A young girl squatted on the edge of an alley in the slums of the city, watching attentively as a merchant rolled his cart full of merchandise by her. Beneath the tarp he used to hide his cargo, she could smell the sweet fragrance of fruit. He was transporting food, and that's all that really mattered.
Waiting until it was only a few feet away from her hiding spot, she rolled a rock out in front of the wheel of the cart. It hit the rock and bounced, knocking a few pieces of fruit out of the back where they rolled out onto the ground. Without wasting a moment, she dashed out and gathered up the food, running as fast as she could in the opposite direction. The merchant was in front of the cart pulling it behind him, and it would take him a few seconds to set the cart down and come around to see if he'd lost anything. Ducking into another alley, she held her skirt out to see what she'd obtained.
Three bruised apples gleamed back at her, ripe and succulent. She hadn't eaten all day, and so it only took her a matter of seconds before she began devouring them.
Sliding down the grimey wall to sit in the muck, she ate in silence, wondering when her next meal might come.
She was still small, slight enough to go unnoticed when she stole, and quick enough to avoid capture when she was pursued, but it wouldn't last. She was eight years old now, and soon she'd be too large to escape detection. As a woman, she'd have other methods available to her though for securing her daily meals.
Swallowing the core and seeds, she looked at the stem of the fruit. Was it edible? It didn't particularly matter, she had another two apples still. She'd have to ration herself if she wanted them to last, this one apple would have to last the rest of the today.
Picking herself up, she slipped the apples under her chemise, shifting them a bit and pretending they were breasts. What would it be like to be a woman? Would she be beautiful like a lady or would she just look like the orphaned urchin she was, only with more wrinkles? She hoped she'd grow to be desirable, if she didn't she'd have a much harder time in life.
A glance at the sky confirmed that it was getting late and she would need to find somewhere to sleep for the night.
Taking the apples back out, she wrapped them up in the folds of her skirt, heading towards the cemetery where she always went at night. The ground was softer and warmer there, and she felt closer to her mother and sister which helped her sleep. The grounds keeper was an older man who was cruel when he caught her, but his poor vision made that infrequent. Sitting herself down beneath a monument, she looked out at the tombstone they had carved for her mother and baby sister.
She didn't know where they had gone, only that one day they had been there with her, and the next they hadn't. She was only two when they disappeared, and the memory was hazy. They had been poor, but they had also been happy. Now she was destitute and alone, and absolutely miserable. For a few years she'd tried to live at the shelter but the overwhelming loneliness she felt when surrounded by so many people who cared nothing for her was too much. The punishments from the den mother were also too much for her to endure. The other children had told her vicious things, like her mother had abandoned her because she was too much of a burden. Or that her mother had killed her sister and been hanged for it.
But she didn't believe any of them. She liked to think her mother had been kidnapped, and was still alive somewhere with her sister, thinking of her. One day her mother would come back and rescue her from this life, and take her and her sister somewhere they could live the happy lives they'd had before.
She put the stem of the apple she'd eaten at the foot of the grave, propping it up like a blade of grass. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring you flowers, mama." She balled up a small clump of clay and stuck it to the top of the stem. "Maybe this will grow into a great apple tree for you instead."
"What are you doing here again, Beryl!" She whirled to find the elderly grounds keeper behind her, brandishing a shovel. "I told you that you can't stay here!"
"I was just visiting mama," she whispered, making sure her stolen apples were well hidden. "I'll leave."
"Then scram!" He waved the shovel at her.
She didn't want to wait to see if he'd actually hit her with the tool, so she hurried away, careful to keep a grip on where the food was hidden in her skirt.
She'd had to find somewhere else to stay tonight.
-
Sailor Venus laid herself out on a bench in the palace gardens, her curly blonde locks fanning out around her. On her stomach, a toddler was busy braiding those locks into a beard.
"Minako," her mother groaned, glancing down when the toddler pulled on her hair.
"Sowwy mama," Minako giggled, finishing off the braid and examining her work. Her mama looked like a lovely golden dwarf.
"Am I a fine man now?" her mother reached up to pull a few of Minako's straight tufts of hair between her fingers. The girl was going to have hair just like her fathers when she grew up.
"King mama!" Minako pronounced, pulling up on a piece of hair so that it formed a mustache at the top of the braid. Plucking a few nearby flowers, she placed them in a crown at the top of her mother's head, tucking them into her senshi tiara.
"You know Minako, I think you're old enough now you should start learning some things besides how to play." Sitting up, Sailor Venus shifted her daughter to one knee. Minako whined when the movement undid her hard work, letting her mothers hair free from its beard. "One day you're going to grow up to be a beautiful woman, and that can have consequences." She stroked her daughter's hair, looking down into her cornflower eyes. "Do you want to play senshi?"
Minako's eyes lit up, she wanted nothing more than to grow up to be just like her mama. "Sensii! Sensii!" She clapped her hands together with excitement.
"Okay, but this time you'll have to try harder than last time." She gave her a mock-stern look.
Minako screwed up her face to try and look serious. Sailor Venus laughed, setting the girl on the ground. When Minako went to pick up a stick, her mother knocked it out of her hand.
Minako pouted, going to pick up the stick again. Her mother hit it away a second time. Minako frowned. "No sensii?"
"Lets try something else. You won't always have a weapon. Sometimes you'll have to become the weapon."
Minako was screwing her face up again in confusion, trying to understand.
"Show me a kick," Venus instructed. Minako threw out her leg from the knee, wobbling and falling over afterwards. "That was good! Lets see it again, but this time no falling." Minako eagerly climbed back to her feet, teetering dangerously as she shot her leg out again but managing to stay upright. "Okay now lets see if you can do a kick like this," Sailor Venus slowly brought her leg up into a high kick, her heel well above her waist line when fully extended. Minako tried to imitate it but fell onto her butt again. "That was great, but you fell over again. Falling over is the worst thing you can do in a battle, it gives your opponent the advantage." Minako was already back up trying to perform a high kick again, but her balance was simply not strong enough and she continued to push herself back into the ground.
"Venus!" a voice behind her distracted her from Minako and she turned to see that Sailor Mercury was standing under a nearby column, motioning her over.
Smiling Sailor Venus scooped her up and set her on her feet again. "Why don't you keep practicing and the next time we play senshi you can show me how good your kick is." Minako nodded eagerly, giving the kick another attempt. "You go play with the other girls now, mommy has business to take care of." Turning without waiting to see if Minako would comply, Venus headed towards Mercury.
Mercury was typing away on her handheld computer, but she paused when the blonde reached her, looking up from her work. "We've got trouble," she said, shifting her screen so Venus could see.
The image on the monitor showed a temperature reading on Mars, with a huge spike dipping down past the range of the graph. "Mars is always frozen though," Venus said, looking at Mercury. "Why is this different?"
"Look at the base of the spike. At those temperatures, the blood inside your body would freeze solid. There are going to be thousands of people caught in this storm, and if we don't act fast, they could all die." Mercury flipped her computer closed.
"Without Mars to help us, there isn't much we can do though, you can only cool things and I only have light at my disposal." Venus worried her lower lip, thinking of her missing comrade. It was no secret that Mars had left because of a fight with Queen Serenity, but what the topic of that argument had been, nobody had been daring enough to risk their own position at the palace to ask. It had been almost a year since her sister in arms had left, and the void couldn't really be filled with Nanako still possessing the power of Mars.
"We have to do something, even if its just to evacuate the civilians. This is the first storm of this magnitude in the history of Mars, more severe than anything we've ever seen. Light has some heat with it, and even if I can't warm anything I can at least provide some medical assistance."
Venus nodded, expression grim. This was a dangerous mission and without Mars they had little hope of saving even a small fraction of the population. "When do we leave?"
"Tonight. A shuttle will be ready for us at the transport bay."
AN: I have mixed feelings about this fic (especially that first chapter). I don't know if I really want to continue it, rewrite it or scrap it. I intended to make a transition from the older order of senshi to the new one over the course of several major events, but I really am not thrilled with the pacing, and some of these characters are reading a bit too cookie cutter from the known senshi personalities. I'll probably decide what I want to do about it soon though.