A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, D82 – write a crossover, and for the Rlt Green Room, Challenge #1 – There's No Business Like Show Business!

Goddesses and Sailor Senshi

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It's not their first play, and probably not their last either. There are years of school left, and it's so fun to be on stage that they might find themselves pursuing the craft even after they graduate.

But the play is a fateful choice – or a coincidence, or just Kirio twisting things to suit his own agenda (however twisted that agenda may be). An innocent choice in the eyes of their classmates, in the eyes who don't know about the Gods and Goddesses and the battles only months before. Not that the play is really about Gods and Goddesses. Rather, it's about children – teenagers, precisely – with magical powers, that go around saving the world and turn out to be royalty.

The story's a little more complicated than that, but Karin is captivated by the female lead: the teenage girl with long blonde hair who thinks she's normal, below average, student. And then she meets a black talking cat and discovers she's in fact one of the Sailor Senshi: Sailor Moon.

Just like Karin had run into Kazune and Himika and then discovered she was a Goddess. Except she'd already had the ring that allowed her to transform and Usagi-chan had received her wand from the cat. And Athena isn't the Goddess of the moon. Nyx is the closest of the ones she's met: Kirika-san. But Selene is the greek Goddess that truly aligns with the moon. There is no ring with Selene's power. Or, if there is, she doesn't know it. And she doesn't ask Kazune either. It seems a silly thing to ask, and he's too pragmatic for silly thoughts.

So Karin just drowns herself in the character that is Tsukino Usagi, that is Sailor Moon, that is Princess Serenity of the Moon and later on Queen of Neo Tokyo…

And the fact that her ring is Athena's and not Selene's is the perfect anchor to yank her out of that bubble.

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She gets the role. She's only half-surprised because she can immerse herself so effectively into the tale, and most her classmates marvel at the skill. It's because she can relate to the story, because so much of it is similar to her own – down to the point where there is a previous life that both of them don't recall. But she doesn't say it out loud. The fights with Ares and Nyx, the fights with Zeus, they're all secret to all but the few directly involved.

But the play is an innocent one. Sailor Moon on stage and it's a little more serious than their Cinderella retelling but fun nonetheless. After all, it's based off an anime: a show targeted towards children, their age and younger. There aren't many male roles this time, but plenty of androgenic villains to go around. Kazune was hoping for one of those. He winds up as the male lead instead.

And it suits him, just like the role of Tsukino Usagi suits Karin. Apollo is the God of the sun after all, and the sun is the antithesis to the moon. In truth, Chiba Mamoru has the power of the earth, but Himika can spin any tale and she spins this one far better than Karin's own scattered mind can manage. The Earth lives because of the sun and its energy, its light. It thrives because of the sun. Its people move under it, are alive and awake because of it. And, in contrast, the moon is the protector of their sleep: the one who stills, who preserves. Sun and moon. Fire and ice.

Athena and Apollo share a somewhat different relationship, but there is a similar essence deep down. Athena fights to protect and Apollo, Apollo strips away the ice that tries to hide to showcase the truth. Kazune's like that too. Harsh, sometimes. Blunt. Karin thinks she can sympathise with Usagi-chan there as well. They're both clumsy girls. They both find themselves in more fights than they'd like.

Himika can be their Ami-chan. Or their Naru-chan. And Michi-kun can be Minako-chan. But that's not the case, and that's where the main surprises are. Karin forgets it's a play for their class and not the story of her life, and she almost laughs as she sees how the other roles are distributed. Himika is in fact Beryl, the main villain of the first act and it doesn't suit her at all.

Except there's a love story in the background and Karin remembers those times Himika had tried to make Kazune smile, all those times she'd tended to him, loved him… And Kazune had been in love with Karin the whole time.

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Usagi-chan is a typical school girl. Her marks aren't that great. Her worth ethic isn't that great either, until it comes to finals or one of her friend tutoring her, because how can she waste the effort of a friend? It's easy to mime for a few moments as well. Easy for most of them to mime, probably. Even if they are a prestigious school far unlike the fictitious Juban High School.

But it's easy to mime the fighting too. At least the earlier scenes, where the nameless enemies are like Ares in a hundred guises. She just imagines they are Ares, imagines that she's back as that immature and inexperienced Goddess. The hardest scenes perhaps are the ones with Mamoru-kun in them. The ones with Kazune. Because it's still embarrassing to kiss him in front of the entire class, let alone the school (and that's what will happen from opening day). It's still embarrassing for him to tease her in public, and even to be publically saved by her when it comes to that scene.

But harder still are the scenes that follow Mamoru-kun's brainwashing by Beryl. Karin has never had to fight Kazune like this and the ease at which they slipped into their roles is a disadvantage here. Their classmates don't understand why there's a difference in quality. Why it's so natural at first. Why it's so stilted in these later scenes.

It's like they're back to the issue with the Cinderella play. How they escape it by rewriting the scenes that don't fit, so it fits the characters playing it. First they cajole the players: Karin and Kazune and Himika who likewise struggle with their roles – and it's lucky that they're beyond the point where Himika is in knots about the blooming relationship between the other two, because her role practically begs for it.

So the scriptwriters rewrite the scenes from the original anime version. Himika takes on a more sympathetic role. Kazune is not brainwashed, but instead injured, possibly beyond repair. And Karin's lines are more heartfelt, though still they fall short of the zenith she acquired in the Cinderella play. But that's because there's no enemy bursting onto stage mid-way. Or there might be, but Karin hopes there isn't. There hasn't been an enemy to fight for months, except when practising for the play. And she is glad for the peace.

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Usagi-chan's hair is long. Longer than Karin's and she sprouts a wig the day the design team claim themselves finished with her costumes. It looks ridiculous, Kazune says. All he has to do is dye his hair black again, she points out. He has the easier job.

But they flatten out the wig. And she tries on her clothes and thinks she looks more like Chibusa-chan than Usagi-chan, and the hair looks weird. The prep team agrees. They take off the wig and dye Karin's hair a brighter yellow. Usagi-chan is Chibiusa-chan's mother after all. It's not too farfetched that they shared the same hairstyle at that age and Karin's hair only needs the buns now to look the same.

The outfit is fixed up a little as well. All the outfits are. They'd forgotten the cast are younger than the characters they act, and so everything is changed in the last two weeks to reflect it. Because it works best that way. Not so much Karin's role, though. Nor Kazune's. They did too good a job with the edits they had. But the other students. The other main characters especially. The Senshi. And Naru-chan. And the main enemies, the ones that appear more than a handful of times. And even Himika, because she's not a cackling old witch in the end.

She's not a witch at all, but that's where the acting part has to stick around.

Sailor Moon becomes Sailor Moon Junior, or something like that. It's unfortunate there's a Sailor Chibi Moon, one of the script writers comments. It means they can't rename their script like that.

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In the end, it's opening night and there's no Ares or any other enemy for Karin to fight in her Goddess form. It's just Tsukino Usagi, the ordinary girl who turned out to be extraordinary: the ordinary girl who'd been given a wand and turned into a soldier of justice, then into a princess of a kingdom.

And inside Tsukino Usagi there is Hanazono Karin, remembering with fond but slightly grey memories of her own path of growth and discovery: naïve child to warrior of the Goddess Athena to a woman, a wife and mother, who'd been accidentally de-aged, her memories forgotten, to regrow in this new time and world. She still doesn't remember much of her life as Suzuka. She doesn't need to, because she is Karin now, no matter who she was before.

Or… She smiles slightly. The stage looks extra bright and the audience extra rapt, but she remembers being herself on it and that's banished any stage fright that could ever take root. She slips back into the character that is Tsukino Usagi, modified. Just like the other characters are modified.

It's just that, in her case, Tsukino Usagi is so relatable, she didn't need to do much in the way of modifications.

Down to the last trip off stage, says Kazune in the aftermath.