[IC][Story][Arc 1] Rob and Brent's as-yet-untitled sidestory (Rob's #10, Brent's TBD)

[robkelk]

Back to the IC posts. Picking up from where I left off, and incorporating Rajvik's post above...

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A wave of realization spread through the crowd, and almost everybody turned to go to the old building for lunch. After a moment, only Usagi, Accelerator, James, Mal, Misato, and Ben had decided to stay with Rob, the two Mimi Hanyus and Mimi Misaka... and Accelerator was obviously there only for Last Order's sake. It appeared that nobody but Ben noticed that Raising Heart, Bardiche, and Reinforce were hiding under Rob's coat collar. They headed into the new building's common room - most with a purposeful stride, but the Mimis walked as if they were going to their own executions.

Once everyone was inside, Rob closed the door behind him, carefully draped his coat over the back of a chair... and turned to Mimi Misaka. "You should have known better than to keep something like this secret."

Before she could answer, Accelerator said, "That's bullshit and you know it. We were both part of more secret projects back in Academy City than you'll ever know about. Or need to know about. We keep secrets. Live with it."

"And it all worked out well in the end! Didn't it? Mimi Misaka adds."

Rob almost yelled at her, caught himself, exhaled slowly, and started over. "Did it? Just what did you expect was going to happen?"

"There'd be two of Mimi-neesan, one of them could stay here, one could go to Hollywood, and they'd both be happy."

"There's two of them, all right. Why would they both be happy?"

Mimi grinned. "Because they'd get to experience both lives ..." Her grin faded away as her voice trailed off. "Oh."

Rob nodded grimly. "Exactly." Then he turned to the other two Mimis. "The Misaka clone-sisters have a telepathic link as a side-effect of their electrokinetic powers. Can the two of you read each other's minds?"

The redheads looked at each other for a moment. "No," they sighed in unison.

"Oops."

Rob turned back to Mimi Misaka. "Right. 'Oops.' You know that, besides your sisters, nobody else here is a telepath."

"Except River," Misato interrupted.

Before Ben could interrupt as well, Rob continued, "Nobody else living here in Ottawa is a telepath. Now thanks to you keeping this secret, there are two people here who don't know what they want to do with their lives instead of just one. I want you to think hard about what you've done to Mimi. Get your sisters to help - I'm sure you're sharing this with them." Mini-Mimi nodded solemnly. "Go get your lunch. The rest of us have some things to say that I'd rather people don't gossip about before we get back." Rob put a slight emphasis on that last sentence.

Just after Mimi Misaka and Accelerator left, the room's TV set and mirror started glowing. Everybody stood and waited for the goddesses to manifest.

"Milady Belldandy, milady Urd, welcome to Ottawa," Rob said, his face neutral. "I would have preferred your first visit here to have been under better circumstances."

"This is a joyous time, Rob," Belldandy replied. "A new life has come into being here."

"Even if it wasn't in the usual manner," added Urd, as she put on a pair of glasses and looked very carefully at both Mimis. "That's interesting... Hmmm... Oh, you poor girls." She turned to Belldandy. "They both show signs of having recently been freed from something very much like demonic possession - and not the kind that Marller uses that doesn't leave any permanent scars." Then Urd turned to Usagi. "Did you have to duplicate the trauma in their souls?"

"I'm sorry," replied Sailor Moon. "It was all I could do to protect Kinomoto-kun and channel the extra power we needed to duplicate Hanyu-san. I couldn't heal her at the same time."

"Do I get a say in this?" Everybody turned to the Mimis, who both shrank under the sudden attention. One of them motioned to the other to continue. "It's my life - our lives, after all."

"She's got a point," Mal added. "What right've we got to decide that for her?"

"You are of course correct," Belldandy replied immediately.

Urd frowned for a brief moment. "And now that the point's been made this way, you aren't going to want to be healed. Are you?" Both Mimis shook their heads. "That's what I thought." She turned back to Belldandy. "I don't know what we're doing here, then. Now that I've seen her up close, I don't have any questions to ask."

"Well," James said looking at the others around them. "Honestly I really have only one question that I would like answered, and I am pretty sure it is high up in everybody else's lists." With that he turned to the Mimis, "What the bloody hell were you thinking, and did you consider what it might have done to those who were casting the duplication spell?" Through the question James did not raise his voice nor growl like he normally did when angry, the tone was flat and near emotionless while his face went from pleasant smile to grimace in the space of two words.

"She didn't want to be alone," said Ben, his voice cutting through the conversation despite his soft tone.

"What?"

"Think about it," said Ben. "It's just like my SI in Being You is Suffering. Your entire life has been ruined, you feel powerless and alone, and then suddenly you find yourself in a world that completely invalidates everything you believe in. Who better to commiserate with than yourself? Sure, being able to pursue both options at the same time sounds like good motivation on the surface... But this goes beyond a simple desire to have your cake and eat it, too. You don't do something that desperate unless you really are that desperate."

Rob looked as if he was about to argue, then sighed deeply. "You're right. Mimi, we can't have this discussion now - I'm still angry. Go get lunch. I'll be along in a few minutes."

Both Mimis virtually bolted for the door, followed at a slower pace by James, Mal, and Misato. Usagi moved to join them but stopped when Rob made a slight motion that she could see but the people leaving couldn't.

Once it was just Usagi, Ben, Rob, Urd, and Belldandy left standing in the room, Rob sighed deeply. Again. "Now what?"

Usagi blinked in confusion. "I don't understand."

"Us grownups need to come to an agreement."

"I'm not a grown-up," Usagi replied. "Not like you."

"Not like us," Rob agreed, "but you have more in common with us than the others do. We're the heavy hitters and the big agents of change in the displacees and managers, at least the ones I know about," Rob answered. "Kinomoto-kun is as powerful as I am and will no doubt become even more powerful as she grows up," (Belldandy nodded in confirmation) "but she doesn't make an effort to change the world. We do. And the way you change the world is one person at a time, making their lives better."

"You think so?" Usagi blushed.

"Of course you do," Urd replied. "But you aren't the only people of power here."

"That's right," Ben added. "Tenchi -" He saw Rob's frown. "Not Tenchi?"

"Tenchi would be happy tending to his farm, and his girlfriends are content to stay with him. And Hyoga's more interested in supporting me than in crusading on her own. Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate, though - they're probably stronger than I am, and they change the course of events as much as we do. You three can tell them that," Rob added, addressing his own coat.

"Stealth operation failed. I'm sorry, my master," Raising Heart said while levitating from her perch under Rob's coat collar.

"How did you know?" Reinforce asked as all three Devices hovered where everyone could see them.

Rob smiled for a brief moment. "Ever since Washuu-chan gave me that nanotech injection and I stopped aching every morning, I've haven't needed to ignore my nerve endings as a matter of course. I felt your weight on my neck. And with you three here as their proxies, the gathering of powerful meddlers is complete." Rob smiled again as he described himself as a meddler.

"You didn't ask us to stay behind to show off, or to talk about our relative power levels," Ben pointed out.

"Right. I wanted to talk about how Usagi changes the world." He paused for a brief moment, then looked Ben in the eye. "Actually, this would be better coming from you than from me." Rob turned from Ben to Usagi. "No meddling with Mimi's soul without her permission. You can be her friend, you can be her comrade-in-arms if she decides to pick up her interest in combat magic, you can even be a shoulder for her to cry on. But you can't change her very self. No Moon Healing Escalation or anything else unless she gives informed consent."

"But why?"

Ben sighed at that. He felt kinda awkward being put on the spot like that, but lately it seemed that more and more often he was the go-to man for dealing with emotionally charged topics. However, what made him sigh wasn't so much being put on the spot, but rather that they were about to cover a topic that would pain Usagi... and, to a lesser extent, himself.

"Believe it or not, Mimi and I seem to have a lot in common. It's for different reasons, probably - though I wouldn't rule out childhood abuse as a possible factor - but using your healing powers on Mimi might do her more harm than good."

"What? But I thought that she had been turned by the Deathbusters!"

"She was," said Ben with sad look on his face. "But the thing is, in order to do that, they had to have something to work with in the first place. Much like how Wiseman used Chibi-usa's resentment of you to turn her into Dark Lady. The Deathbusters used whatever petty hatred was in her heart, and used that to get her on board with them. That's the way it always is in matters like these, and also what's so terrible about it. They didn't simply rape her mind. They got her to consent to it."

Usagi looked stricken. "That... that can't be right. People are fundamentally good... aren't they?"

"Would that it were so," Belldandy replied. "People learn from the examples around them, and most people become good because the people they see are good. But there are always some bad examples, and, unfortunately, some people see more of those than the good examples."

"She might not have been exposed to anything evil before she was turned," Rob replied. "It might have just been a collection of small annoyances. Maybe she lost one boyfriend too many and the Deathbusters preyed on her jealousy."

"She did target good-looking men."

Rob nodded. "That she did. Assuming that's what they did, Mimi still has that core of jealously. If you bring it back to the surface..."

"Oh! Oh. But couldn't I cure that at the same time, the way I did with Kooan and her sisters?"

Belldandy frowned at Usagi's question. "If you were to do that, would Mimi still be Mimi?"

"Usagi could just keep on trying until she got it right," Urd replied. "She has enough power. And all it would cost is a little bit of Mimi's sanity to have gone through the process so many times."

"That's terrible!"

"You're right," Urd replied. "Which is why I phrased it that way."

Rob rolled his eyes. "It looks to me like you're taking after your own mother there, milady Urd."

She sniffed in indignation. "If you're going to be insulting, I'm leaving."

Belldandy smiled slightly. "We really do need to return to Yggdrasil. Until we meet again!" And the two goddesses made their exits.

"Readings captured," Bardiche announced.

"Of the goddesses' dimensional teleportation ability?"

"Yes sir."

Rob grinned. "I hope you can learn something from them. Because that would be something to see - Fate-chan teleporting all over the battlefield."

"Oh, I want to do that, too!"

"Don't you already have Sailor Teleport?" Ben asked.

"That's not really a combat ability," Rob replied. "Maybe Kuroko can give Usagi some pointers, though."

"And maybe Mako-chan can give me some lunch, too?"

They all laughed, save for Raising Heart and Bardiche. "Let's go eat."

On the way out, Usagi asked Rob, "You're not angry any more?"

"Not as much as I was, but it'll take me a while to cool off completely. Ask me again after lunch."

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Next time: Lunch! And then Skating! And maybe even a Big Reveal!