Chapter One
Awakening of the Moon
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! A shrill blare was emitting from the alarm clock sitting on the night table, beside a teenage girl's bed, just out of reach. The girl had her pillow firmly clamped around her head, and had been attempting to ignore the alarm that was loud enough to wake the entire house. She didn't want to get up; it was Monday—the First-Day-of-School-After-a-Week-Long-Break Monday, in fact. One of the worst days of the year, in the opinion of any sane high school student. Unfortunately, staying in bed indefinitely wasn't an option, as much as the young girl wished it was.
"ARIANA!" a voice shouted from down the hall, in her parents' room; apparently, the incessant beeping had awoken her mother, never a good thing at six in the morning.
"Five more minutes…" Ariana mumbled into her mattress, tightening her hold on her pillow-turned-earmuff. She vaguely registered her mother storming into her room and silencing the alarm, rattling the usual pre-school threats of being late. Ariana did her best to ignore those, too. "Five more minutes!" she muttered a little louder, and more forcefully.
Suddenly, the pillow was gone. Ari turned over in her bed, grinning sheepishly up at her mother, who was glaring down at her, holding her pillow. "It is seven thirty, young lady. That damn alarm has been going off for an hour and a half!"
"WHAT?!" Ari squeaked, glancing at her alarm clock; it read 7:32 in big red numbers. "Oh no, I'm going to be late!" She was out of her bed like a shot, ignoring her mother's grumbling as she left her daughter's room, probably to get an Advil. Ariana pulled on the first clean pair of jeans she found, and the first semi-clean T-shirt that came to hand—a tight black shirt with a crescent moon motif—before slipping on her sneakers and grabbing her backpack, as she raced down the hall to the bathroom. "Oh man, my hair's a wreck!" she moaned as she glanced at her reflection in the mirror. She didn't have time to straighten it, though she did her best to get a comb through the blond locks to straighten out the waves, before quickly pulling her slightly-longer-than-shoulder-length tresses into pig tails, her usual hairstyle.
Next stop was the kitchen, where she wolfed down her eggs and toast like there was no tomorrow. It was almost 7:50, and it usually took her nearly ten minutes to bike to school. "Gotta go bye!" she shouted over her shoulder, mussing up her little sister Samantha's hair as she rushed out of the kitchen and out the front door. It was a matter of seconds to snap on her helmet, and then she was pedaling as hard and fast as she could, racing the clock to get to school before the tardy bell rang.
So intent was she on making it to school on time, that she almost didn't notice the cat in her bike's path until it was nearly too late. Ariana clenched the handle brakes hard, swerving to avoid hitting the small, black animal, hitting the curb with her front tire and sprawling not-so-neatly onto the sidewalk. "Ow…" she murmured, rubbing her head and wincing as she sat up. She managed to crawl over to wear the cat was standing, looking positively petrified. Oh, great, I wonder how many years of bad luck it is to almost run over a black cat, Ariana thought dryly, grimacing with pain when she shook her head. "Are you ok, kitty?" she asked, though she didn't really expect it to answer. When she reached out to touch it, she expected it to run away or scratch her, but it actually let her scoop it into her arms. "You sure are a pretty kitty," Ari murmured as she ran her hands through the cat's soft, short fur. "You've gotta belong to someone."
The cat looked up at her and shook its head, as if in denial—of course, it was a cat, and couldn't understand her. Something else caught Ariana's attention, though. There was a patch of bright gold fur—or was it skin?—in the shape of a crescent moon on the black cat's forehead. Gingerly, the young girl touched a finger to it… and withdrew her hand with a sharp gasp, as though she'd been burned. Or, more likely, electrocuted, for that's what touching the mark had felt like to her. The cat was obviously startled by Ariana's sudden movements, for it let out a loud yowl, and dug in its claws as it jumped from her lap and streaked across the street and through the bushes on the other side. "Weird…" Ari muttered as she stood up, brushing herself off. She caught sight of her watch as she did so, and yelped aloud—she was definitely going to be late today.
~*~
The four hours until lunch seemed to span years, particularly the five minute lecture on tardiness she got when she burst into her homeroom ten minutes late and tripped over her feet several times in her mad dash to her seat. It was the same lecture she'd gotten every other day in homeroom ever since she'd started high school, and had to get there under her own power. The speeches her teachers gave were so similar, Ari had come to believe that they rehearsed together, whenever they learned they'd have a class with Ariana Fletcher in it. It had become so familiar that it started to put her to sleep every time she heard it, and then get her in trouble for falling asleep in class, which usually resulted in detention, as it had today. Detention on the first day after break. The world hates me, she thought as she sat at the usual lunch table, pulling out her lunch and turning to Lisa—her best friend since elementary school—for the latest in school-wide gossip. Lisa Sharpe was renowned on campus for knowing everything there was to know about everyone, a trait which earned her the title of Gossip Queen in middle school.
Usually, Ariana dug into her lunch—a ham and cheese sandwich, bag of potato chips, Dr. Pepper, and dessert item (this week it was mint chocolate fudge)—with gusto, and listened with rapt attention to her best friend describing the ins and outs of everyone's social lives, attention that her teachers would be extremely surprised to find her capable of. Something caught her attention first, though, just as she was about to bite into her sandwich; she caught a glimpse of something small and black sitting just outside one of the sets of windows in the cafeteria. When she narrowed her eyes and concentrated, she could make out the form of a cat, and she was positive she saw a golden marking on its forehead, which looked suspiciously like a crescent moon. The young girl was certain it was the same cat she'd nearly run over that morning; but why was it staring at her so intently, as though it recognized her?
A hand waving in front of her face turned Ari's attention back to her immediate surroundings. "Hello in there!" Lisa said, "Anybody home? You haven't eaten anything yet, and have you been listening to me?" Her tone turned suddenly accusatory, and Ari smiled sheepishly, taking a bite out of her sandwich and nodding, as though she'd been listening the whole time. When she looked back at the place the cat had been sitting, it was gone. She mentally shrugged, turning her whole attention to Lisa's stories, which were getting juicier by the minute.
~*~
It was getting late, and Ariana was tired. I still can't believe I got detention on the first day, after a break, she thought, groaning audibly and trudging as well as one can while riding a bicycle. That's when she heard screams, coming from the park just down the street—the same park through which Ari usually rode to get home. "What the hell's going on up there?" she wondered aloud, coming to a stop and briefly contemplating taking another route home. Curiosity got the best of her, however, and she pedaled towards the park, the screams and shouts getting louder with every downward push.
She dropped her bike and helmet next to the soccer field, running the opposite direction of everyone else in the area—towards the playground. When she got there, she stopped short, her jaw dropping open. There was a… thing, standing in the sand-box—there was no other way to describe it. It looked like the Mummy before he started killing people and getting his skin back, only uglier, and far scarier, given that this wasn't a movie, as far as Ari knew. The thing was holding its hands out at its sides, and they were glowing with a strange, dark purple energy. Scattered around it were the motionless forms of unconscious people, adults and children alike. All of them were surrounded by a purple haze, which had trails leading to the monster's hands. As if that wasn't weird enough, the monster's eyes were glowing the same purple as everything else. Ari was speechless—a very rare occurrence.
"Sailor Moon!" a voice shouted, breaking Ariana from her semi-trance. She whirled around, but there was no one else in the area—awake, that is. There were plenty of prone bodies. The shout came again, from right in front of her. "Sailor Moon!" Ari looked down, and her eyes widened; the black cat she'd seen twice that day, the one with the weird mark on its forehead, was standing there, looking up at her expectantly.
"Did… did you just speak?" Ari asked, her voice ending in a squeak as she took a step back.
The cat nodded, then gave an audible sigh. "I did not believe it at first," she said (for the voice was decidedly feminine), "but you are Sailor Moon, one of the Sailor Scouts!"
"I'm the who of what?" Ari asked, her voice squeaking again. The cat looked exasperated—if, indeed, cats were capable of that kind of depth of expression. Suddenly, its eyes widened, and it leaped towards Ari's head; she ducked instinctually, and when she turned, the cat was lying on the ground, panting, a shimmering purple haze attaching itself to her.
"You are Sailor Moon!" she repeated, standing with obvious difficulty. The cat flicked her tail, and a bright golden flash lit the area. When it cleared, there was a decorated locket floating in the air before Ariana. "Take that locket and say the words 'Moon Prism Power'!" the cat shouted. "Do it now, before the monster attacks again!"
Ariana didn't know what to make of the situation, but as in all things, curiosity drove her to do what the cat said, if only to find out what the hell was going wrong with the world today. When her fingers closed around the locket and she carefully clasped it around her neck, a warm feeling shot through her body, a sudden feeling of power, and a certain trust in the cat's words. Here goes nothing! she thought; the monster looked ready to attack again. "Moon Prism Power!" she shouted, her words resonating with power as she through her right hand into the air, fingers spread. Suddenly, Ari found herself enveloped in soft pink light, obscuring everything around her. When the light faded, she looked almost completely different.
Ari looked down at the clothes she was now wearing, a strange look coming over her face. "So I transformed… into a Japanese schoolgirl?" she said in a tone of disbelief. Indeed, she was certainly clothed like one. The outfit consisted of a white leotard, with a very short, pleated blue skirt, a red bow in back and on her chest, with her locket at the bow's center—it, too, had changed, becoming a brooch to fit on her bow, though the moon and star decoration remained the same. Her collar was blue, and her gloves were white, with red frills at the elbows. Her stiletto heeled boots were dark red, and she could feel a tiara on her forehead (inset with a red jewel), as well as a red choker around her neck decorated with a crescent moon. However, her clothes weren't the worst of it. Her hair was suddenly insanely long, though it was the same gold color, and still hung in pigtails. She reached up to feel the top of her head, and suddenly blinked, as though utterly confounded. "Are these… meatballs or something?" she asked aloud, feeling two balls on top of her head, from which her pigtails now descended.
"Sailor Moon!" the cat shouted in warning, and Ariana's preoccupation with her sudden, strange appearance dissipated, as she saw a beam of purple energy flying straight for her. "Ahhhhh!" she yelled as she leaped to the side to avoid it, rolling across the tanbark and hitting the edge of the sandbox with a pained grunt. She stood, wincing, as the monster turned its head an impossible angle, again fixing its eerie purple eyes on her. "And just who do you think you are, crashing this party?" the monster hissed at her; Ari was taken aback by the question, as she herself didn't really know—but then, the words came to her.
"Me? I'm your worst nightmare, evil beast—my name is Sailor Moon, and I'm the Champion of love and justice! In the name of the moon, I'm gonna kick your ass all the way to Mars!"
The black cat's eyes widened slightly at her last words. "… Well, that's not how it's supposed to go," she said. "Well, it was the first thing that came to me!" Sailor Moon shot back, though she kept her eyes locked on the creature.
"Why hello there, Sailor Moon," the monster said, utterly unfazed. "You're just in time for the main event!" With that, it through another beam of energy at her and cackled maniacally. Sailor Moon had to jump to dodge the blast, managing to catch hold of a low-hanging branch of the tree hanging directly over her, but just barely—the blast whooshed past centimeters below her feet.
"Sailor Moon, you must attack! Use your tiara!"
"What?!" Ari shouted as she dropped to the ground, then dodging yet another energy blast by jumping over the sandbox—her newfound power aided her in completely clearing the six feet. "What's a tiara gonna do against that?!"
"That's no ordinary tiara, Sailor Moon. Just do it!"
Suddenly, Ari knew exactly what she had to do. When she touched the middle of her tiara, she knew what to say. "Moon Tiara Magic!" she shouted, her tiara glowing with white energy, which she threw like a discus. Doubt was still clouding her mind, however, and the monster managed to easily sidestep her tiara, which returned to her head immediately. The monster chuckled. "Don't believe in yourself, eh, Sailor Moon? Good, then your destruction will be even easier to achieve. Give your energy to me!" The monster threw more and more energy blasts at Ariana, and she was finding them harder to dodge.
"Oh crap…" Ari muttered, jumping high to avoid the first blast, ducking to avoid the second, and throwing herself to the ground and rolling to avoid the subsequent ones. "Hey… cat… do I have any other cool attacks?" she called, rubbing a deep scratch on her left arm as she got to her feet. "I could use a little help about now!"
The cat didn't answer. Ari looked around, and saw the poor thing's unconscious body being drained of energy. When she looked back at the monster, several more bolts of energy were flying at her, leaving no room for escape. Bracing herself for impact, she held her hands up in front of her face… but the hits never came. She heard a sharp sound, like an arrow, and when she looked up, there was a rose sticking in the ground stem first, and the energy had dissipated before ever reaching her. The monster looked up with a sound akin to the human 'Huh?!', and Ariana looked up as well. "Hey, who are you?!" the monster shouted, looking around for the person who had thrown the rose—Ariana was doing the same, curious about her savior.
At first she didn't see the source of the rose, but then she looked in the nearest tree, and her mouth dropped open yet again. There was a tall man in a tuxedo, black cape with a red lining, a top hat and a mask, standing on one of the lower, thicker branches. A sudden wind picked up, whipping the man's cape around him. Woah, what a hunk… was Ariana's first thought. When he spoke, she nearly swooned. "I am Tuxedo Mask—and you, evil fiend, are no match for Sailor Moon." Then, he looked straight at her, and Ari's heart started thudding so fast she thought she'd faint dead away. "Look into your heart for the strength to fight, Sailor Moon, or all will be lost!"
Ariana nodded, snapping out of her school girl daydream. "Right!" she said, turning back to the monster. Even if this is a dream, I have to follow my instincts. I have to accept this! "I am Sailor Moon, defender of truth and justice! My mission is to destroy evil wherever it stands—and that means you! For real, this time!" She touched her tiara again, allowing herself to know… to believe…
"Moon Tiara Magic!" The tiara flew on a direct collision course, hitting the monster square in the chest. It disintegrated with a wretched scream, and Ari gave a deep sigh of relief. She looked up as Tuxedo Mask spoke again. "Remember, your heart knows the path you must take, Sailor Moon. It is up to you to follow it—and whenever you need me, I'll be there." With that, he turned, flipping his cape and leaping from the tree, disappearing from view.
"Wow…" Ariana whispered, lowering onto her knees as weariness suddenly hit her. "This is all a dream, right?"