"I am the Pretty Guardian who fights for Love and for Justice," said Usagi. "I am Sailor Moon!"
Well then.
"And I am Luna, her magical talking cat," said Luna, in a British accent.
Ami began to sway and decided to sit down. She wondered if she was hallucinating. She felt, for a moment, that she was seeing a false reality, as if she were watching television with her face pressed against the screen. She replayed her memory of the past half-minute in her mind, asking herself if the memory could have been implanted somehow, or altered (though that would still prove the existence of something like magic by itself). She pinched herself, because that seemed obligatory when you weren't sure if you were dreaming, and she didn't wake up. And when she looked at Usagi, she still saw her dressed...
...as a magical girl who called herself Sailor Moon.
"Okay," said Ami, her eyes unfocused. "Okay."
She thought of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, frequently, because she was that kind of person. She remembered Harry Potter's reaction after he first saw magic, something along the lines of 'I've learned that everything I know is false.' She remembered his surprise at how ordinary, how pedestrian it felt to have his whole understanding of the universe upended like a bookcase shoved down a steep hill. And she felt empathy, this is how he must have felt, because what she felt now was a sense of emptiness, a hole in herself where childlike wonder and bursting curiosity ought to have been.
The more she thought, the more she felt angry.
"Why didn't you just do that before?" said Ami, her gaze accusatory. "Transform in front of me, or have Luna actually say something besides 'meow'?"
"I can't tell you yet, but I promise that there's a good reason," Usagi immediately replied. She'd clearly anticipated Ami's question. "Can you accept that?"
"No!" Ami ran a hand through her hair. "It's like– It feels like you were just dragging it out on purpose. It feels like you had this awesome, life-changing thing happen to you, and rather than just share it with me like I was your friend, you went to all this trouble to use it to prank me instead! How is all this 'fighting for love and for justice'?"
Usagi adjusted one of her odango hair buns. "I know that it feels like we were just having fun at your expense," said Usagi. "But I promise you that that wasn't our motivation, and if I could have just told you right away, I would have."
"Was it jealousy?" Ami continued. Usagi's assurances felt hollow to her. She heard them, but they were only words. "Because you resent that I do better than you in school, and that your mom hired me to tutor you, so you wanted to bring me down to your level by making me look like a moron?"
Usagi shook her head. Luna studied Ami from her perch, her tail upright and wagging slowly.
And now Ami would have to start calling Usagi 'Sailor Moon' for the length of each tutoring session, she realized. Her mind rebelled. No, no, I'm not going to do that. Fuck doing that.
But that was being a sore loser. That was doing exactly what she thought Usagi would do, back when Ami thought that Usagi was playing pretend. She thought that Usagi was childish enough to refuse to admit defeat. Ami thought that she was better than that. But if she was, that meant that she would have to swallow her pride.
It was wrong, it was all wrong. Ami had been cheated.
"This whole routine, over and over again, for an entire week! Just what was the point of it all?" said Ami, her head in her hands.
"I was right and you were wrong," Usagi said softly. "Can you accept that?"
Ami considered herself wise, mature, and thoughtful. She must be, because she had read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality seventeen times. She remembered the lessons of that story, that it taught the importance of being able to lose when there was nothing that could be gained by escalation.
Lose, Ami thought. They set out to argue a point as unconvincingly as possible, so that I'd get angry arguing for what they knew was the wrong side. This is all a test to see if I can be a graceful loser.
That thought did little to calm her down. Ami's mind fixated on the image of Usagi and Luna planning this routine, stifling laughter. She imagined seeing Usagi titter, hand daintily perched to cover her mouth. She saw Luna, literally just saying the word 'meow' over and over while Ami kept denying that its significance. Her cheeks burned with humiliation.
"Usagi is being kind to you," Luna interjected. "I did find the whole thing quite funny."
Ami considered grabbing Luna and drop-kicking her out the window.
That's not going to help, she chided herself, if you're right that this is a test, then punting Usagi's cat like a football would definitely constitute failure.
She shut her eyes, breathing deeply into her abdomen.
"Okay," said Ami. "Okay, you need me to admit that I was wrong, for some reason. You gave no reason for me to believe–"
"She gave a reason," said Luna, still in the British accent. Was she affecting that for a joke, or was that actually how she talked?
"You didn't give a good reason–"
"Have you ever heard a cat pronounce 'meow' before?" Luna raised an eyebrow, her tail wagging.
"No reasonable person–" Ami stopped herself. Deep breaths.
She felt that she'd gotten a handle on the situation, the rules by which she needed to play. It wasn't healthy to suppress emotions, but there were times when the thinking brain needed the power to override.
Ami opened her eyes, stared intently at Usagi, and said, "You were right and I was wrong," spitting the words like cherry pits.
Usagi nodded. Ami sighed.
"That was hard for you," said Luna.
She's rubbing it in on purpose, and that's part of the test, Ami thought.
"It doesn't matter," said Ami.
"It does matter," Luna replied.
Deep breaths, Ami.
If Usagi was a magical girl, fighting for love and for justice and whatever, then her revealing that fact to Ami suggested that Ami was meant to help her in some way. And Ami really didn't know anything about this whole 'Sailor Moon' business, or the rules by which it worked. Maybe it worked on Madoka Magica rules and Usagi was inevitably going to die some horrible, poetically tragic death. Or maybe it worked on Lyrical Nanoha rules and she and Usagi would become a lesbian couple. It was a coin toss, really.
Ami suddenly remembered. "You called this a transformation pen?" she asked, lifting the blue ballpoint for Usagi to see.
Usagi nodded, still silent.
Which meant that Ami was probably a magical girl, too.
Which still did little to console her. That would mean that Usagi and Luna were trying to recruit Ami, but the process they followed felt silly and undignified. She wasn't excited to become a magical girl if that meant becoming the butt of a running joke.
But it was still a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and her first priority was still to Not Screw Things Up. Luna and Usagi were still watching her intently, Luna sitting patiently and Usagi fidgeting.
"Alright," said Ami. She decided to be straightforward and diplomatic. That felt most likely to be the right answer. "I have no idea how this works. I guess you have your reasons for being coy, and you may or may not tell me what they are. You're a Sailor Scout, and maybe I am, too."
She looked at her transformation pen. The Mercury symbol on the pen cap was glowing blue. "I'll call you 'Sailor Moon'," Ami said. "Just promise me that this isn't Madoka and Luna isn't Alien Cat Satan tricking me into selling my soul."
"I promise," said Usagi. "I mean, she's the first two of those three things, but–"
"Quiet, Usagi," said Luna.
Luna jumped down from Usagi's bed and walked over to Ami slowly, sitting back on her haunches and looking up at Ami's forehead. Without thinking, Ami reached up to touch her right temple, and saw the skin of her hand cast in blue light.
"It worked," Luna said to Usagi. "We'll have her test the make-up transformation afterward to make sure, but I can sense her energy. She's awakened, now."
Usagi wiped her brow, looking like she'd just gotten a passing grade on an exam she was sure that she'd failed. "Well, that's a relief."
"Before we go any further," said Luna, now facing Ami, "stand up, hold up your transformation pen, and shout, 'Mercury Power, Make Up!' "
Ami stood, wobbling as she rose. She lifted the blue ballpoint, and did as she was instructed.