Sailor Stardust—A Sailor Moon Fan Fiction: Chapter 2

Hoshino Ren walked slowly to school. Although her school was only a few blocks from her apartment, she had left the house an hour early. Her father had left for work earlier that morning, and the apartment got quieter every time he left.

He didn't know about her job as a Sailor. Nor did he know about the world that the Sailor Scouts inhabited: a world constantly in peril. At least, that's how she thought of it.

Ren paused as two shadows bled into her own. She looked up hurriedly, reaching subconsciously for her pen.

"Good morning," Haruka Tenou greeted her.

"Oh," Ren released her pen, which—luckily—she had not taken out of her book bag. "Good morning, Tenou."

"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" Tenou's companion, Michiru Kaiou, commented.

"I suppose," Ren agreed.

"Hey, maybe you could help us?" Tenou asked, pulling out a small drawing—done by Kaiou—and showed it to Ren. "We're looking for people that resemble this person."

Ren nearly gasped aloud when she was presented with the picture. It was a rough sketch of Sailor Stardust—her!—in the middle of her Dead Space attack. Stardust's hair and eyes were particularly accented—probably to help distinguish her. Ren swallowed, throat dry.

"Um…I'm sorry, I can't help you." She tugged nervously at her hair.

If her mistress, Galaxia, found out that she was being sought out by people of Earth…. But both Kaiou and Tenou had odd resemblances to Uranus and Neptune—and their temperament was a lot closer to that of a Scout than the other six that she had seen in the park the other day. No way those six could be the counterparts of the Inner Senshi.

Ren tried to politely move around Tenou, but the older girl put a firm hand on her shoulder.

"Come on, are you sure you haven't seen anyone like her around? Maybe take another look."

"No, I'm sorry, I haven't."

With that, Ren broke Tenou's hold on her shoulder and kept walking. Behind her, she could hear Tenou and Kaiou talking.

"Is it her?" Kaiou asked.

"There's no one else who bears such a striking resemblance," Tenou said. "But we'll let her tell us in her own time."

"Now would be better," Kaiou sighed. "We cannot afford to hold secrets from one another, with neighboring galaxies growing greater in their armies."

"We can't force her, Michiru."

Ren kept walking.

School that day was boring. Ren had scanned the previous chapters, and so was familiar with the material being covered. But the teacher was trying to make the lesson fun, so the least she could do was pay attention, right? But there were some shadows outside of the window that she sat next to, and she could swear that they were watching her. She tapped her pen on her notepad nervously, jumping as stardust sprinkled all over her notes—a warning sign.

"Sensei!" she raised her hand.

"Yes, Hoshino-san?" the teacher turned around from the blackboard.

"I don't feel well; may I go to the infirmary?"

"Of course."

Ren left her bag and notepad—now closed—on her desk as she walked calmly out the door. She ran out of the nearest exit and into the clump of trees that surrounded the school. She saw the shadows follow close behind her. Ren stopped and turned swiftly.

"Cosmic Star Power!" she yelled.

As her transformation began, she saw the shadows come into the light that filtered in through the trees. Sailors Uranus and Neptune stood watching her, not looking surprised at all. Stardust finished her transformation and brandished her staff at them.

"Is that any way to treat a teammate?" Uranus chuckled.

"Why have you been watching me all day?" Stardust asked, not lowering her staff.

"We had to be sure that our suspicions were correct," Neptune said. "If you didn't make a move, we would have left the school. But you came out here just as we were about to leave, and now here we are."

Stardust frowned, but said nothing.

"We like to know our allies," Uranus clarified. "Not knowing who you were was bugging me."

"So you stop me on my way to school? Watch me in the classroom? Follow me?"

"We needed to know," Neptune shrugged. "It's necessary if we are to stand as a team against the neighboring galaxies."

Stardust began to laugh. She couldn't help it. While Neptune's mirror was a powerful tool used to see the problems of the universe, nothing compared to being out in space and watching the stars with your own eyes. Her laughter subsided as a thought occurred to her: could Neptune's mirror have picked up something that she had not? She had been feeling lonely lately, and wasn't her overly-vigilant self. Perhaps the mirror had picked up on something that she had missed.

"I have been watching the neighboring galaxies," Stardust said, bringing her staff to stand beside her. "Your mirror, Sailor Neptune, what has it seen?"

Uranus and Neptune exchanged looks before they brought out their weapons. Neptune her mirror and Uranus her jeweled saber.

"Terrible things will come to threaten the planet of earth," Neptune said, looking into her mirror. "But not before destroying all the others. The last to be destroyed will be Earth, and then the moon."

"What is this enemy?" Stardust demanded, anger flaring at the thought that she had not been the one to foresee any of this.

"It will be enemies from a neighboring galaxy that have harnessed the power of the Negaverse—thought to be lost after the downfall of Queen Beryl."

Stardust stiffened. The Negaverse had been her first slip-up when she had been a small Scout. She had been sent to watch the people of Earth, and to make sure that no one got influenced by the evilness of Beryl. But somehow Beryl had slipped past her defenses and brought about the battle between that of Earth and the Moon Kingdom. The memory of her mistake still haunted her. For a while after, Galaxia had paired her with another Scout, but that didn't last long.

"Are you okay?" Uranus was standing over Stardust, who had sunk to her knees in the grass.

"Oh," Stardust shook her head. "I'm fine, just thinking."

"You looked like you were remembering something," Neptune commented. "Was it something I said?"

Should she tell them that she had caused the battle of Earth and the Moon Kingdom in the future? Space held a different time, and Stardust had been untouched while the rest of the Scouts had been sent back. So none of them remembered that it was her fatal mistake that had cost the Moon Kingdom its beauty…. No one but herself, Galaxia, and Neo Queen Serenity.

Now Stardust hoped to fix her mistake.