A/N: I had plans for an eventual sequel to Here's Your Accordion, where the luckless SI gets moved along to replace Sailor Moon in the anglicized version of the manga.


There was a terrible sense of deja vu to waking up under cozy covers, with a mother's voice summoning me to breakfast. It had, after all, happened to me more than once. Not that there was anything terrible about what I've described - not at all.

It's just that it wasn't the bed I'd gone to sleep in - nor a mother that I'd heard the voice of before.

Trust me, when you get deja vu about that, your life is getting just a teensy bit complicated.

"Bunny!" came the voice again. "It's past eight o'clock!"

I crawled out from under the covers and called "Coming!" loud enough, I hoped, to be heard by whoever was yelling at me. Then I braced myself for the worst and looked into the mirror on top of the bedroom dresser.

I started whimpering almost immediately.

Blonde hair - an almost perfect match for the shade I had enjoyed in a previous life. Blue eyes - not quite right but close - I think. It's getting hard to remember for sure but I think that mine were darker than the eyes was now looking out of. Female - oh well. Male would have been nice, but I'm sure I can manage being a girl again. Two incredibly long (practically floor length!) ponytails descending from fist-sized knots of hair sticking up in the approximate location of Mickey Mouse ears.

I whimpered some more. Not only were they very silly, the meatball-head arrangement was far too distinctive.

If you haven't guessed whose body I'd suddenly found myself riding, then you've obviously been hiding under some damp rock for the last decade or so of pop culture.

It's not that I have an axe to grind against the Sailor Moon cartoon or the protagonist (although Dawn was more of a fan). It's just that I'm about twice her age. It was bad enough going through the late teenage years again as Buffy. What malevolent fate had condemned me to experience the early teenage years as 'Bunny'? And what was with that name? I thought she was called Serena, or Usagi.

"I'm going to kill Whistler," I muttered to myself and grabbed the school uniform hanging from the back of the door. At least the skirt was a decent length.

=/=

Not being the Slayer (or a reasonable substitute) is a tremendous drag. I'd almost forgotten over the last couple of years what it was like to lack the boundless energy and I didn't enjoy being reminded of it. It would, apart from anything else, have come in very handy trying to get to Crossroads Junior High School within a quarter hour. Particularly when I didn't know where it was.

As it was, I went around a couple of blocks before I got lucky enough to catch sight of a a big building that looked just like every Japanese school I ever saw in an anime, with a couple of girls in uniforms that looked like mine going in through the gates. I crossed my fingers for luck and ran as if I was fleeing hell, not heading for what might as well be another Hellmouth.

Naturally, that was the moment when something black crossed my path and I tripped over it. A black cat. Great, losing the Slayer powers hadn't saved me from the associated lousy luck, had it? And winding up flat on my face on the pavement was just another reminder that being the Slayer had had some compensations that I was currently missing.

I looked closer at the cat, my vague recollections of the TV show suggesting that a black cat might be... yep. Two bandaids, stuck across the cat's forehead. Although, as I recalled it, Bunny (or Serena or Usagi) had rescued Luna from a bunch of kids, not just tripped over her in the street.

Nonetheless, I seemed to have hold of her, so I shrugged off the concern and lifted Luna to peel away the bandaids from her crescent moon mark. "Try not to get trampled," I advised her, lowering her to the top of the wall beside the pavement.

Then the bell rang and I resumed my mad dash for the school gates.

The school was, fortunately, the correct institution of torment... er, I mean learning of course. Even more luckily, 'Bunny' had marked her class number on her satchel, so I was able to track down the right classroom with relative ease. Just one of the ways that Crossroads Junior High was infinitely better than Sunnydale High I guess - at Sunnydale, rooms weren't marked all that clearly.

"You're late again, Bunny," called a girl from near the front of the room as I stepped through the open door. Fortunately there was no teacher yet, but I guess the girl in question must have been class president or something.

I raised one hand casually in greeting. "I'm sorry," I replied with considerably more cheer than I felt. "I got lost on the road of life." My stomach grumbled as I took my seat (those were numbered as well - say what you will about the Japanese, their schools are usefully anal about some things). Great. I'd been in such a rush to find school that I hadn't even managed to have breakfast - something that approaches a mortal sin in my personal cosmology.

I did manage to scare Miss H though - that was the homeroom teacher. She was actually Miss Haruna, but everyone called her Miss H. I didn't find out her real name until later. What scared her was the fact that I was paying attention. Bunny, it would seem, is even less interested in the 'wonders' of a modern education than Xander is - hard to believe, yet somehow true. The expression on Miss H's face when I started actually taking notes from her corrections to the English test was something to behold, although it was rather less amusing when I realised other students were edging their desks away from mine.

"Hey Bunny!" called one of the boys in the class after Miss H retreated in confusion. I was pretty sure I'd seen him in a couple of episodes but I couldn't recall his name off hand. Assuming that it was even the same as the one in the cartoon anyway. But he was a recurring character, so he was probably important somehow. "How come you're paying attention all of a sudden?"

I held up the English test with a grimace. It definitely hurt my pride to admit to a bad grade, particularly when it wasn't my fault! "I'm going to be in really big trouble for this," I predicted. "I can't let it happen again."

"But this test was a breeze! I didn't even study much for it!" the boy said, taking the paper from me.

"Nor did I," I said, reasonably confident that Bunnry really hadn't. "And I think I should have."

"Wow!" he said, looking at the score. "How'd you do this badly?"

"Oooh!" pouted the girl I was sat next to me, someone I thought was another important character. It was a little difficult to match actual appearances to the fairly stylized animated images I recalled. "You are obnoxious, Melvin!"

Aha! I knew that name, right out of the anime. I'd found myself a nerd-boy. That could be very useful.

The girl's name was Molly and she remembered being Bunny's friend, which would have made it awkward to ditch her. Besides, I'm fairly sure that I recall Dawn getting weepy about her tragic romance thing with one of the Dark Generals. Frankly, I thought it cut a bit too close to the bone - fortunately I'd not been dumb enough to get close to Angelus. But in any event, it meant that Molly was potentially important so her friendship would be useful for reasons beyond the usual motivations for making friends.

Oh dear. That sounded a bit cynical, didn't it? It wasn't meant that way.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I ended up eating lunch with Molly and a couple of other girls. Given the fact that I'd spent a good sized chunk of the last couple of years with Dawn as a sister and Willow and Amy as friends, I would have thought that my skills at 'girl talk' would have been well-honed, but I suspect that even Cordelia's girly-fu would have been challenged by the converation.

"Did you hear?" asked May. "There was another jewelry store robbery last night!"

"How scary!" Molly explained. Since her mother owned a jewelry store, that probably cut too close to home - prophetically so if I guessed correctly.

"Yeah, but Sailor V nabbed the thieves," Melvin assured her. I'm not quite sure how he managed to wind up eating lunch with a bunch of girls, but it was a skill that would doubtless be of use to him in the future.

"Sailor V?" I asked quickly. With just a a little bit of luck, I figured, Melvin could confirm how close matters were to my ever so slightly hazy recollections of how matters lay at this point in time.

"You haven't heard of her?" he replied in surprise. "Defending against evil in a schoolgirl uniform! Some say she's just an undercover cop, what will they come up with next!?" Melvin declared, obviously dismissive of the theory. "Toto, we're not in kansas anymore. Nope - this is the big city. With all the bizarre and hideous crimes nowadays, the news is more action-packed than a Schwarzenegger movie."

Ha ha. After two years, more or less, on the Hellmouth, I doubted that the 'hideous crimes' of a show aimed at twelve-year old girls would shock me that much. Sad but true: I'm a just a little bit jaded about such things. The other girls were more excited about the whole matter though.

"Wow, a jewelry store! I wish I could see those thieves' loot!"

"Yeah, it must be full of gorgeous diamonds and rubies. I like diamonds," added May as an aside.

"Doesn't your mother own a jewelry store?" I asked Molly.

"Yeah," she confirmed. "And you know what? She's having a huge sale. Wanna check it out?"

Melvin practically had to dive for cover as the girls converged on Molly instantly in a display of feminine enthusiasm. I guess that it's one of those things that you have to be all girl to understand though, so I kept at the back. My main reaction to gemstones these days is to wonder if they're cursed. I swear there must be a whole industry in laying curses on the damned things - and they're a pain in the ass to fence. At least if a vampire's been looting gold, I can melt it down and get weight value without having to worry about it being stolen someplace.

By the time we reached the jewelry store it was pretty packed - and the signs in the windows were a pretty good reason for that being the case. It looked as if Molly's mother had decided to unload diamonds at low enough prices that De Beers would likely be dispatching a hit squad at any moment.

"Hi Molly," called out the lady in question. "You're back from school."

"Hi Mom," Molly replied uncertainly.

"It's crowded," her mother advised the rest of us. "But go ahead and find something you like. Bunny," she added, smiling sweetly at me, "You get a special discount."

The other girls squealed with excitement and plunged into the store but Molly and I looked uneasily at each other as her mother went back to hawking her stock. "My Mom's really packing 'em in," Molly said. "She's like a used car salesman."

"Like a used car salesman about to go broke," I replied, wincing at one bargain. "You probably have a better idea than me about what those cost, but isn't she losing money hand over fist?"

"I'm sure she knows what she's doing," Molly said, but despite the loyalty of her words, there was no conviction in her voice.

I sighed. "You're the expert. Anyway, there's no way I can afford anything, even at a seventy percent discount, so I'd better go face the music. Mom's not gonna be happy about my English grade."

"It can't be all that bad," Molly assured me. "Melvin was probably messing with you." I passed her the test and she blinked as she read the grading. "Oh Bunny..." she groaned. "That's awful, even for you." Then she perked up. "Can I have your earrings when your Mom kills you?"

I groaned and fainted dramatically into her arms. "You're a true friend, Molly," I told her, throwing the test aside.

"Thanks a lot, cow-tails!" came an annoyed voice from behind me. "Right in my face. Try a wastebasket next time."

I turned and saw a dark haired guy a few years older than me, all done up in a tuxedo that looked like it belonged at a diplomatic reception about a hundred years ago. The funky post-modern shades clashed badly with the rest of the outfit.

"Actually I thought you were a penguin at first," I shot back. "But what would a penguin be doing here? So then I figured you must be a decorative trash can." I paused. "A tasteless decorative trash can."

He looked down at the paper and smirked. "Well that's about as smart as I'd expect from someone who got as little as a thirty percent grade on this," he said, and threw the paper back to me.

We glared at each other and then went our seperate ways. That was my first meeting with Darien Shields, and as you can tell, we didn't precisely take to each other.

"You're home a little late, honey," was the greeting I got from Bunny's mother once I found my way back to the house that was my new home. "I ran into your friend Melvin earlier. He got a ninety-five on his quiz - how did you do?"

"I knew he'd done well," I replied. "It would be nice if he didn't rub it everyone else's face like that - he's not making any friends - but at least he has something to brag about."

She looked at me suspiciously. "Why do I get the impression that you didn't score quite so well as Melvin did?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe because you know me quite well? Have I ever gotten a grade as good as Melvin's?" I asked a little sourly. "I've got to go get started on my homework - I want to go over that quiz in detail and see where I went wrong."

'Mom' paled. "Are you feeling alright, Bunny?" she asked. "Do you think you might be coming down with something?"

"Yeah," agreed another voice from the door, and I spotted a little brat - almost certainly Bunny's little brother - who'd come into the house behind me. "Since when did you do your homework without prompting, sis'?"

I considered what to say and then came up with an explanation to cover for my change in attitude. Anyone who knew me wouldn't be surprised to discover that I took my inspiration from a TV show. "I don't like being humiliated, Mom. And being the tallest girl in next year's eighth grade would be very humiliating."

Bunny's - my - mom frowned. "But you're in eighth grade this year, Bunny," she said. "Are your teachers'..."

I shook my head sharply. "No. And I'm not giving them reason," I said flatly and stormed upstairs with a mission. Not quite the mission it sounded like, but a mission nonetheless.

=/=

Now let's be honest - more than half my homework was ridiculously easy. I actually had to make some deliberate mistakes on my maths paper or it would have been grossly evident that it wasn't Bunny doing the work. Just presenting the working correctly was probably an excessive risk in that respect. Other classes, on the other hand, were more of a challenge. The homework for subjects like history kept me busy for the bulk of the evening and probably wasn't much better than what Bunny usually turned in.

The sun had set and there was a crescent moon visible through the open window of my bedroom when I closed the last book with a sigh and leant back to stretch and examine the ceiling. When I looked down again, I saw a black cat had slipped through the window and onto my bed. I turned the chair to face her and spotted the crescent moon mark on her forehead.

"I've been searching for you, Bunny," she said in a clear voice. "My name is Luna."

I passed my hand across my face and blinked at Luna. "Okay, it's offical - I've been studying too hard."

"You aren't dreaming, Bunny," she assured me. "I must thank you for removing my band aid. With that thing on my forehead I couldn't talk or investigate. There are so many poorly behaved children in this area... it has been horrible."

"So why's a talking cat looking for me?" I asked, half-expecting the usual spiel that Giles used to explain the Slayer business. "What is this? A Miyazaki film?"

"It's not a fairy story," Luna assured me. I relaxed slightly. "You've noticed all the strange events lately? On the news and in the papers... unsolved crimes... You see... you are the chosen warrior."

'The one girl in all the world...' "Are you sure that you have the right girl? I'm no one special." I'm just a guy who used to be a mythic amazon destined to fight the things that go bump in the night.

"No, it's definitely you, Bunny," Luna promised. "I'll prove it to you." She reached out her paw and offered me a brooch. It was a golden circle with four small circles attached at the cardinal points. The heraldry of the central circle was complex, involving a crescent moon and a pentagram. It was very girly and I felt far more feminine than I was comfortable with as I studied it.

"Okay, you gave me a brooch," I said. "What does that prove?"

"You still don't believe what I'm saying?" Luna asked. "Yell out: 'Moon'."

"Yell?" I exclaimed. "Are you nuts? Do you want the whole house awake?" Cautiously, I held out the brooch and muttered: "Moon - ?"

That word was hesitant on my part. The words that followed it out of my mouth were neither hesitant, nor of my own volition: "- Prism Power! Make-Up!"

I felt a rush of power flooding through me. Not the physical capability of the Slayer or any of the other enhancements I'd experiment with over the last three two years. Something clean and bright that did not infuse me so much as flow through me. I'm probably not explaining it well, but somehow I knew that the source of the power was somewhere beyond me and that I was drawing upon it rather than possessing it.

After bracing myself for the doubtless horribly embarassing sight, I gathered my resources and looked in the mirror. It was pretty much the way I'd expected: my blouse had become a snug leotard arrangement festoned with ribbons; there were boots on my feet and gloves on my hands (well it would have been silly the other way around, wouldn't it?); and my skirt was awfully short. About the only comfort was that the boots had a sturdy feel to them and the gloves were thin enough not to prevent my fingers from moving freely.

"What's with the Sailor V outfit?" I asked, adjusting the ludicrously huge domino mask that was perched on my nose.

"It is the uniform of a Sailor Scout, Bunny," Luna declared. "You must find your team and defeat the enemy! Then wel will search for our queen and..."

I held up one gloved hand abruptly, commanding silence from Luna as I listened to a new voice that reached my ears. A voice that wasn't from anywhere in the room but was none the less familiar to me from this universe. It was a cry for help.

"Somebody help me," Molly sobbed. "My mom's..." I glared at the images forming inside my mask: Molly, hanging in the grip of a twisted reflection of her mother.

"Explain later," I told Luna, "My friend needs help - and I don't propose to let her down."

The doors to the jewelry store weren't sealed, but I hesitated before entering. A banzai charge has it's tactical merits, but there is a reason that 'look before you leap' has become an adage. Peering through the glass I could just barely make out Molly, an indistinct taller figure holding onto her by the throat.

"Luna!" I hissed to the cat I carried. "You said I was the chosen warrior - do I have any weapons?"

"Your tiara," she replied promptly. "Shout frisbee and throw it."

If I'd had the time I would have been quite sarcastic about that. I didn't think that I had the time however, so instead I simply plucked the pieve of ornamentation off my forehead and watched as it morphed into a chakram - with gold and glitter, naturally. "Right," I replied and put her down on the ground. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck," she said as I pushed open the door. "Sailor Moon."

"I'll give you one chance," I told the ghoulish bitch holding onto my classmate. "Put her down - gently -and maybe you'll get to live."

She turned to see me and there was a flicker of movement from deeper inside the store, that I pretended not to have noticed. "And who are you?" demanded the creature.

"Your executioner, perhaps," I replied quietly. "Do you wish to live?"

She smirked back at me. "I want you to die," she replied candidly. "Slaves -!"

There was the sound of movement around me and I whipped my arm around, announcing "Moon Frisbee!" in a conversational tone as I launched the shimmering circle in my hand at her.

I imagine that her expression was that more commonly found on rabbits when cars come thundering down upon them. Attacked by something quite outside her understanding and quite unable to decide how she should react, the moment of frozen indecision proved to be the wrong choice: that of none at all! The transformed tiara struck her squarely and barely slowed, tearing through her and leaving nothing behind but a heap of sand.

"My god!" I whispered, startled. I don't know what I'd expected, but that simple attack had been more effective than a stake through a vampire's heart.

"I didn't find the the Silver Imperium Crystal here," came a voice from behind me. I whirled, barely remembering to snatch the tiara out of the air as it returned to my hand, and saw a caped man, clad in tuxedo, top hat and finery to match. "However, I enjoyed the show," he added, and with a leap, he was out of the door.

I leapt for the door, chakram at the ready, but in the twinkling of an eye he was gone, disppeared into the night.

"You did it, Bunny!" came an excited voice from next to my knees.

I knelt to pick up Luna, lifting her high enough for us to look each other in the face. "Did I Luna?" I asked. "I killed an agent. But what purpose did she serve and had she achieved it? And who was that man? What's his part in this. Another agent? Her master? Or a third party, perhaps a potential ally?"

Luna shook her head. "We can worry about that later, Bunny. What matters is that you beat her. And that you saved your friend."

I paused along looked back. "Yes," I said as Molly, fallen to the floor during the brief confrontation, began to stir. There were others there as well, some men but mostly women, all in nightclothes. I recognised a face or two from the sales frenzy of earlier and it wasn't hard to guess what had brought them here. "Yes, you're right."

"And so are you," Luna agreed diplomatically. "The enemy has begun its strategy and we still don't know where that leads. But for now," she advised, looking around. "It's time to leave."

"Yes," I agreed, and we departed the scene before anyone had a chance to get a look at me.

There was a curious innocence to the circumstances, I thought, compared to my past experiences. With the threat gone, it appeared that all those involved would recover. Back in Sunnydale, the most I could have hoped for was to avenge the dead and prevent future victims. Here... here victory seemed to cure all. Disconcerting, but not at all unwelcome.

"And then," Molly reported to the rest of the girls, "Right when I was about to be attacked, Sailor V saved me! If I hadn't passed out then, I would have seen her face!"

"Molly," May said dismissively. "Face it - you were dreaming."

"Well something happened," I said, walking up behind Molly and throwing an arm around her shoulders as they began to slump. "Melvin told me there was an article in the paper about last night." And if anyone checked, yes he had. I barely had to prompt him at all.

"Thanks, Bunny," Molly said and then gasped as she looked at me. "Your hair!"

My hair indeed - rather than Bunny's pair of ponytails I had tied off that impressive mass of blonde hair into a single braid that almost reached the floor. Even better, when I transformed into Sailor Moon, my hair went back to the 'traditional royal hairstyle of the Moon Kingdom', which should help to protect my secret identity.

"You like it?" I asked, touching the braid a little self-conciously. "I thought that it was time for a change."

"Wow," muttered May. "It makes you look older. That's so cool!"

And that was the end of the discussion about 'Sailor V'. A change in hairstyle was evidently more important to the girls and I guess that's sort of what it's all about.

"Hi Mom," I called as I walked into the house.

"Hi sweetie," she called and then spotted Luna lurking behind my ankles. "Hi Crescent-Moon Bald-Spotted Kitty... YIKES!" she added as Luna jumped for her face, claws out.

"Mom..." I sighed, snaring Luna out of the air about an inch short of my new mother's upraised hands. "You know that she reacts like this time anytime you call her that." I paused fractionally and then grinned saucily. "There are many much less painful ways to get Daddy to kiss your face better."

"Bunny!" she gasped, laughing despite scandalised expression as I escaped upstairs, with Luna in stealthy pursuit.

"So," I asked, once my bedroom door was closed behind the two of us. "Is there any particular reason you're still here?" Or don't you have anywhere else to go?" She looked a little miffed at that and I reviewed my words. Oops - that hadn't come out quite the way I meant it. "It's not that you aren't welcome, but shouldn't you be out looking for this 'team' you say I've lost?"

"Oh, I am," Luna said. "But you're still a brand new Champion of Justice. There's still tons to teach you before another enemy appears."

Great. Just what I needed: a live-in Watcher. Does she think I've not read the 'If I Ever Become a Magical Girl' list off the internet or something? Although I suppose, I'm not sure if that'd been written back when I was the Vampire Slayer - and I'm further back in time now! Honestly, I'm beginning to feel like Austin Powers, only with better teeth and hair.

I began to unpack my evening's homework. Hell has nothing that I fear in comparison to the distinct possibility that I may be destined to spend the rest of by existence timesharing between schoolwork and world savage. "Right... so these enemies... tell me about them."

"They aren't human."

"Luna, it's spelt b-l-o-n-d-e... not b-l-i-n-d."

Luna looked as abashed as a cat can manage, which isn't very. "My apologies, Bunny. They're evil - things that shouldn't exist in our world. We've got to find your fellow warriors! Then we must find and protect the Princess."

"Or we could find the Princess and then protect her while we look for rest of the team?" I suggested.

"I don't see what difference that would make," Luna said, huffily.

"You're the one who keeps saying warriors first and only then the Princess," I pointed out. "I was just wondering if there was a significance to the order?"

"Humph," Luna sniffed. "In any event, I think I've located the second Sailor Scout."

I had tried spending some of my free time trying to accomplish some physical training, incidentally. I'd ditched the idea of weight training, since that would stunt my growth - I remembered that from my brother trying weight lifting when he was about this age. My parents had let him go ahead despite the 'stunted growth' thing, since he was past six foot by then and anything that stopped him growing like a weed was a good thing in their books.

I'd also had to give up on any type of martial arts training, since Bunny's clumsiness, probably puberty related, was not at all understated in the cartoon. Let's just say I hadn't tried chewing gum while walking - it would probably be hazardous. So my physical training regieme was most limited to some running - for reasons besides being late for school I mean.

Since that left me with a bit or two of spare time, I devoted much of it over the next couple of days watching Amy, Luna's suspected Sailor Scout. I knew the truth of course, or at least thought that I did, but there had been a couple of instances already where matters hadn't gone exactly according to the script for the cartoon, so double-checking the facts wouldn't hurt any, I guessed.

Amy was a pretty girl, I noticed, although perhaps not quite so much with those reading glasses on. That's just my opinion though. Also, she spent a whole lot of time studying and it was paying off dramatically for her - she had apparently aced every subject she studied, earning the top scores across the country.

Rumour (okay, Melvin) had it that her IQ was 300, which wasn't even possible if I understood the scale correctly - not that it mattered. She was bright enough to stand out. Bright enough to get a bit of resentment. Not that takes much in a junior high school - why do teenagers have to have such sensitive prides?

"You know that new cram school, Crystal Academy?" Melvin asked our little lunch group on the second day I'd been stalking Amy.

"You mean the snobby one?" May asked.

"Yeah," Melvin agreed. "Girl Genius Amy goes there!" he announced.

I considered that fact. It matched my recollections - plus the word 'Crystal' would have sounded alarms anyway. "That's the one near the arcade, isn't it?"

"That's the one," Melvin confirmed.

"Daddy said it's really expensive," May interjected. I supposed that that might have explained a little about how Jadeite, presuming that it was him, was funding his operations.

"Well Amy's mom is a doctor, you know," Melvin told us, safe in the knowledge that we probably hadn't know that fact.

"She's smart and rich..." Molly mourned, "It's not fair..."

I made an inquisitive noise and she looked at me in surprise. "Bunny?"

"Your mom's well off," I observed mildly. "And you get pretty good grades too. Should I resent you for that? I'd just like to be clear."

Molly blushed.

"But she's kind of snobby," May objected. "All she does is study... she doesn't hang out at all!"

I shrugged my shoulders but said nothing. There could be a great many reasons besides snobbiness for that behavior, of course, but erasing petty prejudice from the world would take greater power than any I've ever wielded. In any event, it was time to go back to class.

I got another set of grades to take home that afternoon and I hoped that the slight improvement would keep Mom pleased and off my back about 'Bunny's' changed personality.

Amy, I had noticed, walked at least part of the way home by the same route that I did. That afternoon I was trailing along unobtrusively behind her when her routine was disrupted by a jet black furball jumping onto the top of her head, startling both of us.

A familiar jet black furball, at that.

"You scared me, kitty," Amy chided Luna gently as the cat perched herself in the crook of the girl's elbow. "My parents'll never let me keep you," she added reluctantly, stroking Luna's whiskers and then rubbing her cheek against the black fur of Luna's side. "You're so soft," she giggled.

Well so much for the snobby theory, I concluded. She must just not be very outgoing - I could relate to that in spades, and it would match my expectations.

Luna spotted me and bounded out of Amy's hands. She would have landed on my head if I hadn't reflexively stepped back and caught her against my chest. (And as a quick aside, weird as it seemed, despite the age difference, Bunny was just as well 'developed' as Buffy. The wonders of an anime world, I guess.)

"Hi Luna,," I greeted her. "Made a new friend?"

"Oh," Amy said, naturally concluding that Luna could neither understand or reply to me and that thus the remark was directed at her. "That's your kitty? What an angel!" Then she went red in the cheeks as she realised that she was gushing.

I grinned and scratched at Luna's ears. "I suppose that that depends on your view of angels; the ancient Egyptians might have agreed with you. I'm Bunny - and you've met Luna, of course."

"I'm Amy," she replied, a little uncertainly. "I didn't recognise you with your hair like that."

"Oh? People keep saying that I look different," I said. "I don't see much of a difference myself."

Luna chose that moment to jump away from me and run for an arcade a little further up the street. I'd not given the place a second glance until now, but this time I saw that the word 'Crown' was written above the glass doors. Ah, perfect. Pre-Me Bunny's favorite hangout - the place that would be harder than anywhere but my home for me to hide my presence. And Luna was going inside. How perfectly horrible.

"Luna!" I groaned. "That darn cat - always tempting me away from my homework." I turned to Amy. "I suppose I'd better go look for her... would you like to come along? She might condescend to play with you if she's feeling generous..."

Inside the arcade, I saw no sign of Luna, but I was recognised by one of the attendants who was able to tell me that Luna had been hanging around for a week or so - since a few days before I met her in other words. However, he hadn't seen her come in... and since I'd probably be best off waiting here for her to return, would I like to have a go on the Sailor V Fighter game.

Did I mention that I'm not a big fan of video games?

"Sure," I said cheerfully. "How about you, Amy? Have you ever played this game?"

Amy shook her head and said, "I've never played a video game before."

I feigned shock. "What? Never?" When she flushed a little and studied the floor I chuckled and tapped her under the chin, to make her look up and meet my eyes. "Well why don't you have a go first, then. If you don't try, how can you tell if you like it or not?"

Well, I'm not sure exactly how much fun the poor machine was having, but after one round to warm up, Amy was trouncing all over it. By the time she ran out of lives there was quite a crowd gathered too oooh and aah over each level cleared and they cheered as her name was installed in bright lights right at the top of the high scores board on the machine. I was quite impressed - she'd come very very close to getting double the previous high score.

"Not bad," I said, with a wink to mark the obvious understatement. "You're really good."

"Thank you," she said, but a rattle from the machine almost drowned out her words and something clunked out of the opening in the side of the machine. "Hey," Amy said in surprise. "I guess I won a prize."

"With a high score like that?" I replied drily. "I'd say you earned a prize." The prize - a pen - was a match for the game - pink and glittery, with an ornate golden setting on the cap.

"It's your turn, Bunny," Amy told me. "I'm sure that you can win one as well."

A couple of the staff chuckled at that - I gather that for all of her fondness for them, Bunny wasn't all that good at computer games.

Still, I'd been watching how Amy managed... And it wasn't like I had any great excuse to get out of it. I dropped the requisite coin into the machine, took the controls...

...and took a certain delight in hearing the gasps of those who had laughed, when I cleaned out the first level almost as efficiently as Amy had.

Not that that was a major struggle, I'd just seen Amy do so after all, so it was just a matter of matching her actions as closely as possible. It got harder of course and I didn't manage to get even half as far as Amy.

I did, however, score enough to take the bottom slot on the high scorers list.

"Well done, Bunny!" Amy cheered me.

"Wow Bunny," agreed the attendance from before. "When did you get so good at this?"

I avoided replying to that, by the simple expedient of catching the prize that came shooting out of the machine. "I got one too," I told Amy, hiding my shame at touching the pen (which had a faceted crystal where Amy's had an ornate gold loop) under a facade of pride.