The present day.
Usagi Tsukino's bedroom, essentially unchanged since middle school, is awash with pastel color. The coffee table is pastel pink; the bedframe is pastel purple; the bookshelf is pastel green; the carpet is salmon.
The room is clean, almost too clean for an eighteen-year-old. It looks like it was arranged by an interior designer for apartment showings. It has the homely atmosphere of a daycare or the waiting room of a pediatrician, and for some reason the walls are soundproof.
In that bedroom, Usagi stands near her desk. Her odango buns labor to shorten her blonde hair, which dangles in twin ponytails past the hemline of her skirt. She wears a sailor fuku – her school uniform – and a fixed, pleasant smile.
Standing across from her is her classmate, eighteen-year-old Ami Mizuno, the girl genius of Juban. Over her school uniform, she wears a frumpy gray sweater, as cozy as it is unfashionable. Her face drips with sweat, strands of blue hair clinging to her forehead. She clutches her books to her chest like a life preserver from the deck of the sinking Titanic.
Moments ago, Usagi had told Ami that she had a secret to share with her.
"No," said Ami, with the voice of an anxious teenager who just wanted to tutor English, get paid, and then go home. "Not this. Not this again. We've been over this, Usagi."
"It's different this time," Usagi replied.
"No! It's not different! That's what you said every day for the past week! We're two chapters behind schedule because we spend all of our time arguing about–"
"But it is different this time," said Usagi. "Luna–"
"Luna," Ami shouted, "is not a magical talking cat!"
Usagi glanced at her bedside, where Luna, a black Bombay with a crescent moon on her forehead, almost seemed to be smiling.
"Meow," said Luna, sounding faintly like a woman literally enunciating the word 'meow' in British Received Pronunciation.
"That's not a British accent!" screamed Ami. "That's just her meowing weirdly!"
"It is a British accent, Ami," Usagi said softly. She spoke with deep tenderness, as if consoling a weeping child. "I've given you a pass these past several times, but you really do have to accept this before we can move on."
Ami's grip slackened like a woman drowning, her books plummeting to the floor.
"Me-ow," said Luna, in a British accent, taunting her.
Luna's meow did sound British, that was the scary part, but Ami feared that admitting that would be construed as weakness. She feared that Usagi would seize on her admission, that it would give her a foothold from which to further insist that she lived a secret double life as a magical girl named, of all things, Sailor Moon.
Ami had humored Usagi at first, then condescended to her, then shouted at her with spiteful conviction. Usagi would always start arguing this point, and always, she would refuse to offer any proof beyond Luna meowing in a British accent. It was like Usagi was trying to infuriate her. At first, Ami sought to refute Usagi's delusions, but it was like trying to disprove God to a zealot.
It would be less frustrating if Usagi's fantasies were at least original. Ami had pointed out that Usagi's supposed magical girl persona was plagiarized from Sailor V, the British pop idol and masked crimefighter who starred in their favorite arcade game at the Game Center. Usagi had responded that if Sailor Moon was a copy of Sailor V, and Sailor V was definitely real, then Sailor Moon must also be real by logical induction. Ami tried to point out the flaws in this reasoning, and her brain blew a gasket.
She wanted to scream, and did so frequently. Usagi's family never noticed, because the walls were soundproof. They were downstairs, a mother and father and hyperactive younger brother eating together in blissful ignorance. Usagi had skipped dinner, ostensibly to study. For her part, Ami had eaten a large lunch.
"Can we please not do this?" Ami begged. She couldn't convince Usagi that she wasn't Sailor Moon, but maybe she could convince her to let the topic drop. "Your mother wants me to teach you English. I know that your grades have been slipping, and I don't think that this is helping you learn. I'd much rather we just study English instead, and give you the academic help you need, like your parents think that we're doing. Doesn't that matter more to you than whether I think you're a magical girl?"
"Not a magical girl. A Sailor Scout," Usagi corrected.
A pregnant pause.
"And no, it doesn't."
Ami shut her eyes. Oh well, at least she tried.
"I think that today is the day I change your mind," Usagi said, peering at Ami over tented fingers. "Don't you think so?"
"No. No, no I absolutely do not think so, Usagi. I do not think that you will change my mind. I am no more convinced than I was a week ago, when you first started trying to convince me. You haven't moved the needle, and if you have, it's because you moved it backwards. I've never given this question any thought before, but I can say that I have never been more convinced that you aren't a 'Sailor Scout' named 'Sailor Moon' than I am right now," Ami said. Usagi probably got the point, but she threw in finger quotes just to make sure.
Usagi pouted. "And you still don't agree that Luna has a British accent?"
"Meow," said Luna, in a British accent.
"No, I don't," Ami lied. Ami would have said 'yes' under different circumstances, but she wanted to appear resolute. "I'm serious, Usagi. I'm at my wit's end here. If you won't stop doing this, then I won't be your tutor anymore."
Usagi rubbed her chin. "How about this? I'll try one more time to convince you that I'm Sailor Moon. If I succeed, not only will you keep tutoring me, you'll agree to call me 'Sailor Moon' instead of Usagi for the length of each session. If I fail, then I'll never bring this up ever again. And you'll be the one who decides whether you've been convinced, not me. Deal?"
Ami's mouth opened to agree, but something made her hesitate.
Ami really was completely certain, she told herself, but Usagi's confidence gave her a sense of unease. She felt that she might have overlooked something, that she was walking into a trap. But that had always happened before whenever Ami called someone's bluff, usually over some esoteric statistic or 'fun fact' about an animal. There was always that niggling doubt that maybe she was misremembering, maybe the sources she'd read had been discredited, and maybe Google would tell her that she was wrong. But to her recollection, that doubt had always been unfounded. Ami had learned to trust her instincts. Beliefs were only useful if you could use them to make predictions, and Ami could confidently say that nothing Usagi could do would persuade her to change her mind.
Nothing whatsoever.
Well, unless Usagi actually could just transform into Sailor Moon right in front of her. But there was no way that could happen, right?
Again, the feeling of unease. If Usagi really was Sailor Moon, then that's exactly what she would do. And Usagi was certainly acting like that's what she was going to do. Ami didn't know where her confidence came from.
Ami steadied herself. Usagi wouldn't transform. Usagi would just duck into her closet for several minutes and emerge wearing a 'Sailor Moon' costume and say that she'd transformed, and then she'd find some way to weasel out of the deal when Ami said that she still wasn't convinced. She'd find some way to argue that Ami was being irrational, that she was lying to herself. And Ami would give up, quit the tutoring job, and go home.
But Usagi had given Ami full, inarguable power to call the contest one way or another. Usagi would only win if Ami said that she was convinced, regardless of what Usagi had to say on the matter. That wasn't what a liar would do, if they knew they were going to be exposed.
Ami noticed that she was confused.
"Deal," said Ami, standing up straight and squaring her shoulders. She knew that she would win. The anxiety would go away once she did.
Usagi nodded. "Then let's begin. Take out your transformation pen, Ami."
Ami reached into her purse and took out the novelty ballpoint pen that she'd won last week from the Game Center. This was another of Usagi's fixations, believing that these pens were imbued with magical power. She refused to be tutored unless Ami wrote with it exclusively.
The pen was ostentatious and impractical. It had an ornamental cap: a hoop circling a medallion embossed with the head-and-winged-cap symbol of planet Mercury. It was heavy enough for the adornments to be real metal, probably brass, because Ami couldn't imagine getting real gold from an arcade, no matter how many tickets she'd won. If you removed the cap and stored it on the other end of the barrel, the added weight felt like writing with the handle of a claw hammer. That wouldn't be so bad if Ami could just remove it, but Usagi insisted that she not. Ami would glance at her mid-session to gauge her understanding, only to see her staring at the pen and not the paper.
Ami didn't know what Usagi was thinking. "Why do I need this?" Ami asked.
"Just keep holding that tightly," Usagi said, not looking at her. With her left hand, Usagi was clutching the brooch that she kept pinned to the bow of her school uniform, her right hand stretched toward the ceiling and her body taut like a bowstring.
She cried out:
"Moon Prism Power, Make Up!"
And Ami didn't understand what happened next.
She knew that something was happening, sensations that she could not understand and could barely describe, impressions that her mind could only process through synesthesia. There was color, a glaring, flashing whirlwind of color, and music, invisible trumpets blaring triumphantly around a human figure bathed in iridescent light.
It ended abruptly.
"I am the Pretty Guardian who fights for Love and for Justice," said Usagi, now clad in knee-high red boots, white elbow gloves, bows and ribbons, a tiara, and a miniskirt of scandalous shortness. She made a V with the fingers of her right hand and snapped it to her forehead like a salute. "I am Sailor Moon!"
"Nooo," said Ami Mizuno. Her books lay strewn across the floor.