Sailor Moon is property of its respective owners. I only own some mangas, a t-shirt, and a book bag, I think.

Teaser: Not all is what it seems at the Tsukino household.

Title: Illusions
Author: Tink484
Rated: R (for violence and language present in later chapters)

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My name is Tsukino Usagi. Well, at least on Earth it is.

You see, dear readers, a year and a half ago I was accosted by this crazed talking cat; yes, folks, I said: 'talking.' Anyway, this cat, (who sounded eerily like a British professor I once had,) was branded with this golden crescent moon on her forehead. At the time I thought it was the owner's sadistic way of i.d.-ing his or her cat. Boy was I wrong. This cat, who called herself Luna [do you see my line of thinking with the branding?] tells me that I, one Tsukino Usagi, am the world's savior against this "Dark Kingdom," and that included in the package was a mission to find mystical ginzushou and its destined wielder: the Moon Princess. Me, whose favorite occupations at the time were: sleeping, eating, playing Sailor V at the arcade, shopping and did I mention sleep? You know normal teenager stuff. I mean, for Selene's sake, I was only a freshman in High School! I couldn't save the world; I barely had enough concentration to do my homework and even then I was a huge procrastinator. So, of course, I laughed in her face.

And then the youma attacked, and something, a will to fight it, took over. And so, with Luna supplying a nifty transformation brooch and spell to activate it, I transformed into the pretty-suited Senshi Sailormoon! Hey, don't look at me; I didn't have any say in the title, if I did I would have thought of something much cooler.

Anyway so I'm fighting this monster and things are totally looking bleak for the rookie here, when this guy in a tuxedo suit, looking for all the world as if he stepped out of an Armani ad, [I mean this guy was H-O-T-T: HOT!] throws these razor-sharp red roses at the monster to buy enough time to throw a few lame words of encouragement in my direction. And oddly enough; they worked. Though to be honest, the guy could have said "bibbity, bobbity, boo," and achieved the same result as I would have done anything to make a good impression on him.

So I did my thing; a flashy number leading up to my main attack: a flying discuss-type thing. [Lame, I know but I can only work with what I have here.] And to my utter amazement, it destroyed the monster. After a little victory dance, I turned to thank my tux-clad hero only to find he was gone. But, don't worry dear readers! I found my hero, who called himself Tuxedo Kamen, was to repeat this routine at every following battle. And guess what, he's after the crystal and princess, too! Something about her being his long lost love, or something like that. All I can say is that she is one lucky girl. But give up all hope on us working together to find them; both he and Luna made it perfectly clear that it was not an option. Come on you guys haven't you ever heard of teamwork?

To top off the awesome life-altering changes [read: could this get any worse?] this (gorgeous) obnoxious upperclassman from the super elite Azabu High, Chiba Mamoru, enters my life; teasing me about anything and everything under the sun. Oh, and even kindly bestowed upon me a new moniker: Ondago Atama. I'll have you know that this hair style is a family tradition, so lay off will ya?

So things continued in this vein for few weeks; me, battling these freak show escapees sent by the evil General Jadeite by night; [Selene, you should see some of these things. Horrendous, I tell ya!] by day racing to school because I overslept, earning myself detention and getting teased by Mamoru, who I had since dubbed: Mamoru-baka. There were some bright spots, though. I received the Luna Pen, a magical device that allowed me to change into anyone I wanted, unfortunately Luna only let me use it for Senshi business. And I made a new friend at school, Mizuno Ami, genius extraordinaire as well as a fellow senshi: Sailormercury. We were two peas in a pod, Mercury using her intelligence and power of over ice to confuse and outwit the youma and me using my (klutziness) grace and flying discuss (along with a few close-call saves from my hero in the tux) to defeat it.

Yep, quite a pair.

Hino Rei, a Shinto priestess, became the next to don the mantle of a Sailor senshi: Sailormars, with the power over fire (and a temper to match.) Together we triple-teamed Jadeite into oblivion; go, us! We saved the world! Too bad it didn't last long…another general was sent our way, this one called Nephrite, [I swear their mothers were drooling over jewelry when they christened these guys!] and he too, wanted to join the hunt for the ginzushou in the name of Queen Beryl and her Dark Kingdom. If he had a hat, I think had just tossed it.

As his hunt heated up, and the battles increased, my grades quickly began to nose-dive—not that they had far to go to begin with—knocked out by the double whammy of fighting off Nephrite's latest attempt to find the crystal and the huge necessity for sleep as my attacks zapped my energy to the point that, if given a chance, I would literally sleep for a week. That is, if these dreams about some guy calling out to me--at least I think it's me, as he calls me 'Serenity'--would let me.

Never missing a beat, shortly thereafter Mamoru increased his teasing as my failing grades apparently led credence to his dubbing me Ondago; only now Rei picked up on the nick-name. Pyro, sweetie, only Mamo-chan is allowed to call me that! [Uh…did I just say that?] Needless to say Rei and I tended to butt heads a bit because of it, usually ending in the oh, so mature raspberry war. Just when I thought no one was in my corner (Ami usually abstained from getting involved in the arguments and I'm not even going to talk about Luna!) Kino Makoto, soon to be known as the lightning striking Sailorjupiter, muscled her way in to get my back.

By this time we've moved on to the gender-bending General Zoisite. One never knows what it's going to show up as, man or woman; though he/she always uses these awful pink petals as a means of distraction and was the only one of the generals to use a form of their name as a spell to attack. [Just like those cutesy anime characters my little brother, Shingo, likes to watch "Zoi!" "Zoi!".]

Zoisite put oil on the fire that was the search for the crystal (and our search for the princess,) and to aid in our quest to find it before Zoisite and Tuxedo Kamen, who Luna still maintained was an enemy, [I firmly held my ground that he was not.] I was given a new weapon: a crescent moon wand. This thing blew my flying discuss attack away! It was beautiful! Though, it did have its downside as it drained more energy than anything I've used before. In fact, after fainting at the end of a particular draining battle, I found myself in the strangest and least likely of places: Chiba Mamoru's apartment. And how did I end up there? Simple: Tuxedo Kamen brought me there.

The question was really why?

That one was a little harder for me to wrap my head around—Tuxedo Kamen was Chiba Mamoru. Well, that killed two birds with one stone: my crush of a super-hero and the not so obnoxious Mamoru-baka were one in the same. Oh, someone up there really did like me. But then, there was the fact that if he brought me there, he knew who I was…Oh, crap.

No worries though, as it seemed my faith in my caped hero was not misplaced; he would keep my secret. Now, if I could just get around the awkwardness of being attracted to him and not being able to admit it.

Mamoru aside, Zoisite ruthlessly continued to search for the ginzushou; tracking every lead like a bloodhound, he/she even spelled the whole of Tokyo into looking for the crystal by taking advantage of our addiction to the boob-tube, by encrypting videos with hidden messages. The nerve! Yet, it was this venture that led to the appearance of a fifth senshi: Sailorvenus, otherwise known as the idol and crime fighter, Sailor V; and her grand entrance onto the scene: toasting Zoisite.

Oh, yeah, it was cool.

And what was even cooler—for about two seconds—was that the girl was also apparently our long searched for Princess, or so said her guardian cat, Artemis. The little white ball of fur drops onto the scene and acts like he's in charge: even Luna stepped aside for him, but he's the princess's guardian; so he got some slack. But it only goes so far when he almost seemed to demand by association the reverence the other girls were bestowing upon the princess. Though the princess herself burst that bubble, by appointing Luna chief advisor; the crestfallen look on his face was enough to keep me laughing for hours.

So, now that the princess is found, one would think that Ginzushou would also be, you know, 'cause she's its keeper and all. Yeah, no dice there.

The princess, her appellation on Earth was Aino Minako, by the way, was dodging all questions about it. It was about this time where I got the feeling that things weren't exactly kosher around here, if you know what I'm saying. I mean, we were all searching for this princess: The senshi, the Dark Kingdom, and Tuxedo Mask (remember Tuxie claimed that he was in love with her, right?) but Tuxedo Mask wouldn't get within a mile of her and the Dark Kingdom didn't launch the offensive against her to get the crystal. Something just didn't add up. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't think that Minako was evil, no she was definitely a good guy; I just got the feeling that her being the princess wasn't an exact fit: like a puzzle where the only piece left is either too small or too big: no matter which way you turn it, it can't complete the puzzle.

To add more confusion to the mix, the dreams were becoming more frequent, as was the urgency in his—I had called back to him 'Endymion' once, was that his name?--voice, and my attraction to Mamoru was growing, no matter how much I tried to stop it, I had to admit: I loved him. Now, unrequited love might be difficult to handle since I knew he thought he was meant to be with the princess, but shortly after he found out about me being Sailormoon, something, everything about the way he acted around me changed: he stopped teasing me, he almost seemed to become distant, but the way he looked at me…let's just say one wasn't supposed to look at a girl the way Mamoru looked at me when one's in love with another. 'Difficult'? It was pure torture!

Other than that, things were quiet for a week or two; no attacks, no brainwashing video tapes, nothing. It was the calm before the storm, and what a storm it was.

One night, in the middle of a senshi meeting, everything goes black. There was not a light to be seen in the entire city of Tokyo, save one: on the top of Tokyo tower. Guessing that it wasn't the Bat Signal, we figured it must be a trap; but we're the heroes of the city, so we go anyway. A new general awaited us there: Kunzite, apparently the most powerful of Beryl's Generals. So we threw our attacks, spells that fizzed out against Kunzite and his force field that seemed strengthened by the attacks rather than harmed by them. Once we had exhausted our catalogue of spells and the situation looked like it might get worse, I took steps to get the princess and my senshi out of harm's way—I used my wand against them, moving them a safe distance from the fight. It was right before they were completely out of earshot that I heard Sailorvenus order: "Protect Sailormoon, protect the princess!"

With no time to think on that comment, I turned back to Kunzite just in time to see an attack aimed in my direction. I had braced for the worst, expecting to wake up at St. Peter's feet, but it never came. Milliseconds before the blast hit me; Tuxedo Mask stepped in front of me: and took the deadly blow in my stead.

And that was when my world fell apart. Remember that missing puzzle piece? With Sailorvenus's words and Mamoru's sacrifice, it fell into place; and a lifetime of memories fell with it. As Mamoru, no, Endymion, lay at my feet dying one thought ran through my mind like a mantra: Not again.

I couldn't tell you what happened next, but my senshi later told me that I recalled a brief version of myself and Endymion's tale of star-crossed lovers, our own version of Romeo and Juliet, and in the process of riding an emotional power boost, formed the Ginzushou from a simple tear drop. The Senshi also told me of the amazing power it emitted and the newspapers would come to of the miracles that were apparently performed by its manifestation. And somewhere in the confusion: I lost my Endymion.

I was left alone.

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Alright. This was primarily backstory, as will be the next chapter (and possibly the next) to the main plot that takes the place of Sailor Moon R. Read, review and all that jazz! Thanks!