Disclaimer: Hello lovelies! Before we go any further, I must tell you that I do not own the rights to Sailor Moon. I'm going to assume those belong to Naoko Takeuchi. I own more VHS's than I care to admit, and the first three seasons on DVD. I am entirely too picky about looks to have the rest of the fourth season with MISMATCHED COVERS! But yes, other than those things and some knickknacks here and there, I don't own Sailor Moon. I also don't do witty disclaimers – if you want witty disclaimers WITH your Sailor Moon fics, please visit Alicia Blade's works!

A Brief Author's Note: Here, we have the first fic in the LJ 10_prompts community's Table 2 and the start of a new series of Baby Grands. If you haven't read my Repo! The Genetic Opera, Sanctuary, or Alice In Wonderland 2010 fics of these titles, let me explain. A thousand is sometimes colloquially referred to as a "grand". The "baby" bit comes from the term "ficlet," which just brings to mind the image of baby fanfics.

1 - Tidings

A shiver traveled up Hino Rei's spine… a grim, grizzly, not-grinning shiver. It was a terrible omen! Something horrible was going to happen! She wracked her brains for other signs she had seen recently. Had she seen chopsticks stuck in rice recently? If she were really honest with herself, had she skimped with her offerings so as to have more funds at the mall? Had she not been diligent in her chores around the shrine? Could she do a better job of controlling her mind at prayer? No, no chopsticks, she thought. Her brow furrowed – no, she hadn't been to the mall in weeks. Looking around, she saw the shrine practically sparkling at her, squeaky clean. With a deeper frown, she concluded that her mind came up just this side of "steel trap" status.

"Ojii-chan?" she called, looking up from the dish she had been drying.

"Rei? Is something wrong?" he hollered from the courtyard of the shrine.

"Never mind, 'jii-chan," she called back. "It was nothing."

She heard him grunt at her in assent and after a moment, he went back to telling off Yuuichirou for not sweeping the stairs correctly.

"Not so aimlessly, young man!" ordered Hino-ojii-chan. "You must take pride in doing your chores at this shrine!"

Rei felt comforted by her grandfather's shouting voice and Yuuichirou's response of "Aw, man!"

"Go easy on me, ojii-san!" he wheedled, now leaning on his broom – he had just crossed a line.

"I'm not your ojii-san, brat!" yelled the old man. "Now I want these stairs to shine in the sunlight and you still haven't cleaned the shrine floor! Rei is a delicate girl and you should be ashamed of yourself for making her do it all on her own! Earn your keep, boy!"

The dark-haired girl went back to work on the dishes, wiping the cloth gently through the lacquered miso bowls and setting them to the side, stacking them carefully on the counter. Surely she had only imagined the shiver. But no, that was impossible! She had been trained from a very young age to know the difference between the physical, the spiritual, and something she had just plain imagined. Something out there had gone very, very wrong and she had no way of knowing what. But she attempted to shrug it off. It was probably just an energy shift of some kind, right?

"Ooh!" She turned red about the face, a touch angry and grumbling under her breath. "Oh, this better be nothing at all!"

But then things started running through her mind – all kinds of things, bad things. Maybe the Dark Kingdom had come up with something new, something that could cause all kinds of death and destruction! Could it be something related to that strange tuxedo man? Tuxedo Mask, he called himself. Yes, he was handsome, but hadn't she always been taught that people in masks couldn't be trusted? She seemed to remember that line from an American movie. Wow, the man in that movie had been handsome too! No, wait! She brought her mind back on track – she had to figure out the threat, then alert the others! This could be incredibly serious!

"Okay, calm down," she told herself sternly. She stuck her tongue out at one of the shrine cats and shooed him away, off the counter. "You're scaring yourself over nothing. Getting as bad as Usagi, and that is just unacceptable!"

"Rei-san?" asked Yuuichirou's voice from the hallway – he had a bucket in hand, ready to fill it and start work on the floors. "I heard you talking. Are you all right?"

Rei scowled, not at Yuuichirou – really, she was grateful for his concern.

"It's nothing, really," she told him, frowning at a spot of dried-on grated ginger at the corner of a plate. "I was just thinking out loud over the dishes – that's all."

The sort-of-professional singer scratched his bushy head and studied her from behind his tangle of bangs.

"Thought you sounded worried, figured I'd see about you," he told her. "Just let me know if you need anything!"

"Thank you, Yuu-chan," She turned and smiled at him. "But you'd better get to work on the floorboards before 'jii-chan comes back and starts screaming!"

He grinned somewhat lopsidedly at her, filled his bamboo bucket, slung a cloth over his shoulder, and left the kitchen, sliding the shoji panel closed behind him. Rei smiled a different sort of smile back down at the dishes. Yuuichirou was a sweet young man – a bit unfocused and a lot goofy, but genuinely a very caring person. He might never make it as a shrine-keeper, but he worked hard… most of the time. She shook her head, blew some of her bangs out of her eyes, and scraped at the dried-on ginger with her fingernails. It came off.

"Okay, it's not going away," she said aloud, this time to the cat. It ignored her and turned its attention to its backside. "This has to be serious."

Rei set the plate down, turned the water off in the sink, and reached for a dry towel. After drying her hands and smoothing the cloth back over the towel bar, she tossed her hair out of habit, leaving the kitchen in a bit of a hurry. She tried not to let her grandfather or their boarder/apprentice see her rushing down the back hallway towards her room – the last thing she needed was a load of questions right this second. Sometimes, she figured they were getting suspicious enough, though she tried to keep her nighttime disappearances as discreet as possible. For several long seconds, she pawed through her school uniform. Her communicator was ringing!

"Mars here!" she exclaimed, clicking the button.

Usagi's distraught face came through on the circular screen.

"REI!" screeched Usagi. "My mom found the dirty manga Mina gave me and she thinks it's mine and I'm in so much trouble! WAAAAH!"

It was all Rei could do not to break the small pink device in two.

Japanese Glossary

Ojii-chan/'jii-chan – "Grandpa" or "Gramps"

Ojii-san – more formal, "Grandfather"

Shoji – paper panels that make up traditional Japanese homes