Well, what do you know? Less than 24 hours after writing my 
first story for the List, here's my second.

Sudden, irrepressible inspiration, or just the incredible willpower 
that can be summoned up by someone really, really determined 
to put off working on his term papers? You decide.

Seriously, this is dedicated to the nice folks who wrote back to 
say they liked my first story. I can personally guarantee that 
anyone who does send in comments will receive in return a 
beautiful, hand-crafted...er...e-mail...whether you like what I 
write or not.

Apologies if this has already been done before. I'd be surprised 
if it hasn't. Hope you enjoy it.



The New Girl


Lunchtime at Crossroads Junior High.

Serena was boooooored.

She wandered the school grounds, wondering where to eat her 
lunch, and with whom. Amy was inside, working on some extra 
credit project in the computer lab. Raye...oh, Raye went to a 
different school entirely. And Molly...Serena's spirits drooped 
further.

Molly, for all she knew, was still in bed, still in the fetal ball she 
had curled up into when the three of them had brought her home 
a few nights earlier, after Nephlyte vanished...<No, after he 
died,> she corrected her own thought. <We can't pretend it 
didn't really happen. That wouldn't be fair to him. Or to Molly.> 
She couldn't quite remember how the three of them had 
changed back to normal and got her home without any 
questions being asked. But they could probably have 
detransformed right in front of Molly at the time without her even 
noticing, she was so lost in her grief and her guilt. Amy had 
stayed with Molly in her room for a while. She wanted to make 
sure she didn't slip into shock. Serena and Raye had comforted 
Molly's mother, telling her...something. She accepted everything 
they said with a nod, but without really understanding, tears in 
her eyes. <We weren't very fair to her, either.>

Serena sighed. Why did it have to be so _hard_ to help people, 
sometimes? Sometimes there was nothing you could do, and 
nothing you could say, to make anyone feel better, and it didn't 
matter that you could change into someone else who was better 
at fighting monsters when you couldn't help your real friends 
when they were hurting.

She shuffled her feet in the grass. <I need to do something to 
cheer myself up. I need to cheer someone _else_ up. Maybe 
that'll help.> She brightened a little. <Yeah. Just talk to 
someone. Listen to them. Make a difference to someone I _can_ 
help.>

Serena's walk became more confident with each step. <Right! I 
can _do_ this! Now...who do I know whose day needs a little 
sunshine?>

A spectacled spectacle of broomlike hair and pimples burst up 
from behind a shrub just beside her. "Hi, Serena! I have to warn 
you about...Urk!"

"WAK!!! Melvin!!" She bounced back up from her startled fall--
that was _Melvin's_ fault, and not her own clumsiness--and 
shook him by the collar like a rat. "How many ways can I say 
it...NEVER SNEAK UP ON ME!"

"B-but, a-all I w-wanted was to w-warn you," he gasped, his 
teeth still rattling, "to keep your distance from the new girl. She's 
supposed to be a karate maniac."

"Oh, yeah?" This got Serena's interest. She'd heard about this 
girl. "The transfer student?" It was almost unheard of for a 
student to change schools in the middle of the semester like 
that.

"A _disciplinary_ transfer." Melvin checked his memo book. 
"Kicked out of her old school for fighting. Rumor has it that she 
got some people seriously hurt. Wild stuff about brawling and 
damage to school property."

"Do you know which one she is?" Serena looked around for an 
unfamiliar face among the lunchtime crowd.

"Ummm...yeah. That's her, right over there, the other side of that 
tree."

Serena saw dark hair, slumped shoulders, and a pretty face--
eyes down, mouth opening and closing around forkfuls of food. 
She was chewing with a vengeance, and even at a distance 
Serena could tell that her jaws would be clenched tight with 
anger if it weren't for having to eat lunch. She was a bit of an 
expert when it came to eating, and when it came to moods, and 
she knew how to read the signs. This girl was almost rigid with 
suppressed hostility.

Perfect.
 
"Are you sure that all that about her is true, Melvin?"

Melvin adjusted his glasses, pouring an ocean of wounded pride 
into the gesture. "Serena, you should know by now that there's 
_nothing_ I take more seriously than my gossip. You...hey, wait. 
What are you doing? Come back! Don't go over there!" He 
watched in horror as Serena smiled and walked over to the new 
girl. <This is what I've been looking for!> she thought. She 
remembered Amy telling her how lonely she had been during 
her first days at Crossroads, how she had thought everyone was 
against her, talking about her behind her back. Amy had told her 
how grateful she had felt when Serena just came up to her and 
talked with her; it had been her first really happy moment at the 
new school...

Melvin, still behind the bush, frantically waved, trying to call 
Serena back, but she was off in one of her own little 
worlds...<Oh, well. Trust Serena to hit it off with a martial arts 
psychopath.>

She had her fingers crossed behind her back, a bright smile on 
her face, and prepared a spontaneous speech. <Hi! My name's 
Serena!...> Well...she'd make up the rest of it as she went 
along. She thought she was walking pretty quietly--for once. Not 
quietly enough, though. The new girl spun around before 
Serena got within ten feet of her. She had half-raised herself on 
one hand, the other drawn back in a fist, before she stopped 
herself, seeing the quaking schoolgirl in front of her was no 
threat. "What do you want?" she growled.

"Er...I..hi. M-my name's..." The other shoe dropped (and not on 
that creep Darien's head, for once). Both girls stared at each 
other in surprised recognition.

"You?"

"You!"

"You're the girl I..."

"You're the one who..."

They both stared a moment longer, then relaxed. The dark-
haired girl even smiled.

"Well, if I'd known you were going to Crossroads, I would have 
walked the rest of the way with you. You didn't have any more 
trouble with those guys, did you?"

"No, they didn't hang around for seconds." Serena took it as an 
invitation to sit down. At least the new girl didn't stop her. As she 
looked closer, Serena saw what she had missed before from her 
vantage point--this was the girl in the strange uniform who had 
scared off those bullies this morning.

With her usual sense of timing, she had been late for school 
again. And with her usual grace, she had plowed straight into a 
trio of neighborhood toughs while rounding a corner. They were 
as shocked as she was at first, but when they realized the 
blonde schoolgirl stammering an apology to them was alone, 
they shifted into intimidation-mode. They were pretty good at it, 
in fact. Serena was wondering if she would get a chance to 
transform before things got _really_ ugly when a girl with dark 
hair had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She blushed a bit 
remembering the language in which the girl made her... uhh... 
challenge to the bullies. The middle one strutted up to her and 
started walking around her, making his own... err... intentions 
clear in an equally colorful vocabulary. The dark-haired girl 
never took her eyes off him. Not before she punched in under 
the ribs and in the jaw, not even after he crumpled to the ground, 
out cold. She gave the other two the same cold-eyed glare as 
she flipped one right over her shoulder and kicked the other 
somewhere painful. Serena remembered thinking that that last 
kick might have been a bit excessive, since the third bully was 
already backing off, his hands held up. But she wasn't about to 
argue when the girl turned to her, her eyes barely softening.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. I think so. You were...great."

"Huh."

"You're a really good fighter."

"Yeah. Whatever."

"I mean it. I've never seen anyone move that fast."

The girl flushed a bit. Not with pride. "You don't get around 
enough. Take care." She turned and walked away without 
another word.

And now that same girl was sitting in front of her, waiting for her 
next move.

Serena was at a loss. She tried to remember what she was out 
here for. "Um, at least now I have a chance to thank you for 
helping me out this morning."

"No problem."

Serena waited a moment. No takers for that conversation-
starter? Going...going...she looked into the new girl's chilly 
stare. Gone. <What can I talk to her about? Her hair? Her 
clothes? Ah!>

"I would probably have asked to walk to school with you myself if 
I'd known you went to school here. You're still wearing your old 
school's uniform...?"

"The new one's not ready yet."

More silence.

<Ohhh-KAY. I really, _really_ didn't want to do this, but I guess I 
have to. It might not cheer her up, but at least it'll get her talking 
to me.>

She took a deep breath. Her voice squeaked a bit with nervous 
tension as she launched into exactly the wrong subject to bring 
up with this particular new girl. "So, I hear you were kicked out 
of your old school for fighting..."

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and waited for the explosion. 
What she heard was a long-drawn, hissing breath, followed by a 
slow exhale. Serena peeked. No fists. The girl's arms were in 
fact crossed on her knees, which she had drawn up and was 
hugging. There was a quirky smile on her lips.

"Thanks. I guess I was curious about how long it would take for 
that story to get around. I was just scared to find out for real."

"Word gets around," Serena agreed. <Whew. Still alive.> "No-
one seems to know too much about you other than that. If you'd 
like, you could start setting them straight...beginning with me?"

"I don't think so. I don't think I'll be making too many friends 
here. Probably won't be here long enough before they send me 
off again."

"You know, this isn't such a bad place to be. There are a lot of 
good people here, if you'd just give them a chance." <This isn't 
quite going the way I'd hoped!>

"No thanks. Don't get the wrong idea." She looked over at the 
wilting Serena. "I don't have anything against you personally. In 
fact, I ought to be the one thanking you for this morning."

Serena blinked. "Huh?"

The ice came back into the new girl's eyes. "For giving me a 
chance to take out a few frustrations before school. I'm sure I'd 
have collected a couple of detentions so far today if we hadn't 
met those three."

It was Serena's turn to be quiet for a while. "Do you _like_ to 
fight?" she asked, not sure this was the best thing to say, but 
sure she had to follow this through to the end.

The dark-haired girl sighed again, and actually put her forehead 
down on her knees. "I...did. I do, I guess. Or I used to think I did, 
and now I've convinced myself I do. I don't know."

"You're good at it."

This earned a laugh. "Not as good as you think."

"And at your old school? You got into a lot of fights there?"

"Nearly every day. But it wasn't my fault! It was always some 
stupid thing or another."

"So you were defending yourself."

"No. Not really. Most of the time it wasn't really serious. But one 
thing led to another. The fighting...it was something I was always 
good at. Well...it was something I _wanted_ to be good at. But 
it...took things away from me. First it was just time. I'd always get 
to school late because of my fighting. Then it started getting in 
the way other things I liked doing. I couldn't go out with my 
friends or do anything just fun without something happening to 
start a fight. And even when I wasn't the one starting anything, it 
all just seemed to follow me around, like trouble knew who I was 
and where I lived."

Serena thought about this.

"I know what you mean," she said, quietly. "It's sometimes like 
that for me. Crazy stuff...just happens. And it comes up just 
when you think you can relax and be happy with your friends. 
You can't get away from it. It's not your fault. It's just stuff that 
happens to you."

The dark-haired girl nodded.

"Can I tell you something?"

Serena looked up, distracted from her own personal inner 
scrapbook of monsters and battles.

"Yeah. I mean...yes. I'm listening."

"It's all true about me. Everything you've heard. Everything."

Serena opened her mouth to say something, but the new girl 
waved her into silence.

"I hurt some people. Badly. At the time it didn't seem like such a 
big deal. We'd been though it all before. It was like a kind of 
routine we followed. I didn't start it. But that didn't matter. If you'd 
asked me at the time, I'd have told you that the people I hurt 
even deserved it. They didn't. They were my... friends. And I 
never really realized that until after I'd done things to them I'll 
never forgive myself for." She paused. "After it happened... well, 
everyone just seemed to decide that it would be better for all 
concerned if I 'got a fresh start' at a new school. I can't blame 
them, I guess. They wanted to get me away from where it 
happened, from the people who knew me. I suppose it's for the 
best. I couldn't really have faced them, once they knew what I 
had done. I can only imagine what they had to tell the principal 
here to get him to accept me."

Serena's mouth was dry. She tried to swallow, clear her throat, 
do anything to dislodge the awful feeling that she was about to 
start crying. The dark-haired girl noticed this, and tried to smile. 
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring you down so far before you've 
even eaten your lunch." She offered Serena a napkin.

"That's...alright. You know," she sniffed a bit and wiped her 
eyes, "I think there are more people around here who would 
understand what you're going through than you might think."

The new girl gave her a look. "Something tells me I've already 
found one."

The two sat silently for a moment before the new girl gestured to 
her lunch. "Would you like to share? Usually when I'm angry I 
eat a ton. I guess I'm not quite as angry as I thought I'd be when 
I packed lunch this morning."

"Would I?!?" Serena shouted before forcing down her natural 
reaction at the offer of food. "I mean...sure I would. Your lunch 
looks great!"

"Here...would you like to try one of these muffins? I made them 
myself."

The new girl barely had time to hold it out before Serena 
snatched it up, opened her mouth wide and bit off fully half of it.

And turned green.

The dark-haired girl's eyes began to frost over again as Serena 
desperately chewed, trying to wad the horrible mouthful small 
enough to swallow in a single gulp without tasting more of it than 
she absolutely had to. She was turning purple when the 
offended baker asked in a carefully flattened voice, "What's the 
matter? You don't like it?"

"Nnnaaarrg....nnnurrkh..." <gulp> "N-no. It's..." The lump 
splashed into her stomach, which roiled around it, trying to 
decide whether to pass it on without comment or send it back up 
with loud complaints. "It's ffff-ff-fine."

The dark-haired girl watched Serena's barely suppressed gasps 
and the tears in her eyes, and made a decision. She passed her  
a juice box wordlessly.

"Th-thanks." <slluuuurrrp. Whew.>

She gave the new girl a more genuine smile and held out her 
hand. "My name's Serena Tsukino. Do you want to be friends?"

The dark-haired girl smiled back and took her hand. "Sure. I'm 
Akane Tendo."


The End.
(unless anyone is really interested in seeing where this idea 
might go from here...)


Jim Champagne
jwchampagne@msn.com


Disclaimers:
This is an original work of fiction based on characters and ideas 
created and owned by Rumiko Takahashi and Naoko Takeuchi 
and by the licensed distributors of their work. No infringement of 
any existing copyrights is intended. The story itself, for what it's 
worth, is mine. Any reasonable, not-for-profit distribution of it is 
fine. Just let me know you liked it enough to show it so someone 
else.