Chapter One
At some point, I had to except the fact that the life I'd lived was over; this place I had fought for, Usagi's body, belonged to me now. She was… gone, just like everything else I had ever known. My friends and family were as good as dead here, and that combined with the fact that for the first time in my life I was truly and completely alone in the world? Well, it was a hard hit to take; a truth that I knew but wasn't ready to face quite yet.
And so I didn't.
The moment I left my mind and woke up in her body, everything came crashing down on me. I couldn't move, couldn't make myself speak or do much of anything over the horrifying revelation that this was my reality. So I cried, curled into a ball on a bed that wasn't mine and mourned. I'd experienced loss before, went to both of my grandparents funerals, but it wasn't something that could be compared to this. Losing someone is terrible, and difficult to deal with, but I had just lost everyone all at once.
It was beyond horrific.
No matter what happened in life, no matter what trauma you experienced, there would always be someone around. It could be a friend, or an enemy, a neighbor or even a third cousin twice removed; the point was, people were there, not necessarily for you, but nonetheless they were there and having anyone around, that knew you to any degree, was reassuring. I had lost more than that simple comfort, the mere acknowledgment of my existence; my body, my things, they were all gone as well.
It was like my very being had been wiped away, leaving nothing but my mind to prove that the life I had lived, the experiences I'd gone through, were real. That wasn't something you could simply bounce back from, and I certainly didn't.
I spent three days in that bed.
I sobbed and grieved, but people can only cry for so long and by the second night my tears dried up. I was left in a numb state of resignation, a point where I recognized this was rock bottom and that I could do nothing about it. It was on the morning of the fourth day that I finally tore myself from the bed and attempted to get it together. Wasting away did nothing for the situation, and self-preservation would not allow me to continue doing it.
This body had needs just like any other, and I was starting to feel the effects of my neglect. My stomach twisted painfully, my bladder was full, and I could smell myself. Sitting up, I shifted uncomfortably as the weight of my needs made themself known. I didn't want to get up, didn't want to move but now that I had taken notice of my unhygienic state, it was starting to bother me.
I stumbled a couple times on the way to the door as I adjusted to this body, and once there I hesitated. It was dark and I didn't know where the shower was, the memories were there though, on the edge of my mind waiting to be used. Closing my eyes, I dug for any memories that showed the layout of this house. They surfaced, and I went through each one as I opened the door and skulked down the hall to the bathroom.
I locked the door behind me and turned, steadily avoiding the mirror as I turned the shower on. It was an odd sensation, being in a foreign place and knowing where everything went and how things worked. As the water heated up I wrestled with my hair, ripping the stupid bows from it and struggling to release it from the hairstyle it had been in. An image of Usagi bounced around my mind, with her bun ponytail hair thingies. A word floated to me, from memories I did not consider my own.
Odango hair.
Well, that was an accurate portrayal I supposed. I used the bathroom and showered quickly, afraid that if I lingered too long someone would come check on me despite the early hour. Usagi's mother had done so many times in the last couple of days, and each time she came, worry written plain as day on her face, I felt guilty. I could never bring myself to say anything to her, and after all there wasn't much to say to begin with.
I wasn't her daughter, and she could never know that. I'd carry that secret with me until the day I died, and if I was the only one that grieved for the thirteen year old girl then so be it. I hadn't asked to be dropped into this body, but when push came to shove I had made a decision and that was why Usagi wasn't here.
I had chosen to live.
As awful as it sounds, I didn't regret it either.
When I returned to the room, the sun was beginning to rise in the sky. I took a moment to observe my surroundings, something I hadn't cared enough to do earlier. The walls were the fainted shade of pink, and the floor was made of wood. In the middle of the room was a low table, with a large light pink rug spread beneath it. The wall on my right had closet doors, and on the wall to my left was a vanity and a series of shelves with various items scattered on them.
Light shined in to the room through white curtains, and the length of the bed had been pushed up under the windows. Padding over to the bed, my fingers brushed across the blanket, taking in it purple color and adorned pattern of bunnies, moons, and stars. Abruptly, I felt a flash of annoyance as I scanned the room once more. Everything in here screamed child, from the stickers on the walls to the frills on the edge of the pillowcase.
She had been nothing more than a little girl.
The thought had never really crossed my mind before, but standing here now it was so obvious to see. So young, and yet all those people had looked to her to save the world instead of doing it themselves. Usagi had stepped up to the plate when it truly mattered, but was it right to have placed a burden like that on a kid like her? Maybe that was unfair of me to say, I hadn't watched the show in nearly a decade.
I never claimed to be a fair person though.
As I stood here all I could think was that she hadn't really deserved all the stress she'd probably had. This girl was younger than my little sister, far too young to be running around saving the world. My musings were interrupted by the sound of the door knob turning. I stiffened, holding the pink towel wrapped around me in a death grip. Usagi's mother poked her head into the room, blinking in surprise to see me standing there, clean and out of bed.
"Oh!" She murmured. "You're awake. Are you feeling better, Usagi-chan?"
She had said it in Japanese, and though I found myself understanding immediately, I couldn't help but stare stupidly for a moment or two. I'd never spoken a different language before, and being able to speak and understand Japanese when I hadn't actually learned or practiced it was a surreal experience.
"I… Yes." I responded, tasting the words.
"That's good." The woman smiled in relief, eyes lighting up. "I was worried, for a while there. You have school today, you know, if you're feeling up to it."
That was right, Usagi was in school. It had slipped my mind until now, and with dawning horror I realized that she was in eighth grade. Oh god, I was going back to middle school, I had to redo five years of schooling. I grimaced, and Usagi's mother looked at me with concern. She stepped forward and opened her mouth to say something, but I spoke quickly before she could.
"I'm going… I just, er, forgot about it."
Usagi's mother paused, studying me. There was a brief moment where I thought she would bring up the past couple days, but then her face softened and she snorted. "Of course you did. How like you that is."
"…Right." I said, straining a smile. "I should get ready then, for school."
"Well, get going then or you'll be late."
And with that she was gone, shutting the door behind her. My shoulders slumped, and I blew out a breath as I moved over to the closet, eyeing the hung uniforms. Was I really going to do this? Go to school as Usagi, sit in a classroom and play pretend? Then again, there wasn't anything else I could do, my options were limited. I snatched one of the clean uniforms before moving over to the dresser and digging out a bra and underwear. There was something fundamentally wrong with going through another person's underwear drawer, and I was highly uncomfortable while doing it.
Dressing was an affair all by itself, and if looking through another's intimates felt wrong, wearing them was ever worse. Part of me wanted to go bathe in holy water or something, but there wasn't time for that. Usagi had a routine, she would have gone to school, so for the time being all I could do was follow her steps. Besides, middle school would be a mindless task, and that was what I needed right now; somewhere to think without anyone hovering in concern like Usagi's mother.
Her mother, whose name I could not remember for the life of me.
I wasn't sure what to call the woman, and in the end I decided to simply not call her anything. There were a million other problems I had to work through and this just didn't make the cut. I struggled into the uniform, which felt foreign yet familiar all at once, and found Usagi's school bag where it had been tossed under the table. I was about to leave when I spotted a box of cookies sitting on one of the shelves.
I stuffed five of them into my mouth, chewing as I exited the room and shuffled down the stairs. I paused in the kitchen where Usagi's mother stood, humming a tune and preparing a bento. The faint sound of footsteps upstairs clued me in to the rising of the rest of her family. The woman must have heard it too, because she turned just as I moved to say something and startled upon catching sight of me.
"Good grief," She said, holding a hand over her heart. "When did you become so quiet? I didn't even hear you coming down the stairs."
"Sorry." I apologized, eyeing the lunch box. I was still hungry, and the thought of food made my stomach rumble noisily. I wasn't sure how I felt about taking food from her, all things considered, but in the end it mattered little. The woman laughed, before grabbing the lunch box off the counter and handing it to me.
"Some things never change." She murmured fondly.
"Thanks…" I replied blandly. "Well, I'm off then."
Mrs. Tsukino called after me to have a good day as I slipped on Usagi's shoes and left the house. I stood off to the side of the street as I tried to recall the way to this school I'd never been to before. The memories surfaced after a few seconds, and I turned right as I made my way down the street at a steady pace. There weren't many people out, so it wasn't until I found myself on a more populated road that I realized something was off.
I slowed down, brows furrowed as I regarded the people around me. Their appearances were strange; permed hair, pointy shoes, shoulder pads. It was all very old fashioned, and with alarm I watched as a man walked by, talking into the largest clunk of a phone I had ever seen. Panic seized me as I tried to remember what year Sailor Moon was based in.
From what I was seeing, along with several other things that instantly seemed out of place like the fact that no one was on a cellphone, I already had an inkling of what decade it was. I'd been thrown into the nineties, and that meant no cells, or laptops, or anything related to the twenty first century; I was practically in the Stone Age.
That meant I was never going to see the fourth season of Sherlock, and Google probably hadn't been invented yet.
Was there even internet?
Oh god.
I forced myself to take calm, even breaths and continued moving down the sidewalk. This was it, the worst day I would ever have for the rest of my life; no day would ever be able to top this. The rest of the way to school was spent in a daze as I tried to think positively. So I would have to wait like twenty years before anything began to resemble the modern age I knew, that was fine, I would be fine.
I'd just put it on the list of things to never think about.
I had far more relevant worries anyway, like the fact that a little black cat would try to recruit me sometime in the near future. I was Usagi now, but I also really wasn't her and if I let myself be dragged into this whole Sailor Moon mess then someone was bound to figure that out eventually. I mean, I couldn't exactly receive memories of a past life if it wasn't mine to begin with.
The silver crystal was in this body, as far as I remembered, and that meant it was safe from everyone else, so why exactly did I even have to fight at all? It had been really, really long since I had last seen Sailor Moon, so I was fuzzy on details, but I didn't see why I had to involve myself. If a couple people were drained by the dark kingdom or whatever that wasn't really my problem, was it?
I was the only one who knew where the crystal was.
If the fate of the world was resting on my shoulders, then we were already doomed anyway. I wasn't a crime fighting defender of justice, I had failed P.E. twice because I couldn't run a damn mile, and if those people expected me to do all of that while wearing heels then they had better prepare for disappointment. I got winded walking up more than a flight of stairs, so the sad truth of the matter was that I'd likely do more harm than good as Sailor Moon.
"Usagi-chan!" a voice called from behind me. I turned to see a girl with permed red hair and the same school uniform waving as she rushed to catch up with me. She was vaguely recognizable, and I struggled to remember her name as the girl caught up and linked arms with me. Once again, memories that weren't mine came to my rescue, labeling the girl as Naru, Usagi's best friend.
"Man, you're on time for once." She said, baffled. "What is the world coming to?"
"I've uh, felt a bit off." I replied, rummaging up a smile. "Thought I'd get a fresh start today; new beginnings and all that."
"Well, if that's what you were going for then you've succeeded." Naru laughed. "I almost didn't recognize you with your hair down like that."
My hand went to my hair, running through the locks out of habit. I hadn't put it up before leaving the house, and now that I thought about it I wasn't sure I wanted to anyway. It made me look unnecessarily like Princess Serenity, and that was really the last thing I needed. I eyed Naru as I struggled to move the subject away from myself and onto something more important.
"What's the date today?" I asked. "The full date?"
"Uh… May 20th, 1992?" She said, eyeing me. "Did you really forget what day it is?"
"It slipped my mind." I lied, swallowing. "Happens to the best of us."
Naru laughed.
"I'll say." She sighed. "I can barely remember anything I study these days. I know you were out sick on Friday but it was a weekend so I don't think it'll get you out of today's test."
Test?
This really was the worst day of my life, and it wasn't even eight o'clock in the morning. I must have made a face, because Naru patted my arm sympathetically.
"Just do your best." She said. "Your grades can't get any lower, so it can only go uphill for here. Besides, what's the worst that could possibly happen?"
That was a good question, one I didn't want an answer to though.
I'd had enough bad luck for one life.
