Chapter 11: The World Turned Upside Down
(Chapter Revised 3/29/2016)
Logan
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" I yelled to Sailor Pluto, holding her Garnet Rod over an unconscious Stephanie. I could hardly believe what I just saw: Stephanie had fallen to the ground before Sailor Pluto. She had no chance of resisting, and Pluto just swung her Garnet Orb into Stephanie's head as if it were a golf ball!
"Use of sleeper holds was never our way." Sailor Pluto answered matter-of-factly.
"So you club her in the back of the head, instead?!" I couldn't help screeching. "For all the things I do that make you uncomfortable!"
"No need to be so dramatic." Sailor Pluto remained stoic in the face of my anger. "She'll be fine, I promise."
"GET OUT FROM BEHIND MY LOGIE BEAR! SAILOR KICK!"
Even with my Shadow reflexes, Sailor Venus nearly caught me off guard when she flew out of the bushes at near-hypersonic speed following her rant. Her wide eyes gave away that she just realized her heel wasn't aimed towards her intended target, but it was impossible for Sailor Venus to alter her angle of attack. I rolled out of the way just in time, but poor Sailor Pluto was left standing directly behind me. The ball of Sailor Venus' foot crashed into Sailor Pluto's cheek, leaving a gushing red mark and staggering the older Scout.
"That HAD to be the one thing you were good at..." Pluto complained. She regained her footing just as Rini leaped out of the bushes behind her, followed by a panting Hotaru.
Sailor Venus landed on both feet with a sense of balance that Artemis or Luna would have envied. Venus covered her mouth with both hands and bowed. "Trista! I'm so sorry! That was meant for the globe-trotting tramp on the ground!"
"I heard you got jealous easily, but THIS?!" I blurted Mina's way. "She's a civilian!"
"But she's not an INNOCENT civilian, there's a difference!" Sailor Venus quipped back.
"No there isn't!" I realized I had sidestepped unconsciously, forming a wall between Mina and Stephanie. "Ever hear of proportionate use of force? Or are the Sailor Scouts about to start kicking jaywalkers off the street next?!"
Sailor Venus slightly tilting her head and pressed her pointer finger near her chin. A pose I would have thought adorable in another place and time: her telltale sign that she was deep in thought. "As a matter of fact...I did that a couple of times as Sailor V! Artemis may have ragged on me for kicking a couple more folks than I had to, but this was when there was only one beautiful guardian keeping the peace of an entire shopping district!"
Sailor Venus cut herself off mid-rant when her eyes caught Sailor Pluto rolling her own. "Right, lost track! What's-her-face was lucky she didn't catch my Crescent Beam of Anger! I thought she was about to push my Logie Bear into the honey-coated trap of temptation!"
"We stopped hanging out in fifth grade! There was no fooling around!" I was lucky this part of the park was so vacant...at least, I hoped no one could hear me.
"Tell me, Small Lady...should we stick with "Turtle" or adopt "Logie Bear" for ourselves?" I caught an earful of Sailor Pluto's side conversation with Rini. Pluto's lip crinkled in a rare show of amusement. Rini caught that I had overheard them, and merely replied to Trista with a cute smile followed by shuddering her eyelids. Rini sure knew how to keep me guessing where I ranked on her friends list. But Hotaru had kept her distance, untouched by their reunion. Hotaru's arms were folded across her chest, her lips squished together in a pout, and no small amount of disdain hidden behind her violet eyes. And then she reminded me why when she tossed one of the crumpled envelopes with her father's handwriting...
"This is serious matter, you two!" Sailor Venus hissed at Trista and Rini, oblivious to her own mild hypocrisy with that statement.
"You can say that again," Hotaru coldly agreed with Mina. Rini and Pluto broke their own conversation to find Hotaru's eyes still locked on to them. But before anyone had a chance to ask her what was wrong, a patter of footsteps announced the arrival of the other Scouts.
"Sailor Moon!" Diana called out our intrepid leader's name, though Serena - as usual - arrived out-of-breath well behind Mercury, Mars and Jupiter. They had all come as the Sailor Scouts, as if they were expecting trouble.
Sailor Pluto let out a deep sigh. "You said you would be right behind me, Sailor Moon."
"I was in the middle of toasting a pop tart!" whined Sailor Moon. "You didn't say this was urgent, and I love my s'mores!"
"You know...one less pastry could have made it easier to keep up," I teased.
"Try going back to making fun of me after you've seen your own girlfriend chow down!" Sailor Moon stuck her tongue out at me. I heard a nervous chuckle escape from Sailor Venus' throat.
"At least we're all accounted for...except Luna and Artemis." Diana rode atop Rini's head, as I often saw. "I hope those phony Shadows didn't capture them again."
"Don't worry," assured Sailor Mercury. "They have a distress signal, and we have a map of their search route so we would know where to start looking for them."
"So, what's this about?" Sailor Moon asked Pluto. Stephanie had been angled so the newcomers couldn't see her face, but Serena and all the others gasped when Pluto tilted Stephanie's head towards them. They also remembered her from their tour of my memories...she was a couple of years older now, but it would take them more than a couple days to forget what they had seen there.
"You knew she was coming, didn't you?" Hotaru's voice deepened when she turned her coldness towards her guardian. "You went back to Raye's Temple for the others first. You thought we were in danger."
Sailor Pluto sighed deeply before pressing on. As protective as she was of her facial expressions and body language, I just knew she didn't want to answer Hotaru. "Someone came by Amara and Michelle's home searching for you. I didn't know who she was...but I knew she brought word from your father."
"Doctor Tomoe..." Sailor Mercury quietly repeated his name.
Hotaru frowned at the other two names that Pluto had raised. They brought back bitter memories for sure. "How did you find out?"
"Because..." Sailor Pluto lowered her head. "Michelle left me a message."
"Why are you still TALKING TO THEM?!" Hotaru dropped whatever vestige of restraint had been holding back her anger towards them...and now Trista shared it with them. Amara and Michelle had betrayed them several times before Sailor Moon finally decided she had enough and took their transformation wands. A few nights I had heard Hotaru crying, and I knew that was why. Torn between missing the Amara and Michelle she looked up to as surrogate parents...and the traitors who would have done ANYTHING to complete their mission, even sacrificing their own.
Taking advantage of the brief silence, I drew Hotaru's gaze towards Stephanie lying on the ground. "She's been there a while, Hotaru. Can we move her inside first?"
Hotaru nodded curtly and reined her fury in with a deep breath. "Alright. Our duty comes first. But I am NOT finished, Trista!"
Careful to avoid Hotaru's glare - or the eyes of anyone else - Sailor Pluto pulled Stephanie over one of her arms. Without a second thought, I reached down to do the same. Venus' gloved hand came up to block me, her blue eyes turning green as they filled to the brim with envy. She collected herself enough to pick Stephanie up and help Trista carry her into the shelter of one of the closed amusements, but I made a mistake in letting Venus get too far ahead of me...
"WHOOPS!" Venus 'accidentally' lost her grip and dropped Stephanie onto the surface headfirst. "Me and my butterfingers!"
Sailor Pluto was left shaking her head again. "That will set her back a good couple of minutes."
I tugged Sailor Venus towards one corner, though there was no taking her out of earshot without going back outside. "You know I love you. Why are you so insecure? Don't you trust me?"
Again, Venus had caught me off guard and pulled me in close with both arms. "Of course I trust you! But...through no fault of your own..."
Mina's eyes drooped, accompanied by an eerie crinkling of her brows and followed by the top half of her face turning blue. The rest of her speech came in a discomforting monotone: "BURIED DEEP WITHIN EVERY MAN'S DNA LIES A VICIOUS MONSTER INSIDE THEIR CHESTS, WAITING FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT TO TEAR ITSELF OUT AND FEED ON THE HEART OF THE WOMEN DIRECTLY BESIDE THEM. A MONSTER THAT CAN NEVER BE SATISFIED WITH JUST ONE HEART AT A TIME. A MONSTER THAT COULDN'T CARE LESS WHETHER SAID WOMAN IS IN A LOVING RELATIONSHIP OR IN THE THROES OF MARRIAGE..."
"Wait, so..." Diana's squeaky voice piped up. "Charon and King Endymion have one of those alien wormlike things in their chests, just like in that movie I saw on Raye's TV?! DOES MY DAD HAVE ONE TOO?!"
"Yes, Diana." Venus's voice remained disturbingly flat. "Just like that "Aliens" movie!"
"AAAAHHHH!" The naive kitten covered her eyes with her paws and curled up into a ball between Rini's pink 'ears'.
"What are you scaring her for?!" Sailor Mars reached to gently stroke Diana's fur after giving Venus the look of doom. "It was just a movie Diana, totally fictional!"
Sailor Moon was left shaking her head next. "Mina, you know I love you, but this is why we didn't want you teaching Rini. Darien brought up you might fill her head with this kind of manic mumbo-jumbo."
"Oh, it's fine, Serena! You know I totally respect you guys!" Sailor Venus waved off Moon's biting remark, but leaned into Rini and used a gloved hand to cover her mouth so Sailor Moon couldn't read her lips. I could read Venus's lips though, as she told Rini "write that in your notes later."
"Dial it down a notch, Mina!" Sailor Jupiter was the next to take a stab at smoothing things over. "We know Logan's faithful! He's got more than enough willpower to resist the temptations of Stephanie!"
"What temptations?" Venus asked. Oh no, not the twitching eyebrow...
Sailor Jupiter obliviously raised a gloved hand and missed my subtle displays to get her attention so she wouldn't elaborate. "Well, she's right around Logan's age, so she's got maturity going for her! And I remember something from Logan's dream world about her being an honors student, so she's gotta be pretty smart too! Speaking of pretty, I would think she might be a Sailor Scout herself if we weren't all accounted for - "
"GGGRRR! THANKS A LOT!" Sailor Venus balled her hands into fists and held her arms straight down by her sides as if she were a soldier. The last thing Mina needed right now was another reason for being insecure...
"What's with your latest foot-in-mouth streak?" Sailor Mars teased Jupiter.
"Habit I picked up from the last guy I liked..." Sailor Jupiter buried her own face in one palm.
"POOR HELIOS!" Rini abruptly yelped his name, staring right at me as she did. "I completely forgot he wanted to talk to you!"
Rini unshouldered her red school backpack. After she unzipped it, I peeked inside and caught a glimpse of the adorned aqua and golden orb she used to communicate with him. Sometimes I heard them whispering to each other at night, though I tried to respect their privacy. They were both looking to rekindle their friendship, make up for the time they lost.
"Hold up." Sailor Venus gently pressed down to cover the loose flap. "SHE might overhear us."
"But she might be the one Pegasus was trying to warn us about!" With Rini's insistence, Mina withdrew her objection and seconds later, Pegasus' miniature form was peeking at us through Rini's bag.
Pegasus cast a wary eye towards the other Sailor Scouts before he went on. "My intention was not to warn...but I was hoping to prepare Logan for the news."
"I'm so sorry I forgot!" Rini apologized to her winged friend.
"You forgot, huh?" If there was one thing that was nearly as unsettling as manic Mina, it was watching Serena lapse into her destiny as Rini's future mother. "Lost track of time lollygagging in COUPLE'S PARK?"
"As if setting priorities was ever YOUR strong suit!" Rini stuck her tongue out in defiance of her future mother. As she did often.
"Rini was helping me!" Mina raised a hasty defense for Rini, though even she began to wither when she was left facing down Sailor Moon's demanding stare. "With my, uh...DRY FEET!"
"EWWW! Sorry I asked!" A grossed out Sailor Moon backed off instantly. I wasn't sure which I should facepalm over...Mina's lame excuse or Serena falling for it AGAIN.
"What I want to know is how Stephanie fits into this," Sailor Mercury posited. "Her timing can't be a coincidence."
"No, it wasn't. She meant to give me THESE." Hotaru showed everyone the stack of envelopes she had concealed within her jumper. "Apparently, my father's been writing to me but he didn't know my address."
"I hate to say this, Hotaru..." Sailor Mercury gently lowered her head. "But if the Shadows are behind this, those letters could be forgeries!"
"I think Mercury's right!" agreed Sailor Mars. "This smells like yet another Shadow bag of tricks to get us quarreling again!"
"Of course it's a trick if Amara and Michelle are involved!" Hotaru angrily snapped in the direction of the silent guardian. "The point is I haven't heard from my dad in years! I have no idea where he is, but Trista can call up Amara and Michelle whenever she likes?!"
"We never forbade you from speaking to your father, Hotaru!" A suddenly-distraught Sailor Pluto belted. "This was the first time I heard from Amara and Michelle since they were relieved of their duties as Sailor Guardians! Michelle contacted me about YOU, that was my only concern!"
"You said my dad was getting his life back together." Hotaru sniffled, though the rest of her face continued reflecting bitterness. "You let me think he was doing well, that he was getting his life back together."
"I...I did." Regret...another emotion the Guardian of Time rarely expressed. "Your father's mind was still broken when I came for you. I doubted he understood why I had to take you from him, or remembered our true identities. I sensed the distant threat to our Princess drawing near, and I knew we would need ALL of the Sailor Scouts if we stood any chance of repelling them. The three of us knew you were hurt by Small Lady's departure, and we doubted we could make your father understand. The three of us made a pact that we would remain focused on our mission...but I lost track of your father, and the cycle began again."
"And the Shadows have him now." Hotaru's eyes were fixed to the ground beneath her. ALL of the other girls had lowered their heads. They had fought Queen Nehellenia and Galaxia together, yet Hotaru's dad - and the fact that she had lost touch with him - slipped past their notice.
Sailor Moon was the first to step forward and comfort Hotaru. "Why don't you and I step away for a bit?"
"You sure?" Rini asked Sailor Moon. "I never should have left - "
Sailor Moon emphatically shook her head. "I should have checked on Hotaru while you were away."
"I'm not upset with you," Hotaru told Sailor Moon. "I know you were missing Darien, and struggling with school."
"But that's not all of it," Sailor Moon admitted. "I don't even remember if I asked how your father was doing after he checked out of the hospital. I was a little selfish. Some things don't change with age, I guess."
Hotaru quietly nodded, consenting to Serena's offer of time apart. I was proud of Serena, taking it on herself to cheer her up...how could I not admire her for that? Sailor Moon's transformation flashed away, and she walked Hotaru off as Serena.
Sailor Venus gently tapped my right shoulder. "I want you to go with them, Logan. The rest of us aren't Shadow targets. Sailor Moon and Saturn are."
"Please don't get the wrong idea, Venus..." From the corner of my eye, I noticed that Stephanie was beginning to stir. "...I'm not sure that would be a good idea."
"We'll keep Mina in line," Sailor Mars promised despite Venus' following pout. "But I'm worried about them too. We have strength in numbers, at least."
"And bring Trista with you!" blurted out Venus. Sailor Pluto stiffened like a rock while Venus shoved her directly beside me.
"Hotaru made it clear that I am the last person she wishes to see," Sailor Pluto conceded sadly.
"But just knowing you were there, keeping her safe...that's gotta count for something, right?" I did find Venus' words comforting...I even caught Sailor Pluto's head nodding slightly, as if she wanted to believe it. I sensed something disingenuous about the entire thing. But Mars and the others were in agreement.
"Just...be gentle, OK?" I decided then and there to place myself in them. Pluto and I cast each other wordless, but visibly discomforted, glances as we were whisked off. Mina's logic was sound...Serena and Hotaru WOULD need my help if the Shadows made a move. And maybe the fact the other Sailor Scouts didn't feel they had to have me there for security when Stephanie woke up was a good thing. I feared how visiting my dream world, seeing my past, may cloud their feelings towards present-day Stephanie...but the Sailor Scouts were always good-natured, and they still talked about trying to bring other Shadows around to their point of view. As loudly as my instincts screamed for me to go back and stay, I had to put my trust in them...
Stephanie
"Just...be gentle, OK?" That was Logan's voice...at least, I thought I heard his voice. Just trying to think led each individual brain cell of mine to cringe in agony. It was as if every thought echoed and pinged about my skull like a rabid pinball.
"Why send the Guardian of Time away?" And there was Pegasus' voice...even if that brought me no closer to knowing whether I was hearing whispers from a dream, or if I was awakening from one.
"We have to make this up to Hotaru and Logan. At least Sailor Moon will be safer with them." Next I heard a woman's voice, one I didn't recognize...but THOSE names reignited my consciousness and spurred me back to awakening.
The temptation to fall back to sleep gripped my mind when I opened my eyes to different sets of heeled shoes and boots alike...styles I had recognized from Shadow briefings, combined with tidbits from what little news I had watched in high school. My eyes slowly followed up their pale legs to four skirts reflecting different colors, then upwards to white leotards, and further on to various chest ribbons and starred chokers. I had to force my head up the rest of the way...my eyes were met by four twenty-something faces, all as unhappy to see me as if I had fallen from the sky and landed on their birthday cake. My once-dormant brain fully kicked in and dumped their names on my consciousness like a bucket of ice water. Venus. Mars. Jupiter. Mercury. A fifth word came with recognizing them, but it's one that would have had my mom ordering me to wash my mouth out with soap and water.
"Well, well." Despite MERCURY being the water Scout, Venus' voice was the one dripping ice water. I couldn't help envying her long, straight golden hair flowing in the gentle wind...no curls to worry about. "The Wicked Witch of the West finally woke up!"
"I'm no Wicked Witch...although I feel like someone dropped a house on my head TWICE!" The room went spinning when I tried to prop myself off the ground. Worse than the morning after Martina introduced me to beer pong at her thirteenth birthday party...not that I ever thought the moment was something to boast about.
"SUPER MOON CRISIS POWER!" I nearly fell backwards on my head another time when I heard Sailor Mini Moon's voice...and then the Sailor Scout in all-pink herself returned from the shadows. Confirming my earlier suspicions, Diana herself strutted alongside her true master. And the kitten remembered my earlier refusal to coddle her...nothing hurt like having a deceptively cute little kitty paint crosshairs on you with her red eyes.
Sailor Mini Moon's eyes widened at my fearful reaction to seeing her again. She hadn't matched my face with the Shadow from the hospital. At least I had that going for me, though I had to wonder why they were so adored by most of the public if they treated other strangers with THIS level of hostility. Sailor Mini Moon had one of the Space Time Keys that Alyssa needed to "borrow" to corroborate the Kinmokuan fugitive's story...but I dared not make a move while she was flanked by so many other Scouts. Besides, even if I somehow managed to snatch her key, we had no idea how to use it. Maybe it was a place to start...I wouldn't need to steal it if we could see eye-to-eye on at least one thing...
"You're not all about to introduce yourselves, are you?!" My nervous laugh betrayed whatever composure Alyssa would have wanted me to maintain in this situation. "We'd be here all day - "
"You know the only other people who don't appreciate our routines? SHADOWS!" Sailor Venus opened up with a growl. And there's what Alyssa would call Sailor Scout logic.
"I promised him the rest of us would be in charge." The crimson-clad Sailor Scout pushed the big-mouthed blonde off to the side. "So lay off her a bit."
"You said something about making things up to Logan earlier. Did you mean that?" I asked with some hesitancy. They may have started off using him, but...could the Sailor Scouts really have cared about him after all? Was there any chance that we might unravel the indoctrination pushing them to restore the Moon Kingdom at all costs?
If there was any hope of the latter, Sailor Mars hid it behind harsh and sour eyes. "We know you've used him before. We're not giving you another chance to!"
Again...like Hotaru, they acted like they knew me from somewhere. "Did...Logan talk about me before?"
"We found a couple things out on our own." The Sailor Scout in green evasively answered my questions. "We had a few things we wanted to say before we get to business."
"This is why you sent him away?" I heard Pegasus' echoing voice question their motives, just as I had back at the hospital, but his image was nowhere to be seen this time. What kind of relationship did he have with them? They had turned to him for help in combat, yet he sounded more like their voice of reason. Though it also sounded like, more often than not, his words fell on deaf ears.
"Logan is so considerate and thoughtful..." Mars spoke with a much softer tone this time, even as she failed to address Pegasus' last question. "Even when you're the absolute worst to him, even when you kick him to the curb after he tries to help, he always comes back..."
That was true about him. I knew that myself. I had been warned the Sailor Scouts were expert manipulators, but Mars spoke as if she meant what she said.
"There aren't many people like him or Sailor Moon, yet they always look for the best in everyone," Sailor Jupiter added. Her voice rose in volume the further she continued, and the hostility they had shown me before crept back steadily. "But we know it only takes a few scumbags like your puppetmasters to destroy everything they're building!"
They must have meant Crystal Tokyo. That would mean the Shadows' allegation was true...Sailor Moon really was plotting to remake the world in her own image. But I couldn't believe Logan could know what they were planning and willingly climb aboard. That wasn't the Logan I knew. Whatever he may have said about me, they hadn't drowned, electrocuted, or incinerated me yet...that meant I still had a chance. "Coming here was my choice. In fact, I'm probably going to be in a lot of trouble when I get back - "
"If you escaped from them, why would you want to go back to them? Nobody's asked you to spy for us!" Sailor Mini Moon asked with a judgmental tone.
"Wait! What if Doctor Tomoe hid some sort of distress code in the letters he sent Hotaru?" Sailor Mercury proposed. She spoke with an opulent accent that distinguished her from the others. "Too bad Hotaru took those letters with her, I could put them through a number of ciphers later!"
"The content of those letters, Mercury!" Sailor Jupiter argued. "They play right into what the Shadows have been trying to do with us since day one!"
"Tomoe had no ulterior motive!" I swore. "He started writing them years ago! Alyssa didn't even know he gave them to me - "
"You're on a first name basis with the lead Shadows?!" For all her earlier passive-aggressiveness, Sailor Venus was transparently shocked this time. All of them shared her bewildered look, as if they had been so sure I must be some kind of captive.
"Pardon us for being a little suspicious." Sailor Jupiter crossed her arms. At least she was trying to maintain some measure of civility. "We already caught that psycho skulking around what's left of the place Doctor Tomoe used to work, now you show up with his letters? Timing's a little convenient."
Alyssa was surely awake by now - and likely planning a long Svetlana tirade before dumping me back in the States - but hearing Sailor Jupiter blurt out that she was a menace still made my blood boil. "She told me about your latest run-in. I can't compare him to the last Spymaster, but she's no villain!"
"Listen to me, Stephanie." Sailor Mercury raised a finger to one of her earrings, and a previously-invisible visor fizzled away from the top half of her face. "You've been brainwashed. The Shadows tried to do the same thing with my boyfriend and another friend of ours - "
"Alyssa never brainwashed me! And no, she didn't brainwash Tomoe either before you ask!" I snapped back defensively. Mercury's mouth remained hanging open.
"Please, just listen..." I finally got a glimpse of a miniature alicorn's peeking from inside a child-sized, burgundy-colored backpack. It was Pegasus...albeit much smaller than before, somehow. "This is getting out of hand."
"At least one of you is trying," I mumbled to myself. "I don't know what happened with your friend Melvin, but Alyssa ASKED us to work for her, and we said yes!"
All traces of emotions conflicting with each other drained from every single one of their faces. Now their blank stares matched their uniformity. I stood there, nagged by the knowledge I had omitted PART of the truth to make my point. Doctor Tomoe didn't know the Sailor Scouts were our enemies, or that the daughter whose redemption he so desperately yearned for was one of them. If the Sailor Scouts had known that...
"You said 'us'." Sailor Mars addressed me more bluntly this time. She had caught my earlier slip.
"There's no hiding it now." I'd have to watch my emotions more carefully in the future...if I still had one with the Shadows after today. But if I was destined to face retribution for today, at least I would know I tried to defuse the entire situation. I still had a chance to save Logan. I closed my eyes and willed for the dark shards embedded deep within my skin to be fully visible...something I rarely wished for. Not a single one of them, for all their misgiving towards me, had suggested I might be a Shadow myself. They were certain that I had been coerced somehow, as if they believed all Shadows were twisted beings concealing their faces beneath hoods. All except Logan, anyway. Maybe they just needed to see another human face underneath...
"Stephanie..." Pegasus was the only one to respond, and not with the appraisal I had hoped for. Not a single pair of eyes were normally sized, and not a single mouth was left hinged. It was not as if I had expected everyone to join hands with me and sing right away...but every single one of them - from the tween in pink on one side to the Tower of Jupiter on the other - had backed away from me, as if they were about to run off screaming like Kindergartners.
"How could you do this to Logan?!" Sailor Venus cried out as if someone had stabbed her in the heart. "Seeing you under the mistletoe with him was bad enough, but you're actually one of the people who wants him DEAD?!"
"Under the mistletoe?! Okay...I don't know what you think happened back there, but I don't want to see him hurt any more than I want to believe you do!" Under the mistletoe?! From a Sailor Scout?! What kind of relationship did Logan have with them?!
"How can we believe anything you say to us now?!" Sailor Mercury's icy stare chilled whatever hadn't already been frozen by us standing outdoors. "Brainwashing, torture, kidnapping...what kind of person would defend what the Shadows do?!"
"She's not a real Shadow!" The kitten finally spoke up in a high-pitched voice. The Shadows had told me to expect talking cats, but it was still unsettling to see. "She's one of the impostors slandering our future King and Queen!"
"So what the Shadows said about Crystal Tokyo is true, too?!" The Sailor Scouts answered my question by narrowing their eyes. "I thought you might actually care what happens to Logan. Was Sailor Moon's ditzy little I-can-barely-control-my-own-team act part of her play to make everyone think she's a sweetheart?"
Sailor Venus pointed straight at me. "Now you're trash-talking our Moon Princess too! We didn't want it to go this far, but we won't stand for any of this!"
"This is NOT what Sailor Moon or Charon would want!" Pegasus' voice rang clearer than I had heard it before, even through his miniscule projection. "Mini Moon, talk them out of this! Please..."
Sailor Mini Moon kneeled down in front of her backpack. "This is for Logan and Hotaru, Pegasus. I'm sorry..." Mini Moon reached for the zipper and pulled the backpack shut over the unicorn's image.
Sailor Jupiter widened her legs and arms into a fighting stance. She balled her gloved hands into fists and sent electricity surging through them. "We're rescuing Doctor Tomoe and putting an end to Alyssa's reign of terror once and for all! You say he's one of your friends?! TELL US WHERE HE IS AND WE'LL ASK HIM OURSELVES!"
"I CAN'T! Alyssa's my friend too!" I willed my Shadow robes into form and made a dash for the treeline, but then I heard "Venus Love Chain Encircle!" Her chain whizzed past me and pulled a smaller tree down on top of me, tangling me in its branches.
"Shine Aqua Illusion!" A wave of ice water froze me in place before I could teleport away. The Sailor Scouts dashed around and leaped into the trees, watching my attempts to disentangle myself as if they were vultures circling in the skies above. The various twigs and branches held me firmly in place, as if nature itself were punishing me for every slight from every Shadow done to a Sailor Scout. And for Logan...what Mars had said...he wasn't here now, and it was all my own fault...
"No wonder Alyssa hate you!" I screamed as I tussled in vain to get away from them. "YOU'RE the ones hunting us but you still act like you're the victims in all this!"
"We were right to handle this ourselves!" hissed Sailor Mars. "Though after seeing the way you treated Logan for ourselves, we should have pegged you for being a full-fledged member of the bully brigade a lot sooner!
How could they have SEEN my past with Logan?! "Whatever you think you "saw", you don't know ANYTHING about me or Alyssa!"
"Oh yeah?" Sailor Mini Moon taunted me from her branch above. "I just remembered what your real name is! Sveti Yeti, hideous monster on the inside!"
Nothing stung like hearing a Sailor Scout - one I didn't want to hurt before - take the name that my mother had given me and spit it back at me as an insult.
"I think the name fits! The Shadows only see friendship as a big glowing weak spot!" Sailor Mars dripped extra venomous words on me from above. "So for Sailor Moon, Charon, and every other life the Shadows have ruined..."
"WE SHALL PUNISH YOU!"
To Be Continued
A/N: (3/29 update) After receiving some early feedback, I realize I could have done a better job polishing the first half of the chapter and I tried to make the ending less heavy-handed...but I stand behind my premise. That was still a darker ending than even I had planned for, and I'm the one who wrote it! A friend recently asked me if the Sailor Scouts hated the Shadows. I answered no...but I'm beginning to doubt that myself. "Sveti Yeti" had been on the books for a while, though the "ugly on the inside" meaning of it only came with this chapter - it began as a light hearted, manic Mina moment! But her jealousy - and everyone else's insecurity over their past treatment of Logan/Hotaru's grief over losing her father - spiraled into something truly ugly...at least, in Stephanie's eyes. I had a method behind the madness though:
I did my research - I've been fortunate in that I still have DiC/Cloverway episodes to watch - all of them :) In fact, the whole premise of SoSM came with seeing the Sailor Scouts weren't the endlessly forgiving, naively compassionate all the time girls I tended to remember them through my nostalgia. They could be fairly inconsistent with their grief AND treatment of brainwashed (in this case, "brainwashed") enemies. I found this was true with the original Japanese version too - Usagi's determination to destroy Katarina, healing her only after Minako BEGGED Usagi to spare her, comes to mind right away. Even going into the rough draft of this chapter, I doubted that the girls could become fully hostile towards Stephanie. But on a hunch, I went back to episodes near the end of first season and found the Sailor Scouts bashing Endymion as a "traitor" even though they knew he was brainwashed! I remembered another clip, where Uranus and Neptune challenged the Sailor Moon's right to lead at the end of S...the Inner Scouts transformed and readied up to take them on in battle for "trash-talking our Moon Princess." It was Sailor Moon who talked them down...but without their moral compass to guide them, or Logan and Hotaru to make it clear their treatment of Steph wasn't what they wanted, the rest of the Inner Scouts and Mini Moon descended to a point they wouldn't listen to Pegasus. And that has roots in canon too...I just couldn't see Logan in the same position, and sadly Pegasus is a whole lot easier for the girls to shut out.
Logan's scene came from wanting to show the Sailor Scouts' descent...and maybe leave things open to a matter of perspective? Stephanie, as I hope I've shown, is not as adept at interpreting faces and emotions the way Logan and Alyssa are. It's the main narrative difference between their styles: Stephanie is better at honing on the smaller details while Logan focuses on the bigger picture. I know some of the Scouts' lines may have been just vicious - especially that group routine that came about in the final draft - but I wanted to show where they were coming from. The one I felt most strongly about was Raye telling her how she felt about Logan: that line may have been directed towards Stephanie, but I also think she was talking about herself there. Logan kept coming back to the Sailor Scouts, for all the mistrust and accusations they threw at him at the beginning (especially Raye).
I hate leaving you on such a cliffhanger, but I hope you'll keep the discussion going in the meantime...was the Sailor Scouts' distrust of Stephanie justified, or have they taken it too far this time?