Hello, all.

	I hope this gets out allright.  This is my first try at a fanfic, and
it's not very serious.  To help goad myself into writing more, I've
decided to post this, and see how the C&C goes.  Please, do let me know
if you like what I'm doing, and if you want to see more.

Thanks.

-john
Humidity is the experience of looking for air and finding water.
jcfiala@cssltd.com

----------------
The Chase: Part 1

Sailor Moon's World.


	Prologue:

	The woman appeared in the alley, a flash of green light and ozone
heralding her 
arrival.  She picked herself off of the ground unsteadily, leaning on
the brick wall.  She was
short: five feet tall, with a head of blazing red hair, a somewhat plain
but somehow distinctive
 face with an oriental cast, a T-shirt, jeans, and a jacket.  She looked
rather boyish, her figure
 looking like she was just beginning her maturity rather than the mature
age she had actually
 reached.
	Shaking her head, she stepped out of the alleyway to see where she was.
 The
 writing on signs around her showed it was somewhere oriental, and
listening to one
 conversation in particular helped her determine it was Japanese.
Japan?  Perhaps.  She tried
 to walk to a newspaper stand, but stumbled and fell into the street.  A
car honked and
 swerved, missing her barely.
	As people gathered to help the woman, a cat that had been hit by the
car was
 overlooked as it lay in the street, it's coat ripped open from the
collision with the car.  A
 pretty black cat with a yellow birthmark on its forehead...


	The Chase: Part 1 - A Total Eclipse of the Moon

	Several Months Later:

	A mile out from Tokyo, on a major highway heading to town.  Late at
Night. 
 Thunder calls.

	A blast of blue and green electricity burst out of nowhere some six
feet above the 
ground, quickly spreading into a spear of energy whose point expanded to
a large size, the 
point of the spear then splitting and giving birth to a large, dark blue
minibus that shot into 
this world like a watermelon seed.  The driver fought to control the
vehicle as it dropped two 
feet to the pavement, and pulled it over to the side.
	The minibus changed in shape slightly... ovoid electrical equipment
that had been 
sticking out from all sides slid into recesses, reshaping the minibus to
look more like a legal 
street vehicle.
	Rosemary, the driver, sighed - letting the tension go out of her body
with her breath.  
She was a tall girl, some six feet or so in height, with auburn hair
that she kept short.  Mildly 
pretty with brown eyes peeking from under her bangs and a friendly
smile.  She was wearing 
a Miskatonic University sweatshirt and a pair of brown slacks.
	Turning to her friends, she let her smile widen.  "Now, that wasn't so
bad, was it?"
	Tessandra was the first to look back at her, her expression one of
disbelief.  
Tessandra was a short girl, around five feet and a wish, whose most
striking feature was her 
long, silver colored hair that reached to below her rear.  Beyond that,
she was a thin, pretty 
girl, looking almost fragile.  Jasmine was the next to look up, her dark
fingers almost 
imbedding themselves into the arms of her seat.  Jasmine was a large
black woman, taciturn 
but friendly when you got to know her, not fat but not fashionably thin,
either.  Between her 
legs, clutched tight, was her saxophone case, and after giving Rosemary
a nasty look she 
bent down to check how it had endured the experience.
	Samantha, nee Sam, on the other hand, peeled a pair of electrodes-like
pads off of 
her forehead and grinned.  She was a six foot three inch figure who
looked almost elfin with a 
pair of pointed ears and thin red hair that moved to the middle of her
back, her eyes green 
and lively.  "I agree.  Better than I expected."
	Retching noises came from the back of the bus, where Amy was getting
over what 
could best be described as 'continuum sickness'.
	Having checked that everyone was mostly okay, Rosemary put the mini-bus
into 
gear and drove towards Tokyo.

	Chapter 1:


	Serina Tsukino sleepily opened her eyes, gazing at the alarm clock in
front of her.  It 
was moon shaped,  the actual clockface encircled by a golden sliver of
moon that nearly 
surrounded it.  It had been hers since she was very little, and it was
her favorite.
	And then she looked at the time.
	"AWWWW, NO!  I'M LATE!!!"
	Serina jumped out of bed in a hurry to get to the bathroom.
Unfortunately, her foot 
landed on the manga she had been reading before she went to sleep, and
shot out from under 
her, dumping her unceremoniously to the floor.
	"AWWWWW!  WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME!"
	Trust me.  The morning went downhill from there.

	That day, during lunch, Serina groused about her day with her best
friend, Ami.  
"FIRST I oversleep, THEN I trip on a manga, THEN I'm late to class and
Ms. Haruna gives me 
the third degree!  Why am I so unlucky?"
	Ami sighed.  "Serina, you were up all night again, weren't you?"
	Serina nodded, following the conversation as she stuffed a riceball
into her mouth.
	"And why was that?"
	Serina sighed.  Ami knew well what had happened, as it happened often
enough.  
First she had goofed off reading her manga, then she had daydreamed for
a few hours about 
Andrew, the local arcade operator who she had a crush on, and then she
worked as hard and 
as fast as she could on her homework so she could go to bed... and thus
the homework was 
messy, and partially wrong.
	Serina sighed, and looked to the sky, her hands clutched together
dramatically.  "I 
wish I was a Princess!  Then I wouldn't have to worry about homework, or
anything!  I'd have 
people waiting on me hand and foot, and handsome princes would come from
far away and 
court me!  It'd be so ROMANTIC!"
	Amy grinned.  "Watch out what you wish for: You might get it!  And then
you'd be 
in trouble!"
	Serina giggled.  "Hey!  What would be so hard about being a Princess?"
	Ami's face went blank with terror.
	Serina frowned.  "Ami?  Hey, it's not that bad of an idea!"  Then she
heard the 
monster behind her.
	Turning around, she looked up, and up.  The Monster looked like some
sort of 
severely elongated man, with eight arms like tentacles.  She could feel
her chest freeze up as 
the monster started to reach for her... when it's reach was cut off by a
flash of green light that 
resolved itself into a woman in jade-green samurai armor wearing a
domino mask.
	Ami and Serena grinned with delight.  "JADE SAMURAI!" they choroused
with the 
other kids in the area, thrilled at seeing one of the biggest heroines
in Japan so closely.
	The monster roared, and focused it's attention on the intruder, making
as to wrap it's 
long, flexible arms around the Jade heroine.  However, she would not be
so easily contained, 
jumping straight up at high speed and then floating in mid-air.
Creating green rope out of 
thin air, she whipped it around the monster, wrapping up his legs and
hauling him upside-
down into the air.
	Unfortunately, this caused the monster to flail it's arms around
wildly, and one of 
the arms came down towards Serina.  Ami tried to pull Serina away, but
the girl was frozen 
with fear... until a man in a tuxedo and a mask appeared out of nowhere
to scoop the two of 
them up and move them away from the errant arm like a flash.
	Serina looked bug-eyed at the new arrival.  He was so handsome!  "Uhh..
do I know 
you?"  'ARGH!' She thought to herself, 'Good going, Serina!  Now he'll
think you're a dofus!"
	The enigmatic figure bowed deeply to the two girls, and smiled
gallantly.  "My name 
is Tuxedo Mask, my Princess, and I am here to protect you from danger."
He produced a 
rose out of nowhere and gave it to Serina, who started gibbering in
shock as he swept up his 
cape and disappeared.
	Serina grinned happily, clutching the rose carefully, but tightly, in
her hands.  "Did 
you see him, Ami?  He was so HANDSOME!  And he called me a Princess!
Wishes do come 
true!"
	Amy frowned a bit.  "But we don't know him, Serina.  He could be
dangerous!"
	Serina grinned at her friend.  "Lighten up, Ami!  Someone so gorgeous
just has to 
be a nice guy!"
	Amy shrugged.  "He reminds me...of someone."  She concentrated, trying
to 
remember what.  For a moment, she remembered... something.  Her, in an
outfit like Sailor V's.  
She shook her head, trying to loosen the headache that had suddenly
blossomed.
	"You okay, Ami?"
	"Yeah.  Just... got this odd picture.  Me, dressed up as Sailor V."
	Serina grinned.  "Hey, it'd show off your legs pretty nice.  Betcha the
boys would 
notice you then!"
	"SerEEENa... I don't have time for boys.  I'm having trouble staying
five chapters 
ahead of everyone in chemistry!"
	Serina giggled, and smelled her rose.  mmmmmm.  A good day.

	Meanwhile, as Serina dreamed about her knight in pressed tuxedo, the
Jade Samurai 
had vanquished the monster, which had melted away into dust.  Several of
the schoolkids ran 
up for autographs, which the woman signed.  She was now almost as
popular as Sailor V, and 
enjoyed the attention.  When the teachers called the class back inside
for the afternoon, she 
walked away, stopping in a secluded batch of tree at the corner of the
school grounds.  Her 
figure quickly shifted to the form of the woman who had arrived several
months ago in an 
alley, a jade ring with a o superimposed on a = on her finger.  She
walked off towards work.  
	'Wouldn't be good for me to show up late from lunch.' she though.

	Meanwhile, the group of five girls in the minibus had arrived at the
local library, 
intending to do a little research.  Given all the monster attacks, it
was pretty easy to find 
several stories about the Jade Samurai.
	Tessandra nodded.  "That's Mom, all right."  Her finger tapped the
computer screen.
	Amy, recovered from her bout of timesickness from earlier in the day,
peered at the 
picture, and then switched to another one.  "Look, she's making
everything come out of her 
hand.  What's..."  She switched to the first picture, "What's that on
her hand, there?"
	Tessandra pounded on the keys, and managed to convince the computer to
give her 
a close-up of her mother's hand.  "Ha!"
	Sam wandered over.  "What?"
	Tessandra pointed to the screen.  "What does that look like to you?"
	Sam shook her head.  "A ring?"
	Jasmine looked over.  "A Green Lantern ring."
	Tessandra nodded.  "Exactly!  Mom's pretending to be a Green Lantern."
	Amy looked at her friend.  "Why would she want to do that?"
	"I dunno... Maybe nostalgia.  What I'm wondering is why there's so many
monsters 
attacking around here.  That isn't normal."
	"Well, " started Amy, "let's go with the Story Theory of alternate
universes.  That 
would suggest that this universe had a story going on, involving
monsters, and someone or 
someones to fight them.  But where are they?"
	"They must have been interrupted." said Rosemary, who had just gotten
back from 
a quick jog through the neighborhood.  "Her arrival must have messed up
their 'Origin'."
	"Exactly." Said Sam.  "And so the universe is encouraging her to think
she's a 
superhero."
	Tessandra closed her eyes and started rubbing her head.  Amy noticed,
and gave 
her a quick hug.  "Don't worry, Tess.  We'll find her, and then we'll
give her the cure."
	Tess nodded.  "Okay, so next we need to figure out who got replaced."

	A few hours of research, though, hadn't come up with much.  It didn't
help that they 
weren't too strong in their written Japanese.  The girls had translation
earrings to help with 
the spoken language, but it didn't help for reading.  The girls lunched
in the minibus as they 
discussed it.
	"The only other big hero we were able to find was this 'Sailor V'
character." said 
Rosemary, dipping a pair of french fries into ketchup and using them as
a pointer to 
underscore her words.  "And she seems to mostly take on regular
human-level crimes, not 
these monsters."
	They nodded, each of them.
	Tessandra sighed.  "Look, we need more information.  We need a hint."
She turned 
to Amy.  "Amy... could you do a quick reading?"
	Amy thought about it.  It was only recently that they had discovered
that she had a 
gift with Tarot cards that seemed to be as strong as her gift with
regular playing cards.  But it 
spooked her a bit and she wasn't fond of doing it.  But Tessandra was
one of her best 
friends, and the whole situation with her mother wasn't getting any
better.
	Jasmine frowned.  "Why do we have to find who the heroes were supposed
to be?  
Let's just get your mother and scram."
	Rosemary shook her head.  "No, we can't do that.  With all of these
monsters, this 
city needs a protector.  We can't just rip away it's biggest one and run
off to let the bad guys 
win."
	Jasmine shrugged, and bit into her sandwich.
	Meanwhile, Amy had returned with her deck of tarot cards, and began to
shuffle 
and cut them to mix them up.  Then she offered it to Tessandra.  "Think
of your question, and 
then cut the deck to your answer."
	Tessandra thought for a moment, and then cut the deck.  Amy turned up
the top 
card.  The Nine of Wands.
	"Nine Wands?" said Sam.  "Not very evocative."
	"Nine," said Rosemary.  "What are there nine of?"
	"Levels of hell?" said Jasmine.
	"And Purgatory, and Heaven." Tessandra thought out loud.  "That's
Dante."
	"Nine's a mystical number, isn't it?" Said Amy.  "Three Threes."
	"Then there's nine planets, of course." said Sam, biting into an apple.
	Jasmine stopped eating in mid-chew as she tried to remember something
as the girls 
continued talking.  'Planets?  Something about planets, and wands...'
But whatever it was 
remained elusive.

	It was after school, and Serina was trying to convince Ami to spend an
hour or so in 
the arcade with her.  Ami was arguing against it by pointing out how
much work she had to 
do.  Serina was arguing for it by pulling Ami physically along by the
arm while keeping up a 
stream of chatter about Tuxedo Mask.
	"But Serina!"
	"But nothing!  You spend entirely too much time in your books.  C'mon,
we'll try the 
new Sailor V game!  I betcha with all the stuff you know about
computers, you'll wipe me 
out!"
	Arriving at the arcade, the girls got change and Serina took a few
moments to moon 
at Andrew.  Then they found the new Sailor V game.  In it, Sailor V and
a pair of new 'Sailor 
friends', Sailor M and Sailor Crescent fought against lots of monsters.
They watched the boy 
currently at the machine die at the fists and tentacles of something
that looked like a 
geometry exam come to life, and then stepped up to the machine.  In
moments even Ami had 
to agree that they were having a good time.
	"Watch out!"
	"Duck!"
	"Argh!  Don't you dare do that to my hair!  Sailor Splat!"
	GWORF, went the machine as another faceless youma bit the dust.
	Serina was playing Sailor V, and Ami was playing Sailor M, a blue
haired figure who 
had much the same abilities as Sailor V.  The pair reached the end of
the level, and watched 
with one eye the animated bit between levels.
	"You're right, Serina, this is a fun game.  And I'm doing better than I
thought."
	Serina grinned.  "Told ya!  Although I did have to help out a bit at
first."
	Ami nodded, watching the animation again as she shook out her hands,
tense from 
wiggling joysticks and punching buttons.  Then she gasped, and pointed
to the screen.  
"Serina, Look!"
	Serina looked.
	Computer fight games often don't have the resolution to show the faces
of the 
characters in detail.  It's one of the reason all the characters dress
so differently: so the 
players can tell the characters apart by their color scheme.  But in the
between-level 
animation, the 'camera' had panned closely to the face of the new Sailor
M, showing her in 
detail.
	And she looked like Ami.  It wasn't exactly like her, but it was very
close.
	And then Serina had a chance to gape as the new Sailor Crescent stepped
into the 
scene... with two large balls of hair on top of her head... with two
trailing streams of hair 
behind her.
	"Oh, no...." whispered Serina.  "This is too wierd."

	Meanwhile, Leona McAllister was hard at work watching 'The Seven
Samurai' on a 
big TV at one end of the video rental store she worked in.  Leona was
working on a degree in 
film criticism at the local university, and worked here both to get her
through school and to 
keep body and soul together.
	Admittedly, with her abilities she didn't need to work to get along,
but she had 
found out several decades ago that she actually *liked* to work.  And
besides, she didn't like 
to use her abilities more than she had to, for fear of Them catching
her.  She nodded as 
something whispered in her ear, telling her to watch out, watch out,
keep away.
	The bell over the door jingled, and she jumped, pausing the VCR to see
who had 
come in.  Darien.  She shared some classes with the boy.  She waved.
"Hi Darien!"
	Darien walked up, and smiled.  "Hi Leona.  How's it going."
	She grinned, and waved at the TV with the remote.  "Professor Asuma
wants to 
know everything interesting about the Seven Samurai next week... so it's
homework time."
	Darien nodded, and started to go through the aisles.
	Suddenly the voices grew louder in her head, and she leaned against the
counter to 
steady herself while she listened to them.  Her daughter had arrived,
and was with the fiends 
who were pursuing her.  She shivered.  She didn't want her daughter to
get hurt... she would 
have to find out if they had perverted her daughter to find her, or were
merely holding her 
hostage.
	Darien came up with three movies, and she entered them into the
computer and took 
his money.
	'It had better be the latter', she thought to herself.  'I don't want
to hurt my daughter, 
but I can't let them have me.'

	Serina walked home, carrying her books.  After the 'video game
episode', as Ami was 
referring to it, Ami had left, going home to study.  Serina tried
playing a few games by herself, 
but the Sailor V game bugged her, seeming to almost watch her from
across the arcade.  And 
so she was going home a little early.
	Wrapped in her thoughts, she ran full tilt into a man coming out of a
Video store, 
carrying three tapes... which then were scattered about the sidewalk
much like they were.
	"Why don't you look where you're going, Meatball-head!" cried out
Darien has they 
fell.
	"Don't call me that!" shot back Serina.  She got up, and frowned at
Darien as she 
dusted off her uniform.
	Darien bent over to grab a tape.  "Well, you weren't looking where you
were going, 
were you?"
	Serina steamed as Darien picked up his tapes and went off.  'Self
righteous boob!' 
she thought to herself as she stalked home.  A block from her house she
saw the cutest white 
cat.
	"Hello!" said Serina, bending over to look at it.  The cat gave off a
hearty meow and 
raised it's head to be petted.  "Who are you?"
	The cat meowed.  Serina giggled.  "Well, I don't know how to speak
'cat', but it's nice 
to meet you.    I'm going home.  Would you like some cream?"  she
suggested.
	The cat wrapped himself around her ankles lovingly.  Serina opened her
arms to pick 
him up, and he let her, crying out softly as she pinched him by
accident.
	"Sorry!"
	They walked the rest of the way home, arriving there soon.  Serina went
inside, 
dropped off her books, and went into the kitchen to pour the cat a bowl
of cream.  The cat 
quickly started licking, when there was a ring at the front door.
"Sammy, would you answer 
that?"  she cried out to her brother.
	"Get it yourself, Lazy!  I'm doing my homework!" was her reply.
	Serina sighed, and went to the door.  Opening it, she discovered a
blonde, pretty girl 
wearing the uniform of another school.  "Hello?"
	The girl gave a bow, and then a friendly smile.  "Hi!  I'm Mina.  Have
you seen a little 
white cat running around?  I'm afraid he got lost.  He answers to the
name of 'Artemis'."
-john
Humidity is the experience of looking for air and finding water.
jcfiala@cssltd.com