TMC: The Dragon Nights: The Beginning
Zac was sitting at his place in the cafeteria before school started sketching distractedly. It was another picture of Goten fighting Trunks at the World Tournament, but this time he found himself sketching in another battle in the background, a black haired girl in a sailor fuku fighting a boy in green armor. The girl in the sailor fuku he recognized, he'd seen her once when he was 9. The blonde haired boy he'd never seen in his life, and he had no idea why he drew him now. Suddenly Sara poked her head over his shoulder.
"Oh, it's Goten and Trunks again, but who are the people in the background?" Sara asked.
Zac just shrugged. "Dunno, random people." As he spoke he added a couple more details, a tail on the girl in the sailor fuku, a miniature dragon perched on the boy's shoulder, and a lightning-bolt-shaped scar on the girl's forehead
Sara fell over sideways out of her chair. "That's me, isn't it?" she demanded, pointing at the girl.
Zac scratched his head. "It wasn't supposed to be, but yeah, I guess it is."
"Who's the guy in armor?" she asked, pushing her bangs away from her forehead, which showed a scar shaped like a lightning bolt. "He looks kinda like a Super Saiyan."
"I don't know who he is. He's not a Super Saiyan though, just blonde with blue eyes." He added a few more spikes of hair and a yellow glow around him. "Now he's a Super Saiyan." He looked up, and noticed that Sara seemed shaken, for some reason.
She asked, "Can I have this?"
"Sure," Zac replied, "It's just a doodle." He tore it out and handed it to her.
She folded it and put it in her pocket. "Thanks." She said, rushing off.
Zac waved at a brown-haired girl and a boy with longish black hair.
"Krys, Austin!"
"Hey Zac!" Krystal replied, walking over to him. "Where's Sara going in such a hurry?"
Austin shrugged. "With her, who knows? When we were all at a Good Charlotte concert her watch beeped and she's gone, no apology, no explanation! A Good Charlotte concert! What the Hell's more important then that?"
"A Linkin Park concert?" Zac ventured, setting Austin off on another tangent. As Austin raved and ranted, Zac contemplated the boy's earlier words, and then shrugged. Not his problem.
"It's my Birthday tomorrow," Zac interrupted.
"Don't worry, I remembered." Krys said, handing him a glittery package.
"So did I," said Austin, "I saw this at an antique store last summer when I went to Japan, and figured you'd like it." He pulled out a silver fountain pen with a green enameled dragon wrapped around it. On the end there was an orange glass ball with three red stars in it.
"Cool!" Zac exclaimed, "Thanks!" His response was just as enthusiastic when he opened Krystal's present, a couple volumes of "Dragon Ball GT" with the original dialogue and English subtitles. He tucked his presents in his backpack and headed for gym class.
The board said "go to track," so he walked outside. Suddenly he was in a cloud.
"What the Hell?" he inquired of the world in general. "This fog's so thick I can't see my hand in front of my face."
"I know, it makes finding things quite difficult." A voice replied, "Do you, per chance know one Zac Vega?"
"That's me." Zac replied. "Where are you?"
"Look down," the voice commanded. Zac looked, then jumped back, startled. He was staring at what appeared to be a miniature winged dragon, maybe eighteen inches from head to tail.
The creature spoke again. "My name is Cedric. It looks like we're going to be working together. Its English was clear, with a crisp British accent.
Zac groaned. What kind of drug had Austin slipped into his cupcake at lunch? This cannot be happening, he thought, but out loud he said, "Working together at what?"
"Saving the world from the Neo Negaverse." Cedric replied. Zac groaned again.
"Isn't that what we have the Sailor scouts for?" he asked, half sarcastically.
"They're overworked." Cedric replied, apparently serious, "especially the young woman from Vegeta. So we decided to bring in another Saiyan to help."
"There's a Saiyan sailor scout?" Zac asked, "And if you're looking for a Saiyan why'd you come to me?"
"She's a fairly established member of the team. I believe she found her powers at age ten, and she's about a year older then you. Her name is Sailor Monkey. She doesn't have a tail most of the time, but it becomes visible when she transforms."
Zac sat down in the grass. So now she had a name. The mystery girl in the fog was Sailor Monkey. Funny, it'd been a day just like this...
"Cedric continued then, breaking his reverie. "As to your second question, I came to you because, although you are human, you have in your possession an artifact that will allow you to become a Saiyan, potentially a Super Saiyan."
Okay, now this I can't believe. Zac thought, Saiyans, Sailor Scouts, talking dragons, fine. But nothing I have could be considered an artifact even in the loosest sense of the word. Except... didn't Aus' find that pen in an antique store? And in Japan of all places? He dove into his backpack and pulled it out. He looked at it dubiously.
"This thing?" He asked Cedric.
"That is it." Cedric confirmed.
Suddenly there was a scream. Cedric cursed. "Oh, Bloody! I should have known fog this thick was not natural! Quick, Zac, hold the pen up and say 'Dragon Saiyan Make Up!"
Doubtfully, Zac did as he was commanded. "Dragon Saiyan Make Up?" he said. Immediately he was engulfed in a blinding flash of light. When then spots in front of his eyes had faded, he was clad in brilliant green armor, and instead of a pen he held a sword. Almost as he absorbed this, he noticed that something else was different. The ground seemed farther away. He pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes, then froze. Since when did he have hair long enough to get in his eyes?
"Yes, yes, you're a Saiyan now, there are bound to be some physical changes. Get going, someone is in trouble!" Cedric said. There was another scream. Zac set off running toward its source. As he approached, the fog got thicker, something he hadn't believed possible.
"Hey Cedric, any ideas for getting rid of this fog?" Zac asked after running into a tree for the third time.
"Cut it." "Cedric replied. "Because of the fog's evil origin, it should respond to the light magic inherent in your sword by flinching away from it."
"I don't care how it works! As long as it does!" Zac yelled, pulling his sword though the air cutting the fog. He ran towards the screams, cutting a path as he went.
When he emerged from the fog, the change was abrupt. It didn't diffuse out; it just stopped, as though there was an invisible wall. He stuck his sword out in front of him, to make sure this wasn't the case. It encountered no resistance, and he stepped out of the fog. A girl with long blonde hair was suspended from a tree branch by her ponytails, and was apparently the one who'd been screaming. She screamed again.
"Mercury, Mars, Monkey, somebody! Help!" A dark haired young woman stood under the tree staring up at the helpless girl.
"There is no one to help you now, Sailor Moon. Your little friends aren't here. With your Silver Millennium Crystal, I, Veena, Queen of the Neo-Negaverse, will rule the world!"
"I can't let you do that!" Zac yelled, running towards the dark haired girl.
"Damn." Said Veena, throwing down a capsule. "Yoma Cat! Destroy them and bring me the crystal!" She leapt through a portal and vanished.
The capsule broke and an immense cat monster appeared, blood dripping from six inch fangs. Zac bit his lip. I should be stronger now, he thought to himself, let's see how strong! He crouched down and held his sword firmly in both hands. The monster charged towards him, jaws gaping. When it was nearly on top of him, he drove the sword upward, pinning the Yoma's jaws together. He pulled it out and swiftly chopped the monster in half. The corpse vanished in a cloud of black smoke. As he untied the girl's pigtails from around the tree, she asked,
"Who are you?"
"I'm..." Zac started. He looked from his armor and sword to Cedric. "The Dragon Knight." He finished. As he said it, he felt there was a sense of destiny about the name. There wasn't a flash of lightning or a crash of thunder, but it seemed to fit his current form perfectly.
The girl smiled. "Thanks for rescuing me, at any rate. I'm Sailor Moon. Dragon Knight. I won't forget that."
As she walked away, Zac turned to Cedric. "Okay, I'd better get to gym class. How the Hell do I detransform?"
Zac went through the rest of the day more then half in a daze. There's no way this could be actually happening. He thought, but at the same time he knew it was. After what he'd just been through math class seemed distinctly anticlimactic.
Suddenly there was a loud crash from the hallway. Everyone ran to the door to try to see the source of the noise, and Zac slipped away amidst the chaos. "Dragon...Saiyan...MakeUP!" He transformed and ran towards the source of the noise, nearly tripping over the edge of the crater which was now where formerly part of the cafeteria had been. There, a girl in a red sailor Fuku1 was fighting an immense... thing. If resembled a huge green Jell-O mold that had been left in the sun too long. The girl looked back at the sound of his footsteps and their eyes met. Zac started. It was Sara! He didn't have any time to ruminate on his discovery, however. The Jell-O mold thingy was reaching a pseudopod towards him. He slashed it with his sword and it backed off, but the gash just filled itself with green goo.
"It just heals itself! How the Hell do I kill it?" He yelled in frustration. Suddenly he heard the clink of claws on armor as Cedric alighted on his shoulder.
"I am glad you asked. You see that red thing?" the dragon asked.
"The one that looks like an oversize cherry?" Sara asked in between tying knots in pseudopodia. "It can't retract them this way," she explained.
"Yes, Sailor Monkey, the thing that looks like a cherry. This seems to be some sort of mutated amoeba, and that is the nucleus."
"What good does that do us? There's to many of these f-ing tentacle things!" Sara, a.k.a. Sailor Monkey replied.
"If someone distracts it I can run in and stab it," Zac said looking at Sara.
She sighed. "Fine." She ran around to the other side of the monster and started kicking it. It retracted the pseudopodia that were attacking Zac, and sent them after her instead. Zac charged the nucleus and impaled it on his sword. The thing gave a shudder, then melted into nothing.
"That's settled," said Sara, walking over to Zac. "I feel like I know you from somewhere. Have we met?"
"Not that I know of," Zac replied, lying through his teeth. "I'm the Dragon Knight. You?"
"Sailor Monkey." She looked as though she was going to say more, but then the sound of footsteps reminded them both that they'd best leave. As she walked away, Sara pulled out a piece of paper that looked suspiciously familiar.
Zac detransformed and managed to slip into the crowd of people pushing their way toward the crater. He quickly located Austin.
"Hey, Aus!" Zac said.
"Have you seen Sara?" Austin asked.
"No," Zac replied." Why?"
"She was right with me when we heard the crash, but then she slipped away somehow."
"She does that," Zac said distractedly as the object of their discussion came running up.
"Hey guys!" Sara said, and then she turned toward Zac. Their eyes met. She broke first. "You?" she asked incredulously.
"Yes. You?" Zac replied, mimicking her tone. Both of them cracked up, leaving Austin to wonder what the joke was.
"I managed to get down there and there's this huge crater in the cafeteria. I have no idea what caused it." Sara told the boys.
"I'm just glad it's 7th period. I'd never be able to go back to work after this," Zac said.
"Ditto," Austin replied as he looked at his watch. "The bell's about to ring. I'd better go get my stuff."
"Me too," said Sara. "Here's your picture back." She handed him the drawing he'd done earlier and he noted that there was something written on the back in her messy scrawl.
"Thanks Harriet," he said, then ducked the binder Sara had half-heartedly tossed at him. She hated being called Harriet, but the lightning-bolt-shaped scar on her forehead combined with the popularity of a certain series made the nickname inevitable. She sighed and set off toward her class. Zac started walking toward his class and unfolded the paper. He brushed off a little bit of green goo and read the message on the back; "SS meeting at 4 at my house; you can bring that dragon-thingy."
About a half-hour later, Zac parked his bike in Sara's driveway. Cedric leapt from the handlebars where he'd been pretending to be a bicycle hood ornament to Zac's shoulder as the boy approached Sara's front door. He rang the bell and Sara called, "We're around back on the trampoline!" Zac unlatched the fence and walked into Sara's backyard.
"Hey guys," he said hesitantly to the assembled girls.
Sara, his friend Hannah, and a blue-haired girl he didn't know were sitting on the trampoline; two girls were kicking a soccer ball back and fourth; and a dark-haired girl and the blonde he'd untied from a tree were perched on the edge of the hot tub. The blonde with her hair in two buns with tails blinked.
"And you are?" She asked.
"I untied you from a tree and you already forgot?"
Astonished, she lost her precarious perch and fell backwards, making a desperate attempt to save herself by grabbing the other girl's long black hair. The sudden added weight caused the other girl to lose her balance, and they both tumbled into the hot tub.
"You?" she sputtered when she had surfaced. "Weren't you taller?"
"Yes me," Zac replied, "and yeah, I probably was."
"Zac, meet Sarina," Sara said gesturing toward the now drenched blonde; "Ami," she pointed to the blue-haired girl on the trampoline who'd looked up from her book at the splash; "Raye," she pointed towards the dark-haired girl who was wringing her hair out and glaring daggers at Sarina; "Mina," she gestured toward the blonde former soccer player, they too having stopped at the splash; "Lita," the other soccer player, a tall girl with a brown ponytail; "and Hannah, whom you know already." The little brunette waved from her perch with her sketchpad; she drew as compulsively as Zac did.
"Hello, Scouts." Cedric said, "I'm Cedric, Zac's guardian creature. Where are Luna and Artemis?"
"Inside, where it's cooler." Mina replied. "Hi Zac. You're the only guy here today. Sarina's boyfriend Darien's in Colorado on a school trip. It's too bad, he would have liked to see that." She continued, gesturing towards the two girls still wringing water out of their clothing.
Sara rolled her eyes. "True. Sarina, Raye, you guys can borrow some of my clothes, if you want. Sarina, get a pair of shorts, you wouldn't be able to walk in my pants."
Sarina pouted, hating any mention of her small stature, but immediately went into the house to get some dry clothes.
"I still can't quite believe this is all happening." Zac told Sara.
Sara nodded. "I know how you feel. I still remember my first battle about... sheesh. Was it really three years ago?"
"This morning, if you'd told me that the Sailor Scouts were real, I'd have wondered which insane asylum you'd escaped from." Zac replied.
"There's one other thing I wanted to ask you about. When we were fighting that blob thing, your Ki (A/N spelled chi or ki, pronounced kigh, kee or chi, I'll spell it ki pronounce it how you like.) felt really strong, like that of a Saiyan, or an expert martial artist. It's never felt like that before, and it doesn't now. What's up with that?"
Cedric answered for him. "The artifact that gives him the powers of the Dragon Knight also shifts his DNA to make him a Saiyan. Because of the potential for abuse, the pen will vanish during times of peace, and only appears when the coming battle requires a warrior that is more then human."
"What epic battle's coming up now? We've been handling Veena well enough alone." Lita asked.
"Up until recently, that is." Ami said, looking thoughtful. "A few months ago there would have been no chance for Veena to get that close to Sarina, and the monsters have been getting harder to handle. Veena's drawing power from somewhere."
"My thoughts precisely." Luna said, coming outside. "I think she may be accessing the Black Gate, although I doubt she knows its full potential."
"The Black Gate?" Zac asked.
"You know about the Time Gate, correct?"
"Um, the one Pluto guards?"
"Correct. There are two other gates that were formed from overflow energy from the Time Gate. These Gates cannot enable travel in time, but can facilitate travel between dimensions. These Gates are known as the Black Gate and the White Gate. Both gates change emotional energy into magical energy, like Queen Beryl's generals did to crowds. The Black Gate draws on the power of negative emotions, and the White Gate draws on the power of positive emotions. Every portal formed between dimensions is formed by drawing on the one of the two Gates. For along time, it was believed that these Gates as mentioned in the old legends were merely allegories for Good and Evil, but about four years ago when Sara joined the team, we proved that the Gates of legend do in fact have tangible, material forms. These forms are not gateways or arches, as may expect, but stones similar to pearls. I believe that Veena has found the Black Gate." Luna stated.
"Then why hasn't she blown the world up yet?" Sara, who knew the power of the Gates first hand, asked.
"I don't think she knows what it is yet. I think she is drawing on its power unconsciously." Luna replied.
1 Fuku Uniform or outfit