This is a Three Lights/Sailor Starlights story.

Future chapters will contain mature themes, so please enjoy your stay.

Reviews, comments, criticism, and hate are all appreciated.

Thank you for giving my work a moment of your time. Enjoy!

Songs of Experience

By Lchan S.

In the beginning, I didn't understand why Fighter wanted us to disguise ourselves, rather, transform ourselves into men. That is, until I saw the way she looked at her…

Not that the disguise was much of a sacrifice for me. At sixteen years old, I towered close to six feet, an attribute rare for anyone my age both male and female. I was a tall and more or less shapeless girl with narrow violet eyes, a solemn gaze, and a deep voice. But with the rest of my face buried deep in books, I couldn't have cared less, even noticed, if any of my peers were looking at me mockingly or with any kind of interest.

I led a distracted life on our little Olive Planet, we were distracted. I had a destiny and mission, far different from that of a regular sixteen-year-old girl. My team mates, Star Fighter, and Star Healer and I were informed of our fate as Sailor Guardians about four years prior and together we formed a team called The Sailor Starlights. Our task was to help the princess of our planet, Princess Kayuu and her family guard the planet and keep our universe safe from danger and intruders. We were warriors, trained daily and taught to fight. And in order to keep our identities secret, we were instructed to remain elusive and enigmatic.

Which made things like formal schooling go out the window. All lessons became self-taught with what little free time was had. Hobbies and interests were nurture between training sessions. Often when we weren't training, the three of us were present for meetings, building strategies on how to make our team grow and battle methods to utilize, should there be an attack. So what little free time I had, I spent reading classic literature, poetry. I had an affinity for math and enjoyed working with numbers. I liked science and other fact-based topics. Things that were logical, that made sense. And were, for the most part, free of emotional distraction.

My cohorts, on the other hand, were equally hormone ridden, and spent their free times with their hands down the pants and skirts of their dates, respectively.

I remember one night specifically, as Fighter was brushing her long black hair. She tied it back into a tight, low riding ponytail. When I entered the room we shared (located in a small house on the castle grounds), ready to retire after a long day, I saw she was looking at me in the mirror of the room we shared. Her dark blue eyes sparkled with a sort of smug self-pleasure.

"What is it?" I said, dragging my body to my bed. I collapsed on it, stretching my body to its full height. "You look like you have something terrible to say to me. Go on, say it."

"Nothing Maker," she said, rolling up the sleeves of her white button down shirt. She made sure it was fastened high enough so the binding around her chest wouldn't be noticed. "You just forget that you're not a prisoner here. You're a soldier, a fighter. And even a fighter needs to break. To have fun. And recharge." Fighter gave me a knowing look and winked at me.

I pulled my long, light brown ponytail out from under my side and pushed up my glasses. "I know I'm not a prisoner, Fighter," I said, closing my eyes.

"Seiya." Fighter said in a serious voice. "I want you to call me Seiya when we're not at battle."

I pulled in my lips, confused, but I nodded anyway. "But just because I don't go out all the time, Seiya, doesn't mean I don't have fun. Besides, you're attracting too much attention to yourself. To our mission. And if you keep sneaking around with so many girls, they'll eventually find out that you're one of them, too."

"Won't ever happen," Seiya replied in a self-righteous voice. "The only way anyone would know is if they saw me in uniform. And they won't. Because even if there was trouble and I had to run off and transform, I could still get them off before it was time to go. That's the kind of cool guy I am, Maker."

"Right," I said, my tone disinterested, as I reached over and grabbed the book on my side table. Galactic Physics, and I was about halfway done. This should drown her out, I thought.

But Seiya wasn't buying it. "It's true!" she exclaimed, spinning around. She took a wide stance, placing her hands on the hips of her black tuxedo pants. Her eyes widened and her voice did that thing it does when she's yelling at me. "I don't let any of them touch me, Maker. And there's no one more selfish than a teenage girl, especially when they think a guy is generous in bed. I get what I want, both of us get off, and everyone goes home happy."

"Mmm hmm," I mused, turning the pages on my book. "And no one has to know that you're really Sailor Star Fighter, leader of Princess Kakyuu's group of guardian defendants. For just a few minutes, you get to be Seiya, a sixteen-year-old guy almost as cool as the guys in the movies from the Milky Way Galaxy. But you know what it comes down to, Seiya? You, both of you, are just too sexually charged."

"Maker, you're just such a downer," Star Healer said, coming out of the bathroom. She was dressed in a short pink skirt, a purple camisole, and a denim jacket. She'd pulled her platinum blonde hair into a long, thick braid, hair so pale that under certain light it looked silver. She shoved Seiya, who was admiring herself in front of the mirror with a red leather jacket, out of the way and pulled out a hot pink lipstick from a box on the vanity. "At least Seiya made one good point. You're sixteen. Go out and live. If puberty hasn't kicked in and you're not into guys yet, or hell, girls if you swing like Seiya, at least go out and find some people to play cards with!"

"You're already calling her Seiya?"

Healer nodded. "Yeah," she replied. "Unlike you, I listen to and go out with my friends."

I pulled my glasses off my face and put them on the side table with a huffy scoff. "I'm not the one that needs to get out," I grumbled. "You two need a hobby that doesn't involve body parts in your mouths. I'm not the weird one- I'm the only one that has any sense around here."

Seiya and Yaten stopped primping for a second and glanced at each other. Seiya raised her eyebrows and Yaten shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm listening," Seiya said, facing me. "What do you have in mind?"

And just like that, we formed a band. It was the best thing that ever happened to the three of us collectively. Making music together strengthened our bond, and made us depend on each other in a way that was different from training and fighting together. Seiya, the eternal show off, quickly declared herself the band leader. But she slipped into the role easily, and every note she sang, she did with all her heart. Never the one trick pony, she also picked up the guitar, and to a lesser extent, the drums. She said it was important to learn to play guitar, so she could control the sound of the songs once we were ready to write. She named the band, calling us The Three Lights, and gave Healer and me stage names. She called me Taiki Kou, herself Seiya Kou, and for Healer, she chose the name Yaten. And Yaten, the smallest and most dainty in the group...well, she took to the keyboard, plucking out little synthesized melodies that were more or less fun to play along to. And as for me…I picked up the bass guitar.

The long, broad instrument molded to my large hands. The four thick strings suited the intensity of my playing. The bass was sturdy, and was a perfect outlet for my aggravated hands, maybe even bringing out something aggressive that was dormant deep inside of me. And the sound itself warmed me from the inside. It wasn't loud and commanding like the guitar or piano. It wasn't urgent and fierce like the drums. It was the backbone of the songs we played. The voice of reason that supported both the percussion and the moving chords. A deep, resonating voice that held itself steady in a cacophony of shrillness and speed. The gentle silence in a group of insanity. In a way, I could identify with the instrument.

If I thought that playing music together would somehow make my Guardian Team Mates more serious in our mission, I quickly realized I was mistaken. Once Seiya learned how to make music, he used it as leverage to make himself more popular among girls. Even small, petite little Yaten, as soon as she told a guy that he was cute and she wanted to write a song about him, it was over. He was wet sand in her hands, and she was the commander of the tides. As for me…music was freeing. But it was just another thing to study.

That is, until the war happened…