Sailor Moon
For Love is Heat and Mercury is Close to the Sun
By: Alund of the Prophecy
Description: Masashi Itsurashii was an ordinary student in Tokyo...until a girl named Sailor Mercury walked into his life. This is an alternate reality fic, based off the North American series.
There's nothing special about me. I'm an ordinary teenage boy, 14 years old, about 5 1/2 feet tall, maybe 110 pounds, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, glasses, braces, and attending Albert Einstein Gifted School in Tokyo. I'm not very well known, having a mediocre-sized circle of friends, and I've whittled away my years doing schoolwork and living the little-known, seldom-appreciated existence that I call my own. I've never been loved, except by my parents, and have had only a few romantic encounters, each of which terminated without ever starting. I am aspiring to being an airline pilot.
I've never been kissed.
So then why did my whole life have to change? Not that I didn't like the change when it happened, but why me? Why did Fate with his twisted sense of humor decide to pile change on me? Why did those five girls save my life?
Yes, that's what I said: save my life. You don't get it, I see, so I'll start from the beginning.
It was a dark night in mid-April. My parents were out at a conference of City Hall to protest the building of a power plant in our area, so I was home alone for the umpteenth time. I like being home alone. It gives me time to sit and think about endless topics without interruption. It gives me time to wander through the empty house and drink in the silence, or to finish unfinished business. I was busy indulging myself in watching TV, when for some unknown reason to this very day, a light appeared outside my living room window.
The light was a dark green, pulsating energy disturbance located outside in the yard of my nearby school. Someone or something had seemingly lit a green flame to check their watch or something, except the flame had the intensity of a bonfire. The light streamed in through the cracks in my blinds and caught me unawares. I went to the window and lifted a slat of the blinds to see what was going on outside. In the yard of the school a tall, dark, black form stood, with the strange green light radiating from it. It was a huge crystal sculpture of a human form, a tall, slender woman with one arm outstretched toward the sky, the other akimbo with its hand upon her hip. The crystal was sharply cut and jagged, and just seemed to radiate bad vibes. I could feel pure evil spreading throughout the yard and seeping up to my window. It's hard to explain, but it was as if the evil was a fog that was flowing over the grass and rolling over to my house in thick, black waves.
It was then that I chose to run from the window and take cover upstairs. The evil feeling was seeping into the house through the cracks and crevices of the windows and doors downstairs. I knew that going outside would be no good, the evil would be out there, too. Then I asked myself why I was afraid. What could a feeling do to me? I thought that it was silly, running in a panic upstairs from nothing. But I just didn't want to be engulfed in that fog of evil. It wouldn't be good, that was for sure.
The next thing I knew I was prone on the ground under the foot of a woman. I could feel her heels grinding into my back painfully. How she got there I didn't know. One moment I was standing upright in my stairway, the next I was flat on the ground, face first. The woman had just appeared there. Then she kicked me in the side.
The initial pain was ignored by my brain because it had to concentrate instead on the immense feeling of asphyxiation that filled my senses as I tumbled over into the dense, invisible fog of evil in the floor below. My lungs refused to breathe and I could hardly gasp for oxygen. My hands went instinctively for my neck, trying in vain to remove the invisible hands that were cutting off my air. I tried to stand and run, but I was floundering in the evil, my whole body telling me one thing: get air.
It was then that I got a good view of my assailant. The woman was tall, young, and thin, and garbed in a surreal arrangement of white and pale blue fabric that could be likened to a dress. Sharp-looking edges of fabric fanned out from behind her head and her hands were covered in long, white, feminine gauntlets. Even her hair was white. She glared at me with a look of hatred, evil, and jealousy on her face. I knew then that she was going to kill me.
With a high-pitched, shrieking battle-cry, she lifted her hands so that her palms faced me, then made a throwing motion with her arms. Streams of white light erupted from her fingertips and slammed into my body. I felt overwhelmingly cold and tried to shiver, but couldn't move. Directing my eyes downward, I saw that I was being coated over and over in freezing, hardening, excruciatingly cold ice. I was being turned into a big ice cube.
When she had finished, the woman in white lowered her arms and strode off into my kitchen, obviously heading out the back door. I was left encased in the ice, conscious, cold, and unable to move. I heard nothing, smelled nothing, tasted nothing, felt nothing other than the numbing cold, and could only see through a pale blue veil that had been cast over my eyes.
I had been left there for what seemed like hours, when I became aware of a large amount of light streaming in from my house's back windows. This light was brighter than that I had seen coming from the black crystal, and was flickering on and off in various colors: red, white, yellow, blue, green, orange, and violet. What was happening outside I couldn't tell. The lights continued on for many minutes, until I realized that only a few colors were erupting from between the blinds instead of the variety I had seen before. I saw human shadows play across the dining room furniture and its tile floor just to my right. Someone had come inside. When a girl about my age rounded the corner of the wall that led into my living room I was overjoyed to see any human beings at all. Then I took a closer look.
The girl was dressed in an outfit the likes of which I have never seen before. The body of it was a white, skin-tight, one-piece swimsuit-like affair, adorned in the front by a very large blue bow. The bow was fastened at the center by a round glass crystal, and the collar of the shirt had two large, blue lapels which were bordered by two white stripes. The bottom of the suit was a blue miniskirt, and the girl's forearms were adorned with long white gloves edged in blue frills at their outlets. The girl's forehead wore a strange gold headband with a small blue oval crystal at its center, just above and between her eyebrows. She wore knee-high, metallic blue boots with their leading edges pointed at the knee. Around her neck was a blue choker strap.
While I was still trying to make out the whole meaning of her outfit, the girl saw me in my icy tomb and rushed over to help. She called over her shoulder and another girl in similar garb appeared, only her clothes were accented in dark green. The girl in blue had short, shiny, dark blue hair and big blue eyes, while her friend had long brown hair done up in a ponytail and green eyes. The two spoke briefly to each other, desperation in their eyes. They obviously wanted to help me out, but were at a loss as to how. Then they abruptly walked away, the girl in blue stepping over to the wall, the girl in green walking to the wall directly opposite me and turning to face me. Suddenly she brought her arms into an X shape near her face, and a short, slender rod extended from her headband, pointing up. Electricity jumped from the rod into the air surrounding her, and with one quick movement she seemed to fling the electricity at me, sending it flying into the ice. The ice gave a loud, ear-piercing shatter, and before I knew it I was once again face flat on the ground, gasping for breath, and surrounded in shards of ice.
The girl in blue rushed over to me and turned me over onto my back. "Are you OK?" she asked, but I was in too much of a daze to answer. All I could think was: who are these people? What are they doing here? Why was I encased in ice? What's with these girls' clothes? A vague flash of recognition crossed my mind as I stared up at the girl holding my head up. That face ... had I seen it before? My sluggish mind correlated a fragment of a memory to the face. The nickname "Super Nerd"...
Before I could continue my thoughts, a bright flash and blood-curdling scream spewed into the house from outside. The two girls' heads jerked in the direction of the sounds, then smiles spread across their faces.
"Way to go, Sailor Moon!" the girl in green exclaimed.
Three more girls filed into the room, all dressed in similar fashions to those of the first two. Each had a different color scheme from the other. One had red accents, the other orange, and the other dark blue. The one with the dark blue accents was more ornamentally dressed than the other four. She had her hair done up in two buns on either side of her head, and these trailed long tails of her bright blond hair, which nearly brushed the floor because it was so long. Each of her hair buns wore a large, red jewel. The girl with the orange-accented dress had long blond hair that hung loose and ran all the way to her heels. The girl with the red accents had black hair of the same length. They all wore the same gold headbands.
The girls formed a semicircle around me and the one with the blond hair with the jewels in it knelt down to look at me. She asked the girl in blue if I was all right.
"He's a little dazed, but he'll be okay," the girl in blue answered.
"What happened to him?" the blond girl in the orange-trimmed suit asked.
"He was frozen in a block of ice," the girl in green replied. "We set him free."
The girl with her hair in buns seemed troubled. She thought for a moment, then turned to me and asked in a very gentle voice, "You won't tell anybody about us, will you?"
"No," I said weakly.
The girl seemed pleased about this. She stood up. "Let's go home, Sailor Scouts."
With that, the girls walked out through the front door and left me alone in the house. The one in blue took a last look at me as if she was checking to see if I was really all right before she left.
* * *
The next day at school was very uneventful, except that I spent all day pondering over whether the experience I had had the previous night was just a strange dream or not. I sat through my classes with a detached look on my face, my chin resting on my hand, my mind racing. Who were those girls? I had never seen them before, except for that one in the blue. Where had I seen her before? I tried nearly all day to figure it out, until a picture caught my eye in the hallway. There was a series of glass frames in a huge rectangle pattern on the wall by the entrance to the main office here. In each frame there was a picture of a high achiever in the school, be it in sports, academics, or extracurricular activities. There were pictures of football champs, rookies of the year, stars in the school play, and science fair winners. However, one picture among all the rest stood out in my mind and seemed to beg for my attention. It was a picture of the student with the highest GPA in the school.
Her name was Amy. She was a freshman with the highest marks in all her classes and she always got excellent test scores. Everyone knew she would be the valedictorian of her graduating year, no question about it. She was so smart she had earned the nickname "Super Nerd" among the patrons of Albert Einstein Gifted School. She had short blue hair and always wore these sailor-type dresses to school. Something in my brain screamed at me. Had I seen her before...?
Yes, I had. Last night in my living room.
No, I hadn't. That was just a strange dream.
Why had she appeared in my dream, then?
The subconscious works in mysterious ways...
I couldn't deny it. I had seen her.
No, I hadn't. Had I?
This debate was still going on in my head when the very girl I was arguing to myself over came out of the hallway adjoining the one I was in. The corner of the hall was sharp, and as she rounded it she bumped into my back and dropped a few of her things on the floor. I did too.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said.
"My fault," I apologized as we picked up her things. "I shouldn't have been standing there in the middle of the hallway."
"No, really," she said politely with a genuine apologetic tone, "it was my fault. I should've watched where I was going."
The voice she spoke with was sweet, smooth, and melodious. I had heard it somewhere before, hadn't I? As I looked at her, something inside me tugged at my brain. She was awfully cute. She didn't look anything like a stereotypical high-achiever at all. Forget cute, she was downright beautiful! Her blue hair was not flashy or bright, it was a deep, metallic blue, almost black in color. She wore a pseudo-sailor type outfit, with long, puffy sleeves and blue lapels. A big red bow was attached to the front of the outfit, and a knee-low blue skirt hung from her waist. It seemed normal enough to me, but on her it looked very appropriately worn. I could imagine her in nothing else. She caught me looking as I picked up my stuff and smiled sweetly.
"Where are you going next period?" she asked.
"Biology," I replied.
"I am, too," she said.
"Can I - can I walk with you there?" I asked in a mad rush of thought. She smiled again.
"Sure," she said.
What was wrong with me? I felt light-headed and could not seem to keep my feet on the ground. My mind whirled in a fog of adrenaline. What was it about her that did this to me? On the way to her classroom, we asked each other about our lives.
"Do you mind being called 'Super Nerd' behind your back?" I asked tentatively.
"I really don't care," she told me. "Everyone else just has to find someone to try and hurt. I don't take any of it personally. In fact, a lot of people ask me if I could help them with their study habits. There's really no trick to getting high marks. I just study hard for all my tests."
"Oh," I said.
"By the way, what's your name?" she asked.
"Masashi," I said.
"I'm Amy," she told me.
"I know," I said. "I've heard a lot about you around school."
"Good stuff, I hope?" she asked.
"Mostly," I said. "A few people are jealous of you."
"Why?" she asked rhetorically. "All they have to do is study hard, and they'll get good marks like me."
"Well, I'm not jealous," I told her. "It must be a drag having to study so long."
"Not really," she said. "I'm a night owl. I love the nighttime, so I stay out with my friends all day and study after dinner."
"Maybe I should try that," I thought out loud.
"It depends on if you're a night owl or not," she told me.
We then reached the doorway of her classroom.
"You know," I said, my subconscious screaming at me not to say what I was going to, "I never really study, except for finals. You know that big biology test coming up tomorrow?"
"Yeah?" she asked politely.
"I was wondering," I began, my mind still screaming a distinct 'NO' at me, "if you and I could get together and study for it tonight. I need a little help on some of the material." My brain continued to curse at me. "YOU FOOL!! SHE'LL REJECT YOU ON A WHIM!!" it said.
Instead, her face lit up. "I'm not doing anything tonight, so you can come over after dinner and we could study until we get sleepy. My parents wouldn't mind."
I was overjoyed beyond belief. My brain was at a loss for a curse to scream at me.
"I'll call you, then," I said.
"Okay," she replied. Then, after telling me her phone number, "See you tonight." She smiled sweetly as I said goodbye and walked off. My head swam in a pool of joy. Why was I so happy? I must be crazy. What was this feeling that kept tugging at my mind? After I had settled down in my own biology class, I realized what it was: I liked her. And I think she liked me.
* * *
That night, my parents were going to be off at another meeting, and easily consented for me to take the bus to Amy's apartment to study. They liked the idea of me being under the watchful eye of her parents, so I called Amy after dinner and rode over to her apartment.
We spent about three hours studying for the test. The first two and a half hours went smoothly, both of us adopting a no-nonsense attitude for the majority of the studying. But around a quarter to eleven Amy's parents announced that they were going to bed. Amy bid them goodnight and turned back to the book.
"You can stay up longer than your parents?" I asked astonished.
"Sure," she said. "Like I said, I'm a night owl. My parents are used to me staying up until eleven to study for big tests like this one. I always get enough sleep, so it doesn't hurt me." She looked up from the book during the last sentence, and met my gaze with her eyes. After she finished talking we sat there looking into each other's eyes for a minute. Her eyes were like large, watery spheres of blue and white glass that cast a warmth I had never felt before into my very soul. I felt suddenly ashamed and broke off to look at my shoes.
"Well," she said quickly, getting back to business, "do you think you understand it well enough?"
"I think so," I said, my eyes studying my feet with ferocious intensity.
"Then, I guess we're done," she said, closing her book.
"I guess so," I said. Something inside me didn't want to leave just yet, but my legs knew I had to, so they started moving. "I'll see you tomorrow," my mouth spoke. My brain hadn't told it to say that. I felt like a prisoner being taken roughly away from a loved one as I prepared to leave. My mind was the prisoner of my body. If only I could just tell Amy how I felt...
I said my final goodbye and she shut the door a little while later. She had taken the time to see me off to the downstairs exit. I stepped over to the bus stop and as I stood waiting cast a glance up at her apartment window. There she stood, by her bedroom window, gazing down at me, her face an expression of loneliness and - what else did I see there? Was it affection?
When did it all start? How could I develop affection for Amy in the span of one study session? Or did it start earlier? I remembered a feeling I had for that girl in the blue-trimmed outfit during my daze. Something about her compelled me to love her. Is that what it was? Love at first sight?
* * *
Amy and I met continually from then on. Every night there was a big test the following day, she and I would meet at either one of our dwellings to study. Soon, we began coming over to just do homework together. She began coming with me to our school sporting events, which I normally went to with my friends. My friends chided me for inviting the Super Nerd to the games, but I didn't care. She positively enjoyed going with me to the events. She and I got closer and closer with each outing. She even introduced me to her four close friends: Serena, Raye, Lita, and Mina. It was strange, but I vaguely remembered seeing them before. It had been so long since that mid-April night that I hardly even remembered what had happened. I had passed it all off as a strange dream. They all seemed a little uneasy at first when they met me, and I wondered why, but after a while they warmed up to me and became positively friendly. I found out later that they at first feared that I would identify them as the girls who had saved my life.
One rainy night in late May I called Amy to try and find out what we were going to do instead of going to the sports events that night. After a few minutes of thought, I finally gathered up enough courage to ask her out to a movie. Without hesitation, she replied that she would come in an overjoyed tone. My heart fluttered up into my throat. From then on, I could only think of how beautiful her voice sounded as she set the film and time.
We met at the theater nearly soaked to the skin and I paid for our tickets. As we stepped into the theater lobby, my eye caught the concessions counter and I asked Amy if she'd like some popcorn. She said yes, and told me to buy it while I got our seats. I got in line and bought a large popcorn bucket before heading into the theater after her.
The movie was a typical romance flick. Boy meets girl, etc., etc. It was okay, but Amy seemed to love it. I caught her with tears on her cheeks during the sad part and handed her a Kleenex. She seemed ashamed that I had caught her and took the Kleenex, reaching with her other hand for the popcorn bucket. I had meanwhile turned back to the film and had sent out a hand for the popcorn with my eyes at the screen. Instead of grabbing the crunchy, greasy popcorn between my fingers, I touched upon soft, warm skin.
What?
I turned to look at the bucket and instead caught Amy's gaze full in the eyes. She was looking at me with an expression I can only describe as surprised affection. I smirked a little and pulled back, letting her get her handful before me. As I crunched the popcorn and turned for the screen again, Amy very gently laid her head on my shoulder. I nearly jumped. She wrapped her right arm around my torso and shifted her head a little. I hesitatingly brought my right arm up and wrapped it around her shoulders.
She was so warm.
We sat like that for the remainder of the film, and through the closing credits as well. When it was time to leave, we reluctantly detached from each other and walked out to the bus stop. All the ride home we said nothing. She gazed out the window and I examined my shoes. When her stop came up, I got off with her and walked with her to the door of her apartment. We spoke briefly about the film, avoiding the subject we both wanted so desperately to talk about. At her door, we looked into each other's eyes one last time, then she gently shut the door. I rode home in a whirlpool of emotion.
* * *
After that night, Amy and I looked at each other in a new light. For the first time I saw her in a new way. Her beauty seemed to multiply tenfold. Her big blue eyes and short blue hair, her delicate skin and her bubbly personality, and her inner radiance all seemed to become more and more heightened with each time I thought of her. We now met every day after school to talk or go someplace. Soon school ended, but we kept in touch over summer. I was invited by her to come and help in a car washing business her friends had started. I said I'd gladly come, and set off at once.
All of her friends were there, and some of their friends were there, too. I wasn't the only guy there. A lot of little brothers had come, too. We spent nearly all day washing and waxing cars which came in sporadically. By the time the day was over, the abandoned parking lot we had used was covered in soapy water, as were the members of the car wash. We all said our good-byes as night descended, and Amy and I rode to my house on the bus. On the way home, a fierce storm kicked up. The bus was buffeted by strong winds and shook at the huge peals of thunder that erupted all about us. We nearly got blown away as we staggered up the sidewalk to my front porch. Once safely inside, Amy and I discovered that the house was empty and dark. Trying to flick a light switch resulted in nothing.
"Power must be out," I remarked.
"That storm was pretty fierce," Amy replied. "Maybe I should see if my parents can come pick me up. The bus lines might close down."
"I'll check," I said, and after lighting a few candles, turned on the small, battery-powered radio we had in the living room. The radio announcer spoke for a time about the storm' effects on power lines, but then he came to saying that the bus companies have officially closed early due to the storm.
"What about the phone lines?" Amy asked.
The radio announcer said that phone lines seemed relatively undamaged for the moment, but that would not last long.
"I'll call my parents," Amy told me. While she was using the phone, I built a fire in the fireplace and got it to grow quite large to warm the house. After Amy finished with the phone, we both sat on the couch and looked at the fire.
"My parents said that they couldn't go out in the storm, so I should stay the night here," Amy said without looking at me. I acknowledged her with a "Mmm" sound. We passed the minutes in silence.
After a while, I felt tired and decided to set up Amy's bed on the couch. I went into the linen closet and pulled out a large comforter and a couple of pillows. Folding the comforter over so that it made a sleeping bag, I laid it out on the couch and put the two pillows at one end.
"I'm not tired," Amy said. "Let's stay up until your parents get home."
We sat on the floor with our backs on the couch. It seemed to be an eternity. Occasionally I would glance over at Amy to see her gazing at the fire, the firelight reflecting off her glassy eyes and soft skin. Her hair shone a metallic blue in the dim light of the conflagration. Once she turned and met my gaze. I smiled at her. She smiled back.
Something had to happen. Someone had to speak or move. The silence on both our ears and hearts was deafening. I decided to break it. Moving over gently, I brought my left arm around her shoulders and lightly pulled her over to me. She almost gladly slumped into my arms. We both leaned over onto our sides and lay upon the ground, facing the fire. I held her in my arms. After a while, she turned around to face me. The candlelight illuminated her glassy eyes. Her head tilted towards mine.
Oh no.
Oh yes!
Our eyes closed in unison as she very gently kissed me. Ebbing, flowing, surging waves of emotion slammed and flung themselves into my mind. My head swirled in whirlpool after whirlpool of glorious emotion. I saw nothing. I only felt. Her arms and mine wrapped around each other's bodies. She was a warm and pulsating bundle of love and joy. Our souls danced with each other in our minds' eyes. Our lips didn't disengage for quite some time. Pure joy and love is all I felt for a long time afterwards.
My parents must have found us asleep in each other's arms before the fire later that night, but they didn't say anything of it. We awoke the next morning in the same positions and nearly leaped into wakefulness because of it.
The End
---
I hope you enjoyed my story. There are three others in this series, and they seem to get longer and longer with each story, so be ready to sit a just read for a long time! Yeah, this has absolutely nothing to do with the actual series' plot, but I just had an inspiration! These are based completely off the USA series. The copyright for "Sailor Moon" is held by Naoko Takeuchi, TOEI, DiC, Kodansha, Bandai, and others. I have no relationship with any of the "Sailor Moon" copyright holders and do not claim ownership of their materials or "Sailor Moon"'s image/likeness. Please do not sue me. Thanks for reading. -- Alund
For Love is Heat and Mercury is Close to the Sun
By: Alund of the Prophecy
Description: Masashi Itsurashii was an ordinary student in Tokyo...until a girl named Sailor Mercury walked into his life. This is an alternate reality fic, based off the North American series.
There's nothing special about me. I'm an ordinary teenage boy, 14 years old, about 5 1/2 feet tall, maybe 110 pounds, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, glasses, braces, and attending Albert Einstein Gifted School in Tokyo. I'm not very well known, having a mediocre-sized circle of friends, and I've whittled away my years doing schoolwork and living the little-known, seldom-appreciated existence that I call my own. I've never been loved, except by my parents, and have had only a few romantic encounters, each of which terminated without ever starting. I am aspiring to being an airline pilot.
I've never been kissed.
So then why did my whole life have to change? Not that I didn't like the change when it happened, but why me? Why did Fate with his twisted sense of humor decide to pile change on me? Why did those five girls save my life?
Yes, that's what I said: save my life. You don't get it, I see, so I'll start from the beginning.
It was a dark night in mid-April. My parents were out at a conference of City Hall to protest the building of a power plant in our area, so I was home alone for the umpteenth time. I like being home alone. It gives me time to sit and think about endless topics without interruption. It gives me time to wander through the empty house and drink in the silence, or to finish unfinished business. I was busy indulging myself in watching TV, when for some unknown reason to this very day, a light appeared outside my living room window.
The light was a dark green, pulsating energy disturbance located outside in the yard of my nearby school. Someone or something had seemingly lit a green flame to check their watch or something, except the flame had the intensity of a bonfire. The light streamed in through the cracks in my blinds and caught me unawares. I went to the window and lifted a slat of the blinds to see what was going on outside. In the yard of the school a tall, dark, black form stood, with the strange green light radiating from it. It was a huge crystal sculpture of a human form, a tall, slender woman with one arm outstretched toward the sky, the other akimbo with its hand upon her hip. The crystal was sharply cut and jagged, and just seemed to radiate bad vibes. I could feel pure evil spreading throughout the yard and seeping up to my window. It's hard to explain, but it was as if the evil was a fog that was flowing over the grass and rolling over to my house in thick, black waves.
It was then that I chose to run from the window and take cover upstairs. The evil feeling was seeping into the house through the cracks and crevices of the windows and doors downstairs. I knew that going outside would be no good, the evil would be out there, too. Then I asked myself why I was afraid. What could a feeling do to me? I thought that it was silly, running in a panic upstairs from nothing. But I just didn't want to be engulfed in that fog of evil. It wouldn't be good, that was for sure.
The next thing I knew I was prone on the ground under the foot of a woman. I could feel her heels grinding into my back painfully. How she got there I didn't know. One moment I was standing upright in my stairway, the next I was flat on the ground, face first. The woman had just appeared there. Then she kicked me in the side.
The initial pain was ignored by my brain because it had to concentrate instead on the immense feeling of asphyxiation that filled my senses as I tumbled over into the dense, invisible fog of evil in the floor below. My lungs refused to breathe and I could hardly gasp for oxygen. My hands went instinctively for my neck, trying in vain to remove the invisible hands that were cutting off my air. I tried to stand and run, but I was floundering in the evil, my whole body telling me one thing: get air.
It was then that I got a good view of my assailant. The woman was tall, young, and thin, and garbed in a surreal arrangement of white and pale blue fabric that could be likened to a dress. Sharp-looking edges of fabric fanned out from behind her head and her hands were covered in long, white, feminine gauntlets. Even her hair was white. She glared at me with a look of hatred, evil, and jealousy on her face. I knew then that she was going to kill me.
With a high-pitched, shrieking battle-cry, she lifted her hands so that her palms faced me, then made a throwing motion with her arms. Streams of white light erupted from her fingertips and slammed into my body. I felt overwhelmingly cold and tried to shiver, but couldn't move. Directing my eyes downward, I saw that I was being coated over and over in freezing, hardening, excruciatingly cold ice. I was being turned into a big ice cube.
When she had finished, the woman in white lowered her arms and strode off into my kitchen, obviously heading out the back door. I was left encased in the ice, conscious, cold, and unable to move. I heard nothing, smelled nothing, tasted nothing, felt nothing other than the numbing cold, and could only see through a pale blue veil that had been cast over my eyes.
I had been left there for what seemed like hours, when I became aware of a large amount of light streaming in from my house's back windows. This light was brighter than that I had seen coming from the black crystal, and was flickering on and off in various colors: red, white, yellow, blue, green, orange, and violet. What was happening outside I couldn't tell. The lights continued on for many minutes, until I realized that only a few colors were erupting from between the blinds instead of the variety I had seen before. I saw human shadows play across the dining room furniture and its tile floor just to my right. Someone had come inside. When a girl about my age rounded the corner of the wall that led into my living room I was overjoyed to see any human beings at all. Then I took a closer look.
The girl was dressed in an outfit the likes of which I have never seen before. The body of it was a white, skin-tight, one-piece swimsuit-like affair, adorned in the front by a very large blue bow. The bow was fastened at the center by a round glass crystal, and the collar of the shirt had two large, blue lapels which were bordered by two white stripes. The bottom of the suit was a blue miniskirt, and the girl's forearms were adorned with long white gloves edged in blue frills at their outlets. The girl's forehead wore a strange gold headband with a small blue oval crystal at its center, just above and between her eyebrows. She wore knee-high, metallic blue boots with their leading edges pointed at the knee. Around her neck was a blue choker strap.
While I was still trying to make out the whole meaning of her outfit, the girl saw me in my icy tomb and rushed over to help. She called over her shoulder and another girl in similar garb appeared, only her clothes were accented in dark green. The girl in blue had short, shiny, dark blue hair and big blue eyes, while her friend had long brown hair done up in a ponytail and green eyes. The two spoke briefly to each other, desperation in their eyes. They obviously wanted to help me out, but were at a loss as to how. Then they abruptly walked away, the girl in blue stepping over to the wall, the girl in green walking to the wall directly opposite me and turning to face me. Suddenly she brought her arms into an X shape near her face, and a short, slender rod extended from her headband, pointing up. Electricity jumped from the rod into the air surrounding her, and with one quick movement she seemed to fling the electricity at me, sending it flying into the ice. The ice gave a loud, ear-piercing shatter, and before I knew it I was once again face flat on the ground, gasping for breath, and surrounded in shards of ice.
The girl in blue rushed over to me and turned me over onto my back. "Are you OK?" she asked, but I was in too much of a daze to answer. All I could think was: who are these people? What are they doing here? Why was I encased in ice? What's with these girls' clothes? A vague flash of recognition crossed my mind as I stared up at the girl holding my head up. That face ... had I seen it before? My sluggish mind correlated a fragment of a memory to the face. The nickname "Super Nerd"...
Before I could continue my thoughts, a bright flash and blood-curdling scream spewed into the house from outside. The two girls' heads jerked in the direction of the sounds, then smiles spread across their faces.
"Way to go, Sailor Moon!" the girl in green exclaimed.
Three more girls filed into the room, all dressed in similar fashions to those of the first two. Each had a different color scheme from the other. One had red accents, the other orange, and the other dark blue. The one with the dark blue accents was more ornamentally dressed than the other four. She had her hair done up in two buns on either side of her head, and these trailed long tails of her bright blond hair, which nearly brushed the floor because it was so long. Each of her hair buns wore a large, red jewel. The girl with the orange-accented dress had long blond hair that hung loose and ran all the way to her heels. The girl with the red accents had black hair of the same length. They all wore the same gold headbands.
The girls formed a semicircle around me and the one with the blond hair with the jewels in it knelt down to look at me. She asked the girl in blue if I was all right.
"He's a little dazed, but he'll be okay," the girl in blue answered.
"What happened to him?" the blond girl in the orange-trimmed suit asked.
"He was frozen in a block of ice," the girl in green replied. "We set him free."
The girl with her hair in buns seemed troubled. She thought for a moment, then turned to me and asked in a very gentle voice, "You won't tell anybody about us, will you?"
"No," I said weakly.
The girl seemed pleased about this. She stood up. "Let's go home, Sailor Scouts."
With that, the girls walked out through the front door and left me alone in the house. The one in blue took a last look at me as if she was checking to see if I was really all right before she left.
* * *
The next day at school was very uneventful, except that I spent all day pondering over whether the experience I had had the previous night was just a strange dream or not. I sat through my classes with a detached look on my face, my chin resting on my hand, my mind racing. Who were those girls? I had never seen them before, except for that one in the blue. Where had I seen her before? I tried nearly all day to figure it out, until a picture caught my eye in the hallway. There was a series of glass frames in a huge rectangle pattern on the wall by the entrance to the main office here. In each frame there was a picture of a high achiever in the school, be it in sports, academics, or extracurricular activities. There were pictures of football champs, rookies of the year, stars in the school play, and science fair winners. However, one picture among all the rest stood out in my mind and seemed to beg for my attention. It was a picture of the student with the highest GPA in the school.
Her name was Amy. She was a freshman with the highest marks in all her classes and she always got excellent test scores. Everyone knew she would be the valedictorian of her graduating year, no question about it. She was so smart she had earned the nickname "Super Nerd" among the patrons of Albert Einstein Gifted School. She had short blue hair and always wore these sailor-type dresses to school. Something in my brain screamed at me. Had I seen her before...?
Yes, I had. Last night in my living room.
No, I hadn't. That was just a strange dream.
Why had she appeared in my dream, then?
The subconscious works in mysterious ways...
I couldn't deny it. I had seen her.
No, I hadn't. Had I?
This debate was still going on in my head when the very girl I was arguing to myself over came out of the hallway adjoining the one I was in. The corner of the hall was sharp, and as she rounded it she bumped into my back and dropped a few of her things on the floor. I did too.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said.
"My fault," I apologized as we picked up her things. "I shouldn't have been standing there in the middle of the hallway."
"No, really," she said politely with a genuine apologetic tone, "it was my fault. I should've watched where I was going."
The voice she spoke with was sweet, smooth, and melodious. I had heard it somewhere before, hadn't I? As I looked at her, something inside me tugged at my brain. She was awfully cute. She didn't look anything like a stereotypical high-achiever at all. Forget cute, she was downright beautiful! Her blue hair was not flashy or bright, it was a deep, metallic blue, almost black in color. She wore a pseudo-sailor type outfit, with long, puffy sleeves and blue lapels. A big red bow was attached to the front of the outfit, and a knee-low blue skirt hung from her waist. It seemed normal enough to me, but on her it looked very appropriately worn. I could imagine her in nothing else. She caught me looking as I picked up my stuff and smiled sweetly.
"Where are you going next period?" she asked.
"Biology," I replied.
"I am, too," she said.
"Can I - can I walk with you there?" I asked in a mad rush of thought. She smiled again.
"Sure," she said.
What was wrong with me? I felt light-headed and could not seem to keep my feet on the ground. My mind whirled in a fog of adrenaline. What was it about her that did this to me? On the way to her classroom, we asked each other about our lives.
"Do you mind being called 'Super Nerd' behind your back?" I asked tentatively.
"I really don't care," she told me. "Everyone else just has to find someone to try and hurt. I don't take any of it personally. In fact, a lot of people ask me if I could help them with their study habits. There's really no trick to getting high marks. I just study hard for all my tests."
"Oh," I said.
"By the way, what's your name?" she asked.
"Masashi," I said.
"I'm Amy," she told me.
"I know," I said. "I've heard a lot about you around school."
"Good stuff, I hope?" she asked.
"Mostly," I said. "A few people are jealous of you."
"Why?" she asked rhetorically. "All they have to do is study hard, and they'll get good marks like me."
"Well, I'm not jealous," I told her. "It must be a drag having to study so long."
"Not really," she said. "I'm a night owl. I love the nighttime, so I stay out with my friends all day and study after dinner."
"Maybe I should try that," I thought out loud.
"It depends on if you're a night owl or not," she told me.
We then reached the doorway of her classroom.
"You know," I said, my subconscious screaming at me not to say what I was going to, "I never really study, except for finals. You know that big biology test coming up tomorrow?"
"Yeah?" she asked politely.
"I was wondering," I began, my mind still screaming a distinct 'NO' at me, "if you and I could get together and study for it tonight. I need a little help on some of the material." My brain continued to curse at me. "YOU FOOL!! SHE'LL REJECT YOU ON A WHIM!!" it said.
Instead, her face lit up. "I'm not doing anything tonight, so you can come over after dinner and we could study until we get sleepy. My parents wouldn't mind."
I was overjoyed beyond belief. My brain was at a loss for a curse to scream at me.
"I'll call you, then," I said.
"Okay," she replied. Then, after telling me her phone number, "See you tonight." She smiled sweetly as I said goodbye and walked off. My head swam in a pool of joy. Why was I so happy? I must be crazy. What was this feeling that kept tugging at my mind? After I had settled down in my own biology class, I realized what it was: I liked her. And I think she liked me.
* * *
That night, my parents were going to be off at another meeting, and easily consented for me to take the bus to Amy's apartment to study. They liked the idea of me being under the watchful eye of her parents, so I called Amy after dinner and rode over to her apartment.
We spent about three hours studying for the test. The first two and a half hours went smoothly, both of us adopting a no-nonsense attitude for the majority of the studying. But around a quarter to eleven Amy's parents announced that they were going to bed. Amy bid them goodnight and turned back to the book.
"You can stay up longer than your parents?" I asked astonished.
"Sure," she said. "Like I said, I'm a night owl. My parents are used to me staying up until eleven to study for big tests like this one. I always get enough sleep, so it doesn't hurt me." She looked up from the book during the last sentence, and met my gaze with her eyes. After she finished talking we sat there looking into each other's eyes for a minute. Her eyes were like large, watery spheres of blue and white glass that cast a warmth I had never felt before into my very soul. I felt suddenly ashamed and broke off to look at my shoes.
"Well," she said quickly, getting back to business, "do you think you understand it well enough?"
"I think so," I said, my eyes studying my feet with ferocious intensity.
"Then, I guess we're done," she said, closing her book.
"I guess so," I said. Something inside me didn't want to leave just yet, but my legs knew I had to, so they started moving. "I'll see you tomorrow," my mouth spoke. My brain hadn't told it to say that. I felt like a prisoner being taken roughly away from a loved one as I prepared to leave. My mind was the prisoner of my body. If only I could just tell Amy how I felt...
I said my final goodbye and she shut the door a little while later. She had taken the time to see me off to the downstairs exit. I stepped over to the bus stop and as I stood waiting cast a glance up at her apartment window. There she stood, by her bedroom window, gazing down at me, her face an expression of loneliness and - what else did I see there? Was it affection?
When did it all start? How could I develop affection for Amy in the span of one study session? Or did it start earlier? I remembered a feeling I had for that girl in the blue-trimmed outfit during my daze. Something about her compelled me to love her. Is that what it was? Love at first sight?
* * *
Amy and I met continually from then on. Every night there was a big test the following day, she and I would meet at either one of our dwellings to study. Soon, we began coming over to just do homework together. She began coming with me to our school sporting events, which I normally went to with my friends. My friends chided me for inviting the Super Nerd to the games, but I didn't care. She positively enjoyed going with me to the events. She and I got closer and closer with each outing. She even introduced me to her four close friends: Serena, Raye, Lita, and Mina. It was strange, but I vaguely remembered seeing them before. It had been so long since that mid-April night that I hardly even remembered what had happened. I had passed it all off as a strange dream. They all seemed a little uneasy at first when they met me, and I wondered why, but after a while they warmed up to me and became positively friendly. I found out later that they at first feared that I would identify them as the girls who had saved my life.
One rainy night in late May I called Amy to try and find out what we were going to do instead of going to the sports events that night. After a few minutes of thought, I finally gathered up enough courage to ask her out to a movie. Without hesitation, she replied that she would come in an overjoyed tone. My heart fluttered up into my throat. From then on, I could only think of how beautiful her voice sounded as she set the film and time.
We met at the theater nearly soaked to the skin and I paid for our tickets. As we stepped into the theater lobby, my eye caught the concessions counter and I asked Amy if she'd like some popcorn. She said yes, and told me to buy it while I got our seats. I got in line and bought a large popcorn bucket before heading into the theater after her.
The movie was a typical romance flick. Boy meets girl, etc., etc. It was okay, but Amy seemed to love it. I caught her with tears on her cheeks during the sad part and handed her a Kleenex. She seemed ashamed that I had caught her and took the Kleenex, reaching with her other hand for the popcorn bucket. I had meanwhile turned back to the film and had sent out a hand for the popcorn with my eyes at the screen. Instead of grabbing the crunchy, greasy popcorn between my fingers, I touched upon soft, warm skin.
What?
I turned to look at the bucket and instead caught Amy's gaze full in the eyes. She was looking at me with an expression I can only describe as surprised affection. I smirked a little and pulled back, letting her get her handful before me. As I crunched the popcorn and turned for the screen again, Amy very gently laid her head on my shoulder. I nearly jumped. She wrapped her right arm around my torso and shifted her head a little. I hesitatingly brought my right arm up and wrapped it around her shoulders.
She was so warm.
We sat like that for the remainder of the film, and through the closing credits as well. When it was time to leave, we reluctantly detached from each other and walked out to the bus stop. All the ride home we said nothing. She gazed out the window and I examined my shoes. When her stop came up, I got off with her and walked with her to the door of her apartment. We spoke briefly about the film, avoiding the subject we both wanted so desperately to talk about. At her door, we looked into each other's eyes one last time, then she gently shut the door. I rode home in a whirlpool of emotion.
* * *
After that night, Amy and I looked at each other in a new light. For the first time I saw her in a new way. Her beauty seemed to multiply tenfold. Her big blue eyes and short blue hair, her delicate skin and her bubbly personality, and her inner radiance all seemed to become more and more heightened with each time I thought of her. We now met every day after school to talk or go someplace. Soon school ended, but we kept in touch over summer. I was invited by her to come and help in a car washing business her friends had started. I said I'd gladly come, and set off at once.
All of her friends were there, and some of their friends were there, too. I wasn't the only guy there. A lot of little brothers had come, too. We spent nearly all day washing and waxing cars which came in sporadically. By the time the day was over, the abandoned parking lot we had used was covered in soapy water, as were the members of the car wash. We all said our good-byes as night descended, and Amy and I rode to my house on the bus. On the way home, a fierce storm kicked up. The bus was buffeted by strong winds and shook at the huge peals of thunder that erupted all about us. We nearly got blown away as we staggered up the sidewalk to my front porch. Once safely inside, Amy and I discovered that the house was empty and dark. Trying to flick a light switch resulted in nothing.
"Power must be out," I remarked.
"That storm was pretty fierce," Amy replied. "Maybe I should see if my parents can come pick me up. The bus lines might close down."
"I'll check," I said, and after lighting a few candles, turned on the small, battery-powered radio we had in the living room. The radio announcer spoke for a time about the storm' effects on power lines, but then he came to saying that the bus companies have officially closed early due to the storm.
"What about the phone lines?" Amy asked.
The radio announcer said that phone lines seemed relatively undamaged for the moment, but that would not last long.
"I'll call my parents," Amy told me. While she was using the phone, I built a fire in the fireplace and got it to grow quite large to warm the house. After Amy finished with the phone, we both sat on the couch and looked at the fire.
"My parents said that they couldn't go out in the storm, so I should stay the night here," Amy said without looking at me. I acknowledged her with a "Mmm" sound. We passed the minutes in silence.
After a while, I felt tired and decided to set up Amy's bed on the couch. I went into the linen closet and pulled out a large comforter and a couple of pillows. Folding the comforter over so that it made a sleeping bag, I laid it out on the couch and put the two pillows at one end.
"I'm not tired," Amy said. "Let's stay up until your parents get home."
We sat on the floor with our backs on the couch. It seemed to be an eternity. Occasionally I would glance over at Amy to see her gazing at the fire, the firelight reflecting off her glassy eyes and soft skin. Her hair shone a metallic blue in the dim light of the conflagration. Once she turned and met my gaze. I smiled at her. She smiled back.
Something had to happen. Someone had to speak or move. The silence on both our ears and hearts was deafening. I decided to break it. Moving over gently, I brought my left arm around her shoulders and lightly pulled her over to me. She almost gladly slumped into my arms. We both leaned over onto our sides and lay upon the ground, facing the fire. I held her in my arms. After a while, she turned around to face me. The candlelight illuminated her glassy eyes. Her head tilted towards mine.
Oh no.
Oh yes!
Our eyes closed in unison as she very gently kissed me. Ebbing, flowing, surging waves of emotion slammed and flung themselves into my mind. My head swirled in whirlpool after whirlpool of glorious emotion. I saw nothing. I only felt. Her arms and mine wrapped around each other's bodies. She was a warm and pulsating bundle of love and joy. Our souls danced with each other in our minds' eyes. Our lips didn't disengage for quite some time. Pure joy and love is all I felt for a long time afterwards.
My parents must have found us asleep in each other's arms before the fire later that night, but they didn't say anything of it. We awoke the next morning in the same positions and nearly leaped into wakefulness because of it.
The End
---
I hope you enjoyed my story. There are three others in this series, and they seem to get longer and longer with each story, so be ready to sit a just read for a long time! Yeah, this has absolutely nothing to do with the actual series' plot, but I just had an inspiration! These are based completely off the USA series. The copyright for "Sailor Moon" is held by Naoko Takeuchi, TOEI, DiC, Kodansha, Bandai, and others. I have no relationship with any of the "Sailor Moon" copyright holders and do not claim ownership of their materials or "Sailor Moon"'s image/likeness. Please do not sue me. Thanks for reading. -- Alund