her understand though he was unsure how he knew those words. Either way, it seemed to work.

'So, one minute you're one place and the next... how long has this been happening?!'

Hugo brushed some hair out of his face. 'It only started recently. Over the last few months or so.'

'Can you control it at all?'

'Nope. It just happens.'

'And does… time pass when it happens?'

He shook his head. 'I just... move from one place to another as easily as stepping through a door.'

She was listening to him. Listening to me, this nonsense. He dared to look her in the eyes then. This gave him hope. She didn't look at him with the incredulity he had feared. Instead, she was serious and sympathetic. Above all, though her mind was quiet. No discord or disbelief, just a calm echo of his own words as he spoke them.

Thank goodness.

Ami tilted her head, 'So, it happened last night?'

'After I left to go to the restroom,' he said, looking back down at his balled fists. 'I felt sick. I was sick. My head was pounding like my blood was trying to escape my arteries. Then I fainted just as I heard the panicked cries and screams of the guests in the distance. Even though I felt like I was about to bring up bile, I remember staggering towards the door, but I just collapsed. I wondered the same thing I always do;

'"Will it happen again? Will only a few seconds pass… or many months?"

'Everything went dark. Thankfully, I woke up a minute or so later. The bulbs over the mirrors were still on even though the main lights had gone out. I dragged myself up by the sink, caught sight of what a mess I looked, and I could hear my "old friends" grasping and crawling about with their old chant of "Core".' Hugo paused. Maybe Ami knows what that is? He had always wondered what this "Core" they wanted so much was. He presumed it had to be some sort of jewel, but he wasn't sure. Ami neither said nor thought anything. She had clearly heard it and knew what he meant by it but there was no certainty. He felt a little deflated.

He carried on his memory of last night.

'So, I did my little switcheroo and made my way back out towards the main hall again.

'At first, they didn't seem to see me as they were mainly focused on that statue. Then I stepped into the room and they all stopped and stared. There were so many of them! More than I'd ever seen in one place. I think… some of the guests who were at the presentation that night were among them. Some of them looked exhausted like if they were themselves they would collapse but some external force was keeping them propped up. That was when I heard it.'

'It?'

'I sensed you were in trouble.'

Hugo remembered the sound in his head: Ami's voice calling out to him in a desperate whimper. It had sounded so clear. At first, he had assumed she was in the room with him and had looked for her, but she was nowhere to be seen. That was when he had realised this was a thought. Ami's thought. Clearer than any utterance of the mind had ever been to him.

'I could hear you in my head, reaching out to me. It felt almost like a physical touch, a hand tugging on mine. I could hear your voice calling my name. "Hugo." Like you were holding on every letter in my name. It rang and rang and rang... like it was printed on my brain.'

Even though his fists were clenched, his hands were shaking again. Then, he froze. Ami took them into her own.

Her mind was abuzz with memories of that moment from her point of view. He couldn't see what she did, but he heard the names. They were all planets ... and the moon. He guessed they were people. Women like her with the power to transform into superbeings. Yet, in recalling all of that, her mind settled firmly on him and his name. Hugo looked into her eyes and saw the concern as if she feared she had somehow damaged him.

Please don't think that he sorrowfully begged, as if she could hear him.

'I stepped forward to try and find you,' he murmured. 'It was all I wanted to do at that moment. Only instead of stepping forward into the atrium downstairs, I was on top of the building, where you were being attacked.' He looked to one side, as he had last night. He wasn't seeing his living room but the fire extinguisher as it had sat in the doorway. 'I wasn't really thinking,' he admitted. 'I just grabbed the first thing that came to hand,' the fire extinguisher, '...and whacked him.'

Ami reached out and took his hand. Hugo could feel his skin jump at the touch, surprised and excited.

'You saved me.'

Hugo just smiled. 'If you say so, though I wish it had been anything other than pure luck.'

She gave his hand a squeeze.

'You said,' Ami whispered, looking down at their joined hands. 'That you knew how dangerous it was… I'm beginning to understand now with all that you told me. Yet, there's the puppet master, too. She knew you. She said, "You again." Then… we escaped her.' Her eyes met his. 'How?'

Hugo could do nothing else but recall and recount that night he first met the woman Ami referred to as the Puppet Master. 'Just promise you won't freak out—um, panic when I tell you.'

'What is it?'

'The truth is… I have met her before and got away the same way, I think… though God knows how it's supposed to work.'

'I don't—when did you meet her before?'

From tracking the core-zombies, Hugo had presumed they had to be working for someone else. Unwillingly or willingly, he couldn't believe that seemingly deranged and clumsy robbers like them could function without direction. At first, he figured it would be the Phantom. Though he never had any real altercations with that masked mystery, it made sense given he could at least talk enough to declare that "soon we will have the core" from a very safe distance. Then, once Hugo worked out who he was, he realised that there was no way he of all people would be masterminding this. Two-faced prick, maybe. The mastermind of robberies across the whole of London, not really. He was a mook. A frontman for a greater agency.

'So, that night, I decided to follow him.'

It had been a Saturday night when Hugo had picked up on his trail. Trying to keep a safe distance, he tracked the Phantom to where he would later stop another batch of core-zombies. As the Phantom ducked into a disused warehouse and ran up the stairs, Hugo opted to climb the fire-escape.

'I hate heights, but I wanted to properly confront him,' Hugo explained. 'I'd… never dared do it before.'

He was exhausted by the time he reached the top of the barely usable fire-escape, even having had to climb up the railing a few times where the stairs themselves had fallen apart from lack of maintenance. Grasping the rim of the roof-proper, he had hoisted himself up knowing that one false move would probably end "The Guardian of London Town's" crimefighting career forever.

'That was when I saw her.'

At first, Hugo had thought it might be Ami again. He had remembered the night before when he had seen her outside of Cole's shop. His heart had been a cocktail of confusion, fear, concern, denial—he had called out to the figure in confusion. She had turned. Her face was nothing but a haze of gloom… and he wondered how he could ever have thought for a second that thing was Ami.

'It couldn't have been me,' she interrupted, a little defensive. 'I'm… sure I would have remembered.'

'It wasn't you,' Hugo guaranteed. 'I knew when I saw her but… there's another reason, too.'

The moment their eyes had met, the Puppet Master had recognised him. Like she had been waiting for this moment for eternity. She mouthed, "You?" Yet all Hugo could do was stare back at her in confusion, still not knowing who or what he was looking at. It was all a shadow. All a blur.

'Then, she reached out her hands…' Hugo swallowed, replicating the motion with his own. 'A blinding light had surrounded us, just like the one I saw last night when they attacked you.'

'The goshenite?' Ami asked.

'Maybe.'

It had been all Hugo could do to shield his eyes from it with both of his arms, as he felt energy drawing him in. A whisper in a voice he felt he knew and could have believed was once again was Ami, beckoning him to come to her. It searched his very soul before it settled on… something.

'She said, "You might not know where the core is but your body should be enough." The power did not let up, still dragging me forward. I braced myself, digging my heels in as much as I could. Then, I just cried out. I think I said, "Help!" like I was begging some sort of god to step in and save me…'

He dropped his hands onto his knees.

'Then I wasn't there anymore. Of all places in the world, I was in your bedroom.'

Ami stared at him, dumbfound. 'I think I would have remembered that, too?'

'I… don't think you would,' Hugo sighed. 'I found you collapsed in the floor.'

Then she slowly raised her hand to her mouth in disbelief.

'I remember, one night,' she mumbled through her fingers. 'I awoke to a dark aura from – who I thought at the time to be – the Phantom, but I…' she trailed off.

Hugo nodded.

At first, he had tried to rouse Ami, not even considering the possible backlash he would receive from suddenly turning up at her halls of residence, inside her bedroom in the middle of the night. After whatever had just happened he couldn't think straight. One moment, he was blinded by the light; then next in an eerily silent place where there was just him and an unconscious Ami.

'I was just… startled to see you in that state. I doubt you would have appreciated finding me there, but I really wasn't thinking. I tried to wake you up but you were out cold. I felt your breath against my hand and noted the flickering of your eyelids. It was like you were in the grips of a dream. Just when I thought I was rousing you, you barely opened your eyes before falling under again, mumbling.'

'…what did I say?'

'I can't really remember,' he admitted. 'It was incoherent…' Almost like the sound of your thoughts in your head. 'Once I had checked to make sure you were safe to move, I lifted you back into bed. I picked up the things on the floor with you and put them in an open draw and… I climbed out of your window.'

That explains it.

'I'm sorry,' he added.

'For what?'

'For intruding on you,' Hugo huffed. 'Albeit, unintentionally.'

A strange gleam shone across her eyes and the smallest of smiles twitch at the corners of her mouth. So silly, Hugo, she thought. Why is he apologising? Her hand reclaimed one of his. He brushed a thumb across one of her knuckles and her mind was awash with flushed thoughts.

'I'm still sorry,' he added, to answer all her mind. 'Honestly, I could go on for hours about the weird things that have been happening.'

She cleared her throat.

'And, you teleported away last night, too?'

'Yes, though it was the first time I had passengers with me.'

He rubbed his eyes.

'Well, what's the verdict?'

He hoped, perhaps, that if he could be clued into the things Ami knew about what was going on around London, then perhaps the last few months of his life would begin to make sense as well.

'Well,' Ami pondered, still holding his hand. 'You clearly have some form of innate magical ability.'

'You say that like it's so normal,' Hugo grunted.

She tilted her head, 'When you have seen the things that I have you begin to have a different foundation-stripe for what is "normal".'

Foundation…stripe? He snickered. 'You mean "base-line"?'

She blushed, 'That too.'

They looked at each other, uncomfortably, both unwilling to speak next. He could hear her heart pounding inside her head. Her mind was all murmurs of his name over and over to the tune of her beating heart. Hugo. Hugo. Hugo... Then another name. Zoisite.

Like an open book, he thought. He had been wondering when that would come up. Ami seemed to veer back and forth on whether it mattered to Hugo. Zoisite. When he first met her, it was all she ever thought about him. Ever since then he had started to hear it in his dreams and he didn't know why.

'Zoisite,' he said aloud as if to test her reaction.

Ami froze. When her lips parted he resigned himself to the knowledge of what she was going to ask. Everyone was an open book, but it hurt the most with Ami.

'Hugo are you—um, does the name "Zoisite" mean anything to you?'

He looked at her inquiringly. It felt like it should mean something, he only wished he knew what. 'No, it doesn't. What is it?'

'He,' she corrected. 'He was someone I – that is, as Sailor Mercury – fought against, briefly, many years ago.'

Fought against? he pondered, frowning. 'Okay.'

He heard the words "Dark Kingdom" and "Beryl" whispered in her brain as well. He did at least know what Beryl was.

'Beryl was the name of that gemstone,' he muttered without thought. 'The one you have, and the ones the shadow-woman uses, are goshenite; a type of beryl.'

Ami blinked, then she settled, 'You… already knew that?'

'Yes.' Even back at Cole's shop when she was getting it checked he had guessed she had picked up the stone from one of the "core" events. 'Though I only found out what the stone was called when Cole revealed it.'

She nodded, then touched the necklace with the stone that hung from her neck.

'I bought this from Kris's place; a tanzanite is a form of zoisite. Zoisite is a type of gemstone, too.'

Isn't Mum's necklace sapphire and tanzanite? Hugo tried to remember. 'So, this guy was named after a type of stone?'

'I... don't know originally.'

The dream, her mind said. Then, she conjured up another vice that sounded somewhat like his own. "The Holy Tanzanite stone, one of the four heavenly crystals of Earth. All because I was born with its core," he had said. Only the word "core" stood out to Hugo. That had been the word all those people chanted, and before that night in Colbert's shop... "Find the Core!" The droning of all their voices still rang in his ear like an orchestra trying to tune their instruments at once. It hadn't just been their voices, either. To Hugo, their minds had been equally haunting. Their true souls were crying to be set free while a whisper ordered them that they "were nothing unless they found the core." The memory of that noise filled Hugo's ears all over again, drowning out everything else. It was as if he could sense them even now, still crying out.

Ami nudged him.

'Hugo?'

A hand touched his cheek. As if having woken from a nightmare, his mind went silent again.

'Are you alright?' She was holding his left hand with the right one at his cheek, her brow closer than ever to his own and creased with concern.

He squeezed the hand that held his own and nodded.

'I'm fine. I just…' What am I supposed to say?! Forcing a smile, he took a deep breath to push the bad feelings out of his system and it seemed to help. 'I was just thinking about last night. I'm fine, though. Really. Did you say something just now...?'

Ami looked unconvinced, and incredulity seemed to ooze off her. Still, she seemed to let it lie for now. 'I said that I wasn't sure. Last night I had a dream where I was talking to him, or I think it might have been him. It's made me wonder if all of this might somehow be about him!'

'You think he's after you?'

'No,' she said firmly. 'I think someone is after him.'

'…and you think this has something to do with me, too?'

She looked taken aback but he smiled.

'I know there is a connection,' and he gave her hand a squeeze; choosing his words carefully. 'I can feel, Ami. It's like a barricade around your heart — the final frontier of trust between us. I need to know why once and for all.'

She wetted her lips, quickly replaying his words in her head.

The hand that cupped his face traced his jawline.

'You look a lot like him,' she whispered, gazing at him with sorry eyes. 'Exactly like him, in fact. To the point where even in my dreams I have started to conflate you.'

It hurt to hear. 'So that's why you always think about him when you see me? Why you were so stand-offish – um, "cautious" – with me when we first met?'

'For a time, I thought he might have returned to cause trouble all over again and you were just a disguise he had taken on,' she confessed. 'He was a master of illusion.'

As I feared, he thought. His discomfort must have been written all over his face as Ami winced, immediately concerned she had upset him. Her other hand went up to cup his face, thumbs brushing across his cheekbones and eyes filled with troubled passion.

'Now, I realise I had it all wrong,' she declared confidently. 'You and the Zoisite I met couldn't possibly be the same person because you were—'

She stopped.

Hugo didn't need to hear her say it; the tail end of the sentence was spoken clearly in her head, even if she had stopped her mouth.

He had to laugh. 'Who would have thought my coma would actually do me good?'

'It's true, though. You were in a coma, in a hospital, in England when the Dark Kingdom was active in Japan. So, you couldn't be that Zoisite.'

Her choice of words piqued his interest.

'I couldn't be "that" Zoisite? Are there more than one? Like twins?'

He said he was the only one, she thought. 'I think there is only one true Zoisite...' Ami brought her knees together, clutching them tightly with her hands. The man I met in my dreams felt more real than any of the Shitennou had been. As real as Hugo is now.

She reached a conclusion: 'I wonder now if the one I knew before... was a fake.'

'A... fake?'

Her heart began to pick up the pace. 'Since I met you I've been having dreams about the past.'

'About this "Dark Kingdom"?'

'No. Long before that. Not even this lifetime.'

Ami sighed, closed her eyes and rested her forehead slightly against Hugo's. Her mind was whirling with a mix of worry, excitement and, weirdly enough, peace. At this moment, they were more intimate than they had ever been before. Hugo wished they would stay like this, joined at the head for as long as possible. Even his own fears seemed to melt away the moment they came, brow-to-brow.

'In a lot of my dreams, until now, the face of Zoisite was cast in shadow,' Ami whispered. 'I didn't even realise it was him. Now, I know it is him... and when I see him in my dream he is you.'

"I've started to conflate you," she said. Is it because we truly are one and the same? He hated the thought that he might have been connected to this "Dark Kingdom" entity. He hoped she was right in her summation that this previous enemy of hers was, indeed, a fake. I was being monitored in a hospital bed twenty-four-seven, so I probably didn't sleepwalk. He clung to that.

'I had it backwards all along,' she said shakily. 'I thought you couldn't be Zoisite because the Dark Kingdom committed evil but now… as "mad" as it sounds, I think you might be the real Zoisite. The other one was something else.'

The real Zoisite? Hugo repeated to himself. None of it meant anything to him. 'I don't know what that means.'

'The name truly means nothing to you.'

'No.'

'Are you sure? Not even in your dreams?' she urged. 'You... mentioned you had dreams when we were at Dan's home.'

Did I? Hugo didn't remember. Still, he doubted the dreams would provide. Everything is a blur of grey and red, he thought. Hugo could never remember everything he had experienced when he woke; only the feeling it left him with remained. Still, he tried.

'It's just me fighting my way through a crowd. They are shoving towards me while I'm trying to pass them. I'm looking for someone. I feel myself mouthing a name or word, but I can't hear it over the throng and I don't know where they are. Only know I have to find them.'

'Who—?'

Thump.

A dull sound of something being knocked down emanated from the direction of the bathroom.

Oh, right, Hugo sighed inwardly.

The startled look on Ami's face was almost amusing.

'With that,' he exhaled, trying to break the ice, 'comes the third thing.'

He got up and wiggled his finger for Ami to come hither. Dutifully she obeyed, looking confused. On reflection, this might prove to be the most mind-boggling thing she'll have encountered today.

He beckoned her towards the door which led to his bathroom. Ami stared at the door handle, which had been secured shut with the tie of a dressing gown, one end tied to the handle and the other to the radiator.

'Hugo, why have you—?'

He quietly hushed her before untying the knot so that the door might be opened.

'We ought to be on guard seeing as I don't know what mood he's going to be in,' Hugo advised, hand lingering on the doorknob. 'Especially after I whacked him on the head and locked him in my bathroom.'

He? Ami's mind buzzed.

Shock filled her eyes.

'H-Hugo, you haven't—!'

He nodded, 'Prepare yourself for a shock.'

Ami's whole body braced, almost as if she was readying to transform again. Hugo didn't think it would be necessary but approved of her preparation.

In one fluid movement, he opened the door and strolled swiftly in.

The room was quiet and undisturbed but for a single shampoo bottle that had landed on the tiles. Yet it had not awoken the occupant of the bathtub. Hugo was relieved to find the figure exactly where he had left him last night, curled up with a cushion beneath his head and a woollen-throw over him.

Hugo tiptoed towards the handle for the shower, which dangled above the lad's feet.

Slowly, Ami crept up behind him. She tilted her head in confusion, seeming not to recognise at first who was lying there.

Then her breath hitched.

It was him!

Hugo turned the water on. Cold.

Spray spurted forth and the figure awoke immediately. He thrashed about with a panicked 'ugh!' escaping his throat at the pitch of a banshee's wail. He looked to his bare feet and then up to his assailant with a confused, accusatory scowl.

'What the fuck, Hugh?!'

Hugo gave him the most sarcastic wave he could manage.

'Morning, Dan.'

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

As some mysterious get solved, others are just barely being picked at. With Hugo now officially "in-the-know" with Ami you will be seeing the POV shift between the protagonist and deuteragonist henceforth.

The next item posted will likely be the long-awaited 'INTERLUDE: ゆうた - YUTA, THE CHANCELLOR'S SON (Ou, le Japon dans l'intervalle - Le première scène)', where we will return to Japan for a chapter to see how things are going with the other girls. The focus will chiefly be on Rei Hino as she encounters Yuta Higashiro, the son of a wealthy potential benefactor for her father and a familiar face.

Chapter 14 of 'Guardian' is entering its first draft so I hope you will all continue to be patient with me.

Kind regards!