I don't own Sailor Moon.
Big thanks to Ashen Author for idea-bouncing and FanofMostEverything for beta/proof-reading this chapter. It's become all the more better with your brilliance.
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon: Inheritance
Chapter 2 – Wake-Up Call
The first coherent thought that came together in the mind of Eleanor 'Ellie' Channary was, Ugh, I feel like shit.
The second coherent thought came five seconds later, when the rest of her senses came back online, Uuuuhn, I didn't sleep in my jeans again, did I?
The third coherent thought came when she finally, reluctantly, opened her eyes to see the pale ceiling of her room staring back at her, …...Wait. That's my ceiling.
Ellie's room portrayed the personality of someone who loved copious amounts of sugar: light pink walls against a paler pink ceiling, a faded pink carpet that had seen much better times in the house's first ten years, a wooden desk painted a grayish-pink in the far left corner across from a comfy bed with a (you guessed it) pink, flower printed comforter. Of course, it had been designed when Ellie was still in Kindergarten, thus one could be forgiven for not believing the occupant has just entered high school.
To the desk's right, two large bookshelves held an assortment of stuffed animals, from Beanie Babies to My Little Ponies of various generations to a big white Teddy Bear named Vanilla Ice, and a smaller bookcase beside them sported a healthy collection of books, mostly fantasy and romance, but with a good chunk of manga mixed in. They had been later additions, purchased in tandem with Ellie's interests, which remained a steady constant, save for that one year in the 3rd Grade.
On the right hand side of her bed, her closet was built into the wall, accessible via a sliding mirror door that her father had made as an experiment (and thus very proud of himself for the success). On the left hand side, her nightstand, complete with a plain-looking lamp, a Minnie Mouse alarm clock (a birthday present from her Grandmother that she refused to replace), a modest jewelry box, and a Kleenex box.
Her backpack lay discarded at the foot of her bed and her laptop sat offline atop her desk, where an assortment of pens, pencils, and notebooks were stacked.
Normalcy.
The fourth coherent thought, Whoa. Whoa whoa whoa whoawhoawhoawhoawhoa-
Coherent might have been a bit much.
Her impending mental meltdown would have continued had she not moved her head towards her alarm clock, spotting the time in crystal clear numbers—6:01 AM.
What.
AM. A. M.
What?
It had been 4:34 PM the last time she'd checked the time on her cell phone.
PM. P. M.
WHAT?
Carlson's stupid face, his stupid dare. Her friends – Neri, Inaya, where were they?! – coming with her. Deadman's Point. The cave. The circle. The-
Ellie bolted upright, an impressive feat of strength and agility that didn't suit a girl who currently had a C- in Physical Fitness.
"What the hell?" she gasped to the open air; the blue light of predawn poked its way out from under her blinds, filling her room with an eerie glow, "what the hell, what the hell...Holy Bananas, was all that a dream?"
She looked down at herself; even in the faint blue light, she could see the familiar blouse and jean combo that she'd worn yesterday. She felt the top of her head; her scrunchies were still there, holding up two bunches of ebony hair. She clutched those bunches tightly as she noticed that her sneakers had been discarded and a quick – borderline frantic – look around showed that they were on the ground by her nightstand.
They were still covered in dirt.
So was her backpack.
The same backpack that she'd left by the old Rowan stump atop the incline at Deadman's Point.
"Oh my God."
She'd been at Deadman's Point.
She'd been at the cave. She'd been in the cave.
The so-called cursed cave alongside her two best friends.
In the afternoon, after school.
"Oh my sweet God."
How on God's Green Earth did she go from inside a cave in the afternoon to back in her house, a good three miles away from Deadman's Point, in her room, at six in the AM?
"What just-"
The enchanting voice of Adele wafted through the air and grabbed her attention before she could contemplate her insanity further. Snapping her head in the direction of the ringtone, Ellie nearly fell off her rumpled up bed as she dove for the nightstand, or, more specifically, the cell phone sitting innocently between her clock and tissue box.
She knew who was calling by ringtone alone, but she still checked the name.
Inaya.
She noticed the battery icon in the upper corner. The full battery icon in the upper corner.
100% charged.
What the heck?
Ellie fumbled to answer the phone before her sister woke up nextdoor, keychain dangling noisily below as she finally answered before Adele hit the high notes.
"Ellie, what the fuck?!"
Speaking of...
"Innie-"
"What the fuck did you do?!" her bestie continued as Ellie fumbled again to lower the volume before her brother heard from down the hall, "oh God, I knew we shouldn't have gone! What did you do?!"
"Innie, calm dow-"
"I'm in my room, Ellie. In my fucking room, at fucking six AM, after being stuck inside a cramped fucking cave with my lunatic friend not two fucking minutes ago. In the afternoon. Do not tell me to calm down Ellie!"
She sounded freaked. Which was a good thing, because Ellie felt freaked. They could therefore freak out together.
"So it wasn't a dream," Ellie didn't mean to say it out loud, but she'd just woken up from the biggest shock in her short life and thus wasn't computing the dos and don'ts of mind-to-mouth properly.
Inaya didn't say anything for a good fifteen seconds after she said that, which gave Ellie time to get control of her pulse as best she could, wondering if her friend had hung up. She got her answer soon after she managed to get her heart out of her ears.
"Ellie, I'm serious. What happened?"
Taking a deep breath, "I don't know."
Silence for another five seconds. Ellie swallowed her heartbeat back into her chest.
"We were in a cave," she finally said, shifting into a more comfortable position, phone held gently to her ear, "the one at Deadman's Point. We reached the end, there was a circle, a stone-"
"You touched it," Inaya interrupted, not sounding any calmer than she had when she first spoke, "you touched it and then everything exploded and... and... Ellie, why the hell did you touch it? What did you do?"
"I..." why had she touched it? She remembered the curiosity, the allure, the warmth it radiated as her fingers brushed its surface- "I don't know. I just... it didn't look dangerous..."
Inaya groaned from the other end of the phone and Ellie bit her lip, glancing at her bedroom door; almost closed, but left open just a crack. A telltale sign of her mother's presence.
"Innie, how did we get home?" the thought was so sudden, so confusing, it made her heart leap back up her throat, "we were in a cave three miles East of school grounds. How the heck did we get back home without our parents raising a fuss?"
She wouldn't have been left alone to sleep peacefully in her room, that was for sure.
The silence came back and it was longer this time, which only served to freak Ellie out further. Her free hand clutched the comforter until her knuckles turned white.
"Ellie, are you freaking the fuck out too?" The last time Ellie had heard Inaya sound so vulnerable was the first day they'd met. The nostalgia brought with it a wave of protectiveness and anger.
"I am," she answered, truthfully, getting to her feet, "you're not alone in this, Innie, so please, calm down. This freaky stuff happened to all of us. You, me, Ner-" Ellie's eyes widened. "Neri!"
If a rustle from beyond the wall nextdoor was heard, Ellie didn't really pay it any mind, pulling her phone back so that she could see the interface and fumbled for a third time to initiate a group call. She could hear Inaya flipping out further as she got Neri's number, not noticing anything else out of the ordinary about her phone from the wallpaper and icons.
How the hell did it get charged without its charger? Did her mother do that? Did she take off her shoes too?
The questions never seemed to end.
Putting the phone back to her ear, Ellie listened to the rings and nearly ripped a hole in her comforter with her free hand in her impatience, hoping and praying that Neri was alright. She could hear Inaya muttering a mantra under her breath on the other end (if saying 'fuck' over and over again counted as a mantra) and continued to listen until someone picked up on the fifth ring.
"Neri? Neri, hon, are you okay?"
Five seconds of silence. "Ellie...is Inaya on too?"
"I'm here, Ner," Inaya sounded only slightly calmer than she had been when she first picked up, "are you okay?"
And, once again, there was silence. Save for more rustling from the room nextdoor.
"We were at Deadman's Point," Neri finally found her voice, eerily neutral, "it was sometime after four...and we were in the cave, right?"
"Yeah Sweets, we were," Ellie bit her lip, "that's the last thing we remember-"
"You touching the voodoo rock was the last thing I remember," Inaya cut in, "that's when everything went fucking screwy!"
Rolling her eyes, Ellie figured that she should feel relieved that Inaya was getting back to her old snippy self, but given the circumstances, she really just wanted some answers. Problem was, all they had right now were questions.
"It wasn't a voodoo rock," the strange crystal was one such question and yet, for some strange reason, Ellie didn't feel that it was malevolent.
"That whole circle thing was one big black magic ritual from way back whenever and you had to touch the voodoo rock," Inaya continued her panic-fueled rant, "it was turned off, you turned it back on, simple as that."
"I don't think that's how it works..."
"It... it wasn't voodoo... or black magic... at least, I don't think it was," Neri's voice sounded a bit firmer than it had been when she first picked up, which was a good thing, but she still didn't sound back to her usual pitch, "those symbols... I know those symbols-"
"You know witchcraft?"
"Innie, for real?"
"They're not witchcraft," Neri sounded very matter-of-fact for being so spooked, "they're astrology."
No one was there to witness Ellie do a double-take to her phone, staring at the screen of her Samsung as though it'd just turned into a Nokia.
Astrology?
"...What?" Inaya asked, clearly thinking that Neri was still half-asleep.
"The circle in the cave... those symbols were astrological symbols," Neri continued, "I recognized them from an old book report I did in the 6th Grade-"
"You remember something from a homework assignment you did two years ago?" Inaya interjected, incredulous.
"Well, ah, it was an interesting subject and I still have the book," came the meek justification, "it's... I actually checked it after I woke up, just to be sure... well, after I cr—um, got myself under control..."
Ellie had known this girl for five years, from quirks to hobbies, thus she didn't question that Neri owned a book of space-based science. What she did do, however, was stop her before she could push away her needs.
"Sweets, it's us. You don't have to hide anything," she spoke gently, "you have the right to freak out when things go bananas; I did it, Inaya did it."
"I almost started crying too, Neri," Inaya's tone switched to a softer setting, something that she only did for the two of them, "it's perfectly normal to lose your shit over something like this."
There was a quiet pause on the other end, then a small sniff, "I just... I—all of us lost fourteen hours and... and I just-"
"We know, hon, we know," Ellie took a deep breath herself and looked back at her clock, "look, none of this makes any kind of sense. Something happened in that cave. I don't know what and I don't know why it happened-"
"Voodoo," Inaya just didn't seem ready to let it go.
"-but I want answers," Ellie reached over to her lamp and squinted her eyes in preparation as she turned it on, banishing the predawn blue and flooding her room with light, "Inaya, clean yourself up. Neri, stay put and, if you need it, have a good cry, because we'll coming over to-"
"Ellie?"
That voice didn't come from the phone.
Looking up and at the doorway like a deer caught in headlights, Ellie watched as her big sister entered a step into her room, baggy pajamas doing a great job at hiding her model-like physique.
"You're up," Anisa 'Ann' Channary had the benefit of having the most original name among her siblings, named after neither a favorite aunt or father-in-law, not that Ellie complained about it (her brother, on the other hand...), "Holy Cow, you finally woke up."
Trying to remain as composed as she could under the circumstances, Ellie took another deep breath and muttered a quiet "Hang on" into the phone before she lowered it face-down onto the bed, eyes still on her sister, who entered her room, closing the door quietly behind her.
"Morning, Ann," Ellie managed to keep her voice neutral, trying to read her sister's expression as she approached. How was she going to handle this? Heck, how was she even going to explain it?
"What the heck did you eat yesterday?"
...What?
"Dad actually thought you were drunk," Ann sat on the side of her bed, studying her little sister's face for telltale signs of teenage hijinks, "Mom came in here to wake you up for dinner and you just slept through it; she tried to shake you awake, she took your shoes off... she was ready to call an ambulance, but you were still breathing, and I checked your pulse-"
"I'm not drunk," was the first thing out of Ellie's mouth. Her parents had been freaking out too? Not good. So not good.
"Better get ready to tell that to Dad," Ann shook her head, "I knew you wouldn't do something that dumb, even if you were curious." She looked back at Ellie, eyes full of concern. "You didn't have a fever, so you weren't sick, and so I managed to convince Mom that you probably were sleeping off a snack or something. Y'know, the usual."
The usual? Not even close.
Ellie's mind scrounged up the closest thing to a probable explanation, "I... had something spicy over at Innie's house." It helped that Inaya's Mom liked to go crazy in the kitchen. "I guess it didn't agree with me..."
"Apparently," Ann had raised an eyebrow, but she otherwise looked satisfied with the explanation, "still, Dad's gonna have questions, so be prepared for the third degree."
Sighing with relief would have been a dead giveaway that something was wrong, so Ellie kept it in and glanced up at her ceiling fan as nonchalantly as she could.
"Did Inaya do that to your phone?"
What.
Ellie's head snapped down so fast, she was pretty sure she'd have whiplash later, looking down at her cell phone. It'd been dark before and she'd only paid attention to the screen (and her friends, by extension), she hadn't bothered to look at the casing.
A rich magenta casing with a silver crescent moon right in the middle, the curved part facing the bottom while the two points reached for the top.
The more she stared at it, the more she realized how familiar it looked: it had been the symbol at the very top of the circle on the wall at the end of the cave.
Her heart pounded in her ears once again, but Ellie schooled her expression as best she could when she finally turned back around.
"...Yes," she sounded almost robotic in an effort not to let her freakout show, "yes, she did."
To her massive relief, Ann just smiled, "Relax. I think it's pretty. Doesn't make up for you spooking us out yesterday, though."
Her head swimming with more questions, Ellie nodded her head, and swallowed. "Really sorry about that, Ann."
"It's okay," Ann proved her rank of elder sibling by reaching up and rustling her little's sister's hair, almost dislodging the scrunchies, "you're awake, so everything's back to normal. And you don't need to convince me that you're clean. Just try not to eat any more spicy foods and Mom will probably be okay too."
Everything was not okay. Not by a long shot.
If Ellie didn't want answers before, she definitely did now.
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Red-orange eyes slowly opened to the sunlight long since forgotten in the abyss of sleep.
A sharp, intelligent mind produced thoughts and feelings with every second it regained awareness.
Shapes and color came into focus. Muscles reconnected with nerves and synapses. A tail twitched to life.
I am...awake?
Disorientation was normal when hibernation ended, but what she had a hard time understanding was why she had awoken.
Where...I don't under-
"Luna?"
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Be sure to leave a review if you liked what you read. Don't be afraid to fave, either.
Just to let you all know, things will take time to come together in this story, though I wouldn't call it slow, per se. Just be patient and you'll see some Sailor Senshi action sooner than you think "winks"