On Mon, 8 Oct 2001 22:35:22, it was written:
Well,I want to see more of this story!
Oh, okay. >:->
(This time with a title.)
--------
Bubblegum Convergence
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Would you like more tea?"
Sylia shook her head. "No. Thank you, Mrs. Tsukino."
"Please, call me Mika." Mika tucked an errant lock of her gray streaked
hair behind one ear.
Sylia smiled at her hostess. "If you insist. I'm afraid you'll have to
call me Sylia, then."
Mika smiled and nodded. "Sylia then," she agreed. "What brings you here?
If I may ask?"
Sylia paused for a second before replying. "When you were in high school,
you knew a Naru, correct?"
"Naru Osaka?" Mika's expression was guarded.
"Naru Umino now, but I believe that was her maiden name."
"I did know her." Mika admitted.
"She was my aunt."
Mika's face brightened. "Oh! Well." She paused for a second. "Yes, I did
know her. She was my... a friend of my husband's family. I haven't seen
her in ages. How is she doing now?"
"I'm sorry, Mika. She passed away a year ago."
Mika looked downcast. "My condolences. She was too nice for what she had
to deal with when we were in school."
Sylia looked faintly embarrassed. "I'm afraid that's really what I'm here
for. I wanted to know what her life in high school was like; I stayed with
her and uncle Umino for a few years but I never got as close to them as I
should have."
Mika nodded. "I'm not surprised they didn't say anything. But how did you
find out about me, then?"
Sylia leaned forward and flipped open the album resting on the table. It
was already facing Mika, who leaned forward to look. "I found this when I
was helping clean their attic. My cousins were able to name a few people
in the pictures, and I went from there."
"Oh my. I had-" Her shoulders slumped.
"I'm sorry, Mika. If this-"
"No." Mika raised a hand and looked up at Sylia. I'd like to- I should
remember this, and them." She lowered her hand. "My husband's sister was
Naru's best friend at the time. Shingo and Usagi used to tease each other
unmercifully, and Usagi was a clutz and a bit of an airhead, but she was
the sweetest person.... I should remember her because the world doesn't
have enough people like that."
Mika gestured, and Sylia took a seat next to her so the two women could
both look over the photo album. They paged through it with Mika
identifying the faces unfamiliar to Sylia.
"And these were the girls that Usagi and Naru met during the hauntings."
She pointed at each of them in turn. "Rei, Ami, Makoto and Min... Minako,
I think."
Sylia arched an eyebrow. "Hauntings?"
Mika shrugged. "That's what some of us called it. I don't think anyone
ever figured out what was really going on. It was just so strange and
creepy. None of it ever made any sense, even when we were in the middle of
it, and then the end of it...."
"What happened?"
"The strange things just... stopped. But those five, and one of the
upperclassmen, disappeared. Without a trace. Naru was... she didn't take
it very well."
"They just stopped?"
"They just stopped around Juuban High School right around when those six
vanished, though something just like it happened around Mugen Gakuen
later. Considering how that ended, I think we were fortunate at Juuban."
"Mugen Gakuen?" Sylia caught herself and a smile quirked across her face.
"I'm sorry, Mika. I must sound like an echo."
"It's alright, Sylia." Mika nodded. "About a year... no, two years?...
later. That one ended with a few students vanishing and the whole school
turning into a crater. There was plenty in the papers about that for a
while. I suspect just hearing about it made it take longer for Naru...."
Mika shook herself and flipped to the next page of photos.
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