A great change had come over Luna by the time she woke up. For one
thing, she now could remember a lot more of her mission, though parts
were still hazy.
Her paw didn't hurt anywhere near as much, either, since someone had bandaged the wound. Without too much trouble, she got to her feet and began the process of finding out who her benefactor was and exactly where she was.
She soon found out that the answer to the later was inside a cardboard box. Well, it was really half a box that had been filled with an old blanket. The whole affair was sitting in the floor of a rather small and extremely neat bedroom, hence the bed that was taking up most of the available area.
She limped lightly around the room, searching for an exit but found that the window was latched and the doorknob too high for her to leap to with an injured foot.
That avenue closed, she decided that she should at least find out who had brought her here. With a careful leap, she surmounted the bed.
The bed was, perhaps, the only item in the room that wasn't neat and ordered. The blue haired girl in the middle of it seemed to have wrestled the sheets to a standstill before going to sleep.
After a few seconds of examination, Luna reached a conclusion.
"This girl may be the one I'm looking for. She's radiating some strange energy, but it's not malevolent." Luna had taken to muttering to herself when she was alone, a bad habit, but not one that was easy to break.
Briefly, she considered waking the girl and having a long talk. Maybe even getting some answers about what the energy emanations were, but discarded the idea in favor of a "wait and see" attitude. And some more sleep.
Mizuno Ami awake early, as usual. She stretched and yawned lethargically, allowing herself a moment's laziness before launching into the day.
Quickly and methodically, she made her bed and gathered her school clothes before taking a moment out to check on the stray she had picked up the night before. To her satisfaction, the cat seemed to be resting comfortably.
With professional precision, she stripped off the old bandage, cleaned the wound again, and applied a new one.
"There, that's better." The cat, for her part, just watched intently as she went about her task, almost as if she knew what was going on.
Ami admired her handiwork for a second. "We'll have to see about finding your owner soon. You're far too pretty to be a stray." The cat started purring. "My, and so intelligent, too. If I didn't know better, I'd almost swear that you could understand every word that I say."
Usagi and Serenity, meanwhile, were having a bad morning. Naru hadn't shown up to walk to school with them and they walking alone, locked into an internal argument.
Sore and bruised from last night's fighting, Usagi wasn't in the mood for "Drill Sergeant Serenity" and her constant lectures on how she should act. Things came to a head when she complained one too many times about how much her back hurt.
//That's it!// Serenity announced. //You are far too out of shape. You're going to be having regular training sessions starting today. There is no way you should be this tired after such a short fight.//
//Hey, I don't want to be fighting in the first place!// Usagi snapped back. Her annoyance had been growing for a couple days, but was only now beginning to override her normal good nature. //I am NOT going to start any "training program" that you happen to dream up. This is MY life, dammit.//
//I am just trying to make your life easier,// Serenity growled. //If you spend just a few hours a week working on your skills, battles will be much easier for you and you won't get hurt as much.//
//Don't you get it? I don't plan on fighting anything! I don't want to be a stupid superhero! The only reason that I did anything last night was to protect Naru-chan.//
//You don't have a choice. You have to fight.//
//Like hell I do! I'm making my choice right now. I'm not going to go along with anything.//
//You can't do that. If you refuse to fight, they'll end up hurting someone you care about, like Naru. Like your mother.//
//That's low. Bringing my mother into this. But that doesn't matter to you, does it? All you care about is getting me to fight your stupid little war. Listen to me: I DON'T WANT TO FIGHT. Got that?//
//Don't you remember the fall of the Silver Millennium? Do you remember what they did? What it was like? Just because you won't fight them doesn't mean that they will stop attacking. Without you to stand in their way, they will win this time. Millions upon millions were killed in the last war, and they didn't win. What will it be like this time? How many billions will they kill?//
//Let someone else do the fighting!//
Serenity sighed mentally. //Okay, I know how you feel. I felt that way too, once.// Her voice seemed weaker now, bereft of it's earlier anger. //But believe me, if you don't take responsibility for this war, if you don't accept the fact that YOU are the one that has to fight it, the results could be terrible.//
//I still don't see why I have to be the one.//
//When I first became Sailor Moon, I didn't know that I was the Moon Princess as well. I always thought that I was just doing the job till she showed up and took over. Luna tried to get me to take things seriously, but I didn't. So much happened... so much pain...// She trailed off sadly.
//But that was you, this is me.//
//We're the same? Don't you see that? I want you to do what I never would. I want to spare you that pain! Please, just listen to me.//
//I can handle myself.//
Serenity was silent for a long moment. //I hope you can forgive me, but I won't let you make the same mistakes that I did. I tried to handle it by myself...//
//What are you going to do?// Usagi asked, more than a little worried.
//I'm going to show you how things worked out for me.// Serenity reached inside herself and latched onto the memories of the battle she had waged against the Dark Kingdom in her own life and began to spin them steadily into Usagi's mind. She took particular care to point out her mistakes, as she had done many times in her own recollections.
She had already vowed that Usagi was to have the final choice in anything like this, but she couldn't let her make that decision without knowing what the consequences would be if she chose a path similar to the one Serenity had tried to take. And so she spun the memories.
On and on they went, Usagi had stopped walking and now just stared into space, transfixed by the images and sounds that flooded her. Mistake after mistake, error after error. All of Serenity's misjudgements were spelled out before her. Every misstep, every lapse in discipline. Right up to the final battle... and death. Horrible, horrible death.
Surrounded by the stench of it, the worst, most terrifying part of it all was the firm, cold knowledge that this was all her fault. She had put being a normal girl ahead of the lives of her friends... her loved ones. She had killed them as surely as their enemies had.
These last visions were too much and Usagi tried to break free from Serenity's control. To flee this terrible parade of death and mistakes. But she couldn't. Serenity was determined to finish what she had begun and held Usagi's mind firmly.
As the last memory faded out, she quickly moved to blur Usagi's recollections of the more gruesome scenes, leaving her with only the memory of her revulsion at something that had happened to Serenity. The whole thing was probably a bad idea, but it was an act of desperation.
//Now do you understand? Do you see why you can't just walk away? What will happen?//
//Y..Yes,// Usagi replied unsteadily.
Serenity sighed. She was really beginning to hate herself for ruining Usagi's innocence, but what other choice did she have? At this rate, she had another three or four years, tops, before she was either dead or was forced to go "all the way" and become the Neo-Queen. At least, maybe this way, she could trade away her innocence in small parcels and make it last a little longer.
It had to be better than facing the Ice. Anything would be better than that.
Ami's walk to school was much more sedate, if no less important to future events. Behind her, unseen, Luna stalked quietly. It had been a rather difficult maneuver to slip out the door without being seen, but she had managed it.
Now she was stealthily following Ami in hopes that a chance to reveal herself would arise. As they arrived at school, she secreted herself in a tree with a good view of the entrance and prepared to wait. After a while, other students started wandering into the building.
Some time after she had settled in, a blond girl with a vaguely familiar hairstyle trudged despondently into the courtyard. She was obviously late, as the courtyard was totally deserted, but she didn't seem to care. It was almost as if she had bigger things to worry about.
Luna snapped herself out of her musings. She wasn't here to worry about the blond girl, even though she could swear that she had seen that double bun hair style before... somewhere... anyway, she was here to watch the blue haired girl.
Watch and wait for something to happen. She didn't know what that something was, yet, but was sure she would know it when she saw it.
Ami, for her part, had the feeling that someone had been following her, but every time she turned around, there was no one there. Eventually she decided to ignore it and get on to class. Time was wasting.
She found her seat in the empty room and almost immediately immersed herself in a text on advanced particle physics. Over the next half hour or so, students slowly drifted in, and she was forced to stop her reading as class started.
Things went as usual, Ami watching intently as the teacher tried to teach the students some simple piece of knowledge or another. Of course, Ami had already mastered whatever was being taught, but she enjoyed hearing about it again. She was funny that way.
Fifteen minutes after class stared, Tsukino Usagi wandered in. That alone was enough to capture Ami's attention. Even for the Tsukino girl, fifteen minutes was unusual, and the look on her face showed that something serious was going on.
Ms. Haruna looked up from the book she had been reading from and moved over to the latecomer. After a short, whispered conversation, Usagi nodded her head slightly and turned to leave the room.
Ami watched it all, puzzled. Perhaps she had been sent to the nurse if she wasn't feeling well.
Either way, it was really none of her concern and class was underway again.
Usagi was confused and disoriented to say the least. The visions that her future self had filled her with had been traumatic, of course, but now she was wrestling with something else. She was trying to come to terms with the one decision that Serenity claimed had caused all of her grief.
To fight. She had to decide to fight. More than that, she had to accept it and train for it. Serenity had shown her that no matter how much she tried to run from it, no matter how hard she tried to hide herself, this was her battle.
Ms. Haruna had sent her to the nurse and she just let herself drift there on autopilot. Serenity appeared to have retreated to some unknown recess of her brain to let her mull things over. The nurse, apparently sensing her distress, led her to a quiet bed in the back of the office.
She didn't hate Serenity. No, she was doing what she thought was right, and it WAS right. It was also painful and not a decision that Usagi wanted to make. If nothing else, the memories had proven to her that Serenity was, indeed, the same person as she was.
She claimed that she wanted to make Usagi's life easier by making her a better fighter, a better tactician. Thoughts and possibilities swirled through her head for a long time, Serenity staying silent. This was Usagi's decision, she had said.
It was then that she heard the screams. Something inside her clicked and she was out of the bed in an instant. The decision to fight had been made.
The day had flowed along normally until lunchtime. But Usagi hadn't come back to class, which was starting to make Makoto worry. She hardly knew the girl, but she was nice and they were teammates now. She had every right to worry.
She looked over at Minako who returned her concerned glance. They would go check on her as soon as lunch started, since they couldn't think up any good excuses to get out of class. Naru, the only one who could have convinced Ms. Haruna that she was concerned for Usagi, was absent, but that was only to be expected after being on the receiving end of a youma drain.
They had talked over the battle a couple times and come to the conclusion that these were the same type of low-grade youma that Sailor V had fought in England. Apparently, they were the first line of attack used by the Dark Kingdom, and their tactics certainly matched.
Time drifted slowly into lunch and they wasted no time in making their way to the nurse's office. Just as Minako was reaching for the handle, however, screams rang out from the courtyard. They glanced down the hallway to be sure they were alone and summoned their transformation pens.
Only an instant after the lights faded, Sailor Venus was flattened against the wall by Sailor Moon, who had just thrown open the door to the infirmary.
Sailor Moon skidded to a stop when she heard the thump and closed the door.
"Sailor Moon," Venus began. "I really wish you wouldn't slam open doors like that." She got to her feet and gave Usagi a faint grin. "You're supposed to let out enemies beat me up, not do it yourself."
"No," Sailor Moon's face was serious. "I'm supposed to stop them from hurting anyone. That includes you."
"Sailor Moon," Jupiter began from behind her. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah," she let a grim smile settle on her face, "I'm fine. I just had to get my priorities in order. Hey, what are we doing standing around here and talking for? Let's go dust a youma!"
The others nodded, still vaguely confused by Usagi's change in demeanor, but followed her into the courtyard, anyway.
Ami was under her customary tree, eating a sandwich and reading some English novel to try to brush up her foreign language skills. That wasn't unusual, but the large booth set up on the other side of the courtyard was.
Some organization that provided school lunches was test marketing a new entree and passing out pins embossed with their logos. Most of the time, the lunches sold at school were made locally, but the demand for bought food in a neighborhood as attached to the bento box as Juuban was so low that the school was considering letting an outside company handle it. It would certainly help save money.
This was an effort to see if the students would actually approve of this company. Apparently, it was apparently going over well since there was a constant stream of students in and out of the company's booth. Of course, that could be just because they were offering free food.
The line died down after about five minutes, the company having been ready to feed everyone if it proved necessary. That was when the screaming started.
Each student that had one of the pins that had been given out with the lunches began to feel his or her life force slip away. Soon the courtyard was littered with unconscious bodies as more than half the student body of Juuban was dropped in one fell swoop.
Ami hurriedly put away her book and scrambled behind her tree. Carefully peeking at the booth, she saw the cook and her assistant shimmer and become black, scaled... things that began draining the students who hadn't fallen for the free lunch ploy.
Ami cast about, looking for a way out, when she noticed the cat she had brought home the night before. It was slinking toward her through the grass, only slightly favoring it's wounded paw.
"Listen, there isn't any time to explain," the cat said, much to Ami's amazement. "You've got to transform and fight those things before they do any serious damage to the students!" The cat jumped into the air and did a backflip, producing a blue wand. "Here," the cat said through clenched teeth, her paw causing her a lot of pain, "take this and say the words that form in your mind!"
Ami did as directed. "Mercury Planet Power, MAKE-UP!" Soon she was cocooned in light and bubbles. When it all faded away, she found herself in a shortened version of a school uniform. A draftier version, too.
She stepped out from behind the tree and shouted at the monsters. "Stop! I won't let you do this to innocent students who just want to learn!"
One of the students lying nearby, only half conscious, muttered, "Just wanted... free... food..."
Sailor Mercury shot him an icy glare and continued. "In the name of Mercury, I will punish you!"
The monster decided that it'd had enough and fired an energy beam at the annoyance.
Swiftly, Mercury dodged out of the way and came to her feet only slightly unsteady. She gathered her breath and readied to launch an attack of her own. Somehow she knew that she had one, just waiting to be unleashed.
"Shabon SPRAY!" she exclaimed. Soon the battlefield was filled with a screen of bubbles, severely hampering visibility.
"Umm... did that get them?" she asked a little uncertainly, look toward the vague outline of the talking cat.
Luna, meanwhile, was cursing herself. She had just sent the only Senshi with no offensive abilities into combat against two angry youma. "No, Sailor Mercury, get out of here! Those things won't be fooled by this for long."
Mercury, not having much experience with her powers, didn't know how to keep the attack running for more than a few seconds. She quietly slipped along the tree line to another hiding place in hopes that the monsters wouldn't catch up to her. The speech, she decided, had definitely been a bad idea.
Just as her bubble screen began to dissipate, she heard new voices shouting. "You who would destroy these innocent students who merely dreamed of a free lunch, I am the Pretty Soldier of Love and Justice, Sailor Moon! In the name of the Moon, I will punish you."
"In the name of Venus," another voice rang out. "I will punish you!"
"In the name of Jupiter," yet another voice added. "I will punish you!"
A short series of shouts and attacks later, the enemies had dissolved into nothingness.
Sailor Mercury came out of hiding as the three other Sailors walked over to her.
"Well, where is she?" the one in the blue skirt asked.
"Umm... who are you looking for?" Mercury asked.
"Luna. Black cat about this tall? Talks?"
"Oh, her. She was behind that tree over there the last time I saw her." She indicated the tree where she'd been eating her lunch.
"Okay, you three go on and get back to class or something, I need to have a little talk with Luna. Seriously, what did she think she was doing sending Sailor Mercury into battle alone." She frowned and then looked back at her companions. "Explain things to her, please. If Luna did the same job on her memories as last time, she's probably wondering what's going on. Meeting tonight at five. We'll talk later."
With that, Sailor Moon stalked off to have a little talk with a cat.
"Is she," Mercury asked, "always like that?"
The one in the orange skirt looked at her, her brow crinkled in puzzlement. "Nope. She's usually a little more relaxed."
Her paw didn't hurt anywhere near as much, either, since someone had bandaged the wound. Without too much trouble, she got to her feet and began the process of finding out who her benefactor was and exactly where she was.
She soon found out that the answer to the later was inside a cardboard box. Well, it was really half a box that had been filled with an old blanket. The whole affair was sitting in the floor of a rather small and extremely neat bedroom, hence the bed that was taking up most of the available area.
She limped lightly around the room, searching for an exit but found that the window was latched and the doorknob too high for her to leap to with an injured foot.
That avenue closed, she decided that she should at least find out who had brought her here. With a careful leap, she surmounted the bed.
The bed was, perhaps, the only item in the room that wasn't neat and ordered. The blue haired girl in the middle of it seemed to have wrestled the sheets to a standstill before going to sleep.
After a few seconds of examination, Luna reached a conclusion.
"This girl may be the one I'm looking for. She's radiating some strange energy, but it's not malevolent." Luna had taken to muttering to herself when she was alone, a bad habit, but not one that was easy to break.
Briefly, she considered waking the girl and having a long talk. Maybe even getting some answers about what the energy emanations were, but discarded the idea in favor of a "wait and see" attitude. And some more sleep.
Mizuno Ami awake early, as usual. She stretched and yawned lethargically, allowing herself a moment's laziness before launching into the day.
Quickly and methodically, she made her bed and gathered her school clothes before taking a moment out to check on the stray she had picked up the night before. To her satisfaction, the cat seemed to be resting comfortably.
With professional precision, she stripped off the old bandage, cleaned the wound again, and applied a new one.
"There, that's better." The cat, for her part, just watched intently as she went about her task, almost as if she knew what was going on.
Ami admired her handiwork for a second. "We'll have to see about finding your owner soon. You're far too pretty to be a stray." The cat started purring. "My, and so intelligent, too. If I didn't know better, I'd almost swear that you could understand every word that I say."
Usagi and Serenity, meanwhile, were having a bad morning. Naru hadn't shown up to walk to school with them and they walking alone, locked into an internal argument.
Sore and bruised from last night's fighting, Usagi wasn't in the mood for "Drill Sergeant Serenity" and her constant lectures on how she should act. Things came to a head when she complained one too many times about how much her back hurt.
//That's it!// Serenity announced. //You are far too out of shape. You're going to be having regular training sessions starting today. There is no way you should be this tired after such a short fight.//
//Hey, I don't want to be fighting in the first place!// Usagi snapped back. Her annoyance had been growing for a couple days, but was only now beginning to override her normal good nature. //I am NOT going to start any "training program" that you happen to dream up. This is MY life, dammit.//
//I am just trying to make your life easier,// Serenity growled. //If you spend just a few hours a week working on your skills, battles will be much easier for you and you won't get hurt as much.//
//Don't you get it? I don't plan on fighting anything! I don't want to be a stupid superhero! The only reason that I did anything last night was to protect Naru-chan.//
//You don't have a choice. You have to fight.//
//Like hell I do! I'm making my choice right now. I'm not going to go along with anything.//
//You can't do that. If you refuse to fight, they'll end up hurting someone you care about, like Naru. Like your mother.//
//That's low. Bringing my mother into this. But that doesn't matter to you, does it? All you care about is getting me to fight your stupid little war. Listen to me: I DON'T WANT TO FIGHT. Got that?//
//Don't you remember the fall of the Silver Millennium? Do you remember what they did? What it was like? Just because you won't fight them doesn't mean that they will stop attacking. Without you to stand in their way, they will win this time. Millions upon millions were killed in the last war, and they didn't win. What will it be like this time? How many billions will they kill?//
//Let someone else do the fighting!//
Serenity sighed mentally. //Okay, I know how you feel. I felt that way too, once.// Her voice seemed weaker now, bereft of it's earlier anger. //But believe me, if you don't take responsibility for this war, if you don't accept the fact that YOU are the one that has to fight it, the results could be terrible.//
//I still don't see why I have to be the one.//
//When I first became Sailor Moon, I didn't know that I was the Moon Princess as well. I always thought that I was just doing the job till she showed up and took over. Luna tried to get me to take things seriously, but I didn't. So much happened... so much pain...// She trailed off sadly.
//But that was you, this is me.//
//We're the same? Don't you see that? I want you to do what I never would. I want to spare you that pain! Please, just listen to me.//
//I can handle myself.//
Serenity was silent for a long moment. //I hope you can forgive me, but I won't let you make the same mistakes that I did. I tried to handle it by myself...//
//What are you going to do?// Usagi asked, more than a little worried.
//I'm going to show you how things worked out for me.// Serenity reached inside herself and latched onto the memories of the battle she had waged against the Dark Kingdom in her own life and began to spin them steadily into Usagi's mind. She took particular care to point out her mistakes, as she had done many times in her own recollections.
She had already vowed that Usagi was to have the final choice in anything like this, but she couldn't let her make that decision without knowing what the consequences would be if she chose a path similar to the one Serenity had tried to take. And so she spun the memories.
On and on they went, Usagi had stopped walking and now just stared into space, transfixed by the images and sounds that flooded her. Mistake after mistake, error after error. All of Serenity's misjudgements were spelled out before her. Every misstep, every lapse in discipline. Right up to the final battle... and death. Horrible, horrible death.
Surrounded by the stench of it, the worst, most terrifying part of it all was the firm, cold knowledge that this was all her fault. She had put being a normal girl ahead of the lives of her friends... her loved ones. She had killed them as surely as their enemies had.
These last visions were too much and Usagi tried to break free from Serenity's control. To flee this terrible parade of death and mistakes. But she couldn't. Serenity was determined to finish what she had begun and held Usagi's mind firmly.
As the last memory faded out, she quickly moved to blur Usagi's recollections of the more gruesome scenes, leaving her with only the memory of her revulsion at something that had happened to Serenity. The whole thing was probably a bad idea, but it was an act of desperation.
//Now do you understand? Do you see why you can't just walk away? What will happen?//
//Y..Yes,// Usagi replied unsteadily.
Serenity sighed. She was really beginning to hate herself for ruining Usagi's innocence, but what other choice did she have? At this rate, she had another three or four years, tops, before she was either dead or was forced to go "all the way" and become the Neo-Queen. At least, maybe this way, she could trade away her innocence in small parcels and make it last a little longer.
It had to be better than facing the Ice. Anything would be better than that.
Ami's walk to school was much more sedate, if no less important to future events. Behind her, unseen, Luna stalked quietly. It had been a rather difficult maneuver to slip out the door without being seen, but she had managed it.
Now she was stealthily following Ami in hopes that a chance to reveal herself would arise. As they arrived at school, she secreted herself in a tree with a good view of the entrance and prepared to wait. After a while, other students started wandering into the building.
Some time after she had settled in, a blond girl with a vaguely familiar hairstyle trudged despondently into the courtyard. She was obviously late, as the courtyard was totally deserted, but she didn't seem to care. It was almost as if she had bigger things to worry about.
Luna snapped herself out of her musings. She wasn't here to worry about the blond girl, even though she could swear that she had seen that double bun hair style before... somewhere... anyway, she was here to watch the blue haired girl.
Watch and wait for something to happen. She didn't know what that something was, yet, but was sure she would know it when she saw it.
Ami, for her part, had the feeling that someone had been following her, but every time she turned around, there was no one there. Eventually she decided to ignore it and get on to class. Time was wasting.
She found her seat in the empty room and almost immediately immersed herself in a text on advanced particle physics. Over the next half hour or so, students slowly drifted in, and she was forced to stop her reading as class started.
Things went as usual, Ami watching intently as the teacher tried to teach the students some simple piece of knowledge or another. Of course, Ami had already mastered whatever was being taught, but she enjoyed hearing about it again. She was funny that way.
Fifteen minutes after class stared, Tsukino Usagi wandered in. That alone was enough to capture Ami's attention. Even for the Tsukino girl, fifteen minutes was unusual, and the look on her face showed that something serious was going on.
Ms. Haruna looked up from the book she had been reading from and moved over to the latecomer. After a short, whispered conversation, Usagi nodded her head slightly and turned to leave the room.
Ami watched it all, puzzled. Perhaps she had been sent to the nurse if she wasn't feeling well.
Either way, it was really none of her concern and class was underway again.
Usagi was confused and disoriented to say the least. The visions that her future self had filled her with had been traumatic, of course, but now she was wrestling with something else. She was trying to come to terms with the one decision that Serenity claimed had caused all of her grief.
To fight. She had to decide to fight. More than that, she had to accept it and train for it. Serenity had shown her that no matter how much she tried to run from it, no matter how hard she tried to hide herself, this was her battle.
Ms. Haruna had sent her to the nurse and she just let herself drift there on autopilot. Serenity appeared to have retreated to some unknown recess of her brain to let her mull things over. The nurse, apparently sensing her distress, led her to a quiet bed in the back of the office.
She didn't hate Serenity. No, she was doing what she thought was right, and it WAS right. It was also painful and not a decision that Usagi wanted to make. If nothing else, the memories had proven to her that Serenity was, indeed, the same person as she was.
She claimed that she wanted to make Usagi's life easier by making her a better fighter, a better tactician. Thoughts and possibilities swirled through her head for a long time, Serenity staying silent. This was Usagi's decision, she had said.
It was then that she heard the screams. Something inside her clicked and she was out of the bed in an instant. The decision to fight had been made.
The day had flowed along normally until lunchtime. But Usagi hadn't come back to class, which was starting to make Makoto worry. She hardly knew the girl, but she was nice and they were teammates now. She had every right to worry.
She looked over at Minako who returned her concerned glance. They would go check on her as soon as lunch started, since they couldn't think up any good excuses to get out of class. Naru, the only one who could have convinced Ms. Haruna that she was concerned for Usagi, was absent, but that was only to be expected after being on the receiving end of a youma drain.
They had talked over the battle a couple times and come to the conclusion that these were the same type of low-grade youma that Sailor V had fought in England. Apparently, they were the first line of attack used by the Dark Kingdom, and their tactics certainly matched.
Time drifted slowly into lunch and they wasted no time in making their way to the nurse's office. Just as Minako was reaching for the handle, however, screams rang out from the courtyard. They glanced down the hallway to be sure they were alone and summoned their transformation pens.
Only an instant after the lights faded, Sailor Venus was flattened against the wall by Sailor Moon, who had just thrown open the door to the infirmary.
Sailor Moon skidded to a stop when she heard the thump and closed the door.
"Sailor Moon," Venus began. "I really wish you wouldn't slam open doors like that." She got to her feet and gave Usagi a faint grin. "You're supposed to let out enemies beat me up, not do it yourself."
"No," Sailor Moon's face was serious. "I'm supposed to stop them from hurting anyone. That includes you."
"Sailor Moon," Jupiter began from behind her. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah," she let a grim smile settle on her face, "I'm fine. I just had to get my priorities in order. Hey, what are we doing standing around here and talking for? Let's go dust a youma!"
The others nodded, still vaguely confused by Usagi's change in demeanor, but followed her into the courtyard, anyway.
Ami was under her customary tree, eating a sandwich and reading some English novel to try to brush up her foreign language skills. That wasn't unusual, but the large booth set up on the other side of the courtyard was.
Some organization that provided school lunches was test marketing a new entree and passing out pins embossed with their logos. Most of the time, the lunches sold at school were made locally, but the demand for bought food in a neighborhood as attached to the bento box as Juuban was so low that the school was considering letting an outside company handle it. It would certainly help save money.
This was an effort to see if the students would actually approve of this company. Apparently, it was apparently going over well since there was a constant stream of students in and out of the company's booth. Of course, that could be just because they were offering free food.
The line died down after about five minutes, the company having been ready to feed everyone if it proved necessary. That was when the screaming started.
Each student that had one of the pins that had been given out with the lunches began to feel his or her life force slip away. Soon the courtyard was littered with unconscious bodies as more than half the student body of Juuban was dropped in one fell swoop.
Ami hurriedly put away her book and scrambled behind her tree. Carefully peeking at the booth, she saw the cook and her assistant shimmer and become black, scaled... things that began draining the students who hadn't fallen for the free lunch ploy.
Ami cast about, looking for a way out, when she noticed the cat she had brought home the night before. It was slinking toward her through the grass, only slightly favoring it's wounded paw.
"Listen, there isn't any time to explain," the cat said, much to Ami's amazement. "You've got to transform and fight those things before they do any serious damage to the students!" The cat jumped into the air and did a backflip, producing a blue wand. "Here," the cat said through clenched teeth, her paw causing her a lot of pain, "take this and say the words that form in your mind!"
Ami did as directed. "Mercury Planet Power, MAKE-UP!" Soon she was cocooned in light and bubbles. When it all faded away, she found herself in a shortened version of a school uniform. A draftier version, too.
She stepped out from behind the tree and shouted at the monsters. "Stop! I won't let you do this to innocent students who just want to learn!"
One of the students lying nearby, only half conscious, muttered, "Just wanted... free... food..."
Sailor Mercury shot him an icy glare and continued. "In the name of Mercury, I will punish you!"
The monster decided that it'd had enough and fired an energy beam at the annoyance.
Swiftly, Mercury dodged out of the way and came to her feet only slightly unsteady. She gathered her breath and readied to launch an attack of her own. Somehow she knew that she had one, just waiting to be unleashed.
"Shabon SPRAY!" she exclaimed. Soon the battlefield was filled with a screen of bubbles, severely hampering visibility.
"Umm... did that get them?" she asked a little uncertainly, look toward the vague outline of the talking cat.
Luna, meanwhile, was cursing herself. She had just sent the only Senshi with no offensive abilities into combat against two angry youma. "No, Sailor Mercury, get out of here! Those things won't be fooled by this for long."
Mercury, not having much experience with her powers, didn't know how to keep the attack running for more than a few seconds. She quietly slipped along the tree line to another hiding place in hopes that the monsters wouldn't catch up to her. The speech, she decided, had definitely been a bad idea.
Just as her bubble screen began to dissipate, she heard new voices shouting. "You who would destroy these innocent students who merely dreamed of a free lunch, I am the Pretty Soldier of Love and Justice, Sailor Moon! In the name of the Moon, I will punish you."
"In the name of Venus," another voice rang out. "I will punish you!"
"In the name of Jupiter," yet another voice added. "I will punish you!"
A short series of shouts and attacks later, the enemies had dissolved into nothingness.
Sailor Mercury came out of hiding as the three other Sailors walked over to her.
"Well, where is she?" the one in the blue skirt asked.
"Umm... who are you looking for?" Mercury asked.
"Luna. Black cat about this tall? Talks?"
"Oh, her. She was behind that tree over there the last time I saw her." She indicated the tree where she'd been eating her lunch.
"Okay, you three go on and get back to class or something, I need to have a little talk with Luna. Seriously, what did she think she was doing sending Sailor Mercury into battle alone." She frowned and then looked back at her companions. "Explain things to her, please. If Luna did the same job on her memories as last time, she's probably wondering what's going on. Meeting tonight at five. We'll talk later."
With that, Sailor Moon stalked off to have a little talk with a cat.
"Is she," Mercury asked, "always like that?"
The one in the orange skirt looked at her, her brow crinkled in puzzlement. "Nope. She's usually a little more relaxed."