Princess Moon, Chapter Two: Justice or Cram School? No Contest
As of July 3, 2007: I'm going through and slightly polishing the thus-far released chapter (putting in spaces where there need to be larger spaces, changing a few rogue spellings, adding useless notes such as this one).
If you're interested in reading the story at a more stylized location, you can find a link to it on my user profile. (Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to put a URL in here without causing major errors. Sigh.)
"What now?
Ami looked down at the cat in time to see it regard her for a moment. She glanced up again at the advancing monster and took a deep breath. But before the creature could spring towards her -- could use the muscles that had begun rippling on its hind legs -- the little cat made a tremendous jump and did a back flip.
There was a flash of light, and when Ami could see again the cat was holding a blue stick in its mouth. Before Ami had time to ask where it had come from, the cat flicked her head and threw it up at Ami.
Ami fumbled and just barely caught the stick, which she could see now was actually a blue and gold pen. On its cap was a gold planet with a ring around it; inside there was something that looked like an old alchemical symbol, one that Ami didn't remember. She stared at it in confusion. She imagined that the monster was a bit baffled too, seeing as it hadn't killed her yet.
"Hold the pen in the air!"
Ami looked down at the cat in confusion.
"Just do what I say!" The cat yelled, and Ami, lacking any better plan, followed her command. The cat shouted again. "Yell out Mercury Power Make Up!"
"What?" Ami screamed, and jumped back as the monster stood and hurled itself at her. Her question turned into a scream as she dodged the monster's claws. It was now in the corner with her; less that a foot away from her, breathing heavily and stinking worse.
"Yell it!" The cat yowled from somewhere that Ami couldn't see. The monster grinned at her, and Ami finally decided to just trust the cat's voice. It's probably a hallucination, anyway she thought as she thrust the pen into the air.
"Mercury Power Make Up!"
And the hallucination was only getting worse. Ami felt as if her skin had turned into ice. Water rushed around her, and when her feet thumped back to the ground there was something drastically wrong. She was wearing somebody else's clothing.
At least, that was her first thought. Because she'd started out in her school uniform, which had long sleeves and at least a respectable skirt. This was considerably smaller. She felt completely exposed, and she told herself to chew out the cat, should she survive the next few minutes. And to make matters worse, she was wearing heels.
Well, heeled boots, she corrected herself. The problem remained; Ami hated walking in heels. There was a reason she always wore loafers. Heels made her clumsy. She looked around for the cat and the monster. Both were looking rather surprised. The cat in a good way, the monster in a decidedly not-good way. The monster had backed up down the alley a few feet and was looking nervously at the exit into the street. As if it was scared.
"Hold it!" She shouted, prompted by a sudden feeling that it wasn't right for the monster to back out of the battle now that it was at a disadvantage. More than being wrong, it was unjust, and Ami wasn't about to let injustice --
She shook her head. Where the hell had that come from? For all she was concerned Ami was quite happy to let the monster leave her alone. The cat, however, seemed to have other ideas.
"Finish it off!" The little cat yelled. Ami shot her a look that clearly said 'And just how?'
The cat yowled her next instructions, and Ami followed them without a second thought. The monster had a deciding look on its face. As if it was balancing running away with attacking her. Ami held out her hand and screamed the words the cat had just told her.
"Shabon Spray!"
Her hands froze. It was as if something cold and vaporous poured down her arms, and she cupped it for a second in her hands. Whatever it was. Her body had stopped acting under her command; it moved on its own through motions that were oddly familiar. The ball of mist in her hands rippled.
She released it. It rushed out from her body and expanded and suddenly the whole alley was filled with a fog so thick she couldn't see her own hands. The monster howled, somewhere to the right of her, and Ami spun. Even though she couldn't see anything, she had a sense of where everything was. The cat was at her feet. The monster was inching out of the alley, slow and nervous and blinded by the fog. Ami was ...
Ami was lifting another trashcan lid in her hand and slowly, soundlessly, walking towards the beast. The fog felt cold on her skin, and damp.
And there. She was behind the monster, and it was still confused and trying to escape without her notice. She swung the thin end trashcan lid directly at the back of its neck, and there was a sickening crunch as her makeshift weapon hit home.
Ami dropped her weapon as the monster crumbled into dust; the trashcan lid clanged on the ground. The monster was nothing but a pile of dirt. She wobbled on her feet. The monster had turned to dust...
"What just--" Ami started, feeling all of a sudden less sure of herself and less as though she could stand on her own. The fog was clearing, but it didn't help Ami to feel any less cold or clammy.
The cat padded up behind her and looked at the pile of dust, and Ami turned down to her and tried to find something to say.
Something, anything, really. Now that she was coming out of the heat of battle--just a rush of adrenlaine, her mind told her, not some Viking-type battle fury--the reasoning parts of her brain were taking full control again. What was she doing? What was she wearing? What did you say to a talking cat?
But the cat spoke first and saved Ami one concern, at least.
"Good job, Sailor Mercury." She said; she jumped onto one of the trash cans and turned to face Ami.
"I --- I think you've got me confused with someone," Ami managed to get out. Sailor what? Mercury?
The cat shook her head. (Later, Ami would try and figure out exactly how a cat acquired the body language to shake her head -- animals had whole different sets of expression, she'd seen it on those educational cable channels.) "My name is Luna. I've been sent to awaken you as a Sailor Soldier."
Ami shook her head. "A what? I don't know what you're talking about."
Luna, the cat, shifted on her paws; she looked agitated. "There is a great evil massing to try and take over this world--the Sailor Soldiers are the only ones who can stop it."
Ami blinked. "I'm really sorry, Luna, ...Luna-san, but I'm not a soldier. I'm a student. I'm in middle school." There was no way she was getting involved in this cat's battle, even if it was real and not the premise of a bad sci-fi anime.
"You are a soldier." The cat insisted. "You transformed. If you weren't the chosen guardian, you wouldn't have been able to kill that monster. You have the power of the Sailor Soldier of Mercury, and you're wearing her battle uniform. It's got to be you."
"This is a battle uniform? A mini-skirt?"
The cat shrugged. "They call Sailor V a sailor-suited soldier fighting for justice, don't they? You're a fighter for justice too, Sailor Mercury."
"Sailor V is an urban legend." Ami insisted. "And I can't be a soldier for justice -- I have the National Practice Exams coming up!" Am started wringing her hands; she was going to be late and she was going to get behind in her studying and then--a whole future of failure was spreading in her panicked mind. "I have to get out of this, I can't go to cram school like this -- oh no, I'm missing class and I don't even have my text book!" She clenched her hands. "How do I get out of this outfit?"
The cat sighed.
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Panting, Ami slid into her seat in cram school just as the second lesson started. Tanemura-sensei gave her a baffled look, and Ami shrank into her seat. She could feel her face going red; she'd come back almost a half an hour later, her hair a mess and her skirt ripped, without the textbook.
She made do for the rest of the lessons by taking notes in her school notebook. It was something she would have to go back and fix, later, of course. She threw herself completely into the lessons, and the notes, and the lecture; she didn't let her mind wander to the cat, or the alley, or the pile of dust that had tried to kill her.
Ami was good at throwing herself into knowledge. Too good, maybe, because by the time she left the cram school and started on the walk home, she'd nearly forgotten about Luna and Sailor Mercury. (Repressed it, really, she told herself later. It was only the first of a thousand things she'd soon wish she could relegate to her subconscious.)
So it was, for a second, a horrible suprise when Luna jumped down from a fence and confronted her in the middle of the darkening street. She didn't say a word, but there were people all around, and Ami had the distinct impression that the cat didn't want the world at large to know that she talked. Ami didn't blame her. The memory dawned on Ami all of a sudden as she saw the cat, and she backed up. She'd just take a different route home.
Luna followed her. When they got to within a block of her house, with her building rising out of Tokyo's sprawl, Ami turned on her heels and looked at the cat.
"You can't come in." She said. "There's a no pets policy."
Luna mewed and said nothing, so Ami (feeling vaguely bad, did Luna have a home? A place to stay? Food?) went indoors and upstairs to her empty apartment, where she spread her homework across the kitchen table and studied ahead three more chapters in her science book.
Coming home after midnight, her mother found her fast asleep with her head across a textbook.
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The next morning, Thursday, Ami was out of the house earlier than usual; her mother wasn't up, and wouldn't be up until noon, at least. She took the time to sleep in, when she had a day off. There was no other reason to stay; she might as well get in even earlier, and get more studying done. She could retrieve her textbook, make up for what she missed in cram school, transfer her notes...
She was so lost in the crowd of all the things she had to do that she didn't notice Luna in front of her until she'd almost tripped over the little black cat.
Luna growled at her and Ami looked down; her heart felt like it had fallen out of her chest. She'd hoped maybe it was a dream, or a one-time thing, or else she'd convinced the cat to go away and offer 'Sailor Mercury' to someone else.
"You have to listen to me, Ami." Luna said. Ami looked around her, alarmed, but it was early enough that the streets were nearly vacant. Nobody to see a cat talking to her; better, nobody to see her talking to a cat.
"I'm sorry," she began, but Luna cut her off.
"Please, Ami, five minutes. Just come with me for five minutes."
She was going to say that she had to be in school, but she decided to give the cat five minutes. It was only polite, after all. And then she could tell Luna that she didn't have time to be Sailor Mercury, and give her back the pen (which was at the very bottom of Ami's school bag, where it had been crammed since Ami stumbled into cram school yesterday afternoon).
Luna led her down a side street and into an alley. A different one than yesterday, Ami realized after a tremble of unexplained fear went down her spine. She hopped up onto a dumpster so that she was near Ami's eye level.
"I told you yesterday that you're a fighter for justice." Luna began. "I think maybe I should have explained it better. You're the soldier who fights with the blessing of the planet Mercury, but you don't fight criminals like Sailor V does."
Ami watched the cat; her tail was lashing, though the rest of her looked calm and composed.
"Your mission is to protect the world from monsters like the one that attacked you yesterday. That was only the first, and probably the weakest, of what's to come."
"Shouldn't you be asking the army? Or the police? I almost died yesterday. I'm not cut out for this, I'm a student." Well, okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, she thought. But it had been close, for a while there.
"They couldn't deal with them, even if they would believe what I said. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a talking cat." Luna rose and began pacing across the top of the dumpster, her tail lashing faster behind her.
Ami had to hold back a laugh as she responded; it would have been horribly impolite. "What makes you think I can deal with this? I don't know anything about fighting, or monsters, or... Isn't there anyone else?"
Luna hung her head. "There was. That's part of the problem. There are other planetary soldiers, and you weren't supposed to be awakened first."
"What?"
"The soldier I was sent to awaken, Sailor Moon, was taken by our enemies, and I couldn't do anything to stop them."
A flurry of thoughts crowded themselves into Ami's brain that moment. First, she wasn't alone, she could pass this off to someone else, she could keep her normal life, she could still study enough for the exams. Second, if they took that other soldier, they could come for her just as easily, couldn't they? Third, and the one that tumbled out when she opened her mouth-- "The moon isn't a planet. It's a satellite."
She felt herself turning beet red as she realized that she had said that, of all things. Luna didn't look up, though, so Ami faltered onwards. "What--what happened?"
"I found her; I made sure it was her, I made double sure. I followed her for a whole day just to be sure. I went to her house -- I tried to tell her and I gave her the brooch but they must have followed me. They came out of nowhere and they took her. They've been chasing me since then."
Ami couldn't think of a thing to say.
"We have to find a way to get her back." The cat looked up at Ami. "That's why I need your help. She's just an innocent girl, like you."
"I feel bad. I really do." Ami said. It sounded insincere, but she meant it. She felt horrible for the girl, and if there had been anything she could do, she would have done it in an instant. But this? "But I can't do it."
Luna looked up at her. "You know her." She said, and her voice trembled. "She goes to your school. She's missing. She'll never come back unless you save her!"
Ami's heart felt like it had fallen to the bottom of her stomach, or else out of her body all together. She pretended it had, for a second. She had gotten that reputation for being an emotionless genius, and it was for a reason; she suppressed feeling long enough to dig the pen out of her bag and hand it to Luna.
"I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do."
The little black cat looked at her with some emotion that Ami couldn't place.
"Alright, Mizuno-san." It was the first time the cat had used any sort of honorific with her, and it caught her a little off-guard. It was as if a wall had sprung up between them. "I understand. But keep the pen."
"I can't do anything." She repeated. "Give it to someone who will help you." Her heart threatened to revolt, to say that she'd help because it was right, because there was someone in danger, but Ami wouldn't let herself.
"Keep it as thanks for saving me yesterday. Just use it as a pen. I hope it brings you luck on your exams."
Ami hesitated, but the cat looked serious. She put it back into her bag, and looked down at her watch. "I have to go. I'll be late for school."
She left the alley without any further goodbye, and Luna stayed perched on the dumpster for a long time after that, looking at the sky and wondering.