Tsukino Usagi yawned and rubbed her eyes as she walked through the door of her home, afterimages of differential equations and English tense forms dancing behind her eyes as she wondered why on Earth she had decided that she was going on to higher education rather than bowing out gracefully at the end of high school. Actually what she really wondered why on Earth she had told her friends that she was going to do it, because now they weren't going to let her back down. She knew that the future citizens of Crystal Tokyo deserved the best educated ruler possible, but when facts and figures threatened to spill out of her head, she wished desperately that there was an easier way to do it.
As she walked in, she was vaguely aware of her mother asking to see her in the kitchen and her own vague reply in the affirmative, with the rider that she just had to return her bag to her room, but she was too caught up in trying to the pressure of all the information that had been poured into her head from popping her odango off and shooting them across the room, that she missed the odd tone in which Ikukko asked her question. Luna, hiding in Usagi's bag, was paying more attention and caught it. She popped her head out of the bag and looked at Ikukko, but the expression she was wearing was utterly blank, which was very unlike her. It was enough to make Luna worry, as she had been on edge all day with a sense of foreboding that was hard to shake.
"Usagi, I think you should be careful when you talk to your mother," Luna said as the future queen of Crystal Tokyo placed her bag on her bed, allowing Luna to jump out.
"Why?" Usagi asked, sitting down beside the moon cat. "You don't think something's wrong with her?"
"I'm not certain," Luna admitted grudgingly. "She just had a very odd look on her face when she spoke to you and I've had this feeling that something bad is going to happen all day."
"It's probably nothing," Usagi assured her. "Rei hasn't had any visions, Michiru hasn't seen anything in the Aqua Mirror and Pluto would have told us if something was about to happen. I think Artemis is right and you've just been snacking on too many of Mako-chan's treats. It's giving you an upset tummy."
"Fine then," Luna said, sitting down and rearranging her fur that had been put out of place by the trip in Usagi's bag. "Don't believe me. But be careful and don't do anything foolish."
"Don't worry," Usagi assured her. "When have I ever done anything foolish?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?" Luna asked as Usagi closed the door behind her and headed down the stairs. Usagi ignored her.
Instead she headed down stairs, pausing briefly at Shingo's door and telling him to turn his videogames down. She wandered lightly into the kitchen and turned to look at her mother who was seated at the kitchen table, looking quite calm and collected. "You wanted to see me Mama?" Usagi asked, completely unconcerned, because she knew that she had passed all of her last round of tests, though only just in most cases, and there was no other possible cause of parental wrath.
"Sit down Usagi," Ikukko said in a calm, but firm voice. Usagi sat. "Now is there anything important that you want to tell me?" she asked.
Usagi stared at her mother blankly for a few seconds, wondering where the question had come from. She hadn't done anything that would get her into trouble recently and unless someone had been making things up, there wasn't any reason why her mother should either. Nor could she think of why someone she knew wanted to get her into trouble by doing so, not even Shingo, who was good enough at ferreting out the things that he didn't need to make things up, he always had more than enough ammunition at hand whenever he needed it. Though it did jog Usagi's memory on one thing. "Oh yeah, Mako-chan wants to know if she can have a copy of your special miso soup recipe!"
Ikukko sighed mentally and allowed her shoulders to slump slightly. "No Usagi," Ikukko, praying to anyone who might be listening to grant her patience. "Something more important that that."
Usagi thought a few moments longer, but still came up blank. "Nope, nothing," she said with a shake of her head.
Ikukko decided to switch tactics, since it was quite obvious that the oblique approach was doomed to failure. "Not even the fact that you're Sailor Moon?" she prodded gently.
It has been noted by many who knew Usagi, close friends and casual acquaintances that she has an almost infinite well spring of compassion and her ability to forgive was matched only by her inability to lie. To those who knew her well, not only was she incapable of lying, the exact way she tried to lie almost invariably told you exactly what she was trying to hide. For about five seconds Usagi gave a very good impression of a deer caught in a car's headlights. Then she recovered and gave a too vigorous shake of her head as a false smile was plastered over her face. "No. I don't know anything about that," she said, just a little too loudly, followed by a very nervous laugh. "Absolutely nothing!" she added after a few seconds.
Ikukko didn't bother to reply, she just looked at Usagi with the expression universal to mothers who have caught their offspring in an attempted deception, arms crossed in front of her and one foot tapping lightly on the floor. It took a few seconds to work, but work it did and Usagi slumped.
"How did you find out?" Usagi asked with a sigh.
"Rei's grandfather was the one who figured it out," Ikukko explained, letting her stern expression fade. "He was the one who told us."
"Us?" Usagi asked.
"Myself, Minako's mother and Mizuno-sensei. They're probably talking to Minako and Ami about this right now. Though he wasn't able to figure out who those Outer Senshi were. I don't suppose you know?"
"I know, but telling would get the Space Sword and Aqua Mirror put somewhere very uncomfortable, even if I am the princess."
Ikukko stared at her daughter as if she had grown another head that had just started reciting Shakespearean sonnets in Sanskrit backwards. "Princess?" she asked, praying that she had heard wrong.
"Um, yeah," Usagi said uncertainly, desperately trying to figure out how to explain the situation in as few words as possible. "You see, a really, really long time ago there was this Kingdom on the Moon called the Moon Kingdom and I'm the re-incarnation of the last princess of that Kingdom," Usagi explained, nodding for emphasis. She was actually quite proud of herself for that, for while it left out a lot of the details it was very accurate and not too complicated.
"So you're the re-incarnated Princess of an ancient Kingdom from the Moon?" Ikukko, suddenly wishing that she could go back in time and refuse Amuro's invitation to the shrine so that she could remain in blissful ignorance. "And all the others are…?"
"Oh, they're also re-incarnated Princesses of their own kingdoms, but they were all my bodyguards back then as well. Well, the Inner Senshi were, the Outers were kind of like border guards and it made Uranus and Neptune kinda paranoid. I don't think that they trust the Starlights, even now."
Ikukko suppressed an urge to sigh and raised one hand to rub at her temples in an effort to stave off the incipient headache. The conversation was turning out to be far more confusing than she had anticipated by far. "How about you try explaining everything again, from the very beginning," she said in what she thought was a very patient tone of voice, all facts considered.
"Start what from the beginning?" Shingo asked, walking into the kitchen and retrieving the orange juice from the refrigerator. He didn't think of himself as particularly nosey, but when it came to his older sister, he was always overcome by a burning urge to know everything about what she was doing, especially when she tried to cover it up, like she did then.
"Nothing important," Usagi blurted out. "You wouldn't find it interesting at all."
"I'm not so sure about that," Ikukko said, turning slightly in her chair to look more directly at her younger child. "Actually I think Shingo would be very interested to know that his sister is Sailor Moon."
"Yeah, so?" Shingo asked with a shrug as he downed the class of orange juice that he had poured while Usagi and Ikukko were speaking. Lowering the glass, he looked at the surprised expressions on the faces of his sister and his mother. "What, you mean you only just found out?" he asked Ikukko, his expression incredulous.
"When did you find out?!" Usagi squawked, barely managing to stop herself from shouting.
"Ages ago," Shingo said with a shrug. "How many blondes are there in Tokyo with that ridiculous hair style?"
"It's not ridiculous," Usagi muttered. "And there are more people wearing this hairstyle than you think."
"Yeah, but they're bottle blondes and you're a natural and that hairstyle became famous only when Sailor Moon did, but you've been wearing it for ages. Besides, you and Luna should keep your voices down when you talk. The wall between our rooms isn't that thick and I can hear you when you start yelling at each other."
"Luna?" Ikukko asked, confused. "Usagi's cat?"
"Yep," Shingo said. "She talks. Actually it's been pretty cool having a famous hero for a sister, but there's been one thing that's been bugging me. Who is Chibi-Usa? I know she couldn't be our cousin, but I could never figure out who she was exactly."
Usagi looked between her brother and her mother with a sense of doom. She had no idea how Shingo had broken Chibi-Usa's hypnotic suggestion and it really wasn't all that important. What was important was what Ikukko's reaction was going to be when she heard the truth. "She's my daughter from the future," Usagi said in a small voice.
"She's your daughter?" Ikukko yelled, eyes open comically wide and her eyebrows nearly up to her hairline. "But she's was nearly ten the last time we saw her and you weren't even sixteen."
"From the future! From the future!" Usagi said repeatedly. "She hasn't actually be born yet."
It was at this point that Shingo decided that it was about time that he withdrew from the conversation and the room, confident in having completed his brotherly duty of being as annoying as possible and knowing that if he stuck around he was likely to get interrogated as to why he has made no mention of Usagi's secret identity if he had known it for so long. He quietly put the orange juice back in the refrigerator and made a hasty exit from the kitchen, going fast enough that by the time either Usagi or Ikukko noticed he was gone, it would be too late to stop him, but not so fast that he drew any undue attention to himself.
While Shingo made good his escape, Ikukko had her attention focused entirely on daughter. "So she hasn't been born yet and came back in time to make sure that history turned out right."
"That's right," Usagi said, thinking that she might just have avoided being grounded.
"So who's her father?" Ikukko asked, her gaze penetrating and Usagi swallowed nervously. She knew there was going to be no way that her mother would believe any lie that she concocted.
Before she could beging to panic though, inspiration struck and she answered with a completely straight face and utterly truthfully, "Her father's Neo-King Endymion." It was the absolute truth, but there was no way her mother would connect the name with Mamoru. That only left hoping that her mother didn't realise that Mamoru was Tuxedo Kamen as her sole big worry.
Ikukko's face went through several several different expressions in very short order and finally settled on a look of starry eyed excitement. "My baby girl's going to marry a King!!!" she squealed, just about jumping up and down in her seat with glee.
"Um…, not really," Usagi said, squirming in her seat a little. "He doesn't become King until after we get married."
"Oh, so he's still just a Prince then," Ikkuko said, brushing it off as a minor detail, making Usagi squirm even more.
Part of her was perfectly willing to let her mother go with that innacurate impression. It wasn't like she had actually lied, it was just that Ikkuko had jumped to her own conclusions those conclusions were kind of off base. No matter how tempting the prospect though, deep down she knew that it would be just as dishonest letting her mother go one thinking that as if she had lied outright, and it wasn't like there was any point in keeping secrets anymore. "Uhh, that's not it either," Usagi said, blushing and wondering exactly how her mother was going to react to this bombshell.
Usagi's tone of voice was enough to bring Ikkuko down from her daydreams of a royal wedding, at least temporarily. "Well how does he become a king then?" Ikkuko asked. "He can't be that far down the line of succession."
"He… um, becomes King because he marries me."
Ikkuko just looked hard at Usagi for several long moments, obviously demanding an explanation.
Usagi sighed and wondered just how to explain Crystal Tokyo without going into details that she was frankly not comfortable revealing, including the near immortality of herself, Mamoru and the Senshi and the near annihilation of humanity. Then inspiration struck again, causing Usagi to wondering in passing why she couldn't get these flashes of inspiration during exams before taking a deep breath and explained. "Well, the Moon Kingdom that I was Princess of in my past life is ressurected, but on the Earth, not the moon and I'm crowned Queen. Sort of." Very sort of, but it would have to do for an explanation.
Ikkuko just continued to look at Usagi and eventually sighed in resignation. As far as she could tell, Usagi was being completely honest. Ikkuko could read her daughter like a book and while she could tell that there were things that Usagi wasn't being completely forthcoming about, she wasn't lying, or even trying to mislead Ikkuko into incorrect conclusions. If she had wanted to do that she could have just kept her mouth shut at let Ikkuko remain in her daydreams of a royal wedding. And to top things off, the headache that had been threatening earlier in the conversation was back with a vengange.
"All right," Ikkuko said. "I am going to take your word for this for the moment. But if this really is true I expect you to be studying extra hard from now on. You can't run a nation without an education. As for this other stuff about Sailor Moon, I'm not going to stop you from going out, but I want you to promise that you'll tell me when you do. If I ever find out that you've been using it as an excuse to get out of the house, you are going to be grounded for so long that you'll forget what it looks like outside the house."
"Yes Mama," Usagi said meekly. "Can I go now?"
Ikkuko sighed again and muttered something under her breath that sounded suspisciously like "Why me?" and then nodded. Usagi got up and began to beat a hasty retreat. She was stopped when Ikkuo spoke up again. "And don't think you've gotten off lightly young lady. I will be discussing this with your father and you will be explaining this to him as well."
Usagi grimaced and continued in her hasty retreat before any more bad news came her way. Explaining to her father about being Sailor Moon was going to make what she had just gone through look like a free lock in session at the Crown Arcade. She was going to need Luna's help and need it desperately.
Still in the kitchen Ikkuko retrieved the hidden stash of aspirin that she was convinced every housewife had, just to make sure that there was some there when they really needed it. She had the feeling that she was going to be putting a bit of a dent in it over the course of the next few days and at the moment she needed to kill her current headache if she wanted to explain to Kenji that their daughter was Sailor Moon without sounding like a loon. She swallowed two whole and wondered briefly whether or not she should see Mizuno Ryoko about something stronger before heading over to start getting dinner ready.
At that moment raised voices from upstairs signalled the beginnings of an argument between Usagi and Shingo. Ikkuko even managed a weak smile for the sounds of the fight at least brought the comfort that her daughter was still indeed who she thought she was and life would go on much like it did.
Author's Notes:
Well, one more chapter down and the fun really begins next time when Rei and Amuro reach there long awaited showdown. Apolpgies about the delay, but Muse-chan up and quit on my about two thirds of the way through and hasn't gotten back to it for a little while.
As I said, next time Rei gets to shine and after that the Senshi begin to deal with the aftermath of the sudden changes in their lives.