This is a story I wrote :P (Duh)
Please note, I don't own any of the concepts about Senshi in this story, but I do own the story itself!
I hope you enjoy it and I can't wait to read your reviews!
THE FATE SENSHI
AUTHOUR: Jetster
EMAIL: PG
1st Round (Practice Round)
1st Deal: The Ace of Spades
Brogan found the next Handhold and pulled herself slowly up the rock face. She looked down at the lush greenery of The Grampians National Park. Brogan smiled to herself as she remembered the reason why she went up the hardest climb for herself three times a year.
"Ah crap, I'm up to this part again." Brogan recalled the spot where she had fallen on every single trip up- 10 times. Luckily, her rope had held everyone of those times and it just meant she had never made it up the full distance of the climb. Brogan tried to make some footholds for herself a little further up then they were now. No use, the rock in that part was solid and there still hadn't been any put in that part of the face, "OK, so no footholds."
Brogan tightened her grip on the handhold her left hand was in and brought her feet up to her waist as if they were ready to go walking up the wall. She stretched out her right arm to the only handhold available, it was small and there were lots of pebbles built up inside it that made it slippery. Brogan carefully eased her body to meet her right hand. Slowly, she brought her left hand to meet her right hand- she was holding on now only with her right hand.
The handhold broke off.
Brogan squealed in surprise as she fell down a fair way, to the last place she had made her rope secure. She took in short breaths, still a bit overwhelmed. A sound that she least wanted to hear caught her attention. Brogan looked up to her rope, just where it came out of the carabineer she had hammered into the face. Too late, Brogan remembered that she was using her old rope, the one she kept meaning to replace. The spot where it had become weak was now only holding on by a few fibres. Brogan looked down again. She was a good thirty metres above the ground.
"OK Rowgs. This is nothing you can't handle. Just find a handhold, grab on, and climb down." Brogan found a ledge and crossed her arms over it to hold herself. Using her left hand, she unsecured the rope from the hammered in carabineer, and took out the carabineer too, so that she climbed down. There was another one a little way down, but with the rope in bad condition, Brogan was unsure whether it would do much good or not, "Damn it!" Brogan moved her feet around in vain as she tried to find a foothold.
"What is 'it' that you are damning?" Brogan looked up slowly. There on the ledge, behind her arms was a cat. A purple and white cat with a huge grin plastered onto its face.
"What. Is. That?" Brogan began to feel faint.
She fell. Everything went black.
♠
"Strange. I always thought the Spades were meant to only do gardening. Though after that one incident…" Brogan slowly opened her eyes. She groaned and closed them again. All she could see was the face of the freaky grinning cat, "How are you getting on?"
"I'm dreaming. That's what it is. I'm dreaming." Brogan opened her eyes again. The cat was gone.
Brogan looked around. She was on the ground, a rope coiled next to her. She was attached to a bit of rope that had obviously broken off. She stood up.
"Weird… I'm not hurt at all. But I know that I fell…"
"You know, many people address me with a lot more respect than that. And what is this 'it' you keep talking about?" Brogan spun around. The cat was in a tree.
"Look, I don't know what's happening cat, but you better start explaining yourself, because in my experience cats aren't meant to grin and they're not meant to talk either!" The cat's grin went a bit smaller, but didn't disappear.
"Goodness, you are quite mad. You would fit in just fine." The cat's grin went back to its usual large size. It then vanished into thin air.
"OK, what's happening?" Brogan was now scared out of her mind. She took her harness off and began to run, except that the cat now appeared right in front of her.
"My name is Roll. And you, child, are coming with me," Roll walked up to her feet, "give me your hand, if you will," bewildered, Brogan did as she was told and put out her hand. Roll put his paw in it, "thank you. I, Roll, hereby initiate you into Chance's Agents Rivalling Darkness as their first junior member. As I have recognised you to be one of the searched for, I have been granted authority to do so. And so… What is your name?"
"Brogan. Brogan Hiltlen."
"Ah, thank you. I announce that Brogan Hiltlen is the first of the Senshi that CARD sent me out to find, and therefore shall be known from this day to all operatives as 'The Ace' or," Roll made a dramatic pause at that point, and somehow managed to grin even wider, "'Sailor Spades'. Transmission over." Brogan then noticed that a die that was attached to Roll's collar had been glowing. Though now it stopped and just looked like a regular, six-sided die.
"OK. I've done what you want. Now you have to-" Brogan was cut off as she and Roll vanished.
♠
"Do what I want…" Brogan looked around. She and Roll were in a big white room. Fixing up her hair in to her usual ponytail, Brogan stood up and tried to figure out what had happened, "right. Back to business. What exactly are you, what was all that mumbo jumbo before, and where are we?" Roll stretched out lazily, his lilac purple and white stripes shimmering under the light.
"I am a Cheshire cat. I was initiating you into CARD before and we are now in the waiting room of the CARD building," The grinning cat curled up into a ball, "I would advise you to take a seat. You could be sitting quite a while."
"But there is no seat in… here…" Brogan turned behind her to discover a white chair behind her, "I'm sure that wasn't there before…"
Brogan sat down in the chair and decided to take the opportunity to find out a bit more from Roll, who obviously had to be questioned specifically to get a proper answer out of him. "So, what is this CARD thing?"
"CARD is an organisation of secret agents dispatched across the world to fight forces of evil that the general population does not know about. We intend to keep it that way."
"I see… When you said 'Sailor Spades' what did you mean by that?"
"I meant that you are a Sailor Senshi which I was sent out to find. You are a part of a team of four who are vital to CARD's ultimate cause."
"Which is?"
"Which is a word. Go look 'which' up in a dictionary if you will." Brogan sighed. This was difficult.
"What is CARD's ultimate cause?"
"Top Secret."
"I see."
"You see what?"
"I see that I am now meant to be some sort of secret agent that you people have been looking for but won't tell me much."
"How can you see all of what you have said? What you have said is information, and is intangible."
"It's a figure of speech."
"What is this 'it' that you keep speaking of? This 'it' seems to have a lot of uses." Brogan groaned adamantly.
"Can you please tell me how I managed to become this Sailor Senshi all of a sudden? No-one ever mentioned it… I mean, no-one ever mentioned that I was a Sailor Senshi or whatever before"
"Well, you are most definitely not a whatever. Whatevers are ungainly creatures. No-one ever mentioned you were a Sailor Senshi before as it takes a honed mind to sense one. You have always been a Sailor Senshi, but you have never had the knowledge required to transform into your Senshi state. That is one of the reasons I have brought you here."
"HA! You said 'it'" Roll blinked.
"I did, as 'it' was referring to mentioning you were a Sailor Senshi. Perhaps you should explain yourself more if you wish to be understood." Roll then vanished.
Brogan's attention was drawn to the sound of a door she hadn't noticed opening. A tall man walked into the room. Brogan was a bit surprised, as he looked to be one of the lucky few who were taller than her (at that moment anyway, as she was only sixteen and still had some growing to do). He had nicely managed brown hair, was wearing a brown pinstripe suit, and for some reason, a white mask.
"The Ace, I presume?" Brogan raised an eyebrow for a second until she remembered Roll saying something about operatives having to call her that. She quickly nodded in response, "ah, good. Call me Joker, or The Trump if we're going by codenames... I'm here to brief you, as Roll seems to have trouble telling our operatives anything that makes much sense." Brogan rolled her eyes.
"Tell me about it. Don't bother with the codename. Call me Brogan. Or Rowgs. Whichever works. Is Joker really your name? What are you? A Batman villain?" Joker smiled.
"My name isn't really Joker, but I'm not about to tell you what it is, Brogan. Secrecy is an important thing to me. Now." He lay down on the ground, with his legs up on a table (that Brogan was SURE wasn't there before), "do you know why you are here?"
Brogan looked at Joker a bit strangely, he was a lot less sophisticated then she first thought. But then so were all the guys she hung out with, so it was nothing new for her, "Roll said something about me being a Sailor Senshi that you guys had been looking for, so I'm assuming that you guys want me to be a secret agent… Though its strange- I would think you'd only want people over twenty-five or something in this sort of job."
"Normally, yes. But the Senshi are a special case and so those of you under twenty-one will be admitted as junior members… Something we have only done once before."
"OK. When was the first time?"
"Not important. For now, all you need to know is that your first training mission is very soon, and I need to go through a few things with you." Brogan was slightly miffed by this.
"Wait, training mission? You do realise that at this very moment my family is camping out in the Grampians and probably wondering where the hell I am? This is way too far out for me. Secret Agent? Do you know how much I hate keeping secrets and telling lies?"
"We'll take care of all that. Don't worry about it. Your family will be dealt with shortly. As for keeping secrets, if you can't do that, we will have to keep you under surveillance for a while to make sure that you can be trusted to act as a free will agent"
"Free will agent?…" Joker cut Brogan off there by putting his hand up to her face. Somehow he was now standing behind her. He formed his hand into a fist, then opened it again so that his palm was facing up towards the roof. Sitting on Joker's palm was a small brooch in the shape of a Spade.
"Put this on somewhere. Don't take it off."
"What? What is- " Joker cut her off again by putting a finger to her lips.
"Sush. Now put it on." Brogan did as she was told, getting a bit freaked out by Joker, "what did Roll tell you about you being Sailor Spades?"
"Only that I had been Sailor Spades for all my life and no-one, including myself knew about it except for you people of recent times. And that you had been looking for me because I was Sailor Spades."
"Good. Now, this brooch is a key item in transforming to Sailor Spades. Sailor Spades is who you really are. Actually, that's not your real name, but kind of your identity…All this may sound confusing now, but in time you will come to understand what I'm talking about." Joker drew his hand back from in front of Brogan. He swung upside down from the roof now, "put up your hand and repeat after me to transform. 'Spades, draw power!'" Brogan rose her eyebrow again.
"And that's not a bit childish at all?" the upside-down Joker raised his eyebrow in response, "fine. Whatever. This whole thing is weird enough as it is. It can't get any stranger," Brogan raised her arm, a feeling that she had never felt before suddenly came to her, and instead of tiredly saying the words as she was going to, she shouted them as if it were something of great importance, "SPADES… DRAW… POWER!"
Brogan began twirling around. Black Spades shot out of the ground and circled her. Her elastic that was holding her blonde hair into a ponytail disappeared- her shortish hair became a crop and turned jet black. Still spinning, Brogan crossed her arms down in front of her, and her green singlet and baggy pants transformed into a simple black and white 'fuku'. She threw up her arms and black, fingerless gloves that ended in a white triangular edge formed on them. Kicking out with her legs, her climbing shoes came off and were replaced with black combat boots. She held her hands on either side of her eyes in V-shapes and opened her eyes, which had changed from sea blue to a light red colour. A black mask formed over them and a tiara with a black gem in its centre appeared on her head. A group of spades flew around her hand as a simple, black pistol appeared in it. Brogan then posed, now as Sailor Spades.
"Well, that was exciting." Joker commented from the bar on the roof he was hanging from. Sailor Spades looked herself over.
"That it is" she said, surprisingly calm as she came out of her pose, "so, what the hell just happened? And why was I posing? I don't pose."
"You just transformed into the uniformed version of who you actually are, miss Spades. And you cannot say that you don't pose, as you just did."
"I am holding a gun. Why?"
"That is CARD's weapon of choice, and apparently yours too"
"Interesting, considering I have never held a gun before."
"You're taking this very well. If I were in your shoes I would be freaking out big time by now."
"I've already done my freaking out though, haven't I? Besides, I am freaking out. Just inside."
"Oh." There was silence in the room for a while as Joker and Sailor Spades looked at each other. Then Sailor Spades exploded (not literally).
"WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THIS!" Joker grinned and dropped down from the roof.
"Took you long enough. Now come with me, I have to brief you on your training mission."
As Joker led Spades down a hallway, Spades took a good look around. As they walked past a doorway, something purple caught Spades' eye. An Asian woman peeked out through the door before closing it slowly. Spades tapped Joker on the shoulder, still walking, "Who was that?" Joker stopped and spun around.
"Huh? Who?"
"That lady looking from out the door back there." Joker stared down the hallway for a few seconds before he figured out what she must have been talking about.
"Oh, you would have seen The Kismet… Uh… Lady Luck. You'll meet her later. Not today though."
"Oh, OK." As they started walking again, Spades looked back down the hallway, hoping that The Kismet might poke her head out again. No such luck.
"OK. The Ace. To business," Joker brought Spades into a green room with computers everywhere and sat her on a tall, green, plastic chair, "this is the briefing room. If at any time you are called in for a mission, you will report immediately here." Spades rolled her eyes.
"That would be good, except for two reasons. One- How the hell are you going to call me for missions when I still have school and family and commitments to think about and two- I don't even know how to get here." Joker looked at Spades thoughtfully from underneath his mask for a few seconds before grinning again.
"Forgot that part. See your brooch? It's moved to the middle of the ribbon on your fuku, yeah, there. We can contact you through that and its up to you to get out of whatever you are doing. What we call you for will be ten times more important. To get to the building, all you have to do is transform where no-one can see you and then grab your earrings… You didn't notice those, did you? Anyway, hold onto the earrings that are shaped like Spades and say where in the CARD building you want to go to. Obviously, if you are called, you would say 'briefing room, green'. Either that, or Roll or Flip… You haven't met him yet… Will come and get you. Is that clear enough for you?" Spades just gave Joker a strange look. He had talked to her as if she was reacting to what he was saying, but the truth was she hadn't moved the whole time.
"O…K… Gotcha" 'The Ace' threw him a mock salute.
"Good. Now, I will escort you to the training room in a minute, but I can't follow you in. The training room will automatically start up a random situation that you must assess. You are to find the enemy and terminate it. Clear?"
"Crystal. No worries." Spades rolled her eyes again, thinking that this day couldn't get any weirder than it already was. There was no point in arguing anymore.
"Good" Joker got up and began to walk to a corner of the room. He pressed a few buttons and a door in the wall slid open. He motioned for Spades to go in. Spades got up and entered a room. It was white and tiled all over and had a simple window that she assumed was going to be used so that Joker could monitor her.
"Toodles" Spades turned back to see Joker waving and closing the door. Seconds later, she saw him appear at the window, "computer, begin simulation." A computerised voice came over.
"Subject identified as Senshi. Please identify further for appropriate training simulation."
"Spades."
"Thank you. Simulation will begin in 5…4…3…2…1…."
♠
Spades looked around as the white room and the window where Joker was disappeared. She was standing at the bottom of a cliff face. It all seemed to familiar to her. Then something clicked- Grampians National Park. Spades was standing at the bottom of the rock face she had been climbing earlier that day. Some rocks came down and her attention was drawn upwards. A man was quickly climbing up with no harness, and no rope. Spades thought for a second what a stupid moron the guy was until he hung off the rock face and brought out a rifle that had been hanging on his leg.
"Oh crap," Sailor Spades yelped as she rolled out of the way. She drew out her gun and looked at it, "I don't know what to do with this!"
"Ah, you see now you have explained yourself by looking at the gun as you say 'this'," Spades looked down to see a certain grinning Cheshire cat, "you're not really doing a very good job with that man there."
"Roll! What are you doing here?"
"I am sitting, of course. And talking to you."
"I mean… Why are you here?"
"Why are any of us here? That is one of the great questions of the universe." Spades groaned.
"I should have known you were going to be no help," looking up to the man, Spades noticed that he had somehow gotten up even higher without slipping once, "how is he climbing like that?"
"He is putting an arm up, then a leg, and I believe he is using his leg to lever his body up the rock face so he can bring his other arm and leg up."
"Good observation, I hadn't noticed. I meant, why isn't he slipping at all?"
"Experience? There are some things that we cannot know Ace," Roll then began to vanish, until only his grin was left, "or at least that you cannot know."
Spades sat in her little hiding spot, and watched as the man made it to the top of the rock face. He was now sitting at the top and aiming at the ground. Spades now didn't see how she could climb up after him without being shot. All of a sudden, her brooch started beeping. Not quite knowing what to do, Spades pushed it.
"You do realise that you're going to have to do something sometime. Stop thinking like you are Brogan. Start thinking like you are Sailor Spades." Joker's voice rang in her ear. Spades didn't really know what he was talking about, but nodded anyway.
"Right" she ran out into the open and looked right up at the gunman, "Stay right there! I don't know who you are or what you've done, but I have reason to believe you are up to something rotten," she grinned a sly grin, "and I don't think you have a chance against me" Spades brought up her gun so that it was aiming next to the man, and shot it. A rope with a grapple hook at the end of it shot out and gripped right up the top. The man looked at it in shock, and tried to push it of, however, it was to tightly stuck into the rock, "that's interesting. I'm sure a pistol like this wouldn't be able to shoot out a grapple hook…"
Gripping the gun in both hands, Spades released the trigger and walked up the rock face easily, with the rope fully bearing her weight and gradually going back into the gun. The man didn't seem to notice and was still trying to hit the grapple hook out of the rock.
Finally, Spades made it up to the top, and she towered over the man. He still hadn't taken any notice of what was happening and was desperately pulling at the hook.
"My God, I never thought anyone could be so stupid," the man registered that Spades was up the top, and drew his gun on her. Spades took a step backwards and gasped as she almost slipped off the edge. She gulped and closed her eyes. A voice from within seemed to speak to her, and all of a sudden, Spades felt herself speaking without knowing what she was saying.
"SWORDS…. ACE… STRIKE!"
Sailor Spades pointed a finger at the man. He fired two shots, but a kind of barrier had built up around Spades and they bounced away from her. A line of swords came from out of the ground, spun around Sailor Spades and finally plunged at the man, who disintegrated as they pierced him.
Sailor Spades sat down with exhaustion. She looked around and marvelled at the beauty of the Grampians. Even though it was just a computer simulation, it was as if she was really there, at the top of the rock face she had been trying to climb.
Suddenly, the Grampians disappeared and Spades was once again in the white room.
"Simulation complete" the computer chirped. Joker grinned from the window and opened the door for her.
"Sailor Spades. Welcome to CARD."
♠
After transforming back, Roll took Brogan back to the bottom of the REAL rock face.
"So, Roll. What do I do now?"
"That all depends on what you want to get done." The grinning cat vanished, and Brogan was left with her harness, a broken rope, and something she didn't have before- a brand new, shining black rope.
Brogan grinned, hooked herself up, and started climbing.
A/N: For those who don't know, a fuku is a uniform commonly worn by Japanese students. It is the basic suit worn by the Sailor Senshi in BSSM by Takeuchi Naoko.