Sailor Moon: Small Fish in a Very Big Pond
Prologue the Second – T Plus Four Months
Standard Disclaimer: Sailor Moon, Cowboy Bebop, and Star Trek are all copyrighted to their respective owners, i.e. not myself. This derivative work thus falls in the usual gray area occupied by fanfiction. In the end, the purpose of fanfics is to enhance appreciation of the original works, not supplant them – please support the creators of the originals!
Aboard Spacefleet Long-Range Reconnaissance Vessel Enterprise
Difficulties with interspecies diplomacy meant that Spacefleet's very expensive long-range reconnaissance vessels, built for multi-year exploration journeys, were mostly limited to running month-long local sweeps. Captain James Tiberius Kirk found this situation interminably boring. With no possibility this close to New Sol to do the two things he excelled at – namely getting into trouble and getting out of trouble – he had mostly left the day-to-day operations of the ship to First Officer Sulu Hikaru.
Sulu-san was not particularly burdened by this. The great ship Enterprise was mostly a giant paperweight, a white-elephant, a flying monument to humanity's... technology? No, half of it was reverse-engineered from Vulcan equipment and the other half from the few ancient artifacts that humanity had managed to snatch from the interstellar void before the other races did. Ability to waste taxpayer money? Too cynical, though artificial gravity was indeed an expensive addition. Stubbornness, maybe? That was getting close to it.
The correct word, Sulu decided, was bloodymindedness. He checked the readouts in front of him for the nth time. Ship on course, warp core stabilizing after a bit of a rough trip through a nebula, no one in the vicinity. Wait, there was an incoming transmission of some sort. Let Uhura handle it, he didn't want to steal her job.
Meanwhile, Kirk was in the mess hall trying to entertain himself. He had assembled some kind of tall, icy drink from toxic-looking ingredients obtained by thorough and complicated abuse of the kitchen's synthesizers, added an olive as instructed, and now stared at it uncertainly. A well-known online encyclopaedia had told him it was popular on certain alien planets and that its effect on the human system could only be described as "bracing".
He was about to take his first cautious sip, surrounded by an audience of curious redshirts who wondered if they'd have to drag their captain to sick bay in a moment or two, when the doors opened, and, of all people, Nyota Uhura came in to make a report.
Kirk supposed that if Uhura had shifted from her post as Communications Officer something important had just come through. Or maybe she'd just seized some minor excuse to stretch her legs and make an unscheduled trip down to mess hall.
"Captain, your presence is requested on the command deck. The Assistant to the Vulcan Ambassador is standing by and proposes to show you footage of an unspecified nature. They are making a rather unusual request and a decision from you will be required."
Well, this certainly counted as 'something important'. Kirk frowned. The Assistant to the Ambassador? Kirk had met him once before, hadn't he? Someone with a name that sounded like Spock. Anything worth remembering about the man's personality? Well, he was Vulcan. Since when did the Assistant to the Ambassador get to initiate diplomatic contact anyway?
"I'll be right there." he replied, tossing the drink into a refrigerator with a sigh.
"Hello, Mr. Spock. Last I saw you it was at a diplomatic dinner. You communicated some interesting facts about Vulcan religion and had, uh... exquisite table manners." Kirk added, unable to think of a better compliment; truth be told, Spock had been a much more bland sort of person than Kirk was used to dealing with.
"I thank you for the kind words, but since this meeting is already unorthodox a certain amount of protocol may be dispensed with. What I am about to propose, I wish to do with a reasonable degree of secrecy."
"Very well," Kirk replied meekly. "In that case, all personnel without command deck clearance are hereby requested to leave the room."
No one moved. Kirk's meekness was affected and the instruction a mere formality: anyone who was on the command deck would already have command deck clearance. Nevertheless Spock seemed satisfied with the gesture.
"About two days ago," he began, "one of our border patrol vessels had been tracking a Romulan pirate ship that had been operating near the border between Vulcan and human space. We approached and were about to engage the pirates; however, a boarding party of apparent humans had already arrived and was in the process of issuing an ultimatum. We have footage that we would like to show you of what transpired, captain, but there is a condition."
This was all frustratingly vague. A human boarding party? Were they trying to see if Kirk would react in some way that would let the Vulcans blame Starfleet for.. whatever had happened?
"What's your condition?"
"That you do not communicate any of these findings to Starfleet High Command." What? "I would like to stress the fact that what we are about to show you, no matter how unexpected it may seem, is nevertheless a truthful recording of the events. And knowing the truth cannot possibly hurt you, captain."
Kirk weighed his options. Well, it wasn't like he hadn't hidden things from High Command before. Trivial, silly details of some earlier missions, it was true, but practice made perfect in this regard.
He glanced towards Uhura. Her expression indicated that this was the unusual request she'd mentioned.
Oh well. He took a deep breath, feeling as though he was about to plunge into cold water.
"I suppose we might as well look at whatever it is you've got, ambassador." Since Spock was performing the duties of an ambassador, he may as well be called that way, Kirk decided. Was sending an underling supposed to put him at ease and get him to say something he'd regret later, that he wouldn't have said to the Vulcan Ambassador himself? It wasn't working.
Sulu gave Uhura a glance as well, that clearly said I told you the captain might want to make a decision on this personally. Although Sulu had indeed been tempted to declare a refusal to Spock before Kirk got to hear of it, his duty as First Officer extended to his captain's whims as well as his captain's more sensible moments.
"Very well." said Spock. "Now that I have your agreement, I will share with you what we saw two days ago."
And then his face onscreen was replaced by views from several angles of the hull of a spaceship drifting in the interstellar void.
The four figures standing on the hull were getting bored, or as bored as it was possible to be when the full energy output of a planet is being diverted into you without anything to distract you from the fact. In short, they were all quiet as they listened to the thrum of their long-vanished celestial spheres tracing out imaginary orbits. With one exception: the one with short blue hair was whiling away the time on a handheld computer.
The one with long pigtails was the first to speak. "How long did we say we were going to wait for, again?"
Normally you wouldn't expect sound to carry in a vacuum, but here one girl was operating her mouth and vocal cords in a more-or-less conventional fashion, and the other girls could hear her, so clearly they'd somehow figured out a way to cheat that particular law of physics.
This was a minor question in any case. Normally you would not expect four girls in skirted clothing that resembled school uniforms (designed by someone who must have thought the purpose of school uniforms had been to reveal a lot of leg) to be standing outside in hard vacuum at all.
"Quiet. I was hoping I'd get to meditate out here." retorted the girl with flowing black hair, red skirt, high heels, and her eyes closed.
"What? That's not what we came here to do, Mars!"
Mars opened her eyes angrily. "Sailor Moon, I'm perfectly fine with the team's all too frequent use of my usual meditation space, but this means that I must then take other opportunities to practice. It is sort of a requirement for my day-to-day job!"
"What? So you're doing it in the middle of a standoff?" Sailor Moon shouted.
Sailor Mars reddened and leaned towards Sailor Moon. "What makes it a standoff? He's not exactly going to try anything, so the only danger to us is if a CERTAIN PIGTAILED... Oh forget it, his time is almost up anyways." She'd been about to stick out her tongue.
"Jadeite isn't going to make it easy for himself or for us, is he?" Sailor Jupiter remarked softly.
Sailor Mercury nodded silently, glancing up from her computer.
"We're going to have to move quickly once the hull is breached to keep anyone who was uninvolved safe. He's already forced us to get violent once." Sailor Moon raised her voice and addressed an invisible audience. "And HE IS GOING TO PAY!"
They formed a circle facing inwards.
And Sailor Moon announced thus to the people inside the ship: "If anyone who is an ordinary pirate is listening, we don't have any grudge against you. We suggest you find an escape pod or an emergency respirator. However, Jadeite, the youma, and any pirates who know about the demonic goat..."
"... and STILL think it's a good idea!" Sailor Mars shouted.
"... will not be forgiven!" Sailor Moon resumed. "They sought to obliterate a planet and turn the energy of its peoples' love to burning hatred. But love brings forth allies that will defend it! In the name of the Moon, we, Sailor Moon..."
"... Sailor Mars ..."
"... Mercury ..."
"... Jupiter ..."
They raised their arms into the air, or rather vacuum, simultaneously.
"... will punish you!"
A hatch nearby popped open and some foolhardy Romulan decided he'd try to forestall the group by mowing it down with blaster fire. But they simply leaped off in different directions, circling around the ship weightlessly, and reforming the circle around a fifth figure that had been standing at the other end of the hull, idly twisting her heel into its surface. This procedure had formed quite a significant dent.
"And Sailor Venus will take whatever is left of you and punish it again!" she declared, joining the circle. They raised their arms again.
"SAILOR PLANET ATTACK!"
The pirate ship was impaled by a searing beam of energy through the exact center of the circle. When the afterglow cleared, the vessel was in bad shape. It looked as though it had been smashed by an enormous hammer, and there was a wide gash in the hull. The self-proclaimed Sailor girls poured into this breach. About ninety seconds later, a second explosion broke the ship apart into several large of wreckage and it stopped being a ship anymore.
The Vulcans had not managed to get front row seats to the proceedings. The view of the girls standing on the pirate ship's hull was tilted at an odd angle and it had been shot from far away, but their footage still gave a fairly clear idea of what happened.
"In case you're wondering," noted Spock, "the wreckage contained a very small number of charred, unidentifiable remains and a larger number of pirates wearing emergency respirators, whom we have taken into custody and are in the process of questioning. The recorded audio was being transmitted openly over a non-standard channel, and could be picked up clearly at a maximum distance of about seven light-seconds."
"Ah. That sort of makes sense. It's hard to tell at this distance, but it seemed to match the figures' lip movements. Could have been sleight of hand, though." Kirk noted with interest.
The reactions from the other Enterprise top brass were... interesting.
Sulu gaped at the screen with his mouth wide open.
Chekov tilted his head to one side and studied the texture on a ceiling tile moodily.
Uhura had scrunched her face in obvious annoyance.
Most of the others just contented themselves with raising their eyebrows throughout the spectacle.
Kirk looked fairly calm. He'd seen one or two things that were stranger than this. Only just barely stranger, and certainly not in a while. He ventured an observation.
"If I didn't know better," he said. "I'd say that ship just had an attack of magical girls."
"Magical girls?"
"A fictional creation. Generally appearing in visual media – hand-drawn animations and comic books. Never seen them operating in deep space before, though."
"Why would you make that analogy precisely?"
"Well, I have a vague idea of the distinguishing features of the genre. Costume guaranteed to appeal to.. certain sensibilities. They follow strict rules of engagement, right down to announcing that they're about to zap you. We can only guess at what was going on inside, but all that speechmaking seems to have given most of the pirate crew time to find respirators. Then they unleash an energy attack that they appear to have called forth with their bare hands. They have silly codenames: Sailor Moon.. Sailor Mars, Sailor Mercury.."
Something stirred in Spock's mind at the mention of 'Sailor Mercury'. Oddly enough he'd heard something like that somewhere... or maybe he had? For some reason it worried Spock on a quite personal level, but then he couldn't quite recall why he'd been worried and was left with only the vague sense that his usually clear and unambiguous mind was not operating properly. Quite disturbing in and of itself.
"Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Venus..." Kirk was continuing, not noticing the extremely subtle expression of concern that had crossed the Vulcan's face. "It fits the genre. On some of our moons the popular culture is positively swarming with that kind of thing."
"Thank you for that explanation. I will make sure to peruse a selection when I have some leisure time. However, since the notion of magic is by definition entirely alien to logic and reason, I fear the information won't be of benefit to this particular situation."
You could say that again. "Now, with that out of the way, I have a serious question for you. Do you celebrate April Fool's Day on Vulcan, by any chance, ambassador?"
"I assume you are referring to what we call Paradox Day. Within our calendar it falls on the third rest day in Vermillion. Generally it is used as an opportunity to present tests of intelligence in an amicable context, by requiring individuals to distinguish between plausible and implausible behaviour in others."
"Hmm. I hadn't pegged your people as the type." said Kirk. "Did 'Paradox Day' come early this year by any chance, Mr. Spock?"
"I anticipated a question of this sort. Rest assured that when you analyze the data you will find it perfectly plausible. I would like to draw your attention in particular to the large outflow of planetary mana at the site of the recording."
Chekov in particular looked at Spock as though he'd grown a second head.
"Permission to make an observation, Captain?" he stammered, ignoring protocol.
Kirk nodded.
"You say that planetary mana was observed at the site." Chekov addressed the screen. "But the boarding happened in the interstellar void. That isn't logical at all, is it, Mr. Spock? Planetary mana can only be observed near a planet. A child could tell you that." Actually, they couldn't. Planetary mana had no known uses beyond stabilizing a colony's atmosphere, so few people bothered to teach small children its more advanced properties, but still.
"We took that fact into account. It simply indicates that we are dealing with some kind of phenomenon that has not previously been observed. It is logical to change one's opinion when presented with appropriate evidence."
"Well, I already know what kind of phenomenon I'm dealing with, ambassador." interrupted Kirk.
"Oh, really?" asked Spock.
"I'll leave the planetary mana stuff to the scientists. What I will be dealing with, disregarding the short skirts, bows, and various other, uh, ..."
"Decorations, captain?"
"Frills, ambassador. It pays to vary your vocabulary once in a while. Now, without all that, what we are dealing with a landing party of five lightly-armed... uh... women, that was able to take apart what you allege to be a pirate ship in scant minutes using some weapons system that Spacefleet intelligence probably hasn't seen before..." Kirk was redefining the problem into terms more familiar to him. "And presumably they escaped undetected? My gut tells me that if they'd died in the second explosion you wouldn't be bothering Spacefleet with this information."
"We have..." and here Spock hesitated for a fraction of a fraction of a second. "... specific reasons to believe that was not the case, which we will not divulge to you at this juncture. Certainly the fact that the landing was the work of such a powerful force is the most illogical thing about the situation. A group with such abilities at its disposal would generally have chosen some other target and revealed itself in some other context."
"So I'm going to be dealing with imperfect information, trying to chase down some unknown human organization with unknown motives and ties to Romulan pirates – I heard something about a demonic goat, that must have been their mutual code for something? Why thank you kindly, Mr. Spock. I almost forgot, too: you were willing to divulge this footage to a captain on outlying reconnaissance, not very important in the grand scheme of things, who won't even be returning to the area you indicated for another two weeks. But at the same time you don't want the information to be shared with Spacefleet High Command. I wonder what exactly it is you're not telling me."
Spock would have found divulging his reasons to Kirk to be severely embarrassing. It had to do with the fact that Spock was, in some respects, not able to live up to being a Vulcan. In short, he believed the short-skirted girls had not died, and would be showing up again, for the same reason Kirk did: his gut told him. He had not previously been aware that a digestive organ could be used to generate information, and had a difficult time justifying his opinion to the other Vulcans.
"You will only need to maintain secrecy in the two-week period until you return to Sol Vicinity. At which point we would convey the information to your High Command in a more conventional manner and they would doubtlessly initiate an investigation. If you desired, you could then use your familiarity with the situation to be chosen to head this investigation. I will leave it to your imagination how that could be accomplished."
Well, neglecting to mention an unplanned diplomatic engagement with the office of the Vulcan Ambassador, and then revealing some random trivia gathered from the footage as though it were his own insight, Kirk reflected, would be almost too easy, which meant... Kirk raised an eyebrow.
"You want me to investigate this matter personally? Interesting way to bring it about."
"This is how we operate, captain. When we pursue a goal we simply remove obstacles to its fulfilment. Compared with this, suggesting you as a suitable candidate to Spacefleet during direct negotiations is actually a risky and indirect method, which could instead backfire and place you under suspicion of having initiated clandestine contact with us. Therefore you may as well have clandestine contact with us, since it simplifies things considerably."
"But why me?"
"A conversation this far from New Sol is unlikely to be listened in on. Moreover, after reviewing what we knew of your past record, we concluded that you were a fairly illogical person. And since this is a very illogical situation we thought you might get along."
Kirk gaped, far more surprised at what the Vulcan just had said than at being shown a video containing magical girls.
"The phrase 'to get along' has a specific meaning," Spock explained, "namely that beneficial progress would be made given the juxtaposition of the two elements. I am in fact repeating a joke that was formulated to me by the Ambassador when he approved the course of action I am presenting to you."
"I... didn't know Vulcans made jokes." Kirk noted, humbled slightly.
"I had been told that humans were unlikely to show appreciation to our brand of humour." Spock answered sadly.
"Right. So you're not going to tell me why you want the Enterprise."
"No. Trust me, we have our reasons. Now, all of the relevant data has been transmitted to your ship. Whether or not you choose to investigate it," said Spock, "I bid you good luck. Or whatever the customary parting phrase is." he added, vanishing from the screen.
And so the conversation ended abruptly.
Everyone on the command deck took a moment to digest what they had just heard.
"It seems to me," First Officer Sulu was thinking out loud. "That since we will not be able to act on this information until our reconnaissance sweep is completed, we certainly have been left a lot of breathing room in deciding how to deal with the situation."
"What was all their 'love brings forth powerful allies' spiel about?" Kirk wondered quietly. "Not exactly the thing you'd expect from people who destroy pirate ships." Of course, it fit in the 'magical girl' mold, he supposed, but love was not a relevant concept to the lives either of Kirk or of space pirates. Pirates.. were motivated by whatever pirates were motivated by. If there was any love involved, it was love of money. As for Kirk, his entire existence was defined in terms of duty. Duty to humanity, duty to his crew, then duty to Spacefleet. Yes, probably in that order. That left very little room for love, except as an occasional distraction during shore leave. Such amusements were not available aboard a reconnaissance vessel, however.
Kirk considered this and grinned suddenly. Sulu knew this meant he would now propose something wild.
"Captain?"
"Seeing as we got a fairly clear shot of their faces, I suppose we could pass the time by putting out a bounty."
"A serious bounty by James T. Kirk, sir?"
Kirk was a by-now-infamous figure in the cottage industry of joke bounties, the patron saint of bored on-the-ground police officers. He'd been doing it ever since he'd been switched to these mind-numbingly boring month-long missions, and ever since a video of two bounty hunters being beaten into the ground by an obsessive-compulsive geographer with a bounty on his head of a whole 50 point 000000 woolongs had – God knows how – made its way onto video sharing sites across the system. Kirk had laughed his lungs out and then managed to arrange a series of even more ridiculous situations for whichever cowboy would be stupid enough to stumble into them. (For some reason, some cowboys hardly ever looked at who was posting a bounty, which meant Kirk would still be at it for a long time before they finally caught on.)
"And risk High Command figuring out that I knew about the footage in advance?" High Command was far more likely to be interested in a bounty's origins. "No, make up a suitable alias, and get some excuse to obtain any footage that Spacefleet police forces manage to get. As a bonus, any footage collected lets High Command know exactly what they'll be dealing with. Then they'll have the option of looking the Vulcans in the eye two weeks from now, grinning, and saying that they know already. And I won't have any unpleasantness about unauthorized dealings with Vulcans."
"What about Spock's suggestion?"
"Not really my style." Kirk replied. "Even if it means I lose my chance to finally do something interesting, I don't want to be pursuing devious schemes like that."
"With all due respect, captain, gathering surveillance footage from out here is going to be a little difficult."
"Then call in some of your favours." He thought for a moment. "It's odd. I haven't ever heard of a specific cowboy being hired to do some job."
"That would make them into hit men, not bounty hunters, sir."
"Interesting observation."
"Even if someone answers the bounty, are you certain that bounty hunters would be in any way effective against that?"
"But at least we'll get to see some amusing footage as the cowboys fail horribly. Could even learn something useful, couldn't we? I think I'll be going now; I was in the middle of something when Uhura called me up."
Sulu gathered himself for an all-nighter of making up excuses and calling in favours. Wasn't he just thinking that his duties as a First Officer were too simple? he berated himself.
Kirk headed off to the mess hall, to see if that drink he'd made really did feel like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.
Author's Notes: Yes, I've done it – I've butchered the Star Trek universe. If it's any consolation, this is the last we'll be seeing of Captain Kirk for a while. Or of Spike Spiegel, for that matter.
Next Time on Sailor Moon: Small Fish in a Very Big Pond
Episode 1 – Operation: Moon Rabbit
Amateur bounty hunters Moon Rabbit and Mars Ray make an effective team, despite their continual bickering. They are distracted from their latest bounty by the appearance of an unexpected meteorite. Only it's not a meteorite; it's a cryosleep pod containing a completely ordinary (albeit amnesiac and delusional) talking cat in need of immediate medical attention. An amnesiac, talking cat? Certainly, but Luna is not delusional! Give her a little credit, you two, she came from four thousand years ago and who knows how many light years away and she needs your help!