I don't know where this came from.... Well, actually, I do, and the
people who mentioned all the bits that went into this and inspired it
are EVIL! If anyone is feeling sadistic and asks for more... there
will be more. You have been warned.
-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- Desc: Untitled
Sylia suppressed another sneeze, and involuntarily winced from the sudden
stress on her sinuses. Awkwardly freezing in position where she had
shifted to look into a cardboard box, Sylia shook her head to clear the
lingering traces of the near explosion. Then she carefully finished her
move and sat back against a support post with a heavy, oblong object
wrapped in brown paper.
The attic was short on head room, as attics often were, though the
sunlight streaming in through one window brightened the place
considerably. As was also often the case, the attic was crammed with boxes
and other miscellaneous items long forgotten or only half remembered by
their previous owners. Voices accompanied the sunlight from
outside-indistinct but for the occasional shout from someone at play-and
also drifted up from the open stairwell leading to the rest of the house.
Half of the contents of the box in front of Sylia had already been
unpacked and set carefully in the little free area; some of them
unwrapped, all of them sporting plain white stickies labeled with Sylia's
precise script.
Sylia stretched her face and waited for the side-effects of the dust in
the air to diminish to something manageable. The back of one gloved hand
lightly wiped a spot on her cheek, adding a streak of gray dust-the first
on her face-in contrast to the darker streaks on her jeans, blouse and the
kerchief covering her hair.
After a moment, Sylia carefully worked the string off of the object,
mentally noting that it was too worn to be reused, and unwrapped her
latest prize.
Sylia blinked at the unlabeled photo album and carefully peeled it open.
She sat there for some time, paging through the album and mulling over the
decades old photos from her aunt and uncle's high school days. Her aunt
and uncle had known each other then, and had married right after they
graduated. They had acquired the house not long after that, and had spent
the rest of their lives living there. Sylia and Mackie had spent some time
there after the elder Stingray's untimely demise, but her aunt and uncle
had never talked about their time in high school. Then her aunt had died
in a traffic accident a year ago, and Sylia's uncle, it seemed, couldn't
face life without her aunt and had faded out over the last year. Then her
cousins called with the sad news, and she had been obliged to help with
the sorting.
Sylia was never sure just what made everything click into place. It may
have been the photos themselves, some phrase shouted by one of her nieces,
both factors or something else entirely. A look of dread crashed onto her
normally calm face and she reached behind her with one hand for the small
of her back.
And her hand came back with something and she raised it above her head and
the phrase fell from her rapidly drying mouth....
Force surged from within, and the dust on Sylia, along with her clothing,
was flung away into the colorfully glowing aura that had suddenly
surrounded her, and left her nothing but herself. The aura spun then, and
streamers of light spun in and wrapped themselves around her, condensing
into a short blue skirted white sleeveless outfit with a flap in the back
and a brown bow at the neckline. Additional streamers wrapped around her
feet and hands and condensed into blue boots with a white trim and long
white gloves, respectively.
The surge faded and the aura dropped away from the unchanged attic of the
Umino residence.
Sailor Pluto lowered her arm and quietly uttered a vulgar curse.
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