The Agony of Choice
Words: 1,989
Featured Characters: Usagi, Nehellenia, Minako, Mamoru (until now xD)
Timeline: Alternate Universe
Summary/Prologue/Comments/misc.: Hearing of some illegal activities in the underground of Tokyo, Special Agent Tsukino and her colleagues decide to investigate these activities and figure out whether the rumors are true or not. In the end, however, the whole group becomes embroiled in the activities and gets involved with the secret organizations, so that they, at the end, are in great danger themselves and have to fight in order to survive...
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It’s only a dream.

Tears ran down the usually rosy-tinted cheeks, the face pointing downwards to the dirty white tiles. Where people usually saw a smile, they only found corners of the mouth curved downwards now, the inner half of the lower lip already bloody from the constant biting, torn open from the inward urge to not start sobbing.

No, it’s only a dream.

The deep blue eyes were filled with lacrimal fluid and the normally clear sight gradually turned into a blurry point of view, similar to the attempt of seeing under water.
No. It was per se not possible. It wasn’t possible to keep the eyes open. It wasn’t possible to stand by and watch everything.

Come on, just wake up from that dream.

The frantic hands turned to the left and right, up and down, as far as the handcuffs allowed. The wrists were grazed, partially covered with blood, and bruised at the joints which still struggled, despite the low amount of energy, against the of stainless steel made metal ring.

This was no dream.

The feet, already soaked in a puddle of blood, the wrists, in the meantime already dotted with contusions, the lips, bitten open until well into the flesh, the eyes, irritated from the strong squinting and continuous crying – this just couldn’t be a dream.

Second after second, the pain was sent to the brain by every hurt angle and by every hurt corner of the body, the blood inexorably gushing out in the process.
“Get me out of here!” Usagi screamed, the voice high-pitched and the soft tone color now rather panicked and screeching. “Let me go!”

It resounded. The doors were still closed, the windows nevertheless plastered with wooden boards. The chair she was sitting on was directed at the badly damaged wall, the silence she was trapped in more pressing than every crowd of people she had ever faced.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!“
Frantically she shook the chair and herself back and forth, bobbed up and down and got, with every second, new wounds at wrists and ankles.
The yell was sustained, just like the shaking, and after two minutes of making a racket and completely up until the flesh opened wounds, it then, eventually, arrived. The salvation. A light.

“Quit screaming already, you dumb brat,” it sounded from the grating door behind her, the tall woman with the infinite black hair now once again within reach, the voice as cold-hearted as it was just when they met each other for the very first time. “You’ll get enough attention in a moment, you’ll see.”

The high-heeled leather boots dug their way to the chair with every word that left her mouth, the tone cold and the pace moderate. Usagi’s heart beat with every time the shoes touched the ground faster and faster, the tears rolling down the gentle face in a permanent river.

“Nehellenia, please, I beg you. Do whatever you want, but please-”

With furiously high speed the tip of the boots moved towards Usagi’s upper body, the leg lunged off with dash before and the sleeves of Nehellenia’s jacket already pulled up to the elbows.

Blood ran out of her mouth as she coughed from the hard kick in her torso, the feeling of her stomach, intestine and liver bursting temporarily overwhelming her and causing her body to almost provoke a giant nausea.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” the woman dressed in black only said, her eyes fixedly looking down on the young girl, any feeling of mercy or sympathy missing.

“You came here, you spied on me, you wanted to discomfit me. Don’t expect me, after all these things, to give you any sort of special treatment. You invaded my home and now you have to deal with the consequences.”

Once again she raised her foot, once again Usagi felt the torture-like pain, once again the blood flowed in torrents out of her mouth.

“…And now you also soiled my clothes with your disgusting blood…Geez, what am I supposed to do with a mess like you?”

Usagi jerked again, already prepared that the horrendous foot would come at her for another time.
However, to her surprise, it didn’t. The squinted eyes gradually started to open; the noises in her surroundings indicated that the woman had obviously turned the chair.

“Why-?”

“Because the actual fun didn’t even start yet, honey.”

Her eyes widened and the pupils gained the upper hand in her iris. The actual fun…didn’t even start yet?
Her wrists and ankles were bloodshot, her lips were bitten open, her innards were probably burst, her mouth was full of salty red blood – and the ‘actual fun didn’t even start yet’?

“If I recall correctly, you weren’t the only one invading my home, were you?”

Her jawbones moved downwards, her nostrils widened, her brow was wrinkled. Abruptly her tears stopped running and the heart skipped a beat. The pain was gone and the wrists held still. It couldn’t be…

“Did you really think I’d just let them go? Did you really think I wouldn’t notice people loitering in my house?”
A sardonic laughter emerged on Nehellenia’s face, the eyes squinted from enjoyment and the finger slowly moving into a finger-flicking position.

“You chose the wrong game partner.”

The flick sounded and with lightning speed two of Nehellenia’s self-proclaimed helpers appeared, just in tow with…

In less than a second Usagi’s throat dried out and a lump, perceived as big as the gas giant Jupiter, emerged in the shadows of her larynx.

Why didn’t they escape? She faced Nehellenia on purpose – so that they could flee. So why in Heaven’s sake were they still there? Why? Why were they still there now, silenced with duct tape and held in the place by handcuffs? Why?

“Minako! Mamoru!” It only sounded from Usagi’s mouth, her voice, despite the lump in her throat, louder than it was ever before. Tears ran down faster than a lightning could strike a house and within a few seconds, Usagi sat on her chair, the face overflowed with tears and the loud sobbing eventually inevitable.

Her eyes turned around to Nehellenia, to her deathly cold eyes, and what initially looked like grief and sorrow now turned into anger and hatred.

“Oh, this expression is a lot more to my liking, honey,” Nehellenia said powerfully and commandingly, her arms crossed and her body slowly moving to Usagi’s friends. “But guess what! I’ve got an even better surprise for you!”

Confusion was written all over Usagi’s face, worry, however, immediately followed once she saw how Nehellenia stopped dead right behind Minako and Mamoru. What was she up to? What did she want to do with them? It wasn’t that…

Her crossed arms moved and went back to the original position, the left hand, however, this time moving in the direction of her back instead of going back to the jacket pocket where it was at the outset.
A gun, filled with bullets and already locked and loaded, shone behind her back and moved towards Minako, the sardonic laughter from earlier coming back again, if not even worse than before.

“You know…I like you. You sit there in that corner and howl like a child that didn’t get their toy from the supermarket, you bob up and down on your chair and sustain thousands of injuries…I mean, somehow one just has to pity you.” She paused for a few seconds and watched how Usagi’s curiosity increased, how the hope in her eyes seemed to glimmer once again. “I’ll make you an offer now, okay? Instead of two…I’ll just shoot one of these two persons. And, of course, friendly as I am, you can choose which one you’d prefer.”

Usagi’s eyes widened anew, the dried tears gradually getting replaced with new ones the second she got the offer from Nehellenia.
“How could I…just one second,” she stuttered at first, the low volume, however, quickly turning into loud shouting. “How could I, even just to some extent, decide who needs to get shot and who needn’t? You want to hear my answer? Here you have my answer: Neither one of them is going to get shot! Let them both go, let them both escape – don’t do anything to them and you can do with me whatever you want to do! Please…please just let them go.”

“Oh, didn’t you listen to me…Usagi? This wasn’t an option I gave you.” With a broad grin, Nehellenia pulled a second gun from behind her back, this one directed at Mamoru, and looked Usagi deep into the eyes. “You can choose. Either your friend…or your beloved boyfriend. If you don’t decide…then I’ll just shoot both.”

If you don’t decide then I’ll just shoot both.

If you don’t decide then I’ll just shoot both.

If you don’t decide then I’ll just shoot both.

This last sentence, short and yet more significant than any other sentence in her life, burned into Usagi’s mind, playing again and again, like a single song of a playlist, with each repetition being louder and more dramatic than the one before.
Overwhelmed she stared into the void, into the other corner of the room, her dark blue eyes, usually full of emotions and feelings, now nothing more than a device of seeing, her face, once representing the happiness itself, now nothing more than a simple shell of skin.

If you don’t decide then I’ll just shoot both.

“How cruel…,” it only came out in shards. “How cruel…can a person be…to do something horrible like that? How cruel can a person be…to give someone that kind of choice?”

“How could I ever…decide between Minako and Mamoru? How could I…ever decide between my best friend…who protected and supported me already from an early age…and my boyfriend…whom I just love to death? How could I ever say that one human life is more valuable than another one? How…could I…”

Tears fell to the ground, the eyes still directed at the other corner of the room. It just was too hard to look this woman, let alone her friends, in the eyes.

“I can’t do this. Never in a thousand years, I could-”

“Usagi!” She then got interrupted; Minako, who was initially silenced with the duct tape, had been talented enough to free herself from the adhesive prison. “Let her shoot me…okay? Mamoru is your one and only, everyone knows that, and if you let him die now, then it won’t be only you, but also me, who will never forgive you! Even without me, you still have Ami, Rei and Mako-chan – you’ll never be alone, you hear?
...But when you let Mamoru die…then you’ll be – for the rest of your life, up until the very last day – bitterly unhappy!”

Mamoru’s eyes abruptly turned to Minako the second she began talking, not only surprised but also shocked from her request to let her shoot her.

Did she go totally insane now? Did her common sense just leave her all of a sudden?
How could he ever allow something this irresponsible?
Minako was a way better fighter than he was, she protected Usagi for years and she also supported her wherever and whenever she could. Minako was irreplaceable for Usagi, yes, she was like a sister to her… So how could he allow, just the very idea, to let that important part of her die? How could he ever destroy this friendship? How could he ever look into the mirror, knowing that he allowed Minako’s death?

“Oh, how selfless from your friend! My heart almost bleeds for her!” Nehellenia interrupted and commented Minako’s request to shoot her, putting the gun now directly at her head and waiting for Usagi to finally get an answer. “However, I want to hear your decision…Now!”

A broad grin emerged on her pale face. “Well? What do you say? Whose head do you want me to blow away?”

(I guess you already knew it was me because of my typical spelling and grammar mistakes xD, but I thought it would be nonetheless nice if I was writing something, considering that you're my writing mentor and all )

The other part of your gift xD:

But now, let’s get back to the good ol’ tradition, right?
This is probably the third or fourth present now…and I mean, what would all these presents be if I wouldn’t carry on these traditions and give you, as always, a few graphics to go? Hm? It’d be a little boring, don’t you think?

Yeah, I think so too. And this is why I will now continue with a few homemade graphics from tiny clumsy Vivid.


(Let's start with Final Fantasy...)


(...and then let's go over to SAO xD)

They aren’t really world-changing now, but you know…it’s the thought that counts, right? xD I think, after all this time, you know this motto of mine already inside out.
I mean…how long do we know each other now? One year?

Oh yeah…good ol’ times.

I still remember how I harassed you back then on my very first day, and how I sent you a message, just because I had no idea how the profiles of the forum worked…and how you rebuffed me – ice cold – saying that you were still in school and that you would look after it later that day xD

Wonderful time…

After that we always talked about anything and everything, sent several messages back and forth and complained about school and daily problems until we then, after a while, had like 600 messages in our inboxes.
I mean if this isn’t persistence then I don’t know what is xD

And today?

Today we still text at regular intervals on Skype and send us, every once in a while, minimalistic snaps on Snapchat…we still complain about school, you tell me how odd German chocolate tastes, I tell you that there aren’t any tacos in Germany. Isn’t this great? Especially considering that I was super afraid to talk to you back then xD

Oh yeah, time has passed, hasn’t it?

But thank goodness we’re still in contact with each other. Granted, we don’t talk as often as we did back then which sucks, but hey, life is hard, but nonetheless it’s already settled that one day I’ll come to you and visit you so that we can go and eat some tacos at Taco Bell xD And this is really amazing.

Thank you that you welcomed me in your super sweet alyssa-ish way back then, thank you that you bore with me the entire time, thank you that I can get worked up over everything with you, thank you that you’re teaching me on how to speak English, thank you that you’re always supporting me and thank you that I can call you my friend.

I hope you liked the presents, even if it’s just a tiny weeny bit, and I hope that we’ll keep on being friends for a very very long time.

And if I only have a pinch of luck and get rich real quick, then I can visit the USA in just a few years xD