Sailor Star Lights… STAGE ON!
Chapter One: Just by being here---
June 26, 2001
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Disclaimers: Naoko Takeuchi created the Three Lights and the Sailorstarlights. I'm borrowing them for now, but I'll return them when I'm done (like a movie rental). For those who picked this fic, arigato gozaimasu, minna-san. This story is my way of explaining how Seiya, Taiki, and Yaten Kou became famous idol singers.
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Seiya felt a warm light pass over his shivering body. In his sleep, it made him smile, as it brought him to a safe place. But then this warmth vanished, and he felt steely golden eyes glaring down at him. The gaze suffocated him and he gasped tensely, trying to hold on to his last breath of oxygen. He shook himself and slowly opened his eyes and sat up on his aching legs. There were dark trees that surrounded him, and he bent his wrist to feel the cool, dewy grass on the back of his hand. In the near distance, the moon's rays were trying to break through the thick fog above him. A cool breeze blew towards him, making Seiya curl his arms reflexively across his chest. He looked down quizzically and realized…
"Where are my clothes?" Seiya clutched himself protectively, suspiciously eyeing the forest for any signs of peeping human life. "Yaten! Taiki!" He called out nervously in all directions. For a while there was an awkward silence as Seiya tried to stand up and cover himself, and falling over all at once. He heard someone moan his name, "Seiya…" followed by tight coughing. That deep intellectual voice had to be Taiki's! Seiya began to crawl over to the rasping sounds, and saw a slender hand reach out from a bundle of clovers. Seiya knelt over the hand and saw his friend struggling in the thick bundles. He pulled up on the hand and ripped Taiki free from the monstrous hold. For a moment, he didn't speak, and his eyes seemed to glaze over Seiya as though he was concentrating on one of Seiya's witty remarks. Seiya became a little frightened.
"Taiki! Say something!" Seiya grappled his shoulders and shook him violently. Taiki turned his head away and spat out some clover. Taiki looked down at his nakedness nonchalantly and rolled his hands over, "Our clothes must have burned up when we entered the atmosphere."
"Why didn't we burn up?" Seiya wondered.
"We must have come down as shooting stars." Taiki looked back at the hole that Seiya had lifted him from and pointed to the tiny smoking vapors emitting from the ground. They had definitely crashed landed into Earth. "And we must have been lying here for a while though, because the plants grew on top of us."
"Hey Seiya, aren't you going to help me over here?" That had to be Yaten. He emerged from a nearby pile of leaves like a drowning person seeking air and his face and hair were plastered with wet leaves. He smoothed down his blond fringe and peeled off the leaves like it was all apart of his secret plan to show off his survival skills. Seiya and Taiki chuckled at him.
"As soon as we get some designer wear, I'll be ok… ack! What the hell happened to me? I'm a man!" Yaten checked himself over and grumbled, "When I was a girl, I had the coolest clothes and now I can't accessorize at all!" This made the two boys laugh even harder. Yaten was the most easy-going of the three, and he knew quite a lot about personal grooming, but he probably was the most arrogant and boisterous of the bunch. This put Seiya and Taiki on edge sometimes, but they loved him just the same.
"It's nothing new, Yaten. During our journey here, we must have chosen this form."
"As men, we might attract women better!" Seiya said enthusiastically.
"That seems to be the thing here on Earth." Yaten mumbled in response. He traipsed through his leaf pile and hurried over to his friends. He hugged his arms and chattered through his teeth; "I hate being cold. I need something to wear. I'm also hungry." His stomach rumbled vehemently.
"We'll get to that as soon as we figure out where we are." Taiki looked around him then tilted his head towards the sheltering canopy of the trees.
The boys perked up as they heard the sudden sound of twigs breaking. A dark green hat emerged from the shadows of the trees, followed by a park ranger uniform. At first, the ranger was quite surprised to see three naked teenage boys congregating in the forest when he was used to discovering poachers and ordering them off the grounds. He scanned his flashlight over their eyes and said sternly,
"Every year I see boys like you in here. You think it's fun to have your little orgies in this beautiful forest, we'll it's not funny at all. Someone's liable to be hurt from all of this."
He slowly began to advance towards them, when Seiya stood up and answered timidly that they were lost and starving and they didn't mean to fall into his nature preserve. But the park ranger couldn't make sense of Seiya's Kinmokusei language as Seiya profusely apologized and bowed his head several times, which made the park ranger suspect other things. He grasped Seiya's neck with his gloved hand and held him tightly, catching the intoxicating aroma of his olive-scented hair. Seiya's pupils dilated rapidly as the flashlight shined in his eyes.
"Are you on drugs, boy?" the park ranger lowered his voice and knit his brow. Seiya tried to shake his head, not quite sure what was being asked, but the man's tone of voice depicted something serious and dangerous. The man let go of his grasp and Seiya stumbled back, rubbing his neck gingerly. The man had left deep red marks on his skin, and they were painful. The park ranger suddenly turned heel and dashed off. The three boys looked at each other, puzzled.
"That man might call the police on us!" Taiki whispered to his companions.
"That means we better make like a pizza truck and roll outta here!" Seiya looked down at Yaten and Taiki. Yaten rolled his eyes at Seiya as they sprinted away, "Pizza truck?"
"Hey, I smell Earth food nearby!" Seiya pointed ahead of him. The boys tried to keep up with each other, but Yaten kept stopping and leaned against the trees, gasping for air. "I hate jogging," he panted. Taiki and Seiya knew that their little Yaten hated getting sweaty, but there was no time for his complaining. Quickly, they slung his arms over their shoulders and acted like his crutch. As they ran, Taiki brushed the low hanging branches from his face, for he was the tallest of the three, and could see in the distance what Seiya was talking about. "Look!" Taiki said softly, and pointed to a clearing in the forest. They knelt behind a protective wall of bushes and spotted what looked like a campsite. Yaten elbowed Seiya to have a peek, but Seiya was eager to see, and soon they started fighting. They wrestled each other to the ground; then Taiki hushed them. He took another look, it was a campsite all right, but it was a campsite of women! They seemed to have taken a large vehicle, and had set up "camp" or a bundle of tents. It was still early into the night, so only a few of them were asleep. Taiki blushed as he noticed one woman with deep red hair… 'Hey! he thought, he felt a little strange. He was blushing because of a woman, and a feeling he could not remember suddenly swept over him and made him shivered.
"Taiki, what's wrong? Are you cold?" Yaten blinked from the ground, as Seiya prepared to put a chokehold on him. No, no, he said, he was fine, Taiki smiled nervously (he hadn't done that in a while) and waved his hands. Then he began to rationalize, 'Perhaps these women can help us. But they would not be able to understand us.' Taiki remembered what happened to Seiya, and squeezed his eyes. He had to think of something, or the lot of them would starve or freeze quickly. He grasped a handful of leaves from the ground and closed his eyes.
"Say, I know. We could steal their clothes from their big vehicle or their tents. Then we could steal their food. Then we could steal their vehicle!" Taiki heard Seiya propose a plan to Yaten, and they started laughing.
Taiki turned around and stared at Seiya. "That's not such a bad idea!" Seiya was taken aback, "Did you have something in mind, Taiki?" Seiya pointed to the bundle of leaves in his friend's hand. "I thought I could get some mud and make a leaf skirt." They laughed together again (except for Taiki, he was trying to think), and some of the girls heard the noise and decided to investigate. Nature will never be sure who spotted whom first, but both gave an alarming shriek.
"Oh my god!" The girls looked at the boys all over in shock and disgust, but some were trying to keep down their embarrassed giggling. Seiya and Yaten scrambled over each other in confusion and took Taiki down with them.
The boys, in the hysteria, frantically gathered their wits and leapt into the campsite. They began swiping and pulling tents from the ground, frightening the girls underneath them. They wrapped their tents around the lower halves of their bodies and tied it tightly together with the tent's cord. They felt their hearts pound in their ears as they scurried away, but Yaten trailed behind when he noticed one sleeping girl, the red-haired girl Taiki had seen earlier.
"Princess!" he shouted in rapid Kinmokusei-ese. It seemed the long search across the galaxy to find this one woman had ended before it had begun. He reached out his hands to cup the woman's, but they were cold and her green eyes just stared into his, as though she were greatly offended. Embarrassed, Yaten pulled away from her, and quickly caught up with Seiya and Taiki.
"It wasn't her."
"We can't go around grabbing women and seeing if she's the one were looking for. We have to find another way of attracting women without drawing attention to them."
Seiya perked up considerably; "We could be famous athletes."
"Only you could do that Seiya." Yaten moaned.
"We could study hard and earn a Nobel Peace Prizes."
"Ah Taiki! We have to be something that all of us can do."
"What could three fourteen year olds like us do on Earth that could affect everyone?" wondered Seiya aloud.
"We'll get to that as soon as we figure out where we are." They had arrived out of the edge of the dense forest, and Taiki pointed to a large sign reading: You have now reached the New York City Limits. They couldn't read the sign of course, but the bright lights and fast cars attracted them, and they quickly decided that it was worth checking out.
